On one of sport-fishing buckets list is Alaska’s Bristol Bay
FOR MONTHS leading up to my visit to Alaska’s Tikchik Narrows Lodge, I’d been fantasising about two personal angling milestones - landing a king salmon on a fly rod and catching a 24-inch rainbow trout on a mouse fly. It would take a bit of effort and more than a little luck, but if there was any place where such a fishing fantasy could come true, it’s the Bristol Bay region - a sport-fishing Mecca in a state renowned as a sport-fishing Mecca.
Bristol Bay sits in southwestern Alaska, due north of the Alaskan Peninsula and roughly 300 miles south-west of Anchorage. The descriptor is a catchall for the area containing the many watersheds draining into this eastern-most section of the Bering Sea, which include the Togiak, Nushagak, Naknek and Kvichak rivers. These waters are home to the world’s largest returns of sockeye salmon, with some 41 million projected to swim toward their natal waters in 2017.
While the sockeyes sustain a major commercial fishery, they also form the foundation for the region’s tremendously diverse sport fishery. The sockeyes ( joined by chum, king, silver and pink salmon) travel up rivers and lakes hundreds of miles into the interior each summer to spawn, providing angling sport along the way; more important, they provide nutrition (in the form of eggs and, later, decomposing flesh) for the river- and lakedwelling fish that await their arrival, including rainbows, Dolly Vardens, chars, graylings, lake trout and northern pikes. The chance to encounter such a tremendous variety of fish is a big part of its appeal for fly fishers and spin anglers alike . . . that, and the fact that the numbers - many fish and few anglers - make casting a fly or spinner here more an exercise in catching than merely fishing.
For my dream Alaska adventure, I stayed at Tikchik Narrows Lodge, which rests on a peninsula that juts out into the water where the Tikchik and Nuyakuk lakes meet. Tikchik sits at the eastern end of the 1.6 million acre Wood-Tikchik State Park, a roughly 30-minute floatplane ride from the fishing town of Dillingham; there are no roads in these parts. Bud Hodson, who guided and piloted planes at Tikchik Narrows in the late 1970s, acquired the lodge in 1986 and has been operating it since. The main lodge rests on a rise at the point of the peninsula and includes a dining room, bar, sitting area and deck, all overlooking the lakes and the Wood River Mountains to the west. Lodge walls are decorated with a mix of mounted fish reflecting the many species available, along with tasteful angling artwork and photos. The lodge also houses a tackle shop. (All tackle - including fishing rods, flies and lures and waders - are provided.) Guests stay in heated cabins with electricity and en- suite bathrooms with hot water showers.
Tikchik Narrows and its 36person staff can accommodate up to 24 guests for a seven-night stay - with six days of fishing.
A lodge such as Tikchik is all about fishing diversity - not just species, but venues. “We have over 25 fishing spots where we can take guests throughout the season,” said Chip King, who has served as the lodge’s lead guide for 17 years. “We pride ourselves on being adaptive to guests’ skill levels, weather and river conditions, and to the experience visitors want to have. We have many people who arrive with limited or no fishing experience at all, but our 14 guides are great teachers. In the course of the week, they may troll for salmon, cast a spinner or fly for pike or hike into small streams for trout, Dolly Varden and grayling.” Anglers have access to nearly all of the famed rivers of the western Bristol Bay region, including the Nushagak and Togiak drainages, the Wood River and Tikchik Lake systems (which include the Agulipak and Agulowak rivers) and the Kulukak River. Where and how you fish will depend on when you visit, as conditions evolve with the arrival of new runs of salmon.
If six days of fishing is one too many, guests have the option to visit Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park & Preserve, where brown bears gather to capture returning salmon and photographers gather to capture the iconic images of said bears catching salmon.
One constant at Tikchik is flight. Nearly all of the rivers that lodge guests’ fish are accessed by its three de Havilland Beaver and Cessna 206 float planes. ( Boats await to spirit anglers up and down the rivers from there.) Though the last Beaver rolled off the assembly line in 1967, these rugged and beloved workhorses remain the primary means of transportation in the Alaskan bush, allowing travelers and supplies to reach places that might otherwise be inaccessible. The current roster of Tikchik pilots sports more than 120 years of combined flying experience.
Tikchik anglers learn what fishing fates await them after dinner, when lead guide King announces assignments. On my second night, I was excited to learn that the next day I’d be flying to the Kulukak, a short river that dumps into the Pacific Ocean, to cast for king (or Chinook) salmon. Kings are the largest Pacific salmon species to return to the region and are Alaska’s state fish, equally prized for their flavour and fighting power; they can weigh 60 pounds and more, though specimens in the range of 15 pounds-to-25 pounds are more common.
The intimate Kulukak is narrow and shallow, providing the ideal environment for targeting kings with a fly. En route to the coast, we flew just below the clouds, past rugged, mist- shrouded mountains and intermittent stands of spruce, Seuss-like in their thin, narrow stature.
The abundance of water below us was staggering - long, narrow glacial lakes, bogs, small ponds, rivulets and rivers.