It was a hot, buggy afternoon when we landed in King Salmon. One of our party was already missing, having been marooned in a hostile check-in line in Anchorage. We had stopped there to see some friends, pick up licenses and stimulate the late summer business of the local fly shop economy.

After trying to locate the bush carrier that we were to use, we found out that we had a couple of hours to kill, so while waiting for Dave, we loaded up on the supplies that were too heavy to fly in from Seattle, notably Milwaukee's finest Genuine Draft. Figuring (incorrectly, it turns out) that three cases would be adequate rations, we stocked up and headed out to Branch River Air.

Dave showed up. We got loaded up towards the end of the day, and flew out to Nonvianuk Lake for the put in. The pilots took no more time than absolutely necessary to unload us, as they were at the end of their legal flying day.

Our first camp was on the lake shore, on a pleasant and soft gravel beach. We headed over to the mouth and I caught a lake trout within fifteen minutes. Pat Boyle sauntered over later in the evening and swears he caught a nice big silver. The absence of witnesses and Pat's rookie status caused us to discount this catch for the rest of the week, and well, perhaps for all time.

The next morning, after a tasty pancake breakfast, we trooped to the outlet and began catching some of the many fish there. Bill Lemon caught pink after pink, as well as many kings. Eschewing the Alaska standards for the many fine Orvis California specials he carries, he did most of his damage with a Black Boss. There was scarcely a minute when Bill was not playing a fish. We stood in awe.

I moved down below the outlet, and caught rainbows and pinks. It being an even numbered year, the pinks were everywhere, to the point of being a nuisance. Even this high, they were still pretty bright, and fought well. However, they were almost a negative indicator for what I was after, the rainbows. I came to believe that it pinks were present, the rainbows would not be. Where the schools of pinks were, this was certainly the case.

After two days at the lake, we loaded up and headed for the Forks, where the Alagnak and Nonvianuk rivers join into the full Alagnak. This drift was pretty unproductive for us for everything except pinks, which Bill caught practically non-stop. We had to make him stop fishing so that we could make progress along the river. This stretch of the river is mostly one big riffle, though there are some pools as well. While we did not catch rainbow number one on this day, I believe that it was due to the tactics we were using, floating egg sucking leeches and sculpins. Pat had one nice one follow the sculpin.

On this drift, we saw a momma bear and cubs. The distance was right, about 300 yards. So was the direction she was headed - away.

The full Alagnak is quite large - about the size of the Skykomish or even the Skagit. Just below the forks, this river is all in one channel, but the channel is still shallow. One can always see the bottom. We camped below the forks about a mile or so, and just stayed the one night. No fish were caught, so we decided to head down river about mid morning.

Still changing tactics, Bill changed to a Babine Special, and hooked maybe the largest trout of the trip. Looking for all the word like a good sized steelhead, we got a roll and a ripping good run before the hook pulled out. This was the clue, and I switched, and promptly caught 4 fish, rainbows and a nice greyling. Taking the clue, we decided that this was a good stretch of river, and looked for a campsite. We ended up camping on an island about a mile below Charlie Summerville's lodge. We came to call this island, Bear Island.

This is the top of the section of river known as "the Braids". In the braids, the river splits into many channels, some of which hold most of the river, some of which are 4 feet wide. The whole area is a 20 mile long spawning riffle, and it is packed with salmon, trout, and bears. Each island and shoreline has a beaten down bear path. Everywhere one wants to go, there is a bear path. If there is not a bear path, that indicates that the ground cannot carry a bear, or human. Don't go there.

It is difficult to follow the traditional advice, don't camp near the bear trails. There is no such place within a mile of the river. Along the top of the ridge, there is an ancestral bear trail that in some places is worn two feet into the ground.

The first night on bear island, we were sleeping, when Dave Metzger was awakened by a noise. For the next hour, he listened to Yogi snuffle around the camp, wondering what to do next. As Dave describes it, he had lots of time to figure out how to describe the unique smell of the bear, which he decided was a mix of spoiled Kim-chi and Butyl rubber. After a while of this, I awoke, needing to attend to some urgent nocturnal irrigation, which I proceeded to take care of. Announcing that I was on 'bear patrol", I stepped from the tent, to Dave's great relief. He asked if I could see him. I looked around, said no, and went back to bed. The next morning, Dave told me the rest of the story, and we had a good, if nervous, laugh.

The next morning, we looked at the trails that the bear had walked through the grass, and observed where he had bedded down for a while, 20 feet from Pat's tent.

We stayed there at Bear Island for 2 days, and it was here that, after experimenting with many colors of eggs and flesh flies with mediocre success, that I hit on the pheasant tail nymph. We had been seeing many may flies and stones flies, and after I saw a fish or two swirl, I figured, well, let's see. Knotting the PTN to my leader, I threw it into the water to let it drift down before casting it out. I got two strikes before I made the first cast.

Between 4 and 7 o'clock that afternoon, I caught half a dozen rainbows, 3 char, two pink salmon, and lost a bunch of other fish. The spell had been broken.

For the rest of the trip, I would catch some fish in the morning on eggs, flesh, Mickey finns, or other stuff, and then, from about noon to 7 o'clock, the PTN was magic. Just to be sure, I always had it as a dropper with some other fly, an egg, a Babine, a flesh fly, something. In the morning and late evening the other things would work. During the day, the PTN was the key.

After Bear Island, we went about another 4 miles into the Braids, and camped on another island. This was our best campsite, and had obviously seen repeated use over the summer, probably by a guide. This camp was surround by good fishing, and there were miles of channels within easy walking of camp. The first night, Dave Metzger saw a monster rainbow just behind camp, which Dave Hardwick hooked and lost the next day. Oh, well. We won't describe the ignominious circumstances, or the many unpalatable anglo-saxonisms that were uttered. Let's just say that Dave has a 24 inch marker on his rod, and all agreed that this fish was quite a bit longer.

We stayed here for two days, and fished till we dropped. The last morning, we got a leisurely start, and fished out of the shallow braids. The river seemed to grow in size dramatically, perhaps due to some side streams that the map shows entering the river around here. The river's nature changes, and it starts to lose it's never ending riffle nature. We still kept catching rainbows, and hooked and lost our first silver here. The river now became a deep set of channels, and we started losing site of the bottom. Given the gin clear nature of the water, this says something.

We camped the last night near a big back eddy where we saw silvers rolling. That night, we pulled out the plugs (alas, my apostasy revealed, but we wanted to eat fish for dinner), and we immediately slammed fish. After we got a nice hen and some firewood, we went back to camp and had our first salmon dinner. The next morning, I rolled out of bed at 7:00am, ready for action. Unable to get anyone else to join me, I rowed over to the hole, and commenced to do some serious damage. In the space of an hour and a half, I hooked ten fish, landed six. By now, my shouts had brought the others out of bed, and after a cup of coffee, we came back to the hole and got busy.

At noon, the time came to get camp broken down and head down the river to the pickup. By now, it was a beautiful sunny day, and all thoughts of the prior week's rain were forgotten. We broke down the rafts in shirt sleeves, and when the planes came in at 4:00pm, wearily and happily flew back to civilization and 4 bacon cheese burgers. Pat, ever the non-conformist, made do with fish.

There are many memories that made the trip special:

• Bill Lemon pinking up at every turn. Bill displayed a special touch, and appeared able to hook a pink salmon from a spruce forest on a bare hook, if need be. Bill also performed above and beyond the call of duty in obtaining the fine cigars with which we kept the clouds of no-see-ums at bay.
  
  
• Dave Metzger, who wins the Tundra Craig Claiborne award for his Pahd Thai and Chicken Curry dinner. Dave proved to be a master of wood and camp craft, which was valuable to all of us. His taste in scotch was also appreciated.
  
  
• Dave Hardwick, for his hilariously accurate imitation of the Neal Oman water pratfall (1997). Dave was perilously close to not repeating his 1997 record of falling in the water time after time, and indeed, made it to the second to the last day of the trip before going completely under trying to get into the raft. Dave wins the award for most knives, appearing to have somewhere between 3 and 7 on his person at any point in time. In combination with his shotgun, Dave was truly the best armed man of the trip.
  
  
• Pat Boyle getting bear noise religion after Yogi slept 20 feet from his tent. Pat, who had been reluctant to make a fool of himself calling out to Mr. Bear before this incident, became very attached to his whistle after this session. Pat demonstrated his truly awesome capability for focus, disappearing into the Braids for extended sessions at a time, radioing out from time to time about the awesome water that was back there. With that and his whistle, we tracked his progress back and forth behind us for hours.
  
  
• The 'snoof', splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, when the bear had crept up on camp without our knowing it.
  
  
• The moose sloshing behind the tents the next morning that made us all scramble for our guns.
  
  
• The giant bear track that appeared at our feet as we were pouring out the pasta water.

For the record, we fished August 26 to September 4. The Kings were done spawning, as were the chums. The pinks had not yet started in the upper river, but were spawning in the middle braids.

Champagne eggs worked in the chum areas, orange and champagne worked in the king areas, and the pheasant tail worked everywhere. Little bright red eggs worked once we hit the spawning pinks. The silvers took silver stuff (flash flies, bunny flies, alaskabous) without noticeable discrimination. The pinks took anything that was wet.

We didn't catch a single fish on a surface fly, despite trying. We did see several fish jump as if they were chasing caddis.

We saw a good blue wing olive hatch, size 16-18, every afternoon. We saw a larger brown mayfly as well, about 12-14.

We saw tons of green stones, and a few brown stones. Both were about .5 inch long. We saw small brown caddis, about size 16, medium tan caddis, about size 14, and large tan/brown/olive caddis, size 10-12. I caught one fish on a sparkle caddis pupa, and then lost the fly, so we don't know whether that would have worked well or not. There were LOTS of caddis hatching.

One of the guys noted that my exhorbitant tackle list, that the Kauffman's guys laughed at, turned out to be right on. We went through tons of shot, and big ones. 3/0 was the size I used most of. The rainbows were in fast water, and if you didn't get down, you didn't catch fish. Traditional, high stick nymphing was the key.

That's our report, and I'm sticking to it.

© 1998, Andrew Brunette