WRANGELL, ALASKA
The Quiet Southeast Destination For Kings, Coho, Halibut,
Bears, Blue Bergs Hot Springs, Flaming Jet Boat, Trout Rivers, Eagles, Whales,
Outpost Cabins, Garnets, Moose, Flyfishing, Steelhead and Mr. Yeager’s
Tail-Less Super Herring
By Terry W. Sheely
We need more time!
I realize it when I see the agenda—July 6-9--and nobody is mentioning sleep. I know it when the port rod pounds down into Alaska’s Ernest Sound and stays there until Jim finally gets control of the hot 25-pound king.I know it when we put on our seat belts and skid, skitter and jet up the fastest free-flowing navigable river in North America in 18 inches of water with a grinning blonde pilot packing a 44-50 just in case, when we chip mastodon-era ice off the blue bergs that are crunching around in Chief Shakes Lake, soak in a Forest Service hot spring hot tub in the middle of a moose meadow, throw flies at several of the prettiest little trout streams on the planet, listen to 8-year-old Brian describe the ledge crowded with plum-size garnets, lunch on fresh Dungeness crabs, and wish we’d made the run down to Clarence Strait for halibut.
And that didn’t count the internationally-famous wooden walkway to Anan Creek brown and black bear observatory, the hooligan gorging of 1,600 bald eagles, some say it’s the second largest concentration in the world, or the harpoon-toting, shade-wearing, pot-bellied wooden rendition of Ponderosa Pete “The Fisherman” standing silent guard on the porch of Bruce Harding’s Alaskan Sourdough Lodge.
And it didn’t count the try-it-all, git-it-done energy level of our host, island champion and fish guide John Yeager.
For four non-stop days The Reel News publisher/editor Jim Goerg and I explored Wrangell Island with John, felt the awesome power of 330-miles of Stikine River running downhill from Spatsizi Wilderness Park in British Columbia, tested freshwater rivers that offer salmon, cutthroat and Dolly Varden, and a chain of local saltwater sounds, straits and canals with wild and imprinted runs of kings and coho.
Wrangell, population 1,800, is the third oldest city in Alaska and is Alaska without road access. It’s located comfortably off the beaten path in Southeast, away from the tourists’ trappings of major Alaskan cruise ship ports. It’s the only town in the state that has been ruled by four nations: Tlingit, Britain, Russia, U.S.
The community is a tightly woven blend of sport and commercial fishermen, local entrepreneurs and 10 U.S. Coast Guard licensed charter boat operators. Shoppers walk Front Street in black knee-boots and thick orange Grundens, and if there’s a yard without a boat in it I didn’t see it. The community is built around a working boat harbor where the tide swings 15 to 20 feet between low and high slack, gillnetters moor next to sport guide boats, totem poles poke into the mist, moss grows on everything that’s nailed down or falls asleep outside, and everybody knows everybody.
It’s a town for fishermen. The first thing you learn is that Wrangell Island is no where near the yellow-horned Dall Sheep that big game hunters dream about in the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountain Range up north and the second is that it’s wet. The Wrangell City Guide brags, “Rainy weather with mild temperatures characterize Wrangell’s climate. Summer, which generally begins in May and runs through August, usually is the dry season (by Wrangell standards).”
The next thing I learn is that Wrangell is positioned at the junction of multiple salmon migration paths. Thousands of
wild kings, coho, pinks and chums stack off the mouth of the Stikine, a river that draws its name from a Tlingit word Shtax' Héen, meaning "cloudy river;” cloudy with the milt of spawning salmon, the natives say although I have a hunch the 300 glaciers milking glacial flour into the headwaters has something to do with the color, too.
Aggressive regional chinook enhancement programs and net-pen imprinting projects at Earl West Cove, Anita Bay, Neets Bay and Bradfield Canal among other places supplement wild coho and chinook stocks and have allowed ADFG to designate it an enhanced terminal fishery and boost chinook catch and possession limits for non-residents.
According to Doug Fleming, Petersburg-Wrangell area biologist for ADFG’s Sport Fish Division, sport-caught Stikine
kings remain close to historic averages and ADFG “would like to see stronger sport catches of Stikine-bound king salmon for all local anglers in Petersburg and Wrangell.” He added, “we are allowing anglers the opportunity to fish two rods, and have increased daily bag and annual limits. Sport salmon anglers in Wrangell appear to be doing very well, resulting from the reopening of previously closed waters, liberalized regulations, and several commercially closed areas that benefit sport anglers.”
In most areas of Southeast the Chinook limit for nonresidents is a conservative one a day but in the Stikine Delta area from May 1-July 15 non-residents can keep two kings a day and five a year. With kings weighing from the low 20s to 50+ pounds it’s a rare chance to put a lot of prime chinook fillets in the freezer.
May-June mark the peak of the king run, followed by a July-September full of silvers, halibut, ling, cutthroat and Dolly Varden. March and April brings a slug of wild steelhead into the island’s freshwater rivers.
Freshwater rivers are a specialty of Dan Roope owner of Roope’sSoutheast Alaska Fly-Fishing
Adventures (www.seakflyfishing.com).
“Come back either in May for steelhead on the fly and kings in the salt or the last week of July and first two weeks of August for the Stikine tributaries and other coastal rivers as well as the salt. You'll find it rewarding!” he teased. The exclamation point is his.
That’s the fish talk and the irresistible promise of new fishing discoveries within range of Washington and Oregon readers that brought Jim and I to this harbor town, 750 miles north of Seattle. The long list of unexpected natural superlatives was pure bonus.
John and his wife Brenda Schwartz-Yeager own two of the 10 licensed charter operations in Wrangell. John runs Alaska Charters(http://wrangellalaskafishing.com/ ) a sport-fishing operation with a 35-foot 6-inch aluminum cruiser with a wave softening 11-foot beam, covered cabin, heaters, electric downriggers, top of the line electronics all pushed by twin 250 hp. Mercury 4-strokes. He specializes in custom fish trips. The doubly talented Brenda, works as a highly sought-after marine water-color artist, and operates Alaska Charters and Adventures(www.alaskaupclose.com) running a 26-foot racing hull jet boat coolly personalized with blue bow flames and a massive German Shepherd named Furuno (“I was saving for a new depth sounder/GPS when the dog came up for sale,” is how she explains his corporate name.) Brenda specializes in eco-tours and Stikine River runs.
Both John and Brenda specialize in offering custom trips. The fishing or adventure trip you want is the trip they put together and they’ve got a lot of resources and imagination to work with. Roaring across the hidden, constantly shifting sandbars at the mouth of the Stikine in the blue-flamed, shallow-draft (6 inches) jet with Brenda on the throttle, eyes bright, blonde hair flying, and grinning with Furuno and his red bandana at her knee, and wild Alaska on all sides is worth the price of the trip by itself. The delta is a magnet for carnivores. In the spring when the Stikine is washing out the smorgasbord of winter dead it hosts the greatest concentration of bald eagles in North America, up to 500 Steller sea lions, seals, harbor porpoises, black and grizzly bears, wolves and anything else with pointed teeth.
Jim and I left Seattle at 7:55 a.m. on Alaska Flight.65 landed in Wrangell at 10:22 a.m. in the never-ending rain squall that encased the entire Northwest last year, shook hands with John, dropped our gear at Bruce Harding’s Alaskan Sourdough Lodge (www.akgetaway.com) and headed for the docks where Dennis Johnson of Panama City, FL joined us for an afternoon trolling for silvers. The silver limit is 6 a day.
John moved to Wrangell in 2002 after retiring from the Coast Guard at his last station in Petersburg, and two years later bought Timber Wolf Charters. Ironically we discover that his parents were born in the same small northwest Ohio town where I was born and that John grew up about 70 miles from my hometown in a farming area where I sometimes hunted pheasants. Small world--and a long way from Wrangell.
We’re trolling the deep water rocks off Elephant Nose, towing flashers and plastic squid for silvers, hoping to pull a late king off the wall. We’re close enough to the bank to see bears, moose or blacktails if one should step out. I shake off a shaker. On the Furuno fish finder we mark a small pod of bait, and then see the bigger blob of a salmon, tracking the herring ball. We’re riveted to the electronic game of tag-and-eat until someone happens to look at the rods long to yell FISH ON! A silver is rolling across the surface wrapping the flasher and leader in the wake. It leaps and we can see the hoochie in its mouth. Our Florida friend grabs the rod and our first Wrangell salmon is in the net.
Day 2 is dedicated to Brenda, Furuno, the flaming blue jet boat and the Stikine.
The river is 5 miles from the dock in Wrangell, marked by a shifting delta that’s up to 7 miles wide and a twisting swath of gray glacial water gushing at 20,000 CFS into the transparent blue saltchuck. The Stikine River is a dedicated wilderness from the mouth to the Canadian border, 35 miles upriver. The river continues for another 320 miles into the wilderness of British Columbia passing through a staggeringly impressive canyon of 1,000-foot vertical walls and mountain goats. The gorge walls squeeze the river into a powerful 55-mile long roar that even salmon find difficult to impossible to buck, according to ADFG. Like the salmon we too stop well short.
Upriver are towers of glaciated mountains part of the Coast Range and the peaks of the Boundary Mountains marking the US/Canada line and a monstrous ice field that encases peaks from south of Wrangell to the Fairweather Mountains between Gustavus and Yakutat. We’re hurtling around bends between walls of hemlock, spruce and cedar, and the white skeletons of old dead trees, past drifting chunks of blue ice, looking for moose and bears and the clear water spill that will reveal a trout and Dolly Varden tributary.
We slide past several remote and isolated Forest Service rental cabins. 907-874-2323 for rental info / $25-$35 per night, or www.recreation.gov ).
Brenda noses the jet into flooded willows of gin clear AndresCreek, sends Furuno on bear patrol, while we pull on waders, grab trout rods and wade upriver. It’s gorgeous trout water. Later in the summer John says, the stream attracts spawning salmon, which will attract predatory native cutthroat, Dolly Varden and rainbows. In August when a fresh run of silvers hits the mix of trout and char the light tackle action is explosive, he says. I imagine so…but today it’s too early and it seems to be fishless. Jim throws spinners and his trusty red-white Daredevil spoon. I throw several wet fly patterns. We go fishless. Too early John says.
We continue up the river, hemmed in by Alaska wild, zigging and zagging and snacking on orange slabs of smoked sockeye. The small chunks of glacial ice are increasing until we skitter around a bend and into Chief Shakes Lake which is packed with floating pyramids: ice bergs. Some are the size of trucks or small buildings, most are blue and all are dimpled with sun scallops. Brenda noses the jet up to a berg, John climbs out with a hatchet, chops away and we’ve got a supply of ice that’s older than all of us combined and dense and cold beyond description.
Later that afternoon we will sit in the 120-degree water of a hot spring in a moose meadow looking east through the steam into the glaciers of the Boundary Mountains, mosquitoes buzzing at bay around our ears, enjoying Canadian amber chilled with ancient chunks of Chief Shakes’ blue glacier ice. If you think it can't get any better than this then you don't know about the ice chest full of Dungeness and king crab that John has for us back in the boat.
Back to the main river and Alpine Creek where we oooh and ahhh but again don't raise a fish. Next month there are resident trout 10 to14 inch average in these clear streams, John promises, not big but tremendous numbers. Fly guide Dan Roope supports John’s shoulda-been-here-next-month theory.
We wind up our Stikine day at Mill Creek where there is a series of thundering waterfalls each with gin clear pools stair-stepping between them and a run of closed-mouth sockeye headed to an upriver lake. Brush crowds the stream edge, alders, devils club, and elephant ears. Back in the trees the understory is open and carpeted with thick green moss. We wiggle into the water and casts. Jim catches a 4 inch cutthroat, then a 6 incher-big trout of the day. Mill Creek, like the others is, beautiful but seasonally barren. I make a silent vow to come back some August. I love small quick streams packed with predatory trout and big salmon.
On the hike out we stop to inspect abandoned logging equipment left over from the last century and now covered with moss and rust and history. Rain is still pouring down when the alarm goes off at 5:30 the next morning and five more days of rain are in the forecast. The snow level has dropped to below 1,000 feet on the nearby mountains. It’s July for crying out loud! Even the locals are grumbling—it’s that kind of a summer.
Today we’re going to take a serious shot at king salmon in ErnestSound, around Ham and Black and Found Islands, Point Ward, Nemo Point, and Thom’s Point.
We cruise up “The Narrows” a tight stretch of saltwater betweenWrangell Island and the mainland, where moose, bears, deer, and wolves occasionally swim, John says. In late summer the narrows fill up with pink salmon, possibly because there’s no commercial season in here.
Misty rain has flattened the water; clouds hang in swags on the skirts of the green mountains and hide the tops. I ask about bottomfish and John says there are “hardly any on the inside. There’s no major reefs for lings or bottomfish. We’ve got a few close-in spots for banty-size chicken halibut,” he says, and explains that most of the good halibut fishing is in nearby Clarence Strait. We’re looking for kings hiding beside a submerged hump along Blake Island.
I’m staring at an eagle out the starboard side when the port rod bounces, jerks free of the downrigger clip and simply folds over.
Fish! Fish! Fish!
Jim jumps for the rod, pulls it out of the holder and comes up solid against a 25 pound king that hit a chrome and red Hot Spot flasher towing one of John’s custom tied tail-less herring rigs. (Removing the tail and pinning the herring into an arch, John says, gives a righteous king roll.) Jim’s king thrashing in the net is all the evidence I need to start whacking herring tails.
John moves to Ward Point, another local hot spot, where we see two cow orcas and a calf, pick up two tasty rockfish and nail a good eagle photo before running to Found Island.
John watching the graph where our downrigger balls appear as streaks running at 45 and 50 feet, detects a salmon moving up to the 45-foot rod. The fish paces the flasher-tailless herring rig for several yards and my rod springs up, clears the downrigger and plows down. The shadow on the depth sounder screen turns into an ornery 21-pound king in the net. A few minutes later Jim catches and releases a 17-pound king.
We’re outside the two-fish area and are king limited for the day. John says we’ll start looking for early silvers.
The rain has turned to drizzle and clouds are swirling around the green mountains below the snow line. In the distance we see boats moored off the bay that leads to the trail that leads to the boardwalk that leads to the blinds where photographers watch black and brown bears feasting on pinks at Anan Bear Preserve.
Anan Creek is in the Tongass National Forest, 35 miles southeast of Wrangell, and is accessible only by boat or float plane. .It’s on the “must see” list in Wrangell and a popular stop for all of the charter operators. The developed observatory is world renowned for up-close viewing of black and grizzly bears gorging on one of Southeast’ largest pink salmon runs. With the binoculars I can see Brenda’s fire-breathing jet boat moored below the walkway that disappears into the Tongass. Bear viewing is best in July and August and visits require special permits that are limited in number for each day. Most charter operators can line up permits.
Wrangell Island has over 100 miles of graveled forest roads that offer mountain bikers, hikers, RV'ers, and back road addicts access to remote lakes, rivers, campsites, trails and scenic overlooks. Jim and I are both gravel road nuts and we spent a day with John poking down those roads, testing a couple of trout rivers, looking for moose and bears in the muskeg, spooking black-tail deer, flushing grouse and wishing the huckleberries were ripe.
Jim and I waded upstream in the light rain and fished Lower Salamander Creek, a beautiful trout stream that gets Steelhead in March and April and offers summer trout fishing for rainbows, cutts and Dollies; most are less than a foot long. Its amber-colored water was little high, but plenty fishable. John carries the 44-50 slung over his shoulder and stands bear watch while Jim and I fish. Furuno is on guard. Jim pitches spinners I whip through a series of wet flies and none of us gets a tug. Some days are like that.
Still, it was a good day—even if salmon weren’t involved.
I like this Wrangell place. There’s a lot more to see and do before it gets discovered.
I knew we needed more time.
I’ll be back.
We need more time!
I realize it when I see the agenda—July 6-9--and nobody is mentioning sleep. I know it when the port rod pounds down into Alaska’s Ernest Sound and stays there until Jim finally gets control of the hot 25-pound king.I know it when we put on our seat belts and skid, skitter and jet up the fastest free-flowing navigable river in North America in 18 inches of water with a grinning blonde pilot packing a 44-50 just in case, when we chip mastodon-era ice off the blue bergs that are crunching around in Chief Shakes Lake, soak in a Forest Service hot spring hot tub in the middle of a moose meadow, throw flies at several of the prettiest little trout streams on the planet, listen to 8-year-old Brian describe the ledge crowded with plum-size garnets, lunch on fresh Dungeness crabs, and wish we’d made the run down to Clarence Strait for halibut.
And that didn’t count the internationally-famous wooden walkway to Anan Creek brown and black bear observatory, the hooligan gorging of 1,600 bald eagles, some say it’s the second largest concentration in the world, or the harpoon-toting, shade-wearing, pot-bellied wooden rendition of Ponderosa Pete “The Fisherman” standing silent guard on the porch of Bruce Harding’s Alaskan Sourdough Lodge.
And it didn’t count the try-it-all, git-it-done energy level of our host, island champion and fish guide John Yeager.
For four non-stop days The Reel News publisher/editor Jim Goerg and I explored Wrangell Island with John, felt the awesome power of 330-miles of Stikine River running downhill from Spatsizi Wilderness Park in British Columbia, tested freshwater rivers that offer salmon, cutthroat and Dolly Varden, and a chain of local saltwater sounds, straits and canals with wild and imprinted runs of kings and coho.
Wrangell, population 1,800, is the third oldest city in Alaska and is Alaska without road access. It’s located comfortably off the beaten path in Southeast, away from the tourists’ trappings of major Alaskan cruise ship ports. It’s the only town in the state that has been ruled by four nations: Tlingit, Britain, Russia, U.S.
The community is a tightly woven blend of sport and commercial fishermen, local entrepreneurs and 10 U.S. Coast Guard licensed charter boat operators. Shoppers walk Front Street in black knee-boots and thick orange Grundens, and if there’s a yard without a boat in it I didn’t see it. The community is built around a working boat harbor where the tide swings 15 to 20 feet between low and high slack, gillnetters moor next to sport guide boats, totem poles poke into the mist, moss grows on everything that’s nailed down or falls asleep outside, and everybody knows everybody.
It’s a town for fishermen. The first thing you learn is that Wrangell Island is no where near the yellow-horned Dall Sheep that big game hunters dream about in the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountain Range up north and the second is that it’s wet. The Wrangell City Guide brags, “Rainy weather with mild temperatures characterize Wrangell’s climate. Summer, which generally begins in May and runs through August, usually is the dry season (by Wrangell standards).”
The next thing I learn is that Wrangell is positioned at the junction of multiple salmon migration paths. Thousands of
wild kings, coho, pinks and chums stack off the mouth of the Stikine, a river that draws its name from a Tlingit word Shtax' Héen, meaning "cloudy river;” cloudy with the milt of spawning salmon, the natives say although I have a hunch the 300 glaciers milking glacial flour into the headwaters has something to do with the color, too.
Aggressive regional chinook enhancement programs and net-pen imprinting projects at Earl West Cove, Anita Bay, Neets Bay and Bradfield Canal among other places supplement wild coho and chinook stocks and have allowed ADFG to designate it an enhanced terminal fishery and boost chinook catch and possession limits for non-residents.
According to Doug Fleming, Petersburg-Wrangell area biologist for ADFG’s Sport Fish Division, sport-caught Stikine
kings remain close to historic averages and ADFG “would like to see stronger sport catches of Stikine-bound king salmon for all local anglers in Petersburg and Wrangell.” He added, “we are allowing anglers the opportunity to fish two rods, and have increased daily bag and annual limits. Sport salmon anglers in Wrangell appear to be doing very well, resulting from the reopening of previously closed waters, liberalized regulations, and several commercially closed areas that benefit sport anglers.”
In most areas of Southeast the Chinook limit for nonresidents is a conservative one a day but in the Stikine Delta area from May 1-July 15 non-residents can keep two kings a day and five a year. With kings weighing from the low 20s to 50+ pounds it’s a rare chance to put a lot of prime chinook fillets in the freezer.
May-June mark the peak of the king run, followed by a July-September full of silvers, halibut, ling, cutthroat and Dolly Varden. March and April brings a slug of wild steelhead into the island’s freshwater rivers.
Freshwater rivers are a specialty of Dan Roope owner of Roope’sSoutheast Alaska Fly-Fishing
Adventures (www.seakflyfishing.com).
“Come back either in May for steelhead on the fly and kings in the salt or the last week of July and first two weeks of August for the Stikine tributaries and other coastal rivers as well as the salt. You'll find it rewarding!” he teased. The exclamation point is his.
That’s the fish talk and the irresistible promise of new fishing discoveries within range of Washington and Oregon readers that brought Jim and I to this harbor town, 750 miles north of Seattle. The long list of unexpected natural superlatives was pure bonus.
John and his wife Brenda Schwartz-Yeager own two of the 10 licensed charter operations in Wrangell. John runs Alaska Charters(http://wrangellalaskafishing.com/ ) a sport-fishing operation with a 35-foot 6-inch aluminum cruiser with a wave softening 11-foot beam, covered cabin, heaters, electric downriggers, top of the line electronics all pushed by twin 250 hp. Mercury 4-strokes. He specializes in custom fish trips. The doubly talented Brenda, works as a highly sought-after marine water-color artist, and operates Alaska Charters and Adventures(www.alaskaupclose.com) running a 26-foot racing hull jet boat coolly personalized with blue bow flames and a massive German Shepherd named Furuno (“I was saving for a new depth sounder/GPS when the dog came up for sale,” is how she explains his corporate name.) Brenda specializes in eco-tours and Stikine River runs.
Both John and Brenda specialize in offering custom trips. The fishing or adventure trip you want is the trip they put together and they’ve got a lot of resources and imagination to work with. Roaring across the hidden, constantly shifting sandbars at the mouth of the Stikine in the blue-flamed, shallow-draft (6 inches) jet with Brenda on the throttle, eyes bright, blonde hair flying, and grinning with Furuno and his red bandana at her knee, and wild Alaska on all sides is worth the price of the trip by itself. The delta is a magnet for carnivores. In the spring when the Stikine is washing out the smorgasbord of winter dead it hosts the greatest concentration of bald eagles in North America, up to 500 Steller sea lions, seals, harbor porpoises, black and grizzly bears, wolves and anything else with pointed teeth.
Jim and I left Seattle at 7:55 a.m. on Alaska Flight.65 landed in Wrangell at 10:22 a.m. in the never-ending rain squall that encased the entire Northwest last year, shook hands with John, dropped our gear at Bruce Harding’s Alaskan Sourdough Lodge (www.akgetaway.com) and headed for the docks where Dennis Johnson of Panama City, FL joined us for an afternoon trolling for silvers. The silver limit is 6 a day.
John moved to Wrangell in 2002 after retiring from the Coast Guard at his last station in Petersburg, and two years later bought Timber Wolf Charters. Ironically we discover that his parents were born in the same small northwest Ohio town where I was born and that John grew up about 70 miles from my hometown in a farming area where I sometimes hunted pheasants. Small world--and a long way from Wrangell.
We’re trolling the deep water rocks off Elephant Nose, towing flashers and plastic squid for silvers, hoping to pull a late king off the wall. We’re close enough to the bank to see bears, moose or blacktails if one should step out. I shake off a shaker. On the Furuno fish finder we mark a small pod of bait, and then see the bigger blob of a salmon, tracking the herring ball. We’re riveted to the electronic game of tag-and-eat until someone happens to look at the rods long to yell FISH ON! A silver is rolling across the surface wrapping the flasher and leader in the wake. It leaps and we can see the hoochie in its mouth. Our Florida friend grabs the rod and our first Wrangell salmon is in the net.
Day 2 is dedicated to Brenda, Furuno, the flaming blue jet boat and the Stikine.
The river is 5 miles from the dock in Wrangell, marked by a shifting delta that’s up to 7 miles wide and a twisting swath of gray glacial water gushing at 20,000 CFS into the transparent blue saltchuck. The Stikine River is a dedicated wilderness from the mouth to the Canadian border, 35 miles upriver. The river continues for another 320 miles into the wilderness of British Columbia passing through a staggeringly impressive canyon of 1,000-foot vertical walls and mountain goats. The gorge walls squeeze the river into a powerful 55-mile long roar that even salmon find difficult to impossible to buck, according to ADFG. Like the salmon we too stop well short.
Upriver are towers of glaciated mountains part of the Coast Range and the peaks of the Boundary Mountains marking the US/Canada line and a monstrous ice field that encases peaks from south of Wrangell to the Fairweather Mountains between Gustavus and Yakutat. We’re hurtling around bends between walls of hemlock, spruce and cedar, and the white skeletons of old dead trees, past drifting chunks of blue ice, looking for moose and bears and the clear water spill that will reveal a trout and Dolly Varden tributary.
We slide past several remote and isolated Forest Service rental cabins. 907-874-2323 for rental info / $25-$35 per night, or www.recreation.gov ).
Brenda noses the jet into flooded willows of gin clear AndresCreek, sends Furuno on bear patrol, while we pull on waders, grab trout rods and wade upriver. It’s gorgeous trout water. Later in the summer John says, the stream attracts spawning salmon, which will attract predatory native cutthroat, Dolly Varden and rainbows. In August when a fresh run of silvers hits the mix of trout and char the light tackle action is explosive, he says. I imagine so…but today it’s too early and it seems to be fishless. Jim throws spinners and his trusty red-white Daredevil spoon. I throw several wet fly patterns. We go fishless. Too early John says.
We continue up the river, hemmed in by Alaska wild, zigging and zagging and snacking on orange slabs of smoked sockeye. The small chunks of glacial ice are increasing until we skitter around a bend and into Chief Shakes Lake which is packed with floating pyramids: ice bergs. Some are the size of trucks or small buildings, most are blue and all are dimpled with sun scallops. Brenda noses the jet up to a berg, John climbs out with a hatchet, chops away and we’ve got a supply of ice that’s older than all of us combined and dense and cold beyond description.
Later that afternoon we will sit in the 120-degree water of a hot spring in a moose meadow looking east through the steam into the glaciers of the Boundary Mountains, mosquitoes buzzing at bay around our ears, enjoying Canadian amber chilled with ancient chunks of Chief Shakes’ blue glacier ice. If you think it can't get any better than this then you don't know about the ice chest full of Dungeness and king crab that John has for us back in the boat.
Back to the main river and Alpine Creek where we oooh and ahhh but again don't raise a fish. Next month there are resident trout 10 to14 inch average in these clear streams, John promises, not big but tremendous numbers. Fly guide Dan Roope supports John’s shoulda-been-here-next-month theory.
We wind up our Stikine day at Mill Creek where there is a series of thundering waterfalls each with gin clear pools stair-stepping between them and a run of closed-mouth sockeye headed to an upriver lake. Brush crowds the stream edge, alders, devils club, and elephant ears. Back in the trees the understory is open and carpeted with thick green moss. We wiggle into the water and casts. Jim catches a 4 inch cutthroat, then a 6 incher-big trout of the day. Mill Creek, like the others is, beautiful but seasonally barren. I make a silent vow to come back some August. I love small quick streams packed with predatory trout and big salmon.
On the hike out we stop to inspect abandoned logging equipment left over from the last century and now covered with moss and rust and history. Rain is still pouring down when the alarm goes off at 5:30 the next morning and five more days of rain are in the forecast. The snow level has dropped to below 1,000 feet on the nearby mountains. It’s July for crying out loud! Even the locals are grumbling—it’s that kind of a summer.
Today we’re going to take a serious shot at king salmon in ErnestSound, around Ham and Black and Found Islands, Point Ward, Nemo Point, and Thom’s Point.
We cruise up “The Narrows” a tight stretch of saltwater betweenWrangell Island and the mainland, where moose, bears, deer, and wolves occasionally swim, John says. In late summer the narrows fill up with pink salmon, possibly because there’s no commercial season in here.
Misty rain has flattened the water; clouds hang in swags on the skirts of the green mountains and hide the tops. I ask about bottomfish and John says there are “hardly any on the inside. There’s no major reefs for lings or bottomfish. We’ve got a few close-in spots for banty-size chicken halibut,” he says, and explains that most of the good halibut fishing is in nearby Clarence Strait. We’re looking for kings hiding beside a submerged hump along Blake Island.
I’m staring at an eagle out the starboard side when the port rod bounces, jerks free of the downrigger clip and simply folds over.
Fish! Fish! Fish!
Jim jumps for the rod, pulls it out of the holder and comes up solid against a 25 pound king that hit a chrome and red Hot Spot flasher towing one of John’s custom tied tail-less herring rigs. (Removing the tail and pinning the herring into an arch, John says, gives a righteous king roll.) Jim’s king thrashing in the net is all the evidence I need to start whacking herring tails.
John moves to Ward Point, another local hot spot, where we see two cow orcas and a calf, pick up two tasty rockfish and nail a good eagle photo before running to Found Island.
John watching the graph where our downrigger balls appear as streaks running at 45 and 50 feet, detects a salmon moving up to the 45-foot rod. The fish paces the flasher-tailless herring rig for several yards and my rod springs up, clears the downrigger and plows down. The shadow on the depth sounder screen turns into an ornery 21-pound king in the net. A few minutes later Jim catches and releases a 17-pound king.
We’re outside the two-fish area and are king limited for the day. John says we’ll start looking for early silvers.
The rain has turned to drizzle and clouds are swirling around the green mountains below the snow line. In the distance we see boats moored off the bay that leads to the trail that leads to the boardwalk that leads to the blinds where photographers watch black and brown bears feasting on pinks at Anan Bear Preserve.
Anan Creek is in the Tongass National Forest, 35 miles southeast of Wrangell, and is accessible only by boat or float plane. .It’s on the “must see” list in Wrangell and a popular stop for all of the charter operators. The developed observatory is world renowned for up-close viewing of black and grizzly bears gorging on one of Southeast’ largest pink salmon runs. With the binoculars I can see Brenda’s fire-breathing jet boat moored below the walkway that disappears into the Tongass. Bear viewing is best in July and August and visits require special permits that are limited in number for each day. Most charter operators can line up permits.
Wrangell Island has over 100 miles of graveled forest roads that offer mountain bikers, hikers, RV'ers, and back road addicts access to remote lakes, rivers, campsites, trails and scenic overlooks. Jim and I are both gravel road nuts and we spent a day with John poking down those roads, testing a couple of trout rivers, looking for moose and bears in the muskeg, spooking black-tail deer, flushing grouse and wishing the huckleberries were ripe.
Jim and I waded upstream in the light rain and fished Lower Salamander Creek, a beautiful trout stream that gets Steelhead in March and April and offers summer trout fishing for rainbows, cutts and Dollies; most are less than a foot long. Its amber-colored water was little high, but plenty fishable. John carries the 44-50 slung over his shoulder and stands bear watch while Jim and I fish. Furuno is on guard. Jim pitches spinners I whip through a series of wet flies and none of us gets a tug. Some days are like that.
Still, it was a good day—even if salmon weren’t involved.
I like this Wrangell place. There’s a lot more to see and do before it gets discovered.
I knew we needed more time.
I’ll be back.
