Alaska 40. Road Warriors August 18

Rather than fishing and having to drive back up the road to get the camper, we opted to hook it up and bring it with us. We were mostly heading back to Kenai out of obligation to Loren (Colorado fishing friend/guide) who was SO EXCITED for us to catch… I’m not sure what. He didn’t seem to fully understand the words I spoke to him many times: “The silver salmon are not here yet.”

He was undeterred in his advice and enthusiasm for us to fish his carefully guarded map pins where he had had so much success in past years. The difference, of course, being he was here in SEPTEMBER and not during the Sockeye run when nothing is BITING. When all the normal fishing rules are out the window. 

But we love Loren, and despite all our fishless expeditions thus far, we still love to fish. And we wanted to experience wading the Kenai and Russian. So off we went to the fly shop in Cooper Landing to pick up the flies that Loren recommended. 

Fly shops are almost always great fun. In addition to an insanely cute and mopey mini dachshund named Little John, it had a great selection of gear. Interestingly, the fly shop guy was adamant that it was “too early” to be fishing beads for trout. Call us clueless about all this Alaskan fishing stuff, but… seriously? Did we hear that wrong? Literally every other person UNDER HEAVEN has said we could ONLY fish beads. But he was unmoved. “Too early.” 

Maybe that has been our problem? 

To be fair, he wasn’t all that encouraging on any front. Those trout are “just plain full.” In other words, they simply aren’t hungry. 

That DID make sense to us.

In any case, we bought a handful of streamers and nymphs and quickly decided it would be fun to take the free ferry to the far side of the Kenai River and hike up the Russian River, 1) for the experience and 2) because the fly shop guy mentioned that was the ONE PLACE you could potentially throw a dry fly to a trout.

The ferry cost $12 each to take roundtrip. Fascinating. It’s non-motorized and works with the river current, both coming and going from each bank, and is guided by a rudder and a cable. It only takes a few minutes to cross. We talked to a cute little local family, the dad of which said he didn’t go too far up the Russian, personally, because it’s “too juicy” with bears. 

It’s funny because we were so worried about bears before setting out on our trip. I can’t tell you how much time we spent researching how to bring a gun with us for safety (basically impossible due to Canadian customs). And yet we’ve only seen one bear — even with all our bushwhacking! So bears have become sort of… fictional, to some degree. For me, anyway. It’s also hard to feel too scared when there are about a hundred other fishermen around. 

We started by walking a short way up the Russian River, then started casting our new streamers. Nothing. And our new nymphs. Nothing. Meanwhile, Dave saw a guy catching several small rainbows upstream from us. And what was he using? A BEAD! We switched and shortly thereafter Dave caught one. So exciting! …I, of course, caught nothing.

Until I finally did! 

A 3” BABY!

Shortly after I caught a nice Dolly Varden. 

It was a RELIEF to finally catch a few fish. But it was also really slow. We were pretty far upstream just enjoying the day and casting. I was passing by an older guy when he tried to converse a bit, though he didn’t have much English as he was from Spain. He indicated he wanted to see what I was using and I showed him my bead. Then he showed me his and said “Better” and proceeded to dig in his bag and gave me a handful of the ones he was using — slightly, smaller and just a hint more red.

I didn’t have the gear to rig up but I didn’t want to be disrespectful of his kindness — even though I didn’t give any credence to his certainty that his was better — so I quickly made just sort of a hacked jury-rigged bead set up and cast it, just to show him I was grateful. 

I kid you not. First cast I had a HUGE trout on. HUGE! I landed it and looked upriver to him and he was giving me a thumbs up. “THANK YOU,” I yelled!!

I caught a ton of fish after that. Eventually I even made a rig for Dave. 

I’m kidding. I made one for him right away. It is astounding to see such a small thing make such a big difference. We leapfrogged with this guy for the next hour as we made our way back toward the Kenai and the ferry. I thanked him so many times I think I became annoying. But he simply didn’t know how many times we’d been skunked over the past weeks. It was a gas. It was thrilling. 

We continued to catch them right up until we boarded the ferry. What a day. (Spoiler Alert: this day would need to sustain me…)

We are still trying to figure out what the HECK that fly shop guy was smoking. Too early…

We got back to the camper and made some sandwiches and hit the road north, backtracking past Girdwood where we saw TONS of cars pulled off and using binoculars and having cameras at the ready. Far off in the distance I saw a funky wave and Dave immediately knew it was a bore tide — something he had read about. It turns out that Turnagain Bay has some of the largest bore tides in the world — which happens when high tide switches to low tide and vice versa. We think this one was about 5-6 feet high.

We pulled over just in time to see all the locals who were lined up in the water catch the big wave and ride it toward the end of the Turnagain Arm. So cool! What great timing!

It took us another couple hours to get back up to the Talkeetna turn-off where there was a campground right at Montana Creek that someone had told us was nice.(Remember? Probably the #1 trout stream in all of Alaska? Yes. We are giving it another try.)

It wasn’t a nice campground. 

But we had it almost entirely to ourselves, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Everything is sodden and muddy and puddly. There has been so flippin’ much rain. We walked to the creek to see if there was any easy fishing access. 

There wasn’t.

One thing I have been super grateful for was the foresight to bring our Muck Boots along. Dave bought a pair and I brought one of my two pairs from MN to CO so I could bring them with to Alaska. Since getting to Alaska I went directly from wearing my Chacos 100% of the time to wearing my Mucks. I have lived in them. 

In Alaska, the locals wear Tuff brand. They are actually really cute. I can’t you don’t see them more at home. Maybe I’ll become a distributor. (Editor’s note: we DO have them at home. Schools sells them.)

We had pork chops again (So quick! So good!) and hit the hay.