Wilderness Magic - Nushagak River
by Pudge Kleinkauf

Our trip up the Nushagak River this year was every bit as exciting and productive as last year, but in quite different ways. We departed Anchorage for Dillingham, Alaska, and then transferred to a small bush plane for the trip north to the village of Koliganek to meet our host, Roger Skogen of Ketok Lodge. Roger is a 20+ year resident of the village and is extremely knowledgeable about the river, the wildlife, the plants and flowers, and especially the fish! After a great dinner of caribou chow mien and a relaxing night at Roger’s, we set of early the next morning for the trip up river.

Because of low water, (a problem all over the State this year), we couldn’t get as far up river as we’d hoped, so we opted for making camp just below a beautiful area where we’d caught lots of fish last year and decided to hike up river and down to the fishing. It turned out to be a great decision!

After helping Roger pitch the tents and grabbing a quick lunch, we set up the 5-wts with an egg fly to see what was happening. The first cast to the run right in front of the tents brought a twenty-inch rainbow to the bank. He was absolutely gorged on salmon eggs as the fish usually are that time of year. He was also only the first of dozens of fat and feisty bows we landed without even moving away from the tents.

After tiring of catching rainbows (is such a thing possible?) we retreated from the 85 degree weather for a cold drink and re-rigged with dry flies to see what the grayling were up to. Although grayling are nearly constant feeders (they are the slowest growing of all Alaska’s sport fish and must eat continually) they aren’t always taking dry flies. So, we identify areas where they are likely to be and then play the game "can you make them rise"? And make them rise we did. After about three drifts with a #12 elk-hair caddis, they couldn’t resist and we spent the rest of the afternoon hooking and landing gorgeous, shimmering grayling from 16 to 22 inches long.

Although rainbows typically do not take dry flies when they are feeding on salmon eggs, there are notable exceptions. As I was fishing for grayling, a fish slammed my caddis and line screamed off the reel almost before my brain registered that this was not a grayling. Instead, it proved to be a 22 inch rainbow that didn’t realize that he was breaking the rules. Because of his size, and my 4 lb tippet, it took me awhile to land him. And then, just when we thought he was the only exception to the rule, two other flyfishers also had rainbows on their dry flies and I had another one nearly as large. It didn’t last long, but it was great !

And amazingly, we also had two large dolly varden take our dry flies along the same stretch of water the next evening. The incredible thing was that there were virtually no caddis hatching when all this activity occurred, and we were fishing water filled with salmon eggs. We couldn’t explain it, we just enjoyed it.

Early in the morning, during the heat of the day, or as the evening cooled and the breeze kept the bugs under control, we trekked up-river to one of the small creeks that feed the river. The water was low and wading was easy but the spawning red salmon kept interfering with our rainbow fishing by aggressively taking our egg flies. Both the reds and kings were stacked up at the entrance to the creek and we simply couldn’t get through them to the rainbows we could see without hooking up. So, we’d retreat to the deep slow runs farther behind the salmon to find rainbows. And often we found dolly varden and grayling as well.

One afternoon in a small riffly run that we’d overlooked on our previous hikes, I stopped to fish as the others returned to the tents. Just for fun, I began to count the grayling and rainbows that eagerly took my dry flies. But there were so many I couldn’t keep count of how many were grayling and how many were rainbows. Then, I decided that we hadn’t done any nymph fishing so I tried my hand at that. The fish were just as eager to accept my nymph as they had my dries. Sure, some of the fish were probably the same ones taking both nymphs and dries, but there’s no way to know. I stopped counting at fifty fish.

Reluctantly, we broke camp to begin our drift down river, but we fished as Roger rowed and managed to catch dollies, rainbows, and grayling. We even hooked a couple of kings and reds, but got them off before they caused problems on our 5-wts. The drift was more notable for wildlife than for fish, however. We floated past beaver dams too numerous to mention, some taller than a two story building, and saw moose, river otters, many species of ducks and birds, and lots of bear sign.

Before our last camp, we stopped at some beautiful bluffs along the river to pick wild blueberries, because Roger promised us a blueberry cobbler for desert if we picked the berries. High on the ridge, we could see the tundra rolling away to forever, the river glistening on toward the horizon and the mountains in the distance. I even had to stop stuffing my mouth with berries periodically to take it all in.

The last night we camped beside a long stretch of quiet water with lovely riffles at both the head and foot where we expected to locate more rainbows. Surprisingly enough, we didn’t. Instead, we found the mother lode of grayling. "Making them rise" with dry flies, we stayed casting until we couldn’t see our flies any more and finally headed for the tents.

We’d hoped that there might be some early silver salmon near the village as we got down river, but it was not to be. How could we complain? We’d just experienced Alaska as few people get to see it. Fish, berries, scenery, wildlife and gorgeous water. What more could you ask?

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