Big Fish....Bigger Story!

My co-publisher of AlaskaFlyfishingOnline.com magazine, Brad Hanson, finally found a short overnight window in his busy schedule to pop on down to Soldotna and join me for a day or two on the Kenai, hopefully to catch a king and maybe do some dipnetting before making the run back to Palmer. Brad has two kids that just love fishing so he brought them along in the hopes we could get them hooked up on a fish to remember....maybe even a personal best. McKenna is 8 years old and already she is a successful float-tubing lady fly fisher on area lakes. Wyatt is 11 now and already has several king salmon notched in his rod butt from fishing the Matsu Valley streams although all were in the small to medium size range. So each was looking forward to the trip and especially salmon fishing from a boat on big water - something that would be a first for them.

We chose a Sunday in July because that was the one day of the week reserved just for nonguided, private anglers and boats and allows folks a chance to fish the river with their families and friends without the extremely crowded conditions of the Tuesday through Saturday fishing days. And with two novices in the boat, it was decided that drifting eggs rather than back-trolling would be a better way to break in the kids to get their feet wet on this river.

We headed out of Eagle Rock launch and as soon as we hit the channel there were a couple nets in the air for the drifters fishing the hole....a good sign. But as we headed downstream and passed through the CrossOver and Beaver Creek, things looked a bit less hopeful as most boats were still fishing all their rods. It was on to Bluff Hole, where we had a one mile stretch of river with lots of room to drift our eggs, enjoy the eagles, and get away from the crowds and noise of the high density fishing areas. Only five other boats were there as we dropped into the slot and cast out for our first drift.

Many hours later...and six drifts later....we were still fishless, yet both of these kids still had the fire burning bright on every run that THIS drift would be The One! I was very impressed because I've taken a lot of kids fishing yet most lose that enthusiasm after the first 5 minutes of the trip if there isn't any immediate catching going on. They both reminded me of myself, who started fishing at 3 years old and always had a bonfire-size desire to fish...anywhere, anytime, for any thing.

The Bluff Hole is very deep and relatively slow and on each high tide the river will back up and it turns to a big "lake" until the tide begins to drop. Its really so different from the rest of the river its almost like its not even related to the Kenai. You can see a bit of the hole in this boat photo of Wyatt's catch. Then lady luck finally smiled on us at the beginning of drift #7.

Brad gets a takedown and buries the hook....no doubt it was a king by the way it began to fight, but there just wasn't a lot of meat behind it so we knew it was a small one. Since Brad is primarily a Catch and Release fly fisher most of the time, he rarely takes fish home unless from dipnetting, but with two jobs and little free time this year, this 13 pound 2 year jack was headed for the freezer. And did the kids get pumped now! Finally, something in the fish box to look at and realize they may be the next lucky angler.

One more drift passed by uneventful, and then we got lucky again on #9. The tide was rising, the hole current was slowing down and it was about time to call it quits after this drift. I saw Wyatt's line begin to do some strange things, then a bit of the same on McKenna's rod too. Then Wyatt's went tight and his rod doubled over...Fish On! And one that definitely was a dandy. He was in the front of the boat with plenty of room to fight the fish so I reeled in, then grabbed McKenna's rod to clear that line. Opps, her's was tangled in the the fish and Wyatt's line. So we let that one remain loose during the battle rather than cut it off...and THAT would be a significant blessing as we found out.

With three other boats very nearby, including the ADFG netting/sampling boat, for an audience, the show began. To start it off this 50 pound fish came straight up with a beautiful leap clearing the water. It was like watching a great fireworks display in a big crowd, each of the FOUR out-of-the-water jumps that occurred illicited Oooo's and aaaah's from the 8 or 9 anglers in the other boats. And there was clapping and cheering too. Meanwhile Wyatt is fighting this fish with flawless technique, as if this was his 100th fish he's hooked. Rod high, pump and reel, rod out when it dove a dozen times under the boat and traded sides around the bow over and over again. I WAS IMPRESSED!

As the fish began to tire and fought closer to the boat, it dove frequently straight down in the 15 feet of water below us...and on one of these dives, with the rod bent double and fully loaded....it exploded with a shattering crrrack. No errors, no mistakes, just a failure of the rod right at the base of the ferrule where the two pieces connected. Now I'm thinking, "here comes Panic City."

Geez, was I ever wrong! The crowd, upon seeing & hearing the rod snap in half chorused another synchronized "Ooooo, WOW....his rod just broke!" and all suspected this was a fatal turning point in this young angler's batttle of his lifetime. But to my amazement the kid didn't even blink an eye or miss a lick. Now with the butt of the rod with one guide fully loaded during a drag burning dive to the bottom, he braces himself in the boat, reaches out with his left hand and tries to insert the rod tip back into the butt section, assuming he had NOT tightly inserted the two pieces together and the tip had fallen out. (You have seen kids who assembled their own rods make a cast and the tip comes off..well that was his mental processing at the moment.)

We informed him that the rod was broke and couldn't be pieced together....BUT, his sister's rod is still VERY CONNECTED to the fish with the tangled spin n glow, so we swap out the rods, and take his broken one while he continues to tighten up and fight the fish the rest of the way with McKenna's rod. The one logistics problem now was the way the lines were tangled, he couldn't reel the fishing line far enough to bring the fish to the net and had about nine feet of line to work with. Turns out this was just a minor inconvenience for Wyatt since this fish was HIS and it was just a matter of time before it would be in the box....no matter what sort of challenges arose. And I doubt that during this 20 minute long ordeal the thought of losing this fish at many potential points in the fight NEVER crossed his mind.

Finally after the umpteenth dive to the bottom, he reefed it straight back to the surface with enough momentum to bring it to the top on the long leader and as the hoop engulfed the fish the crowd cheered and clapped. And yep, it was his biggest so far at 50 1/2 pounds. Pretty cool day!

Photo Courtesy of Brad Hanson ©2000

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