Join Brian Smith as three amigos take on the grayling of Alaska
I've travelled to over 40 of the lower 48 states and fished in eight including Montana and Wyoming, not bad considering I only started fly fishing as my retirement project six years ago. However, I had never been to Alaska (AK). It is a long way from the rest of the USA and even longer from the UK. You can of course drive through Canada but that road trip is not for me. Last winter I was paging through the latest edition The Grayling magazine and an article by David Martin describing his 2015 trip to Alaska caught my eye. I have to confess I get quite a few fishing related magazines and usually I just skim through them with the intention to read later. However, grayling and Alaska; well obviously this peaked my interest and I read it and read it again and there and then began scheming as to how I could make it happen in 2016.
I contacted Dave and found out I was not the first to get excited by the thought of not just grayling but lots of grayling and the chance for a fish of a lifetime. George Ashton, a well known and active grayling angler, was already bombarding Dave with questions and was very keen to explore the possibility of a trip to Alaska.
Dave and his wife had stayed in The General Lodge in Port Alsworth, AK and had nothing but praise for the lodge and especially the owner Peter Goodwin. Peter and his wife Katie had bent over backwards to make sure the Martins had a great vacation. So this became the obvious destination for our summer trip. Port Alsworth is an isolated community and the entry point to Lake Clark National Park. Accessible only by air and only through a mountain pass about an hour south west of Anchorage, AK.
George did all the contact work with Peter at the lodge who together worked out a program for a week of fishing and it came down to the best value would be a party of four. George set off to recruit more interested folk and although at times we had five anglers ready to go in the end only three of us were willing and able to go and perhaps more importantly to pay the cost of the week up front by the end of February. This may seem unusual to have to pay in full so far in advance but this is Alaska and the season is short basically just three months: June, July and August. However, a sweetener for this old Yorkshireman paying this far in advance came with a nice 10% discount.
The third member of our group was Bob Perret an avid travelling angler and also the secretary o f the Grayling Society for Scotland. We met up in a bed and breakfast in Anchorage the night before our flight to Port Alsworth. George and Bob flew with Iceland Air from Manchester and I flew in from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Now it's appropriate to mention that flying to Anchorage is not cheap, this is an 'end of the road' destination with no direct flights from the UK. I used some frequent flyer miles for my trip but George and Bob dug deep just to get to Anchorage.
Once in Anchorage the package deal George negotiated with The General Lodge kicked in, it including flights to and from Port Alsworth and all the fishing, food and comfort we needed for our week in Alaska. Talking of the flight to the lodge, when we got up at the B&B the weather had turned from a beautiful clear day when we arrived to pouring rain and low overcast. My Air Traffic Controller head said no flying today but I was wrong as Lake and Pen Air had a beautiful new Cessna 208, 10 seater turbo prop ready with all the latest electronics to whisk us to the Lodge.
We were met at the end of the runway by Peter and his Dad who showed us the layout of the lodge and our rooms and after a quick and delicious lunch suggested we might like to fish a little.
So with the lodge dog in tow and our guide equipped with bear spray we went for a hike to Tanalian Falls. What a spectacular setting for us to catch our first of many Arctic grayling.
Lake Clark National Park is huge, centred on the lake which is 42 miles long and 5 miles wide and the only marked trail in the park is the one we took to the Tanalian Falls, the rest of the 6300 square miles is prime Alaska wilderness.
The next morning was to be chasing the big ones! We crossed Lake Clark and transferred to a smaller jet-boat for an exciting ride up a secret river. The river is very shallow in places so it was just me and our two guides who headed out first. By the time George and Bob arrived I was well into decent sized grayling. Nothing too big but all in the 1 1⁄2 to 2lb range, and then it hit! The big one took my size 18 bead head nymph and wasn't about to give in. I was using a Keiryu rod (a beefed up Tenkara rod) which turned out not to be beefed up enough as the rod broke as I was trying to move down stream with the fish. A lesson learnt! Future trips to this venue demanded I reverted to a more conventional western set up. But there were many more fish to catch on this day and the guides set me up with a 9 foot 5 weight and suggested I try a dry fly, and sure enough a size 14 Griffiths Gnat did the business for the rest of the day. Our first day on this 'secret river' was a huge success everyone over 20 and one of us over 30 fine grayling to hand.
We had thought we might guide ourselves on the small streams which enter the lake for a couple of days but the size of the lake and the difficulty in locating the smaller streams persuaded us that it would be prudent to have a guide along with us and Peter, the owner of the lodge, quickly adopted our change of plans and provided us with a boatman with knowledge of the lake.
Did I mention rain? Well it rained every day we were at the lodge, as a result the lake was much higher than normal summer levels which changed some of the fishing opportunities. However, no one blanked and many grayling of all sizes were caught, in fact on day three from a very small stream my largest fish of the week was caught. As we were fishing small creeks that day I had reverted back to fishing with a Tenkara rod and was delighted I didn't break another rod when I landed a 3lb plus beauty on a small tungsten bead nymph from Richard at barbless flies.
It goes without saying that the fishing was fantastic but I really need to briefly mention the lodge and the staff. This at first seemed a strange location for a fishing lodge, sitting as it did on the side of an active runway but this is Alaska and very much the back country of Alaska where aircraft are the go-to means of transport.
The accommodations were excellent, George and I shared a two bedroom suite with a great mini kitchen and sitting area and Bob had a single room. Clothes washing and drying facilities were at the end of the corridor and our waders and boots were taken away to a drying room at the end of the each day's fishing. Nothing was too much trouble for the staff. Bob had forgotten his back brace and Pete dug around until he found the one he used when he built the lodge.
Now the meals. Yes I definitely need to mention the food! Now bear in mind that every item of food has to be flown into Port Alsworth and the meals would have been great had we been in Anchorage but being in the bush the meals were nothing short of fantastic. Take a look at the menu for our week:
The evening chef was professionally trained and was also an aircraft mechanic for Lake and Pen Air, the breakfast cook was also the school dinner lady in addition to running the local post office!
We returned to the 'secret river' once more and all of us had a successful day in spite of the pouring rain. George caught the fish of his lifetime which may (or may not) have been bigger than my three pounder and Bob just couldn't stop catching fish after fish.
The guiding was very knowledgable but not intrusive as both Bob and George are very experienced anglers and I was happy bumbling along catching plenty of fish. We had packed lunches each day and the guides even brought dry wood along to build a fire while we ate our sandwiches and drank terrific home-made soup. Hot water was supplied which resulted in our explaining the intricacies of drinking English tea, alas no converts among the guiding staff.
Our final day had planned to be a return visit to the 'secret river' but there was a scheduling conflict and Peter stepped in with an offer we couldn't refuse; for an additional fee we would fly out and fish a wilderness river. Of course we jumped at the offer, who wouldn't want to add a float plane flight to a fishing trip of a lifetime? Well the next morning the weather was, I'm searching for a polite word here, and failing. I thought well there goes the float plane ride, but surprise, surprise I was wrong again. Although the river was 'just over the mountain range' there was no flying over the mountains so our young pilot headed off down the lake to where the river flowed in and just followed it up stream to our fishing spot.
The fishing on this river was very different from our previous fishing spots. We ended up not fishing where the guide had planned, as due to the weather the pilot wasn't able to get us to his usual hot spot. However, with a little scouting by our trusty guide we found a very prolific stretch which produced dozens of fish, not big grayling but hungry grayling which would attack just about any fly attached to your fly line.
That was it for the fishing. We left Port Alsworth and our good friends at The General Lodge and flew back to Anchorage. However, this time we got to see some of the many glaciers whose melt waters flow into Lake Clark.
On landing in Anchorage I said goodbye to the boys at the international airport. 12 hours later they would be back in UK. I couldn't go to Alaska and leave my wife in Minnesota so she flew in and we spent a week doing the usual tourist stuff and yes I did manage a little fishing on a couple of occasions this time for young Dolly Varden from some fast moving mountain streams.
A trip of a lifetime? Absolutely!
George is looking to go back again either in 2017 or 2018 if you are interested in a fantastic fishing experience email him at georgeaashton@yahoo.co.uk.
Brian Smith
@mspaddler
An old canoeist coming to Fly Fishing from the Dark Side