Well, I just got back from a fifth annual trip silver salmon fishing in south-central Alaska. As always, the company was great and the scenery fantastic. This year was one that drove home the point that in fishing, nothing can really be taken for granted. Our trip was a bit earlier this year, which happens to be one featuring an unusually late run in that area of the state. Complicating matters further, things were far more dry than we've seen in previous years. Little water in the streams means that few salmon head up them to spawn. Consequently, fishing was tough. For the first time, I found my wrist hurting more from casting (flinging a heavily weighted fly on a #2 hook behind a substantial split shot on a sink-tip line with an eight weight is hard on us five weight mountain stream fifteen-foot-no-backcast #16 Adams types) than from hanging on while a silver goes nuts on the other end. Sometimes you just have to grind a bit to catch fish and previous trips where my arm did get tired from fighting fish (not that tired, but still) probably built up a little earning-it time in the fishing karma bank.
Still, we caught fish, saw only bear tracks, saw moose
and a curious weasel and generally had a fine time. My limited experience in Alaska has shown it to be much like the Grand Canyon in that the scale of the scenery is so large there is no way to capture it with photographs.
This trip was sunny, so the mountains were unusually visible, requiring frequent pauses just to admire the view.
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