These
are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip
into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update: October 10, 2000
9:56
ALASKA TIME ROOM 103 OF THE KENAI PRINCESS HOTEL
Shit,
it's snowing. I thought I was going fishing today. That's why I
opted to stay around the Kenai River and stay in a fancy hotel.
I was going to take a drift boat up or down the Kenai today and
catch some big rainbows. I feel asleep with visions of blue skies
and multi-color rainbows dancing in my head. Woke up, and it's gray
and white.
Bugger
it. The snow is falling, the sky is gray and I'm watching TV.
Yesterday
fooled me into today. Yesterday was pretty spectacular all the way
around, although not even perfect weather allowed me to catch a
steelhead.
Driving
out of Homer, I got the full panorama of sea and sky and mountains.
It was a cold, crystal clear day, and there were snow-covered volcanos
poking up all over the place.
The
sun was shining, and I thought for sure that this was the day to
finally catch a steelhead.
I
stopped at that bridge over the Anchor River and fished there for
a while, but nothing.
Then
I went to the Bridge Hole on the Anchor, and flailed that with a
few others. Nothing.
Then
I went down to the mouth of the Anchor, where I had seen that gypsy
camp with the sled dogs a few days ago. This time, my timing was
perfect. The tide was way in and the estuary was full of water.
It was a flawless blue day, and the mountains of the Aleutian Chain,
on the other side of Cook Inlet, looked like Valhalla.
I
pulled up next to the gypsy camp and pulled out my fly rod and began
flailing. This time, the resident of the gypsy camp was around.
His name was Scotty and he was a transplant from Pennsylvania who
had come to Alaska five years before and never left. He had been
living at that spot at the end of the Anchor River for several years,
and was nice enough to share some Local Knowledge.
"You
might want to come up this way. There's a channel right through
here, and then a little island the fish bounce off. You might have
better luck."
So
I moved where he said, but pretty soon I would learn he was just
being nice.
"You
can see the fish when they're moving," Scotty said. "They put up
a bow wake and you just cast in front of that."
I
knew that from fishing the Sooes. Today there weren't any bow wakes,
just the occasional plop from a rising Dolly Varden.
"Oops,
there goes one, heading back out to sea!" Scotty shouted, and I
turned to see a bow wake going the other way. I cast at it, but
Scotty just chuckled.
So
I got into a conversation with Scotty, as he drank beer and talked
to his dogs. Scotty had the place wired. He said summer was the
time to be there, when there were tourists and fishermen everywhere,
but also a lot of fish. Scotty would sit with his buddies in their
hillbilly gypsy camp with their crude, monofilament line rigs while
yuppies flailed the water with thousand dollar rigs. They'd see
fish moving, put down their beers, throw in their monofilament,
snag a fish, chortle at the yuppies, then go back to their beers.
"Drove
them crazy," Scotty claimed.
I
could imagine.
Scotty
had only seen one bear in all his time on the Anchor River, a black
bear scuttling away, off in the distance.
Scotty
reckoned that if you were going to be poor, might as well be poor
in a beautiful place. I agreed with that.
Scotty
had hitch-hiked all over Alaska, but spent most of his time in the
gypsy camp at the mouth of the Anchor River, with his dogs and his
beer and his million-dollar view.
He
said that I was a little late in the season for the big steelhead
and red salmon runs, and that I owed it to myself to come back in
the summer, when all of those things were happening.
"I
personally pulled 200 kings out of this river myself," Scotty claimed.
He
offered me a beer, but I declined. If I'm going to stay in Alaska,
I'd better learn to like that stufff. I'm becoming unsociable.
I
left and poked around in a couple of Anchor River holes, but there
were fishermen everywhere, and it kind of lost its flavor.
So
I pushed on to Deep Creek, and went down to the mouth there. This
time there wasn't even a Scotty around. It was just me and a hundred
yards of slow-moving river, heading out to sea. I didn't see any
bow wakes, but I didn't care. I just cast and drift all the way
to the mouth, where I got another million dollar view of Redoubt
Volcano, and another volcano that I can't spell.
And
then I gave up. No steelhead for Ben this year. Don't know what
I was doing wrong. Maybe nothing. Catching a steelhead comes with
experience and patience and luck, and I guess I didn't invest enough
of both this time.
So
I drove out, past the Ninilchik, into Kenai, through Soldotna and
onto the highway that runs along the Kenai River. This is a river
designed by God of the Chamber of Commerce. The Kenai is just a
classic: trees, mountains, snow, rapids, turquoise water, bald eagles.
The works.
Along
the way, I saw a pretty bad accident. Someone had run their black
truck into a ditch, and it looked totaled. There were cops and a
a tow truck and I wondered about the driver.
That
reminded me of another wreck I had seen another day. A giant trailer-home
had veered off the highway, and would need a crane to get it out.
Near
Cooper Landing I saw more police cars pulled off to the side, and
as I approached I caught a glimpse of black. Someone had hit a black
bear with their truck. The bear was dead, and there was a grinning
hillbilly with the hood of his truck up and open, checking for damage.
Poor
Yogi. Never hurt anyone.
The
Kenai looked too good to resist. You should have seen it all in
the evening. At Cooper Landing I called Alaska Troutfitters to ask
if they had any trips going out. They suggested I call back in the
morning.
While
driving along I saw the Kenai Princess on the other side of the
river. It was a lodge and an RV park, so I thought I might find
a place to eat dinner, watch Monday Night Football and stay for
the night.
The
Kenai Princess is semi-fancy for around here. I had turkey/vegetable
soup in the bar while watching Tampa Bay and Minnesota on Monday
Night Football.
The
bartender turned out to be very knowledgable about fishing. He had
caught 13 steelhead on the Anchor River a week ago, but he had been
doing it for years, and had techniques. He used only monofilament
line, which was something that Scotty suggested.
"Those
steelhead are real smart," the bartender said. "They'll see one
of those orange or green or yellow fly lines coming at them, and
they'll bolt. I've seen times where I wasn't catching anything on
eight-pound monofilament, and went down to six-pound and started
nailing them. You have to put in some time with steelhead, but once
you catch the first one, a little lightbulb goes on over your head,
and it gets easier from there."
I
asked about drifting the Kenai the next day, and The Bartender said
go for it. So I checked into another fancy hotel room, and fell
asleep thinking "Kill trout on the morrow." (Hey, I wanted to stay
in the RV park, but it was closed. All of this part of Alaska is
closing.)
It
is the morrow, and it is snowing outside. The trout are safe, not
that they were in much danger from me, anyway.
No
fishing the Kenai today. But I shall return.
Off
to Anchorage now. Need my tide chart to figure out when the bore
will be coming through.
I
think I better get out of Alaska in a hurry. The weather is about
to get really bad.
No,
the weather already is really bad.
Next
year, I'll have a Humvee.
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