Juneau Fishing Mission
August 19, 2006
I just got home from a week-long road trip and I think I may have found some of the best fishing on the planet. That is if you like yanking on halibut until your arms feel like they’re full of wet cement and hooking so many coho salmon that it seems a little like bluegill fishing out of a 5-gallon bucket.
And the best part of the deal is this angling paradise is relatively close.
My base of operations was Juneau, which is a short 3-hour flight from Sacramento, with a stop in Seattle. On assignment for Fish Alaska Magazine, my orders were to explore and report back on the fishing opportunities available in the waters within easy striking distance of Alaska’s capitol city.
Steelhead Abuse!
April 21, 2006
It’s no secret that steelhead anglers are a masochistic lot.
Those of us who are card-carrying members of this freakish society will — gladly, I may add — stand chest-deep in frigid water for hours on end in inhospitable weather, casting thousands of times with frost-bitten, roe-slathered fingers to fish that often seem only to exist in our dreams.
Salt Water Paradise: Milbanke Sound
September 6, 2004
While on assignment for Salmon Trout Steelheader magazine over Labor Day weekend, I had the great fortune of visiting one of the most spectacular fishing destinations I’ve ever been to: Milbanke Sound on British Columbia’s northern coast.
Located approximately 360 miles north of Vancouver, Milbanke Sound is incredible - not only from a fishing standpoint, but also in terms of scenery. Hordes of migrating king and coho salmon annually pass through the area and the sound is also home to incomprehensible numbers of rockfish and some extremely large Pacific halibut.
BC Steelheading
April 8, 2004
“Sorry about the slow fishing today, guys,” said our guide Justin Gyger of West Coast Fishing Adventures after our first day of steelheading on the Kitimat River in Northwestern British Columbia last Thursday. “It’s normally not this tough.” I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Our “slow” day of fishing consisted of four steelies hooked and two landed. As any steelheader from the States would attest, that’s not at all a bad day of fishing. Especially when you consider that my fish, at 14 pounds, was the minnow of the day.
Floating the Talachulitna
September 14, 2000
Being one rung removed from the top of the food chain is not a feeling I’m comfortable with. Yet there I was, with three buddies — Chris Hayes, Jeff Darlington, Ty Shalley, and Rico — standing on a river bank in the middle of the Alaskan bush. Nobody said a word as we stood there, gawking at the huge grizzly bear tracks in the sand. Fresh bear tracks, each the size of a salad plate with 5-inch claws. I’m not sure what the others were pondering, but I kept thinking about the fact that grizzly bears can out-run a horse. That they can kill a 1,200-pound moose with one blow to the head. About how they could easily beat you in a swim race. About how “grizzly” sounds a lot like what your remains would look like after a bear got through with you.
