First Brooks sockeye for the freezer. Taken by Pavel the physicist.
At Brooks you gotta bag 'em whole and go straight to the freezer, dodging hungry grizzlies on the way. A good policy in its way, though I'd rather gut & bleed 'em first.
Here's Pavel -- with his first ever salmon on a fly!
A bad weather report came in the evening of 6/30, so I immediately packed up and headed out, a day ahead of plan. Those beautiful cirrus are the first sign of a low blowing in.
First day in camp. No wind or weather yet.
Light breeze on the North beach & dining room.
After this, it was constant and sometimes intense wind & waves on the South beach and dining room.
Reason #1 for staying nine days at the same camp. This fish -- a rainbow, though it looks like a steelhead -- bit a half mile out of camp.
I laid this poor guy out and made a notch on the paddle. According to the tape measure here at home, he's just over 32 inches long.
No notches for measurement, but I would have sworn that this one was the biggest of the bunch.
Most of my fish cleaning/cooking/eating took place on an island off the South beach. It was a pleasantly sheltered, flowery place from which I could easily spot any approaching bears.
Paddling away from the beach camp during a morning lull in the wind. 21 miles and 12 hours later I'd be back; the planned portage looked awful, and I had all the fish I needed back "home."
Back on the North Beach, drying stuff out in the bright 10:00 p. m. sun.
Heading out to pike water in the morning lull under the eagle's watchful eye.
Finally, a big bow on a fly! Though we're not talking subtle stuff here: he took a four-inch long whistler designed for striper fishing.
Delayed briefly by a beautiful char.
Sorry Dolly!
Can't get enough of that good fat and protein!
A bunny leech and a few inches of wire is all you need to catch these guys all day long.
I think this was my biggest one on flies.
Lunchtime lupine camp on the way back.
Five miles out of Brooks, a milestone!
Fixing to consume as much as possible of Mike's first salmon on fly tackle. Actually his second, but therein lies a tale . . . (see my blog).
Simple, unadorned, and delicious.
Brown bears not invited into the inner sanctum.
A boy and his dog.
Chums are hard to tire out on the line, but it's harder yet to get me tired of catching them.
Between the second and third movements I took an "intermission" near Willow Creek. This was a B&B, but a very fishy one; these are the proprietor's Kasilof river sockeyes plus my four Brooks specimens.
Why are they laid out on the lawn? For high-pressure water scaling, of course!
Plenty of filleting practice. I cut mine up and took them to an Anchorage processor for cold-smoking.
The first fish on my third movement were tasty dusky rockfish.
Some die that others may live. Some swim back to the deeps, others are laid to rest in cajun-style blackening rub . . .
These spiny fellows were the most common catch on jigs.
Between the spines and the salt water, my hands weren't doing too good. Every time I warmed them or dried them, I had to go through five or ten minutes of itchy agony. So I mostly kept them cold and wet.
Is this a monkfish? It tasted like it! Sauteed in garlic-flavored olive oil with the last of my prosciutto chunks mixed in.
I took my first rest day in Jackpot Bay, and was sad to say goodbye to this sweet camp.
Finally, on the third try, succeeded in dragging a halibut up on shore! Movies on my blog tell the tale of larger ones lost in the kelp.
When you can only manage to land one, you have to compensate with lots of photos.
Good weather for a good . . .
halibut dinner! That's close to three pounds in the pan, and I ate every morsel as though I was starving. I'm not sure losing ten pounds qualifies for starving, but it felt like it.
Then when I finally found a school of cohos, I found that they were thick as thieves in their herring-chewing frenzy. Taking them on flies was fast, joyous, and completely exhausting for my paddled-out arms and shoulders.
A plate full of blackened salmon, fish for the eighth night in a row. I took a break for canned chili on the ninth, but then got back to my tasty little rockfish on the tenth and last dinner.
Here's Chris, a genuine Anchorage yuppie (rare) and quite a kayaking animal.
He and Kelly and Mike were great company, and they had lots of extra food to donate to starving kids from California.
The train to the plane that signals the last note of the sonata.
