Over the course of the next two days, our fair weather disappeared. At first it was just the typical Alaskan on-again off-again rains, but by Day 5, we were consistently "damp". While our weather deteriorated, the fishing remained unfazed. Whether on an egg, a flesh fly or a mouse, the dollies and 'bows were plentiful. They could have cared less about the rain… they were after all, already wet. The 'bows were especially cooperative, In fact they seemed to just get bigger and bigger the more it rained!
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| As the rain fell, the 'bows got bigger! |
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Another monster
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| ...and another! |
As an added bonus, we started seeing some silver (coho) salmon and soon targeted the seams and sloughs on the downside of braids with great results. Fresh from the salt, these salmon were chrome bright, very acrobatic and eager to take both pollywogs on the surface and bright magenta and pink streamers underneath. Plus they were delicious!
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| Silvers were chrome bright |
Over the course of these two wet days, we continued to batter our casting arms, catch big fish and try to photograph them through rain splattered lenses. It was heaven!
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| Big dollie on a king salmon egg. |
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| We caught some rainbows that were a real handful! |
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| Pollywog on the left, streamer on the right |
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| Beautiful grayling ate eggs and managed to get a few mouse flies in their tiny mouths! |
Ah, one poor lonely grayling made the cut. They're sure pretty fish. Have you ever eaten one?
ReplyDeleteYes, one year we flew to Kakatovik, Alaska our jumping off point to get to the Aichilk River. All our gear and kayaks arrived in Kaktovik, but no food. We scrounged some macaroni and decided to go anyway. We caught grayling and shot ptarmigan until we ran out of shotgun shells (we saved a few for bear protection). Then we lived on grayling only. I was pretty sick of grayling by the time we reached the Beaufort Sea. WE found an old cold war DEW (Distant Early Warning) radar site and ate 35 year old peanut butter and biscuits before we got flown out.
ReplyDeletestill can't get over the colors of those char, sweet!
ReplyDeleteI love them Erik, I can't stop trying to capture their colors with my camera!
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