Aleutian adventure
Salmon, caribou enhance ‘cast and blast’ experience
Anthony Michaels of Little Rock took the cast-and-blast concept to a high level recently when he visited the Aleutian Islands.
In Arkansas, “cast and blast” usually means shooting squirrels from a canoe while float fishing for bass. Michaels, owner of the CrossEyed Pig on Rebsamen Park Rd., traveled with Tom Rayburn Sr., and Tom Rayburn Jr., both of Little Rock, to Cold Bay, Alaska, a town in the East Borough of the Aleutian Islands Sept. 4-14. Their primary mission was to catch the annual silver salmon spawning migration near Bristol Bay.
As an aside, Michaels also killed his first caribou, an unlikely achievement given the very limited amount of time he had to scout and prepare.
Michaels often fishes in Alaska and knows several rivers well enough to fish without a guide. He calls himself a “combat” fisherman because he knows how to fish successfully among the crowds that throng the banks of Alaskan rivers to fish for migrating salmon.
Most anglers come to fish for king salmon, but Michaels said he prefers catching silver salmon. They are smaller than kings, Michaels said, but they taste the same and they fight as hard.
“We mainly went to fish,” Michaels said. “Their silver salmon run starts on Labor Day. Russell Creek is only about a half a mile from the ocean, so we were getting what you call ‘fresh’ fish. They fought like they were in the ocean, so they hadn’t lost anything.”
Silver salmon were plentiful and aggressive, Michaels said. The group caught them by throwing large streams on fly fishing gear. On the last day, Michaels said he cast spoons on spinning gear. The daily limit was four silver salmon per person.
“It was incredible,” Michaels said. “If you wanted to, you could get your limit in an hour. Out of each group [of fish], we’d pull in a 10-pounder. Oddly enough, 7- and 8-pounders were the ones that fought the hardest.”
Unlike catching silver salmon, hooking silver salmon is honest catching, Michaels said. A silver salmon actually strikes a lure. No matter what anybody says, Michaels insisted, the only way anybody ever hooks a king salmon is by snagging it.
It’s also a numbers game, Michaels said. Excessive exploitation by commercial fishermen has depleted king salmon numbers to the point that the Alaska Department of Natural Resources prohibits recreational anglers from keeping them. Numbers dip so low that the state closes the season for them when they leave the ocean.
Silver salmon, on the other hand, are plentiful, as are sockeye salmon and pink salmon, also called “humpys.”
“Typically kings are in the ocean for three to five years,” Michaels said. “The total number of king salmon (in the streams Michaels fishes) is about 13,000 the last four or five years years. Compare that to the sockeye which we fish for in July. It’s 2 million.
“The kings have been getting lower each year,” Michaels said. “If you saw the nets they run in the ocean and in Cook Inlet, they’re catching so many.”
The only abundant population of king salmon remaining are in the Western Aleutians.
“I’ve quit trying to fish for them,” Michaels said. “Russell Creek is known for silvers and humpys or pinks. We got to see them when they were all piled up getting ready to come up a three-foot wide stream. Silvers have about the same fat content as king and they taste about the same, so why not go to a place where you can catch 10-pound silver salmon that will give you all you can handle?”
Michaels enjoys catching fish that are strong enough to break fishing rods. To an angler, breaking a rod is the same as a duck hunter going underwater. It’s an event, and it’s expected.
“I’ve had it in Alaska where you have the fish on the shore like you have a catfish here,” Michaels said. “Think small tuna. You get them up on the bank and they flip-flop around and take right back out to the water.
“I had a nice Sage 8-weight (fly rod). A silver took off and just snapped it,” Michaels continued. “Tom Hathorn (owner of Ozark Angler in Little Rock) gave me a nice Orvis, and I brought it back to him in three pieces. Another one broke my Scott 8-weight. Silver salmon just don’t quit.”
Michaels’ hosts for his visit were Bill Sager and Lillian Sager, owners of Bayview Charters in Cold Bay. A small herd of caribou lives on the island. The Sagers offered Michaels a hunting option. The chance of success was remote, Michaels said, because caribou on the island tend to stay in places where they can’t be reached by humans or wolves.
“The first thing Bill Sager asked me is whether I wanted to hunt or fish,” Michaels said. “Caribou is one animal I’ve never hunted, so I told him I wanted to hunt. The more I studied it, I realized how small my chances were. I just said, ‘Let’s go out, have good time, keep it simple and focus on the fish.’ ”
For his last day, Michaels planned to fish for halibut in the bay, but heavy wind made success unlikely. Michaels bought a hunting license and a caribou tag, and Bill Sager grabbed a rifle chambered in 243 Winchester that hadn’t been fired in nearly three years. They drove onto the tundra in a side-by-side utility vehicle and spent hours looking over the windswept expanses with binoculars.
“This is not the way to do a hunt, but we were having fun,” Michaels said. “The last place we could get to was called Lookout Hill. I saw something odd about a mile away. It happened to be a caribou sitting down. I spotted another one right beside it that was even bigger.”
Michaels uncased the rifle and began walking toward the caribou. It was upwind, so it couldn’t smell Michaels.
“Caribou aren’t like elk and deer, that take off when it sees you,” Michaels said. “When it saw us, it got up and started trotting toward us. It wanted to see what we were. That cut the distance about a hundred yards.”
Michaels said that the rifle was sighted to zero at 200 yards. He fired once, but evidently the bullet didn’t reach the animal. It was closer to 300 yards away, so Michaels aimed above the shoulder and
“Caribou aren’t like elk and deer, that take off when it sees you. When it saw us, it got up and started trotting toward us. It wanted to see what we were. That cut the distance about a hundred yards.” Anthony Michaels of Little Rock on the bull caribou he killed Sept. 13 in the Aleutian Islands near Cold Bay, Alaska
hit the caribou in the heart. It was a good-size bull with an impressive rack.
After returning home, Michaels rested a few days and then drove to South Dakota to hunt pheasants with a group of friends from Central Ar- kansas and Northeast Arkan- sas.