Kayaking and fishing Southeast Alaska

By Christine Loomis

© Christine Loomis.

Ordinarily I’d pause to give my soul unfiltered access to the grandness of the Alaska landscape, to breathe in slowly, deliberately, to bathe my senses in its enduring wild beauty. But there’s no time for that now. I’m up to my boobs in brown waders, stalking humpies.

Armed with a fly rod and Chilkat Clouser fly, I’m ready, but the truth is on this late July day in Green’s Creek it’s impossible not to catch salmon, swirling as they are just below the surface in a mass of spawning, decaying ecstasy. The pinks are running.

On their inexorable decline from ocean-going sleekness to hook-jawed maturity, male pink salmon turn dull brown and grow an unattractive hump. Neither change causes a problem for the females laying thousands of eggs in gravel trenches below us. Humpy males immediately fertilize the eggs and, after covering them up, females spend their final few days on this planet defending them.

This expedition is strictly catch-and-release. We don’t want to interfere with the reproduction cycle of Alaska’s most abundant salmon, critical to its fisheries. Salmon in this stage aren’t good eating (for humans, anyway), so we handle our catches lightly, tipping them back into the water to continue doing what nature intended.

I have to document a day in which I catch so many salmon I lose count. Unfortunately, getting a grip on a writhing humpy is a practiced skill, and my photo ops flop away with the fish.

Later, I switch from Clouser to a trout bead, hand-painted with pearl nail polish to resemble a fertilized fish egg. I’m going for fun-to-catch Dolly Vardens, green chars with dazzling pink polka dots named for a character in Charles Dickens’ "Barnaby Rudge."

The long, honored connection between literature and fishing is just one of the things that draws me to the sport. That and the fact that it’s my version of a mind eraser — adrenaline pumping and soul soothing enough in alternate doses to drain away stress.

Here on rugged Admiralty Island, however, a gnawing edge of concern grows as our group of five spreads out, inching our way upstream from the gravel-strewn tidal zone of Hawk Inlet where our float plane landed into shadowy groves of Sitka spruce and hemlock. All the salmon in the world can’t eradicate my thoughts of Admiralty’s most famous stat: one bear per square mile.

At 1,600 square miles, that’s a passel of grizzlies. The Tlingit call this place “Fortress of the Bears.” I’m glad our guide, 26-year-old Matt Boline, is well-armed as he leads us into the creek’s rich cache of salmon. Bear Creek Outfitters hasn’t lost a client yet, but I scan the shadows and fireweed-studded fields just in case, charged with equal parts hope and horror that one of Admiralty’s most notorious residents will come lumbering along to find us shin deep in her fish. Catch-and-release is not a bear thing.

In the world of fishing, Admiralty Island is memorable for its excesses. I put it almost up there with landing a halibut as big as me in Cook Inlet and hooking a 20-pound king salmon off the coast of Kodiak a couple of years ago. Both catches were flash-frozen and shipped home to savor all summer long. Nothing to ship on this trip, but I did discover an enticing new variation on the sport — kayak fishing.

The author shows off a humpy salmon.
© Christine Loomis.

Combining fishing and kayaking isn’t exactly like Capulets and Montagues eloping, but traditional aficionados of these sports lack more commonality than they share. Still, for those who appreciate the serenity, skill and individual challenge inherent in both sports, it’s a heavenly match, and no waters on earth are more conducive to kayak fishing than Alaska’s.

Alaska Boat & Kayak outfits sit-on-tops with rods and tackle, giving kayakers what they need to bring in silvers, kings or even halibut — not that a kayak is where I’d want to be in a tug-of-war with a hefty halibut going deep.

Paddling from a rocky beach at the north end of Juneau’s Douglas Island, we headed around False Point on a slack tide in the middle of a brutally hot day. Not just hot for Juneau (hearty Alaskans were keeling over like ten pins), but hot, period. A few silvers lackadaisically broke the surface of the dead-still water, but fish don’t bite much in extreme heat. One of our group — two cruise ship passengers and me—hooked a salmon but lost it inches from the kayak.

Our guide kept things interesting, throwing out tidbits about Alaska and Juneau. Other times, I paddled through my own still world of deep blue and brilliant yellow, views framed by green peaks streaked with summer snow that said in powerful wordlessness, "This is Alaska."

Sometimes, it’s nice just to paddle without trying to land dinner. Gary O’Quinn of Alaska Kayaking Adventures spends winters in Vail but for 17 years has summered in Juneau, offering everything from short outings to multi-night kayak adventures. He based our paddle on my skills and strength, and on a hot, cloudless day I was all about mellow. Fortunately, we didn’t have to go far to flirt with wildlife. Harbor seals and sea lions bobbed all over the rolling waves. Overhead, bald eagles sang and chirped (yes, chirped), waiting for a sand bar loaded with raptor edibles to emerge out of the retreating tide. It was a fine day to paddle a little, drift a little, paddle some more.

Juneau hangs like a strand of painted beads at the throat of the coastal mountains. The walkable downtown is a mix of modest local emporiums and wildly out-of-place diamond shops aimed at cruise passengers. A few of the best sights require wheels, including Mendenhall Glacier with its bear-viewing boardwalk and the flower-filled rainforest of Glacier Gardens. In town, you can hike or ride the tram up Mount Roberts. For the best lunches around, try fresh crab at Tracy’s King Crab Shack behind the library or Bernadette’s Special Barbeque from a cart at Seward and Front.

From Juneau, I ventured deeper into Southeast, boarding CruiseWest’s Spirit of Yorktown for an up-close look at the remote towns and bays of Alaska’s Inside Passage. The ship has room for 138 guests but there were just 81 of us, making for an intimate experience.

From a ship, you can kayak and fish in multiple ports. Salmon fishing off Sitka was a bust but paddling out of Haines was cool. One of our guides, Paul Chase, is a Fort Collins native who lowers his Alaska grocery bills by crabbing in season. Sounds romantic, but you better work out. A couple of us helped him haul up one pot with one lonely crab and it was muscle-straining.

The Yorktown’s compact size put us face-to-fin with endless Inside Passage wildlife — orcas, Dall’s porpoises, sea otters, Steller sea lions and harbor seals among them. But of all that we witnessed from Glacier Bay to Misty Fjords to the villages of Metlakatla and Petersburg, most incredible was the sight of more than a dozen humpbacks bubble-feeding. Even the crew was on deck for the spectacle. The pod circled, dove deep and sent up an eruption of bubbles, a "net" to trap tiny fish and krill. Then in unison the behemoths torpedoed skyward, mouths gaping, in a roiling frenzy of breaching and feeding.

In between kayaking, fishing and watching humpbacks gorge themselves like cruise passengers, life onboard was low key and ship lectures informative. I fell in with an Australian couple and two spirited women from the U.K., and after a week of shared wine and dinners I was sad to say good-bye to our convivial group.

Sad, too, that no Alaska salmon was winging its way to my lower-48 grill.

There’s always next time. Maybe by then, women anglers will have figured out how to make waders more attractive. My two cents: Accessorizing alone won’t do it.

Christine Loomis is a freelance writer and former Coloradan now living in California.

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