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.

Sunday July 4

Hit the parade in Anchorage and it was a good one! It was packed with people and lasted a long time. It was followed by 4th fun stuff in this park where, as you can see, I had my picture taken with some pretty special people. Apparently the days events are the most attended happening in the whole state of Alaska for the year. You can imagine that there were tons of food vendors, rides, military demo's, and even a concert by the Air Force band.....off we go, into the wild blue yonder.

Next I went to a double header baseball game that started at 7pm....weird I know. They didn't turn on any lights till around 11pm and the fireworks were more or less in the day light.....yet, very good.

Met a guy an older guy named Jerry at the game He was from Montana and we got to talking. We were going to team up the next day and possibly fish the Klutina River for Red Salmon, also called Chinook. He was quite a cat, owned mules and horses and did pack trips in Montana. He also left a pickup truck, camper, and boat in storage here in Alaska during the winter so he could fly up during the summer to fish and camp. He had the mentality that many Alaskan's have. That is that nature is here to be used and harvested. Once in a while he said that he loads a large freezer full of fish, hooks it up to a generator, and drives it all the way to Montana. Man, machine and nature all in perfect harmony, Alaskan style.

Saturday July 3

Rained last night. I was online reading a little more about Talkeetna and I noticed that according to one web site there was a bakery in town that made a pretty mean ginger cookie. I found the bakery and they were right. Best I've ever had.

Like I said, Talkeetna is a stop on the Princess Cruise lines itinerary. Here's how it works. Every time a bus rolls through town or the train flies by, within 5 minutes the town goes from quiet and quaint to mobbed. Then, in about 2 hours time, the town is empty again....cycle after cycle, and, I'm sure, all summer long.

The tours are a funny thing. You can see the busses shuttling people all over Alaska, folks being whisked from one local to the next. Everyone's got their matching tour bags and looks like they just got out of the shower (maybe I'm a little jealous about the shower). They are essentially trapped in the tour. Doing it my way, I'm allowed to go walk through the woods or go fishing all day if I like......really the reason I came. I'd say the average tour lasts about 2 weeks and costs about 5 grand. I know I'll have spent $3,000 on gas by trips end and probably more on other things, but my trip will last 73 days and that's not too bad. These tours seem to provide a sterilized view of Alaska because they take you to all the very best places. The fact is, people here are pretty hard up, they bust their asses every day in some pretty harsh conditions for not a lot of money. The tour busses skip the shacks and huts that many people live in, the ones that I see when I've traveling down a dusty dirt road to some river. The crowd in Alaska is generally pretty rough, like the players in the drinking.....sorry..... softball league back in Fairbanks.

I fished a few of the spots given to me by yesterday's guide Skip to no avail. The water was running high. It was good to find these places now because when the silver salmon are here at the beginning of August, I'll know just where to be.

Drove to Anchorage via Sarah Palin's town of Wasilla, again, kind of a dump. Arrived in Anchorage late but managed to pass an hour sitting on a bench outside a nightclub watching the chaos. Half naked girls running in and out, guys fighting, everyone spitting and smoking. Quite a spectacle.

And....before I sign out today. Happy Anniversary wishes to my Sis and Ian. As you say, 15 long, hard, etc, etc.........

And special Happy Anniversary wishes to my parents......45 years, and a shining example to us all as to how it's done.....for shizel.

Friday July 2

So the plan is king salmon.....boat leaves at 8am. Boat driver Ivan is a no show. Apparently his cell phone (and his alarm) fell in the river a few days ago and it's still drying out. We decide to come back and try it again at 11......pending the locating and raising of Ivan.

Good to go at 11am. Ivan gets a mock standing ovation. Guide skip seems pretty excited that I want to catch one on the fly rod......most people are not into that. Skips been fishing and guiding for like 40 years and has never caught a king salmon on anything else but a fly rod.

The boat ride up is pretty cool....we turn the last bend and there are the crowds. The outlet of this river (the only one legal to fish for kings within 100 miles) is loaded with people. Whatever, I jump in line and try my luck. I cast and cast and cast for the next 5 hours to no avail. I saw a few mosters swim buy and even saw a few landed, just not by me. I gave it a solid effort...that's all I can say.

Skip spills the beans on a few great spots for trout which I decide to hit tomorrow. Skip was a pretty cool guy, still pumped for fishing after guiding so many years. He's lived in Talkeetna his whole life. His place has no running water and he needs to truck water in himself a couple times a week.

Every Friday night at 5, there's a concert in Talkeetna common. Had some pasta and watched the show. Sweet little husky pups on the common too.

Decided to check out the raging music at a nearby restaurant only to find the infamous Ivan inside. He turned out to be a pretty cool kid. Born and raised in Talkeetna. 40 kids started his freshmen year of high school and only 20 graduated. Drugs, especially meth, took over many of his friends. He said the problem was huge. The drugs weren't brought in, most were manufactured in secret labs in the woods. He said he couldn't recognize a few of his old friends.