Big Alaska Rainbows

[Al Agnew]

My brother-in-law Jeff had a friend who is part-owner of a place on the Kvichak River in Alaska, and 15 years ago he had been there and fished it. He had regaled me with stories of the big rainbows he'd caught, and this year he wanted to go back to both fish and bowhunt for moose and caribou. The friend invited him back, and he and his wife suggested my wife and I come along.

The Kvichak (pronounced "Kweejack" by the locals) comes out of huge Illiamna Lake and flows into Bristol Bay. It gets a big salmon run, all five species of Pacific salmon, and the rainbows that live in the lake in the winter come down into the river to gorge on the salmon eggs, flesh, and fry, so they grow big. I was pumped to go try them.

We left Missouri on Sunday the 2nd of September, flying first to Dallas where we caught a plane for the 7 hour flight to Anchorage, arriving Sunday night. Jeff and Sheila were already there, having explored the Kenai Peninsular for a couple of days, and met us at the airport. We stayed that night and the next at a hotel in Anchorage, doing some hiking the next day and stocking up on groceries for the stay at the friend's place. On Tuesday morning we caught an Illiamna Air Taxi flight to the tiny native settlement of Igiugig (pronounced IG-ee-AH-gig by the locals) in an eight seat Pilatus. We were met at Igiugig by Jeff's friend Kent and Butch, the caretaker of the place, in their big jetboat. A ten minute boat ride downriver brought us to the "lodge", which consisted of a plywood building the served as a kitchen, a plywood two bedroom building, a shower house, a two holer outdoor toilet, a utility shed, the generator shed, and two quonset hut type soft plastic shelters.

It was located on a big island on the river. The Kvichak is a big river by Missouri standards. At the island there was a main channel that was a couple hundred yards wide, 4-8 feet deep all the way across, and fast, along with a channel around the back of the island that was about half that size. The water was slightly silty, visibility perhaps 4 feet, but Kent said that was because there was a northeast wind that was kicking up big waves at the lower end of the lake and stirring up silt that was coming downriver. By that first evening the wind had died and the river had cleared to at least 8 feet visibility.

I was anxious to test the fishing, and Butch suggested that I don waders and fish up to the shallow, fast water at the top of the island. He said most anglers were using beads and other egg patterns, but the silver salmon were totally done and rotting and the sockeye spawning was winding down, and that flesh flies might be a better choice.

Like I said, it is a big river, and I was somewhat intimidated by the size and by how little of it I could fish effectively. But there is such a thing as beginner's luck after all. As soon as I reached what looked like some good water, pockets of deeper water in and just below some shoals that had spawning sockeyes and chum salmon, a drift of the flesh fly produced a hard strike. I set the hook and the fish instantly shot downstream, ripping off line at an alarming rate, far into the backing of my 8 weight reel. Then it paused in heavy current and suddenly shot out of the water, clearing the surface by at least four feet...and it was just about the biggest rainbow I'd ever SEEN! Two more leaps, just as spectacular, then it came back upstream (I simply reeled in fast enough to keep a tight line, I certainly didn't reel the fish in!) It got in close, and I got too anxious and put to much pressure on and the line snapped. Actually, it snapped at the butt of the fly line itself, something that's never happened to me before.

I was bummed. But two casts later I got another, similar strike. This one didn't sizzle off a run. In fact, it didn't do much of anything, and I soon brought in a 14 inch grayling. A few casts later and another strike. Again, not much fight...a whitefish (and Kent said he'd never seen a whitefish in this river before, and it was the only one I saw in eight days of fishing). Then, a "small" rainbow, about 14 inches, that leaped out of the water at least six times, three to five feet high, so fast it looked like the fish was bouncing on a trampoline. And finally, another hard strike and another awe-inspiring run downstream, and another big fish leaped high in the air. This one I played carefully, and it took a long time, several leaps, a bunch of heart-stopping runs, before I slid the fish into a couple inches of water and admired it. With nothing to measure it, I laid my rod down next to it and noted where the nose and tail came to on the rod, snapped a few pictures, and released it. I was pretty sure it was the biggest rainbow I'd ever caught, and when I got back to the cabin and measured my rod, I found that the fish was 28 inches. It was a silvery fish with just a hint of pink and inconspicuous spots, looking like a steelhead, but a lot thicker than steelhead I'd caught on the Salmon River in Idaho.

That was all for that evening. The next day, Butch took Mary, Sheila, and I out in the boat. His preferred way of fishing was to backtroll, letting out about half the fly line behind the boat and idling the motor so that the boat slipped slowly downstream while gently moving side to side, letting the flesh flies drift along in the current. It was effective, and produced several fish in the 24-27 inch size range.

The next day I explored a bit further along the upper end of the island, working down the back channel. I hooked one huge fish and caught several 18-24 inchers. Each day after that was a little different. One day we went down to "the braids", where many of the local guides took their clients. The sockeyes were thick in the shallow runs of the braids, and there were lots of trout, but also lots of anglers. We didn't get any big ones there, but caught a bunch of smaller fish. Another day I found a great sockeye spawning riffle on a side channel off the back channel of the island, and caught a 27 incher and hooked another a bit bigger. And Mary caught her biggest, a gorgeous 29 incher, from the boat in a run up near the lake two days before our last day, right before I almost matched it with a 26 incher.

The flesh flies, however, were getting less and less effective. I tried egg flies, as most of the guided anglers were using, with little success. There WAS a lot of fishing pressure and the fish were getting "smart". So, on the evening before our last day, after a long and mostly unproductive day of drift fishing and backtrolling in the boat, I decided it was time to try something different. I had a few big bunny hair streamers I'd originally tied for smallmouths, and I put one of them on, an olive and yellow thing with a bulky body and long red squirrel tail, and started stripping it in the riffle at the head of the island. First cast, bang, a 24 incher. A few casts later, a bigger one hit but got off. A bit later, another big fish that ran a long way downstream before suddenly coming undone. As I worked my way down the flat to the cabin in the growing darkness, I had two more awesome strikes but came up empty both times, and when I got finished I checked my fly and found the hook had broken off!

The last day. We were scheduled to fly out at 4 PM, so I only had the morning. I had one more of my homemade smallie streamers, this one a darker olive with a double squirrel hair tail that made it look a bit like a jig and pig. I started back up the flat toward the riffle at the head of the island, and soon got a hard strike. This fish at first dogged it and wouldn't move, and I thought I had hooked a sockeye. But then it took off and leaped and I saw it was the biggest fish I'd yet hooked. It ran far downstream, and then escaped. I was disappointed figuring I'd lost my last chance at a big fish. But on the very next cast I got another strike. This one stayed on, and after a long battle I beached my biggest fish of the trip, a heavy-bodied 29 incher.

I fished a couple more hours, but caught nothing else but grayling and small trout (small being 12-18 inchers...how soon one's sights get set higher).

By mid-afternoon the wind was blowing at gale force. Kent took us back up to Igiugig, but I had my doubts that small planes could even fly in the face of 35 MPH winds with gusts to 50. But here came a very tiny-looking four seat plane, buffeted by the gusts, to take us to Illiamna, where we'd catch a flight on the bigger Pilatus to Anchorage.

That was the scariest plane fight I've ever experienced, by far. We skirted the edge of the great lake, looking down at huge whitecaps, while the plane skittered sideways, bucked up and down, tilted far over to one side or the other, quartering into the wind the 40 miles or so to Illiamna, a flight that took us WELL over 40 minutes, so we weren't making a lot of headway against that wind. Mary was petrified--and suffering from motion sickness--and I wasn't much better in the fright department. One time the plane took such a sudden radical downwards dip that all of us hit our heads on the ceiling, even the pilot, even though we were strapped in tight. The landing at Illiamna was just as scary, with the plane wobbling from one side of the appproaching runway to the other, crabbing sideways, wings tilting radically. When we were within four feet or so of the runway, barely crawling against the wind, a gust tilted the wings downward to the right and the right wing couldn't have been more than inches above the asphalt. At that point, the pilot somehow righted the wings and then simply shut the thing down, and we dropped the last couple of feet to the runway instantly. I saw him take a big sigh of relief.

The Pilatus was no problem taking off, and we made it to Anchorage with no more adventures. We caught a 10 PM plane to Dallas, got there at 7 AM this morning, caught the St. Louis flight at 10 AM, and finally got home at 1:30 PM today. Serious nap time was in order this afternoon!

[rainbow]

Great story Al....I'm jealous.