Summer in Alaska
I love Alaska in the summer. Sun sets there nearly at 11:45pm and rises again at 4:00 am, and in between it never technically gets dark. One can play outside as long as you want until you are tired. Landscape is alive with lush green and flowers in the lower elevations and plant and animal life buzzes with nearly continuous sunlight. Rivers are high, and often that spectacular glacial teal colored. There is no covid there, and depending on where you are, there are usually more fish than human, and last I checked, fish are immune to covid :)
Fishing in Alaska
First of all, I am no fisherman. I fished occasionally, when I was a graduate student, mostly during my field work days in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. I fished to eat fish. As that was easy and nearly free. However, than was nearly 12-15 years back. Later I fished occasionally as well, mostly near home, with a spinning rod, but it was never as satisfactory as with a fly rod, and also in the south, I never found fish to be that interesting. So rather quickly I stopped fishing. I still own two fishing rods and multiple boxes of tackle and bait, but mostly the rod remains in the attic, and the tackle box is a plaything for my daughters!
Fast Forward to my summer vacation in Alaska: Mind you, this is not my first time in Alaska, and also I travel most frequently to the western United States mountain, where fishing for trout is mostly excellent and that is the type of fishing I enjoyed the most. But I never really fished during any of my vacation until this year. I didn't even plan this vacation as a fishing trip. With my family, few things can be planned! Even fewer can be executed!!
But somehow I rented a house in Sterling, AK in the Kenai Peninsular, and this house is right by the Kenai River, which is a spectacular river famous for Salmon fishing. However, even then, I thought....wel maybe I will fish just from the platform next to the house, and play with my daughters and teach them a few knots and stuff. If we catch some fish, great, but won't do anything serious. When, I arrived at this house however, the owner, Ron, turned out to be a avid fisherman. He said, man, you must FISH! He said, I will hook you up, and he did! He provided rod, reels, tackle, fly, net, anything and everything we need for all four of us...all for free. He essentially let us borrow essentially $5000 worth of fishing gear!! What a great guy! Happens to be, in the Kenai River, we were between two Salmon run, so it was slightly lean. Ron recommended a fishing guide, Joe, who took us to Bing Landing (which is a state park, and a boat launch area). So basically, you park your car there for $5 a day. Then take a boat to whereever you like to go on the Kenai River. That's the idea. The picture above is the posted sign at the parking lot, as you can see, people mostly catch Salmon and Trout there.
Joe got us into the boat, and then he got everyone geared. We were fishing for trout using a spinning rod, just as you see above with my younger daughter. We used a while fly, called dolly llama, and life was simple! You cast, reel, and catch Rainbow Trout!
And that's about it. A happy five year old with her first Rainbow Trout! They say, “If you give a man (a kid) a fish, you feed him/her for a day. If you teach a man (a kid) to fish, you feed him/her for a lifetime.”...I hope its correct.
We did a lot more fishing in the area after that. Many exotic ways, and even more exotic locations. If I find time, I plan on writing some of that later :)
