Sportfishing is Alaska’s number one sport and outdoor recreation activity. More people participate in fishing than all other Alaska leisure activities combined. Alaskans spend their vacations, holidays, days off, and time before and after work in pursuit of fish. A large percentage of visitors to the Great Land spend their time with rod in hand, and millions yet to visit, dream of fishing Alaska.
Alaska is a land of unlimited fishing opportunities, but it is almost impossible for someone to get their arms around the entire Alaska angling possibilities in one lifetime. For more than six decades I have fished the State, both for pleasure and as my vocation, and I have only approached the potential.
Different than most other states where fishermen are required to go to the fish, Alaska is unique, the fish come to the angler. Each season five different species of Pacific salmon migrate to their natal streams bringing other varieties with them. Following the salmon, these beggars are seeking an easy meal, mostly of salmon eggs. This phenomenon provides fish hatchery-like populations of fish at times.
The precise time of the run’s return to a given watershed cannot be predicted, but it will be within a few days of it’s anticipated occurrence. The miracle of returning fish is almost exceeded by the marvel of how quickly the word spreads to waiting anglers. A whispered, “Reds are in the Russian,” is heard seemingly simultaneously by thousands of waiting sportsmen. One day the stream is void of anglers—and fish, the next morning the banks are lined with the hopeful. Every area along the road system in the State enjoys the same kind of angler’s telegraph. Gas stations, restaurants, gift stores, and tackle shops know within an hour of when the first few fish are taken from any roadside water.
If an angler is on the stream concurrent with the spawning run, it is almost impossible to not catch fish, even if only basic fishing techniques are employed. More important than all the how-to, where-to books and guides written, information obtained from local sources are the most reliable. Anglers can get more real angling assistance from filling station attendants, store clerks, and waitresses, than from a library of written material and a month of reading.
There is hardly an angler who doesn’t dream of fishing Alaska. Alaska seems to be every fisherman’s dreamed of Nirvana. It is the ultimate fishing experience. Chances are as you read this you are saying, “I’d Rather Be Fishing Alaska.”
Alaska is the grand banquet of angling. Alaska is fishing for native rainbow trout in unpolluted water, casting a fly to a sockeye salmon or a king, sighting a glacier blue bear, photographing a moose, tricking a fish, or as Robert Service put it “standing in some mighty mouth hallow that’s plumb full of hush to the brim, and watching the big husky sun wallow in crimson and gold and grow dim.”
