Where the hell is Crescent Lake!?
That was my question, when my friend Dan and Morgan said that they like to guide me to some fishing to the Crescent Lake. Well, there are many crescent lakes I have heard off, some in Alaska even (hey even in Kenai Peninsula!), but I had a feeling that is not what these dudes were talking about. Why? Because, I explained, that Kenai River Fishing the other day, was satisfactory, but felt a bit lean, and not quite Alaskan standard! I was just pulling their legs. It was amazing actually! So they wanted to impress me, and showed me the real Alaska, where there are no roads, no human, and you only compete with bears to catch fish! :)
Morgan Fishing for Dolly Varden Trout at Crescent Lake
Well, I asked them, where is the damn lake, again! They said in the Lake Clark National Park. Now I am seriously embarrassed. I like America's National Parks. I visit them often. There haven't been a single year over the last 20 years that I haven't visited a national park. Yes, in 2020 too! I should know names of all National Parks, especially ones in the American West. But damn! They are making me an ignorant little tourist!!
https://www.nps.gov/lacl/index.htm
So I googled and got it. One of the least visited (3rd least visited) of the 62 National Parks in the United States! Here is the yearly visitation number over the last 10 years. I put together a table below to show where the Lake Clark National Park falls in terms of yearly visitors, compared to the most visited National Park, The Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and the famous Alaskan Park, The Denali National Park, below:
Even if you ignore the anomaly of 2020 as the covid year. Denali, the famous Alaskan park, received about two orders of magnitude less visitors per year than the most visited National Park in the United States. And the Lake Clark National Park receives one less order of magnitude less visitors than Denali! Especially when you consider, the park has 4,030,015 acres!! Well, I thought, it would be empty. I asked Dan and Morgan how do we get there, as I saw on the map that it was on the other wide of the Cook Inlet! They say, there is no roads..only way is a bush/float plane!! Sign me up!!
I measured as a crow flies, it is about 80 miles from where we were at Soldotna, AK at the Kenai Peninsula (red circle), our destination would be the blue circle, across the Cook Inlet. By the way, on a sidenote, 
How the hell will we get there?!
Turn out, I have a friend there too! LOL. Good to have friends, eh? My friend Allan is a bush plane pilot. He flies commercially for a small tour operator locally. Dan and Morgan said, that Allan will be happy to drop us off to Crescent Lake, and pick us up when we are done for the day! Dan and Morgan will both guide our family of four and teach the girls (and me) how to fish for Trout! Dan said, that lake is full of Dolly Varden, and he will show me how to catch them with a hook on a fly rod. I didn't quite understand at first. But I never question Dan's skills. He is a career fisherman and knows these lake, rivers, and fish like the back of his palm. I just tend to go with the flow. I didn't bring any fishing gear with me, but Dan said, he will take care of it all. We will report to a local lake, from where Alan will pick us up, and drop us off at the Crescent Lake. Dan takes tourits there professionally, and has boats there already. We will fish off the boat!
A 1992 CESSNA 208 10 seater, our ride
Crescent Lake
The lake is at the foot of 10K ft Mt Redoubt, which is a snow-covered active volcano! Last it erupted was fairly recently in 1993. Soon we flew near the southern glacier of Mt Reddoubt and landed on the Crescent Lake.
Allan dropped us off and we are waiting for Dan and Morgan to get the boats
That's Dan the 'mountain man' bringing the boat
Here we are leaving for the day of fishing!
Fishing Set up
Here is something I didn't believe at first. Dan said that we will fish using a fly rod (which I like a lot), but we won't be using any fly or bait. We will fish using a hook and a orange bead about 2 inches above the hook.....that's it!
This is the most pure/minimalist set up I have seen (granted, I haven't seen much, so pardon me!). But to me, I thought, anything more simple and we would be fishing with bare hand! No live bait. No frill, no fly, nothing! Oh there was a bobber, or indicator, to mark a bite by a trout...so there's that.
Annnnnd.....that's it. I am fishing. What Dan taught me from a static boat floating downstream off the outlet stream of the crescent is to cast downstream first and let the line drift, and then flop it with one wrist whip motion upstream....work the line as the hook gently goes past me to downstream...and flop again. Extremely simple. He said to my wife, no Brad Pitt motion here! We are handsome, but no Brad Pitt. He was referring to the movie The River Runs Through It of course!
Dan is always helpful with a net, it's easy to land it after catch when someone helps with a net
They are not very big, but great fighter, and taste's heavenly!
And....pretty soon, we were catching Dolly Vardens like there is no tomorrow! Everyone caught fish. We released most of them, grilled some. Have lunch by the lake! When we were done, we fished some more with spinning rod and spinners straight from the lake shore, under the shadow of Mt Redoubt! It was perfect!
Dan and Morgan
Without these two wonderful and helpful humans, we will never be able to go and have a day like this. They didn't even let me touch the carving knife. Filleted and packed all the fish, and grilled them for the whole family! Later, as the never setting Sun was getting closer to the horizon, I saw it was past 9pm, Allan showed back up to take us back to the civilization.
Allan landing the plane to pick us up!
