Salmon Fishing

So, Les, one of the bartenders in our bar, is also a fishing guide. He is a local, a bit of a character and calls himself an “Eskimo.” Five of us (Mary, myself, our friend Juanita and another young couple) decide to go fishing with Les to try our luck. We all set off one morning, in pouring rain so Mary wimps out and stays home, for the two-hour drive south to the closest salmon river from us near the town of Talkeetna. We all pile into Les’s beat-up old van and go flying down the road with all the gear, a cooler of ice and of course Les’s shotgun because there have been bear sightings lately near Montana Creek, our destination.

After buying our licenses, we wondered downstream to try our luck. By this time the weather has cleared and the sky was clear and blue like only it can in Alaska. There were lots of fish in the creek, some swimming upstream to spawn and others dead and floating downstream having competed their responsibility. I was using a fly rod and reel for the first time…a little tricky to begin but I quickly got the hang of it. We were using single hook spinners and began catching right from the beginning, however, they were all small pink salmon and we had expected to catch a few large silver kings. After a couple of hours of catch and release I suppose the group had caught about 25 or so. We then moved on to the mouth of the creek and found even more fish available…it really is quite spectacular to see all these fish making their way upstream.

We spent the remainder of the day catching fish along some of the most pristine scenery I have seen. We did see fresh signs of bear…tracks and scat (full of berry seeds…the food of choice this time of year)…so we kept the gun handy. Toward the end of the day we started keeping the biggest pinks so we could take a few back. It was a great day.

A couple of nights later the cook in the hotel restaurant grilled of few of the salmon and we all had a evening snack in the bar. It was a great day and another of the wonderful adventure we have experienced this summer.

Click the photo above to see a few more from the day.