Adak Silver

            Typically I’m not the man who is in the right spot at the right time.  But that day, as I stood waist deep in the frigid Bering Sea casting a pink and silver streamer across the gently rolling surge of tide, I had no doubt my time had come -- and without question -- I was that man.

Behind me a nameless Aleutian stream emptied itself into the salt water and my eyes, as they so often do when I find myself at the edge of the ocean, scanned the horizon.  Abruptly, several hundred yards in front of me, the swelling sea erupted in total chaos.  A school of salmon a thousand strong broke the surface of the ocean like a wild swarm of bees, vaulting and leaping in an unbelievable display of aerial acrobatics.

            Instantly, striking at the heart of the school, a killer whale tore through them like a crazed torpedo, busting out of the ocean with his wide mouth opened in a toothy grin, his gullet filled with salmon.  A wall of water pushed out around him and in its surge rode hundreds of fish, appearing like silvery minnows against his huge black bulk.  His body cleared the ocean completely and then smashed down onto the school in a great crash.

Then, just as quickly as the frenzy began, the ocean with its ever rolling surge, swallowed them all, hiding its’ turmoil down below. 

            In disbelief I stood there for several moments.  Often I had seen a pod of killer whales cruise the edge of the island, slowly rising and sinking as they hunted the shore, but never had I seen anything like this.  Here it wasn’t me with my fly rod who was top dog to the salmon, it wasn’t the eagles with their crushing talons, it wasn’t the seals, or the sea otters – it was the killer whale.

            For an hour I stood in the sea casting, hoping the whale would move the fish in close.  But there was no more schooling salmon, no more killer whales, only an empty open ocean and a gray cloudy sky.  The cold water became unbearable and my legs felt like boards attached at my hips. Fishless and cold, I turned my back on the sea and moved into the stream. 

In August, at the peak of the pink salmon run, fish were everywhere here.  I spent many summer evenings wading in the cold crisp water wearing my arms out catching them.  It was easy to lose count of the fish I caught.  With hundreds of salmon waiting out in front of me, I simply forgot about the one just released and started immediately thinking about catching the next one.  

            I quickly learned how different these cold water fish were from their warm water brothers I caught back home in Indiana.  Back home if a fish was foul hooked and released, chances were it wouldn’t survive.  Soon it would be back on the surface gasping its’ last breath.

            These salmon were warriors.  Some I caught escaped the powerful talons of eagles – punctures wounds pierced them from side to side.  Others managed to wrestle away from the hungry grasps of sea otters or seals – deep gashing claw marks ran down their bodies and chunky bits of flesh were bitten out of their backs.  But, still they fought as hard as any salmon I caught.

            On that day in September the harsh Aleutian winter signaled its’ approach.  The green tundra grass stood a dull brown.  During the night, under the cover of cloudy darkness, the snow had crept further down the mountains.  Though the temperature held seasonable, the wind blew in off the ocean with a cold foreboding chill. 

The pink salmon run was dead and I became even more amazed at those fish.  More than likely born in this stream, they had spent years in the ocean, travelling thousands of miles and somehow, against great odds, made it back to their birth place to spawn and die.

            The salmon didn’t know or perhaps they didn’t care of their destiny.  They littered the stream.  Everywhere I looked, they were there – hundreds of bodies of decomposing, hanging flesh.  Some more skeleton than fish, yet still they attempted to swim.  Their bodies had lost the ability to go where their minds told them to so instead they floundered on shallow banks and gravel bars.  There they waited patiently for the ravens and fox.

            On that day they were not why I was there.  I was after my first Alaskan silver salmon – just like the one’s I had seen disappear in the mouth of the killer whale.  I had been told they moved into the stream when the pinks were finished.  I’d also been told they were twice as big and twice as fun to catch.

            I worked up into the stream wading from hole to hole looking for the silvers, but finding none.  I was glad to have the rotting pinks for company because among them were beautiful dolly vardens and rainbow trout gorging on their living corpses, and they kept my line busy.

            In front of me the stream curved in a gentle sweep. In the bend of the stream the years of slow moving water had gnawed away at the fragile bank and created a deep undercut hole.  A tall knoll rose sharply above the bank and upon it perched a mature bald eagle.  For a moment, my attention drifted from the stream and onto the big bird and I strayed carelessly close to the hole before my eyes caught a vague movement of something in the water.

I stared straight at them for several seconds before I realized what they were.  They moved in a shifting silvery wave in the current, their bodies big and shimmering bright -- fresh from the sea and perfect for catching.

The salmon were schooled below the undercut bank, all but those on the very edge safe from the eagle above them.  I couldn’t resist trying to get a better look at them, so I climbed out of the stream and slowly worked across the bank on my belly and lowered my head over the side.  With my eyes inches from the water my heart started to race.  Directly under me were over a hundred salmon and some of them were giants.  The biggest ones were well under the bank putting them out of reach to my cast.

Cruising under the salmon were several dolly vardens that made the two-pounders I caught earlier look small.  Underneath my nose was a salmon that would go eight pounds.  For a moment I wished I was that eagle because with a quick grab of a talon he would have been mine.  With my face almost in his world I looked down on the salmon and decided then and there somehow that fish would end up on the end of my line.

For thirty minutes I casted to the fish, my fly drifting too far into the middle of the stream for it to drift past the salmon, or my line carrying too far up onto the bank and snagging in the tall tundra grass.  More than once I had to lay my rod down on a gravel bar and sneak around the hole to free my line.

Then, at that moment when I was just going through the motions, something different happened: I made a perfect cast; my fly carried in the current to the waiting salmon; as if on cue I noticed a flare of the salmon’s gills; my fly line stopped where one hundred times before it had drifted past.  Instantly I raised my rod and with a whoosh my line lifted off the stream sending thousands of tiny water droplets spraying into the air.

My rod doubled over and the salmon glided slightly to the left.  Feeling the bite of the hook he exploded and bulldogged his way to the head of the pool.  With a great leap the fish was out of the water twisting and shaking, sending its power surging through my rod down into my hands.

Instead of running away the salmon brought the fight to me and I recovered line as quickly as I could.  With no place to go but back into the pool or downstream the salmon made a run for the sea.  His muscular silver body split through the shallow riffle at my feet throwing water on me with his powerful tail.  In an instant he was past me and my reel was into nothing but backing.  I decided if I wanted to land this fish I better get after him.

I let out a war whoop and gave chase down the middle of the stream.  By the time I caught up I was completely drenched and out of breath.  Luckily the salmon was just as tired and was soon swimming at my feet.  Gently I lifted the fish from the water, snapped a picture, removed my fly and returned him again.

The salmon edged to the side of the stream and held in the slack water.  I gathered my rod and walked back upstream to the grassy knoll and began to climb.  Halfway up I waved my arms and yelled.  The big eagle vaulted from his perch and soared into the distance until his form melted into the gray cloudy sky.

“Today,” I said, “this salmon will be caught only by me!”

Fish weren't the only thing on the menu for the eagles.

I couldn't tell if they were breeding or fighting over the fishing hole.

A mom with her pup.

My first Alaskan Pink Salmon.  The Bering Sea is a cold wade!

When the hole below me was fished out with artificial we could always dig some earthworms and catch a dozen more.

A beautiful little rainbow trout.  Unfortunately my best fish pictures were lost when my camera sunk in the Bering Sea!

Wading the Creek

I could tell you the best place to be on a late July day when the weather person says it will be ninety-five degrees by noon -- but, I don't think I will.  However, I will tell you this.  This place is better than staying in your house in the air conditioning; there all you will do is sit on the couch and watch television, maybe do a little cleaning, and then decide it is even too hot for that.

This place is even better than going to your favorite swimming pool -- which at first you will think is the only place to be --  until you get there and you see everyone else thought so, too, and there will not be enough room to swim.  There will only be enough room to wade through a crowd of people.

You might as well be on a crowded New York City sidewalk.  Only if you were in New York City, you could walk on the shady side of the street, which would be a cooler place to be than under the sun in the swimming pool, because the water there will be warm enough to take a bath in and soon enough you will wish you were back home in the air conditioning.

I could tell you where the best place to be on a horribly hot, late July day is and I will.  The best place to be on such a day is wading through a creek that slowly meanders between two steep wooded hillsides.  Maybe you are asking yourself this:  Why is this creek the best place to be on such a day?  Well, because if you are lucky you have a memory from your childhood of wading in such a creek.  It might have been a creek on your grandma's farm, or, it might have been a creek that you waded on a family vacation to the Smoky Mountains one summer.  But anyway, if you are lucky you have that memory and it is probably a good memory.  I can tell you this: wading in a creek as a grown-up will give you just as good a memory, especially if you have a fishing pole in your hands.

If this in itself is not a good enough reason to be wading in this creek on a scorcher of a July day, maybe this will convince you.  Here, giant sycamores, cottonwoods, beech, and poplars grow along the edge of the creek, reaching up into the open space above.  Under these grand old trees grow smaller maple and box elder, filling in the void.  So when you are wading in the creek, with the trees growing in such a way, it seems as if you are wading inside a tunnel of trees.  Only the big trees have more weight to hold and sometimes their roots cannot do the job and they end up falling into the creek.

But the reason I am telling you about the trees, is so you know when you are wading in this creek, the sunlight that falls across the water has first passed through the big trees and also through the smaller trees; and even on a hot July day, when you are here, under the shadows of the trees, as the sunlight touches your skin, it does not feel at all like a hot July sun, but rather more like a warm May sun.

The best place to be on a hot, late, July day is wading through the water in this creek.  This water is not anything like the water you will find in your favorite swimming pool.  The water here slowly lumbers along, constantly flowing, but never in a hurry to get anywhere.  This time of year the creek is not fed by runoff water; it is late July, not a single drop of rain has fallen in a month -- there is no water to run off of anything.  This creek runs through cave country and is fed by underground springs.  The water you wade through here has been underground so long that it has become very cool.  When you are here waist deep in the creek and you wade through the seeping springs, chills will run up your spine.

For the time being, this creek is away from development.  There are no roads or bridges across this particular stretch of creek.  On a hot July day, you can wade the creek with a friend and not see another person the entire day.  Behind you, you can float a small minnow bucket, a seine, and a cooler.  Sometimes the creek will become shallow enough that each of you will have to grab a handle on the cooler and walk it over the rocks, but most of the way the cooler will float.  At other times the creek will become deep enough where if you are six feet tall, you will have to wade the creek on the tips of your toes, hold your fishing pole above your head and bend your neck back to keep your mouth and nose above the water.  If you are not six feet tall you will have to find shallower water closer to the bank.

Catching fish is easy enough.  This particular stretch of creek has been forgotten about for now -- nobody ever fishes it.  In the shallow stretches of the creek, you seine, enough creek chubs to fill your minnow bucket and you are all set.  When you reach deeper water, you hook a creek chub through the tail, and gently toss it out into the water in front of you.

The smallmouth bass in this creek are mean, fat, and greedy.  You would not prefer them any other way.  And because they are not used to being caught, they strike again, again, and again.  The fish are big, too.  In fact, the fish are so big, that later on, when you are talking to other fishers, you will not tell them about these fish.  Only a fool would tell somebody else about this spot.  Besides, nobody would believe you anyway.  Not every fisher gets to see a five pound smallmouth bass walk across the water in front of them.  And then, because you are standing in its world, you look down as the fish swims between your legs, thumping your knees with its mighty tail.

Later in the evening, when the sun has disappeared behind the wooded hill on the western side of the creek, you know it is time to turn back.  Even though there is still fishable water ahead of you, those fish will have to wait for another day.  Wading back to the truck, you find a big tree that has fallen across shallow water and you have a seat.  Sitting on the tree with your feet in the creek and a beer in your hand, you realize you are cold.  You have been in and out of the cool water for almost eight hours and your body temperature is low.  You are not just cool, you are cold to the point where goose bumps are popping out on your arms and legs.  If you were in Alaska on a cold, January, day you would have to do something quickly -- goose bumps are the first sign of hypothermia.  Because you are here in this creek and because this is one of the hottest days of the year, you know you will be okay.  But thanks to those goose bumps, and thanks to the fact that you have been outside all day long, you know that there could not be a better place to be on such a terribly hot, late, July day.