Alaska holds a special appeal to those that like the outdoors, like a magnetic personality pasted to a stool in a college bar. When it’s out of sight it’s out of everyone’s mind, but open a few windows and let the cold air roll across the top of a few IPA’s and it sticks to your steely medulla like a thorny synapse.
I really had no plans to travel to Alaska, that is until an old friend joined the Navy and relocated there. That’s the side of E-mail you don’t hear much about, the Devil in the black dress that watches over the working man, throwing images of majesty in the face of his In-Box. It all started with a few photos of fish from JJ and the message, “Hey man, I got the commission in Alaska, it’s incredible.”
Well…Crap! Everyone knows Alaska is incredible. It’s just not a place I really thought much about traveling to, and it’s enough of a hassle getting there that I’ve been able to keep it out of the crosshairs for some time. That is, until the photo of the plane arrived.
Stuck to the top of my In-Box was the E-mail from JJ and the image of a red and white bitchin’ little float plane that had, “endless adventure” written all over it. When you work in an advertising agency in Austin, TX there’s an element of creativity that goes with the job, and when you can think of nothing besides big fish, snow-capped mountains, free falling down from the ionosphere, endless daytime and some of the best microbrews in the world, then it’s just a matter of time before the rest of the staff accuses you of mixing Lunesta with your morning vitamins.
Living in a state the size of most third world countries but with the population of South Beach, the opportunity for outdoor adventure is limited by your willingness to drive, or in JJ’s case, fly. So he spends his weekends flying his float plane and looking for remote lakes where he then introduces himself to the local gamefish population via wind drifts while fishing from the pontoons. In other words, he lives out the normal working person’s vacation on a weekly basis.
And I was good with that, until I received the e-mail with a half-dozen dive tank sized silver salmon stretched across the pontoon. If a picture is worth 10,000 words, then I just received the book on how to mindlessly daydream of the frozen tundra. I was two weeks into a three month project with a plastic bag over my head and just enough oxygen to focus on the computer monitor when I fired back an e-mail along the lines of, “I’m there. See you in a couple of weeks,” thinking that would back him away from the lion’s cage.
I’d just poked a hole in that bag and gotten back on track when my In-Box displayed a response along with an attached image. The text read, “So this is just one of 200 cabins you can fly into and rent across the state. We found a site about them and rented this one this weekend. Cool huh?”
JJ has always been the kid who goaded the lion to take a swipe, and I’d just whiffed at the pie-faced kid holding the stick. He ran it across the front of the cage with an email saying, “they’re still catching some Rainbows on the Kenai. We can fly up there, or drive in and get a guide.”
By the time I get home, I’m twitching like a Starbuck employee with a nervous tic to the point that my wife pulls me aside and asks if I need a time out. I explain JJ’s gig and the epic fishing, and mention something about maybe going out to visit him next summer, when she puts a hand on each shoulder, shakes me back to reality and says, “Why don’t you go now AND next summer?”
I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I am married to the all-time greatest female on this planet, but I’d been burning the wax hard and hadn’t been able to spend time with my family, so how was I going to get past the guilt meter pasted to my heart? I mention the trip to JJ, who explains that the lakes he’s been fishing are about done for the fall. I slump into the easy chair until my wife walks in and calls me out, “Go anyway, you idiot.”
Two minutes later I’m filling out my credit card data on a discount ticket website and e-mailing JJ to find out whether he likes plain or peppered beef jerky. Nine days later, I’m standing in an airport in Phoenix with a connecting flight to Anchorage staring at the people in the boarding line and thinking, “Geez, if this plane were to crash land in the bush, I look like the only one here who couldn’t find a way to walk out.” Even the women had a confidence that said, “We’ll eat you big guy, if we have to.”
Before I can get the image of a woman frying my liver on a pan made out of discarded beer cans with a University of Texas keychain handle, I’m knee-deep in rainbow trout. Just me, JJ a pocketful of egg-sucking leech flies and enough salmonids for a good case of tennis elbow.
JJ owned the Dolly Vardens, while I was one with the rocks. In a calm pool, miles upsteam from the ocean, JJ caught a Silver Salmon with a malfunctioning GPS, then hooked several more.
We tipped a few at Humpy’s and at F Street, watched eagles flock like seagulls and caribou marching to Sheryl Crow.
We came, we saw, we slipped on wet rocks and filled our waders with freezing water, and then I returned home, ready to return the following summer with the greatest woman on the planet.
One of the cheekier discussions centered around how anglers should strip a fly for permit, with individual observations relayed for fishing crab and shrimp flies. Most felt that the crab flies really needed to fall until directly in the path or “view” of the fish, then as the fish approached, it was to be hopped away from the fish like a crustacean with a dissimilar pelagic magnetism. The same went for the shrimp flies, which should be cast to the side but into the path of approaching fish, then hopped from the strike zone like a live shrimp on the barbie.
