The ferry dock in Cordova drifts into the distance as the FVF Chenega pulls away.

Sunday evening marked a milestone in this adventure.

I made it back to Alaska’s mainland.

Technically, even while I was in Cordova I was on the mainland. But, with no road out, it might as well have been an island. Cordovians, by the way, are proud of this. They have resisted suggestions of building a road there. And a bumper sticker on almost every car and truck in town reads simply: “No Road Cordova.”

Vehicles fill the deck of the FVF Chenega ferry on Sunday, Sept. 23, 2012.

Early Saturday afternoon I filed a column for The Roanoke Times in which I wrote that I expected my fishing time in Alaska was over.

But then there was a little break in the wind and rain. What the heck?

I drove out to Ibek Creek.

A lone angler casts toward a current eddie on Ibek Creek near Cordova, Alaska, in late September 2012.

It was still way up, but what else was I going to do?

I loaded up my gear, including my bear spray, and headed up the trail toward where we’d fished the first couple of days, before all hell broke loose with the weather.

About 30 minutes later I heard grunting ahead of me on the trail. I gulped and got my spray ready.

Bill Beaver of Wenatchee, Washington, displays a finger bloodied while fishing for silver salmon on Ibek Creek.

The grunting came from another angler, who was walking downstream.

He carried two salmon in his left hand, and a third in his right.

I was impressed. This guy was hard core.

His name was Bill Beaver, and he said he was from Wenatchee, Washington.

“My friends didn’t want to come up here with me,” he said. “So I came by myself.”

Bill also came without a fillet knife and a stinger, which is why he was carrying his fish by the gills.

One of his fingers, likely cut by the sharp teeth of a coho, was bleeding profusely.

I offered to fillet his fish and he graciously accepted. I knocked out the chore in a few minutes. Bill put the fillets in Ziploc bags, which he stuffed into the back pocket of his fly vest. It was a good load, but would be much easier than carrying the fish along the sloppy trail though thick, face-slapping willows.

After salmon roe produced two keeper coho salmon, a Luhr-Jensen spoon tricked this big buck and four more salmon on a high-water day on Alaska's Ibek Creek.

Bill told me he’d caught six fish in all on his fly rod, and told me where he’d caught the fish. I thanked him.

I reached the spot a few minutes later and baited up with a gob of salmon roe. The bait was in the water for maybe 10 seconds when the rod bowed.

Read more »

It’s raining here. The rivers are flooded so there is no fishing.

It’s not windy so the ferry left today. I wasn’t on it. There were too many people ahead of me who have been trying to get out of here for going on two weeks now. I was supposed to be on a plane back to Virginia tonight. I called the airline and open-ended my reservation.

The wind returns tonight. I am betting the ferry will be canceled Saturday and Sunday so I have no hope of catching a standby ride out of here. I have a reservation for Monday. To say I am praying for the wind to lay down on Monday would be a huge understatement.

I told my boss I would have a column for Sunday. I have no idea what I will write about. Maybe all the things I like and dislike about this rental RV that has been my shelter for more than three weeks now?

So while I mull that over I have been catching up on Outdoor Writers Association of America administrative tasks.

I just made myself a bacon, egg and cheese English muffin for lunch. It was tasty.

Small victories, folks. Small victories.

Two hours of fishing the rising Ibek Creek in a driving rain produced this 6-pound silver salmon.

CORDOVA, Alaska — Wednesday brought a welcome break from the incessant rain that has plagued this week-long (with no end in sight) visit to this remote little town in Southcentral Alaska.

I spent the break at the Cordova airport.

Kraig Cesar, the last remaining member of my party, had finally said “Enough is enough.”

With required business travel next week he had no choice but to bail, booking a flight out of Cordova to Anchorage so he could catch his plane back to Virginia late Thursday night.

While the ferries have not been running – today’s cancellation is the fifth in six days – flights have been getting out of here, albeit with lots of delays.

Again, the weather was actually decent yesterday afternoon.

Here. Not in Anchorage.

So the 737 Kraig was to be on sat on the tarmac for several hours. Sure, I could have just dumped him and gone fishing. But I am not one to leave a man behind. So we waited out the delay in the RV – appropriately labeled the Sunseeker – until he finally got the call to board about 3 p.m.

On the way to the airport we’d driven over Ibek Creek, which had dropped a goodly amount since the heavy rains earlier in the week.

Naturally, heavy rain started falling about the time Kraig left.

I geared up on the side of the road and hit the creek – it’s really a river — along with a half-dozen other Gore-Tex clad anglers. Read more »

A Johnson Silver Minnow spoon fooled this and many other small pike at Alaska's Fiasco Lake.

Bill Watt of Arizona casts a fly for Fiasco Lake's northern pike. Fly fishing proved effective for the lake's hungry predators.

We flew to Fiasco Lake in Will's Cessna 206 amphibious float plane.

The winding Birch Creek is popular among float hunters seeking moose.

Pilot Will Johnson has been flying bush planes in Alaska for decades.

CORDOVA, Alaska — While skill is the most important aspect in successful fishing, luck really does play a part.

Sometimes, that luck occurs off the water.

While checking in for the Outdoor Writers Association of America’s recent conference at Chena Hot Springs Resort near Fairbanks, Alaska, every registrant got to draw for a prize tour offered by the resort.

Most were modest, such as a day’s bike rental or a tour of the facility’s famous ice museum.

A few were significant, such as flight-seeing tours that normally sell for a few hundred bucks.

I drew one of those, an airplane trip to a place called Chicken, with a stop to tour a gold-dredging operation and a chance to do some gold-panning.

Bernie Karl, the resort’s colorful owner, said the scenery from the air would be spectacular, and added that we’d have a good chance to see caribou.

But…

One of the other tours was a fly-out fishing trip to a remote lake to fish for northern pike.

I like scenery. I like gold.

I love fishing.

Part of the deal was we were able to trade tours. So, how could I find out who had drawn the fishing trip?

I decided to make an announcement at lunch that I was looking to trade my Chicken trip for the fishing trip.

Just a few minutes later I was waiting for a conference session to start when Virginia writer Nancy Sorrells walked up and asked me, “Do you know anyone who might be interested in trading for a fly-out fishing trip?”

Bingo.

The trip was at noon the next day. I packed a 9-weight fly rod and a medium-heavy action spinning rod.

Our pilot was veteran bush pilot Will Johnson, who estimated that he had somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 hours of Alaska flying.

We were flying in his amphibious Cessna 206, a plane with wheeled landing gear tucked into its pontoons. The versatile plane can take off and land on runways or water.

Our target was Fiasco Lake. No kidding.

The other guys fishing on the trip were Bill Watt from Arizona and William Greer from Florida.

Yep. Will. Bill. And William.

We made it there in about 45 minutes, and Will taxied us to a wind-buffeted shoreline.

After Will parked the plane and tied up to shore, we hit the shore and got our gear ready. The shoreline was boggy, so we needed waders.

Bill and William were starting with fly gear while I started with my spinning rod, to which I had tied a weedless Johnson Silver Minnow.

The lake was clear, with lots of weeds and lily pads. It looked pikey.

And it was pikey.

I got a strike on my third cast but didn’t hook up. I figured after getting the quick strike that it would be wide open, but it wasn’t. So I experimented with my retrieve, trying fast retrieves and slow retrieves.

Then I tried a varied retrieve, turning my reel handle three times, pausing, then reeling three more times.

Boom!

The pike crushed the spoon as it dropped during the pause.

These weren’t big fish, mind you, ranging from 18 to maybe 30 inches. But my tackle was relatively light so the fish were fun.

After I caught a couple dozen – really – I decided to try my fly rod. The only flies I had were some hideous king salmon flies loaned to me by my buddy Mark Freeman.

How nasty were these flies? Imagine taking a white chicken wing and tying it to a 3/0 hook. That was pretty much it.

Now, those kinds of flies may be awesome for kings, and I’m sure would work well for Chesapeake Bay striped bass. But trying to cast one in the wind with my 9-weight fly rod was brutal.

Bill and William were doing well with their gear, however, and having a blast. I was somewhat envious.

I returned to the boat to get my spinning gear and a different spoon as I’d loaned my one Silver Minnow to Will.

A weedless Johnson Silver Minnow proved the day's best lure.

Will was on the plane’s pontoon, his boots off and his pants wet.

“What happened?” I asked.

He smiled sheepishly.

“I hung up your spoon and when I was trying to get it free I fell in,” he said. “And I still lost it.”

I shook my head.

“My grandpa gave me that lure,” I said, then laughed.

Actually, a rep from Pure Fishing had given me the lure a day earlier.

We loaded up and hit the air.

Other than Will’s unintended dip, our trip to Fiasco Lake had been anything but a fiasco.

A float down the Kenai River near Cooper Landing produced an early morning sighting of two brown bear cubs, including this one, as well as a huge sow.

SOLDOTNA, Alaska — Time flies when you’re up before dawn, fishing all day in the wind, and scrambling to set up camp and eat dinner before 10 p.m.

As for the fishing, it’s been hot and cold the past couple of days. If anyone tells you that Alaska equals a fish on every cast every day, they are lying.

Not that it can’t happen. But it can happen in Virginia, too.

The thing about here is that when you do connect, the thing on the end of the line could be the biggest of that species that you’ll ever catch.

Sunday afternoon was frustrating as I attempted to upload some pix on my blog using my phone as a wireless hot spot. The cell signal in the Russian River campground was good, but not good enough to like uploading 100K photo files.

It’s Tuesday afternoon and things are moving a little better here at the Soldotna Suds Laundromat. I volunteered to do the laundry while Cliff and Kraig ran to Fred Meyer for provisions.

FYI, I have been using the word “provisions” since I got here because it seems more appropriate for Alaska than “groceries.”

Honestly, looking out the window here it looks like any town of 10,000 in America.

But, back to the fishing.

Things improved Sunday evening.

Using beads on the Russian I finally connected with a few trout, including a couple nice rainbows. The largest was about 18 inches long and really fat.

Dan Myers of Alaska Clearwater Sportfishing has been guiding on the Kenai River for more than 20 years.

Monday we spent the day with Dan Myers of Alaska Clearwater guide service, fishing  a 7-mile stretch of the Kenai River from just below the confluence with the Russian to Skilak Lake.

We were in Dan’s 20-foot drift boat, and while we fished some from the boat, most of our fishing was while wading.

Dan was giving us a primer right after we launched when Cliff said, “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a bear.”

Walking the shoreline was a large brown bear (above). At least we thought it was large until we saw the second one.

The sow, which actually had two cubs with her, was enormous.

The river was chock full of spawning and spawned-out sockeye salmon. We would fish around the spawning fish for rainbows and dollies.

Kraig and Cliff connected with fish pretty early on. Cliff’s first was a really nice rainbow that was probably in the 20-inch range, and he also had a nice dolly varden early.

Cliff Bruner, right, had little trouble connecting with the Kenai's fat rainbow trout and dolly varden.

On every cast I watched intently for my strike indicator (a fly fishing euphemism for “bobber” to dart off indicating a strike.

I did a lot of watching, and no catching.

At one point, while fighting a nice dollie, Cliff asked, “Mark, do you want to reel this one in?”

Dan was working hard for me. At one point, after Kraig had a few hits, Dan said to him, “Kraig, you take this rod and give yours to Mark.”

It was easier to do that than to keep trying different color beads on my rig.

Things finally lit up for me about midday, and they lit up in a big way.

Fattened by salmon eggs, a 20-inch rainbow trout on the Kenai River pushes 3 pounds.

Over a stretch of about an hour in one run I could do no wrong. Every time I got a good drift I got a hit, and I hooked about half of the fish. The first one in was a 20-inch dolly. Then came an 18-inch rainbow (pictured), a 20-inch rainbow and, eventually, one that was  probably 22 inches long – the best non-steelhead rainbow of my life. Toward the end of our stay at the run I hooked a fish that appeared even bigger.

We had to move on, and made a long run through the river’s rollicking canyon section, which we didn’t fish.

The day ended with us casting for about 90 minutes from the boat right were the river dumps into the lake. I had a short tussle with a large rainbow but, with the exception of old, accidental salmon, that was it for me at that spot.

Kraig Cesar prepares to release a fat dolly varden.

Anglers in the boat next to us were pulling in some really nice dollies, fish that were in the 5- to 7-pound range. When they moved we slid over and got in on the action. Or, I should say Kraig and Cliff did. Both caught fish that were about 25 inches long, and shaped like footballs.

My time had come and gone.

Dan said the fishing was slow by his standards. I’d love to experience fast fishing. We could get back here next week so maybe we will.

Dan Myers spotted this black bear sow and cub while transitting across Skilak Lake.

The trip to the ramp required a 5-mile run under power, with took an hour with the 15-hp motor pushing the big drift boat. But Dan spotted a black bear on the shore and we got to go in for a closer look and pix of the sow and her cub.

Cliff said the bears were the highlight of his day, and it was tough to argue with it.

We camped at Bing’s Landing near Sterling on Monday night, and met Dan’s partner, Shane Sanders, Tuesday morning for a half-day of fishing for silver salmon out of Shane’s powerboat.

Shane Sanders of Alaska Clearwater Sportfishing guide service points his power boat down the lower Kenai River during a chilly morning of silver salmon fishing.

Shane said from the outset that it had been a tough season on the Kenai for silvers. That trend continued. We caught lots of old pink (humpy) salmon, but silvers were few and far between. I had two follows on a chartreuse Blue Fox spinner, and finally caught a small hen of about 3 pounds on that lure. That was it.

The wind was howling pretty good, and Shane really had to work to control the boat.

A morning of fishing on the lower Kenai produced many unintentional hookups with spawning pink and sockeye salmon but only this single silver salmon.

We bailed a little earlier than planned, with plans to call Shane if and when we get back here to see if action has improved.

This afternoon we’re heading back up to the Russian River campground. Tomorrow we catch the ferry for Cordova and, hopefully, some fast silver salmon action.

Bill Cochran used a small Blue Fox spinner to trick this 12-inch-long Chena River grayling.

CHENA HOT SPRINGS, Alaska — Bill Cochran and I don’t have the best track record on our fishing outings.

You’d think that with both of us going, the notorious outdoor writer curse would somehow cancel itself out. Instead, I think it doubles.

We’ve had slow days fishing for flounder on the Eastern Shore, and slow days fishing for smallmouth bass on the James River. Even slow days on Bill’s little pond on his property. (Granted that was an ice-fishing outing.)

So, I had to admit I was little nervous on Tuesday afternoon when we headed out for an afternoon of grayling fishing on the Chena River.

The fishing had been great a day earlier on Monument Creek, a little Chena River tributary. Would that continue? Or would the double curse rare its ugly head?

We headed a few miles down the road from the resort, along with Bill’s wife, Katherine, and writer Doug Stamm.

I was the only one with waders, an advantage on the stretch of water we ended up on. But from the river I found a spot with some decent bank access and got Bill and Paul there.

The fishing wasn’t furious. In fact, the grayling were pretty picky, rising slowly in the crystal clear water and then turning away from my flies. Read more »

Al Kittredge, who is a regular on Virginia's Smith River, gives a couple of his Allie Flies to Jon Small of Brooklyn after a chance meeting on the banks of the Susitna River.

CHENA HOT SPRINGS, Alaska — Dan Small, an outdoors writer and radio host from Wisconsin, walked up to me yesterday evening after the opening night dinner at the Outdoor Writers Association of America.

“I’ve got a message for you,” he said.

Not unusual. I figured it was something from one of our three association staffers regarding an upcoming duty or task.

“Al Kittredge says he still wants to take you fishing on the Smith River,” Dan said.

Al is a fixture on the Smith, the tailwater trout fishery that runs below Philpott Dam.

“How do you know Al?” I asked, figuring they were Facebook friends or something.

I figured he would say something like, “We were in the Army together.”

But, no.

“I just met him on the Susitna River two days ago,” Dan said.

They were actually in the exact spot, where Montana Creek flows into the Susitna, where I’d been fishing two days prior.

In talking Dan learned where Al is from and one thing led to another.

“He even gave us a couple of his Allie Flies,” Dan said of a pattern Al invented for the Smith.

This shot is of Al giving the flies to Dan’s son, Jon, who plans to try the fly on grayling today.

On a day when I didn’t get any adventures of my own because I was in a meeting all day I appreciated hearing this small world story.

The only way it could have been better is if I’d been the one who had run into Al.

Who knows? It might yet happen.

The conference is now officially rolling, and it’s busy.

So busy that I haven’t even had a chance to catch up with Bill Cochran, who got in yesterday afternoon. We talked briefly but I am eager to find out more about his pre-conference adventures with his wife, Katherine.

A cow and calf moose browse within sight of outdoor writer Chris Batin's Alaska cabin.

CHENA HOT SPRINGS, Alaska — Mark Freeman woke me up Saturday morning at 6:30 a.m.

“I just got a text from Brett,” he said. “There are two moose out by the solar panel.”

We looked out the window of the RV and could see the dark figures in the tall weeds next to our host Chris Batin’s cabin, from which Brett had a better view.

It was a moosey morning, with a drizzling rain and lots of fog. Sorry the picture isn’t better, but the light was pretty poor.

The cow and her calf hung around for 30 minutes until Chris headed out to start his generator, which is next to the solar panel.

Chris was headed up to Chena Hot Springs Resort to do some conference-related work. So we all bugged out about 8 a.m. He had been a great host and his place is spectacular.

About 40 miles north on the Parks Highway, just inside the border of Denali State Park (not to be confused with Danali National Park), we came to Troublesome Creek, which I had read held rainbows, salmon and grayling.

It was rolling pretty good, but looking down from the bridge I could see some small fish, which I figured to be grayling, in an eddy. Why not?

We geared up and hit the water.

Grayling are supposedly quite gullible but whatever these fish were, they weren’t. The river had some half-dead spawning salmon but we didn’t see any rainbows. So we decided to move on. And, by on, I mean we abandoned our plan of camping around that area and decided to blow on up the road to the resort.

The Denali National Park visitor's center provides a glimpse at the wildlife that inhabits the park.

On the way we stopped at the Denali National Park visitor’s center, which was pretty interesting. Of course we couldn’t see the mountain due to clouds and fog.

Still, the scenery in the area was spectacular, the mountains covered with a mix of spruce and aspen in their bright yellow fall colors, with the alpine floor red from changing leaves on a shrub the identity of which I don’t know.

This being a holiday weekend the RV park at the resort was full when we got here, so we headed back down the road and parked on a gravel bar next to the West Fork of the Chena River. One nice thing about Alaska is that you can camp pretty much anywhere, apparently. Just pull off the road and you’re good to go. There are camps everywhere in the area because moose season just opened and, up here, moose season is like deer season used to be in Western Virginia.

We ended up camping on a gravel bar alongside the West Fork of the Chena River

We woke up this morning to patches of blue in the sky, and by midday it was absolutely gorgeous. I am wearing shorts this afternoon.

We came back to the resort this morning and got our site, which is on Monument Creek. We found OWAA staffers Robin, Ashley and Jessica and they said they’d been up the creek yesterday and seen some nice grayling.

Thirty minutes later we were on our way.

Grayling were abundant in the cyrstal clear waters of Monument Creek, a tributary of the Chena River.

The fishing was great, the iridescent fish gobbling just about anything we threw at them. It reminded me a lot of a good day on a native brook trout stream in Virginia, both in the size of the water and the eagerness of the targets. I probably caught and released 25 grayling in two hours. They were all small, in the 8- to 10-inch range. Brett and Mark both caught some better fish, including a 19-incher that Brett fooled on a girdle bug.

Work starts this evening with a meeting of the association’s executive committee. Tomorrow we have the board meeting. The board meetings have been known to last all day but I hope we can get through our business in a reasonable time as I’d like to head down the road to the larger Chena River to see if I can find a few more grayling, and maybe some bigger ones.

Chris Batin works to clear branches from a culvert. Beavers had clogged the culvert, causing the road to Batin's cabin to flood.

TALKEETNA, Alaska — The plan for our second day in Alaska was to fish the upper reaches of Montana Creek, where the stream flows through the property of our current host, Chris Batin.

Before fishing, though, we had a chore.

The driveway into Chris’ home was partially washed out because a beaver had dammed up a culvert under the road. The job was to unclog the culvert.

There was water seeping through the culvert and the pressure made pulling the sticks and weeds out of the culvert tough.

The progress was slow, so Chris decided to crawl into the lower end of the culvert and start pulling sticks that way.

I was down there shooting pictures.

If you haven’t already figured it out, the “bea…” teaser in the headline was not a bear.

Chris pulled out a big stick and yelled, “Here it comes!”

The “dam” was breaking up. Read more »

TALKEETNA, Alaska — Yesterday was a busy one.

After wrapping up some work using the airport’s wifi connection I headed over to ABC Motorhome Rentals and got rolling on getting the rig.

It’s a 24-footer and is little tight for four of us with our ridiculous amount of gear.

So, the rest of the crew.

Mark Freeman is the outdoors writer for The Medford (Ore.) Mail-Tribune, a paper about 90 miles from where I grew up. He got in about 11:30.

Mark Freeman of Medford, Ore., battles a pink salmon on Alaska's Montana Creek.

We made a run to Fred Meyer for supplies, then picked up the Brett Prettyman and Reed Sherman, who live in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Brett is the outdoors writer for the Salt Lake Tribune. Reed is a freelance shooter (still and video).

We headed north. Read more »