When It All Goes Wrong

I just spent the last week in Alaska, fly fishing my way from the Kenai Peninsula up to the interior. That’s a dream trip for a lot of anglers, and that was certainly the case for my best friend, Lander Crook, and I. The trip came together last-minute, but we had lodging lined up, and should’ve been on the Kenai at the tail end of the sockeye run. In theory, we’d still be able to catch a limit of salmon every day, then spend the rest of our time looking for rainbow trout and dolly varden.

Few plans survive first contact with the enemy, however, and when we arrived in Soldotna on a Sunday night, we showed up to an almost-empty river. Few anglers lined the banks, the parking lots were mostly empty, and the river felt devoid of life. I hooked—and lost—two sockeye that night, which didn’t instill much confidence.

A quick look at the fish count totals on the Alaska Fish & Game website showed we were fishing to only 30,000 fresh fish per day, a far cry from the 80,000+ fish per day the week before.

So, as Alaska often forces you to do, we called an audible, headed upriver earlier than expected, and fished the Russian River sanctuary for the first time.

I’ve fished the Kenai before, but never at the Sanctuary, and it’s up here that the famous shoulder-t0-shoulder combat fishing is on full display. It’s the Wild West of fishing, with people standing on the bank ready to take your spot if you so much as look anywhere other than the river. I hate fishing around a lot of people, and under normal circumstances, I would’ve balked at standing next to so many people I don’t know.

But that’s sockeye fishing for you, and I was pleasantly surprised at how nice everyone was. Even when I had a few fish kick my butt and run downstream on me, other anglers cheered, offered high-fives, and told me to “quit letting that fish kick your ass.”

It was one of the most unique fishing experiences I’ve ever had. It was also the best fishing I’d have on the entire trip.

On our second day on the Kenai, it started to rain. It didn’t stop for five days, and it rained so much that many of the rivers we fished for rainbows, dolly varden, and grayling, were overflowing their banks. We drove north, deep into the interior, hoping to escape the rain. But it just kept coming, and while we eked out a few fish every day, it was far from the fast and furious fishing so many anglers imagine when they think of Alaska.

A few of our tried-and-true grayling streams were nearly impossible to fish thanks to the rain, and the one river that was running clear was more crowded than the Kenai.

It’s hard to say that it all went wrong on this trip (it didn’t) but this trip certainly wasn’t what Lander nor I expected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy I went. But I had to roll with more punches on this trip than in all my other Alaskan adventures combined.

It could’ve been worse, though. I could’ve not gone at all.