Monday July 5

Chaos reigns in my head. For each kind of fish, you need to be in a certain place at a certain time. Add to this a rule book with so many rules for fishing and and the possibility of the dreaded Emergency Closure and you've got a recipe for frustration. Most advice I get includes info for 6 types of fish, each called 3 different names depending on who you talk to, 27 different locations (all 4 hours drive from each other), and a time frame of....well, sometime around this or that particular date, give or take a week or two. I just got a glass full of more of the same from a fly shop in Anchorage. I have moments of real frustration to the point where I get upset. I need to chill a little.

I'm sticking with my new pal Gerry and headed out of Dodge to the Klutina to see whats up there. The ride was pretty spectacular, glacial views, mountains, hairball hill side roads with no guard rails. It was fun.

Found Gerry's truck at the bridge on the Klutina River. He tells me it's slow but we decide to take a few casts anyway. I use the fly rod of course, Gerry opts for the spinning gear, his lure of choice? Absolutely nothing but a bare hook. He says the fish won't chance a fly or lure and swim in large groups with their mouths open. Our goal is to apparently get our lines across the open mouths of salmon and pull the hook through and into their mouths. Ok...more lessons in Alaska for me.....again the theme, nature less for sport and more for practicality. We didn't catch (or snag) anything. Might be better in a few days. I was headed for Valdez on the southern coast where the fishing was reportedly on fire at the moment.

The drive to Valdez was really spectacular. The temp dropped from 56 to 46 degrees (heard it was 100 at home today, don't miss that a bit). Then came the second highlight of the trip so far,

a place called Worthington Glacier. You could walk right up to it and it was awesome. It was a huge dripping ice mass and the view from just in front of it was incredible. You could look right out into this massive valley with high mountains on each side. Everything was cold and grey but you could see for miles.

Arrived in Valdez and immediately found wild kingdom at work. There were millions of fish stacked up in this one river with 5 giant sea lions chowing down. The gulls were going crazy and at one point I counted 11 eagles in the trees above. The locals were hard at work filling their pails with fresh fillets. Their lure of choice? The down and dirty weighted bare treble hook. Just cast her out and rip it through the school and reel in whatever gets impaled by the hook, Alaska style. I didn't even take a cast at this locale. Something felt impure about catching my first Alaskan salmon this way.