Silvers August 2008

It was Saturday morning and Mike and I had planned to fly in his plane to the west side of Cook Inlet south of Anchorage in search of Silver Salmon. This day dawned like a lot of others this year, cool and rainy but good enough to fly. I met Mike at his home on the hillside in south Anchorage and we drove to Merrill field where we loaded the plane, gassed up and headed west and then south over the mouth of the Susitna Rivers.





As we flew south along the shore of Cook Inlet the weather improved somewhat. After about an hour we reached the mouth of the Kustatan River and we turned to follow the river upstream. The plane is equipped with large "tundra tires" that would allow us to land on a gravel bar or the bank of the river when we decided where we wanted to fish. We flew low and slow along the course of the river looking for salmon. As we came around one bend a large brown bar stood on the edge of a gravel bar, a good sign that there fish in the river. We also saw a couple of planes and people fishing in the lower reaches of the river. The stream narrowed and the vegetation along the banks of the river became more dense the further upstream we got and finally mike turned the plane back downstream as we searched for a place to land.

Finally, we agreed on a spot where the river narrowed below a bar. We circled to land on the right bank of the river but as we did I spotted something dark in the brush and suggested we look at it again to see if it was a bear; it turned out to be moose bedded down and so we landed.







We quickly pulled our gear from the plane, set up our rods and headed through the brush to the river. We waded down stream and out to the island we hand seen from the air. The water was knee deep between the bank and the island. At the downstream end of the island the river was about 60 feet wide between where we stood and the opposite (left) bank. Mike moved downstream and I worked my way up stream; we were separated by about 100 feet, or so. The idea was to dead drift flesh flies and streamers: cast upstream and across, allow the fly to sink and drift with the current, strip the fly back near the end of the swing and then repeat the process.

Thirty minutes went by quickly with no takes. We changed flies occasionally looking for the right combination. Finally, Mike had a fish on, almost to him, but the hooked pulled; he thought it might have been a rainbow. Another, 30 minutes and still nothing. Then WHAM, something took my fly at the very end of the drift, almost directly downstream from where I was standing. The fish charged up stream, my line rooster-tailing through the water. I wasn't sure what I had but it was fairly heavy fish. Then the fish charged downstream, very close to brush along the bank opposite me. I put pressure on it to keep it out of the brush, and when I did the fish came at me. I backed up as fast as I could, reeling as fast as I could, but I had a pile of slack in front of me and was sure the fish was off. Suddenly the line tightened and the fish headed down stream, still on! I worked my way down and up onto the bar. We did not bring a net and so I planned to beach the fish. Now I could see that it was a nice silver, bright, just out of saltwater. With Mike's help we got the fish onto the bank, snapped a picture and tossed it into the tall grass for safekeeping until we headed back to the plane.



Soon I had another fish on, a silver. It took my fly almost in the same spot as the first one and fought a similar battle. It wasn't long until we had it on the bank and in the grass next to the first salmon. Now it was Mike's turn. He hooked into a silver below me. The fish had more room to run where Mike was standing and it took advantage of that. After about 10 minutes we landed our third fish of the morning. It was now after 11:00A and so we agreed to fish for another 20 minutes and then head back to Anchorage. We both hooked and lost one more silver in the allotted time, then gutted the three fish we had and headed back to the plane.










It wasn't long until were airborne and headed north, back to Anchorage. As we flew over the mouths of the Sustina and Little Susitna Rivers we spotted large pods of Beluga whales pursing schools of salmon headed upstream into those drainages. It had started raining soon after we took off; the rain continued all the home.