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Volume 17 • Issue 7 • July 2017 Dave Fish Alaska Fish Dave © 74 Departments Features Fish Alaska Creel 6 Clarence Strait Summer Silvers Fish Alaska Gear Bag 8 by Terry W. Sheely 38 Fish Alaska Online 10 Summer-run silvers are a unique early strain of coho Fishing for a Compliment 12 that’s been quietly surprising Southeast anglers since 1998. These fine-eating, acrobatic silvers arrive in late Fish Alaska Families 14 June/July and if you know where to look, they’ll add a Salmon Sense 18 dimension to any midsummer angling outing. Fish Alaska Conservation 20 Divers & Bait Techniques for River Salmon Fish Alaska Fly 24 by JD Richey 44 Fish Alaska Boats 26 The diver-and-bait rig has got it all: It’s deadly on river Fish Alaska Saltwater 32 salmon, easy to learn, a ton of fun—and almost utterly Fish Alaska Stillwater 34 foolproof. It is also really easy for inexperienced anglers Fish Alaska Recipe 94 to master. Advertiser Index 96 Confessions of a Mooching Fisherman Final Drift 98 by George Dennis 52 Mooching is a go-to technique for Alaska’s saltwater © JD Richey 44 captains, and after becoming a mooching convert following four decades of trolling experience, George Dennis walks us through everything a saltwater angler wants to know about catching salmon in Southeast. Sockeye Time! by Terry Wiest 58 Every year, hardcore Alaska anglers with the sense to know a good thing when they see it begin to salivate over the upcoming sockeye season. Well, the time is now, and the reds are in. Fishing with Ghosts by Andrew Cremata 66 Around Skagway, the pursuit of fish opens a doorway to Alaska’s past, and Andrew Cremata has set you to explore it all, rod in hand. Join him to explore the ruins and relics of Alaska history, and the fish often hiding nearby. © George Dennis © George 52 Destination Talkeetna by Troy Letherman 74 Meaning “river of plenty” in the Dena’ina language, Talkeetna is located at the confluence of the Susitna, Talkeetna and Chulitna rivers, and it’s an area that offers nearly unlimited wilderness adventure just minutes from town. Not only an angling hub of this fish-rich region of Alaska, the town also serves as the staging area for climbers attempting to reach the summit of Denali—read along here for all that and more. Fishing Poppers for Coho by Scott Haugen 86 Staying up top and fishing poppers for incoming silver salmon is one of the great thrills available to Alaska fly anglers. Here Scott Haugen walks us through the right type of coho water to look for, when, and how to deploy your popper for salmon success. COVER / Tony Davis enjoyed a good day of catching sockeye and a gorgeous sunset. © Terry Wiest © Terry 58 © Kristin Dunn/Kodiak Custom Fishing Tackle July 2017 www.FishAlaskaMagazine.com 3 2 www.FishAlaskaMagazine.com July 2017 July 2017 www.FishAlaskaMagazine.com 3 PUBLISHERS Marcus Weiner Melissa Norris ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Patrick Speranza Kathy Anderson EDITOR Troy Letherman OPERATIONS MANAGER Wayne Norris EFFICIENCY MANAGER Ana Taylor ART DIRECTOR Bailey Anderson PRODUCTION MANAGER Russell K Porsley III GRAPHIC DESIGNER Melissa Wong CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Greg Brush, Troy Buzalsky, Andrew Cremata, Les Gara, Scott Haugen, Pudge Kleinkauf, George Krumm, J.D. Richey, Terry Sheely, E. Donnall Thomas Jr., Jeremy Anderson CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Hastings A. Franks, Ken Baldwin, Anthony Madden, Tony Davis, Kristin Dunn, Brian Woobank REGIONAL SALES MANAGERS George Krumm (907) 529-6172 Rick Birch (907) 394-1763 SALES REPRESENTATIVE Alan Mariner (907) 345-4337 Fish Alaska Magazine PO Box 772424 Eagle River, Alaska 99577 Toll Free 1-877-220-0787 (907) 345-4337 main (907) 223-8497 advertising www.FishAlaskaMagazine.com ISSN 2475-5710 (print) ISSN 2475-5729 (online) SUBSCRIBE TODAY! Check out our specials at www.FishAlaskaMagazine.com Already a Subscriber? Call for our renewal specials! (907)-345-4337 Toll Free: 1-877-220-0787 Fish Alaska magazine is published ten times annually in January-July, Aug/Sept, Oct/Nov and December by Fish Alaska Publications, LLC, P.O. Box 772424, Eagle River, Alaska 99577. Send all address changes to P.O. Box 772424, Eagle River, Alaska 99577. One year subscriptions are $30 U.S. dollars for subscriptions in the U.S., $50 U.S in Canada, and $80 U.S. in all other countries.The single copy price is $6.99 in U.S. dollars. To subscribe by phone please call 907-345-4337. Editorial correspondence should be sent to Attn: Editor, Fish Alaska magazine, P.O. Box 772424, Eagle River, Alaska 99577. Unsolicited manuscripts and photos will be considered, but must be accompanied by a self- addressed stamped envelope. Although we will take care, Fish Alaska is not responsible for the loss or return of unsolicited materials. The opinions expressed in this magazine are not necessarily the opinions of Fish Alaska magazine publishers and editors. ©2017 by Fish Alaska Publications, LLC. All rights reserved. 4 www.FishAlaskaMagazine.com July 2017 July 2017 www.FishAlaskaMagazine.com 5 across another actual person. You can fish a river’s outside bend for two hours, then motor around the corner and feel Season’s Greetings like you’ve entered a different world. That’s Alaska—unique, raw and wild, I make the time pass by letting my vast and varied. mind wander through decades of fish It often doesn’t make sense, but of memories and the future fantasies course, so much of travel is meant to common to anglers who can never be discomforting. If everything was the quite sufficiently scratch that itch. I’m same all over no one would ever leave sitting in the diminutive Grant Aviation the house. For anglers especially, travel is terminal in Bethel, counting minutes an exercise in disorientation. Just when a until my flight to Quinhagak is ready to person thinks he’s gotten good, he’ll gear depart. I see chrome-sided king salmon up and head for someplace else, where bruisers rolling mid-river, fat-shouldered between different water characteristics, rainbows leaping three feet clear of the varying fish haunts and habits and the water in an attempt to spit the hook, very specialized techniques developed early-arriving silvers jammed into soft- for local needs, he’s bound to be water pockets near the grassy banks, served a nice helping of humility. In voracious Dolly Varden snapping at any this sense, then, July must be the most fly drifting past. I get lost in the images. uncomfortable Alaska month of all. In I get lost in the Alaska of my mind. these thirty-one days alone, within say “Tekituten,” a sign on the wall at Grant a hundred square miles of southcentral Aviation reads. You have arrived. Alaska roadway, an angler can go deep The piscatorial procession is halted for halibut, back-bounce heavy gear only by the whine of engines and the for the largest king salmon on earth, unfolding panorama of water-crossed suspend a size 20 midge for grayling in tundra below. By the time I disembark, an alpine lake, lob articulated leeches on there’s no time for chitchat, not with sinking lines for rainbows or utilize a rods to string up, waders to don. There’s uniquely Alaskan technique for sockeye. half a day left, and in southwest Alaska, And that’s only the half of it, in one half a day can mean a lot of new fish for region of the state, just this month. the memory bank. For each of the above and the dozens To view angling as respite from the of other alternatives anglers can expect hustle and bustle of modern-day life to find when venturing out during the is both dodgy and trite, yet I’m prone height of summer, there are myriad to such foolishness anyway, owning variations on the simple manner of a vagrant’s optimism in the power of presenting a bait, fly, spinner or spoon flowing water to impart meaning to to the fish that call these waters home. things I can’t quite figure out for myself. None of it’s like back home, wherever Questing, since at least the time of Don home may be, and that—aided Quixote, seems a dumb idea, but here considerably by both the setting and the I am, all Gore-Tex and seven-weight, numbers and size of our fish—is part of propelled along a senseless odyssey that what makes traveling to Alaska’s waters I can only hope ends with fish. such a draw. Angling in Alaska can often be Not a half-hour removed from the abrupt, traveling from the height of plane that deposited me on a gravel contemporary culture to utter wilderness airstrip in Quinhagak—and hardly in the blink of an eye. None of it is new— further away from a thousand daily I’m not exploring anything, regardless of rituals, responsibilities and other our penchant for self-aggrandizement annoyances—I cast and land a plump when telling our fishing buddies of the Dolly fresh in from its ocean sojourn. streams we’re lucky enough to encounter Another cast, another fish. In sum, I across this vast state. But much of it landed six fish, including two chum is new to me, and whether I’m fishing salmon and a pink, in nine casts. And a piece of water for the first or fiftieth I forgot about whatever I thought time, it always feels special. important before my flight into A person can dine at a five-star the bush. restaurant in Anchorage for lunch and That’s Alaska, I thought, July in be casting towards the edge of the world particular, proving once again that before darkness falls.