Bump
bump ba-bump bump ba-bump, stop.
Jerk! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, Fish on!
As my pole bends my reel's drag
begins to work, I change my stance
to prepare for the fight. If
the king salmon can get to the
fast water of the roaring Klutina
River, I have surely lost, but if
I can keep him in the hole until
he is too tired to escape to the
swift water, then I have won.
In this chess game both my
opponent and I have advantages.
Mine is eight years of experience,
five of which I have been a
professional fishing guide.
In these years I have learned much
about the battle. I've
learned when to give, when to
take, and how to use tension of
the line to apply pressure that
uses the water's current against
the fish. The salmon
however, may weigh 40-85 pounds
and can muster all the speed and
power of a torpedo. He knows
how to use the water's current to
break my line, or he may fly
downstream so far and so fast that
I have no choice but to break my
line, or he may fly downstream so
far, and so fast that I have no
choice, but to break my own line.
Move and countermove, until one of
us prevails.
From experience, I know that the
first move the salmon is likely to
make is a lightning burst
downstream. I am ready for
it, and I hold my rod tip low,
near the water, and bend it toward
the riverbank. The fish's
tail is his rudder, but his head
is the steering wheel. I
know I can't control the tail, but
where the head goes the tail must
follow. I must control the
fish's head if I want to win the
battle. Bending my pole
toward the riverbank pulls the
head in that direction and
prevents the fish from using his
massive body in the swift current, which
rushes by the hole. I have
stopped the beast's initial surge,
and its my turn to make a move.
While keeping my rod tip near the
water, I rotate my body so that
the rod is now bent and pulling
upstream. Gently, I begin to
coax the fish back to where I
hooked him, and from there, the
fight continues.
I fell in love with king salmon
fishing when I was twelve years
old. The first time I felt
the pull on my line from the
awesome fish, I was fishing with
my dad and brother on the Gulkana
River, about two miles from the
home where my dad grew up in
Alaska. We were on vacation
from our mountain home, near
Kremmling, Colorado. It was
early June and the salmon run had
just begun. It was another adventure for a father and
his two sons. My brother is
two years older than me, so you
can imagine my delight when I
hooked and landed the first fish
of the day. I had never
fought a fish like that in my life
and I was overjoyed. I
thought it was going to be a once
in a lifetime experience, so I
basked in the glory for the rest
of the trip by reminding my
brother who caught the first fish,
and incidentally, who's was
bigger.
I have been competitive with my
brother over fishing as long as I
can remember. Near our
former home in Colorado there was
a pond that had some of the
largest rainbow trout in the
country. My brother and I
spent countless hours there trying
to outdo one another. When I
was ten years old and my brother
was twelve, we took on the task of
learning to fly fish. When
we were fishing with bait there
wasn't as much to compete over.
But with a fly pole: who can cast
farther, who could get their fly
tied on fastest, who could figure
out what the fish were biting the
fastest. Would it be the
Wooly Booger, Elk Hair Caddis, or maybe
a Hairs Ear. Every aspect of
fishing wasn't merely a challenge,
but also a competition. One
year my dad, my brother, and I
entered a fishing contest at the
local sporting goods store.
We took home first, second, and
third place.
When we moved to Alaska in the
summer of 1996, I think it was
that competitive nature, that
sibling rivalry, which soon pushed
us to become two of the best
fishermen on the Gulkana River.
We were Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry
Finn and the Gulkana was our
Mississippi. One of the best
gifts our mother has ever bought
for us was a blue, twelve-foot,
inflatable raft. We
rafted from Sailors Pit to the
Bridge sometimes twice a day.
Jenny's, The Sand Bar, The Trough,
Beaver, Bear, Upper and Lower
Homestead, White Rock, Swimming
and Last Chance; these are the
names of the holes we found and
named. We spent every
possible minute, on the river
learning where and how to catch
the largest fish either of us had
ever dreamed of catching. If
we couldn't get our parents to
drop us off with our raft, we
would ride our bicycles to the
bridge with our fly poles to catch
red salmon and make all the
tourist, who were clueless, feel
inferior to a couple of kids.
After being in Alaska for one year
my brother got a job as an
assistant guide with on of the
local fishing outfitters, and I
was jealous. He was being
paid to fish! I new that I
could do it just as well as he
could and probably better.
The next summer I was fifteen and
I knew that I was not going
to be left behind again, and
I was right. My brother
first got a job working for an
outfitter as a fulltime guide.
After about a month, the same
outfitter approached me and asked
if I could help out at times, as
well. Trying not to give
away all my excitement, I agreed
and began my first job, not as an
assistant, but as a guide.
At first the trips I guided
intimidated me. I was taking
people who could be anywhere from
double to triple my age. But
my confidence soon grew, as I
realized that age didn't make you
a good fisherman experience did,
and I have amassed enough
experience in the previous two
years to last some fisherman a
lifetime. I thought I was in
heaven. People were paying
me to take them fishing! By
the end of the year I had earned
about two thousand dollars and had
one summer's experience as a
fishing guide.I was on top of the
world. The next summer my
brother raised the bar again.
Over the winter my brother and dad
decided to start an outfitter of
their own. I was excited
about that, because it meant I
would work for family, which would
lead to a definite raise. We
began the summer well, and the
fishing was great. But near
the end of the summer the fishing
on the Gulkana comes to an end
just as the Klutina River begins
to peak. I had fished the
Klutina River a couple times with
our neighbor, a guide for another
outfitter, and while the fishing
concepts are all the same, rafting
the river is another story.
The Klutina River is a glacial
river, which is also the fourth
fastest moving body of water in
North America. Class four
rapids and varying water levels
from glacial melting or rain, make
the river dangerous and sometimes
unpredictable. But the
salmon are among some of the
largest caught in the world, and
that caliber of fish demands
attention. My brother began
rafting it in the summer he turned
18. It was one challenge
that I could not match until I was
older and stronger as well.
My disappointment didn't last long
and I soon decided that if I
couldn't beat him, I might as well
join him. So, I would go
with him. Learning the holes
on a new river, as well as
perfecting technique.
Moving water has always had a
hypnotic effect on me. There
is a poem I wrote with my
grandmother when I was a young
child.
The
bibbling, babbling, brook
Gurgled
down the hill
And if
it ever stops
It
seems its running still.
Though we were writing about a
creek that passed under the dirt
road on the way to our mountain
home in Colorado, I often think of
it as I watch the glacier blue
water of the Klutina as it flows,
separating into tiny crystals that
pour over rocks then rejoining the
fluid mass, leaving all colors of
the rainbow to hang in the air.
It took a couple more years for me
to build up the strength and
confidence needed to tackle the
Klutina River. Now, I feel
like I am the luckiest person in
the world. I have a skill
that was taught to me by my father,
that I perfected by competing with
my brother, and people pay me to
teach them to do something that I
love.
