vinegar, it thrashed about as if the stones were hot coals. I dropped my pole, pounced on it, trapped it between my knees, grabbed a rock, and brought it down hard between its eyes. It quivered. I whacked it again. The fish went still. Maya, perched on the bluff above, barked and wagged her entire hind end.
“Nice one, huh, Maya? You approve? I thought so. Good girl.”
I rinsed my hands in the river, put my fish on a stringer, secured it with a rock, then rinsed my hands again, shook them off, picked up my rod, and stepped back into the current.
By early evening, between the two of us, we had three reds the size of canoe-paddle blades on ice in the cooler, all caught within the first forty-five minutes, after which it seemed the reds ended their shift and punched out for the day. Although the limit was three per angler per day, after more than two hours without a single intercept, we called it quits, loaded up our fish, hoofed it back to the car, peeled off our waders, and headed toward home.
Other than caffeine, granola bars, and a couple handfuls of gorp, we hadn’t eaten all day, and our engines were sputtering like old Buick Skylarks with bad distributor caps.So on our way back to Girdwood, we stopped for dinner in Cooper Landing, a community of tidy log cabins and quaint fishing lodges along a winding stretch of highway that skirts the shore of Kenai Lake and the upper part of the Kenai River. A sleepy settlement of 370 in winter, the town triples in size and never sleeps in summer, during which locals and non are interested in two things and two things only: fishing and talking about fishing. As the launching pad for fishing trips on the Kenai and Russian rivers, key services at the time were open for business all day and night, including thebar at Gwin’s Lodge, which on a hopping night back in the day would close at five in the morning and reopen in time for breakfast.
We pulled into Gwin’s around 6:30 that evening. Burgers and beer at the half-century-old log roadhouse had become an end-of-the-day fishing tradition. We headed into the bar, parked ourselves at a table against a wall, and ordered without bothering to look at the menu since we knew it by heart. The place was abuzz with anglers comparing notes and guides dropping in for beers after work, several of whom we either knew or recognized, all of whom talked fish. Halfway through our burgers, we overheard a couple of guys talking about how the reds were holed up at The Sanctuary. From the sounds of it, they had limited out without much trouble.
John and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing. I didn’t have to be at work until ten the next morning, but John was due back at the hotel later that night for the graveyard shift. It was just after seven, it was a gorgeous evening, and the sun wouldn’t be setting for about four hours, and even then “dark” would be relative. John threw it out there.
“What do you think about running down to the Russian real fast and trying to get those last three fish?”
“Hell yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
John, who had no problem keeping his priorities straight, called in sick.
“We should swing by and see if Jaha wants to wet a line,” I said.
Jaha, short for Jeremy Anderson Hard Ass, a nickname earned in middle school for holding his ground against bullies half again his size, was the most natural-born fisherman I’d ever known, an angling genius who could practically talk a fish into skipping the drama and hopping straight into his cooler. My favorite image of him came from a day at that same fishing hole we’d just left down the highway. Standing atop a boulder at the water’s edge, he’d cracked open a can of Coors Light, raised it toward the heavens, hollered out the motto, “Tap the Rockies!,” tipped it straight back, chugged the whole thing down, crushed the can against his chest, tossed it over his shoulder next to his pack, cast into the river, and instantly nailed a
“Nice one, huh, Maya? You approve? I thought so. Good girl.”
I rinsed my hands in the river, put my fish on a stringer, secured it with a rock, then rinsed my hands again, shook them off, picked up my rod, and stepped back into the current.
By early evening, between the two of us, we had three reds the size of canoe-paddle blades on ice in the cooler, all caught within the first forty-five minutes, after which it seemed the reds ended their shift and punched out for the day. Although the limit was three per angler per day, after more than two hours without a single intercept, we called it quits, loaded up our fish, hoofed it back to the car, peeled off our waders, and headed toward home.
Other than caffeine, granola bars, and a couple handfuls of gorp, we hadn’t eaten all day, and our engines were sputtering like old Buick Skylarks with bad distributor caps.So on our way back to Girdwood, we stopped for dinner in Cooper Landing, a community of tidy log cabins and quaint fishing lodges along a winding stretch of highway that skirts the shore of Kenai Lake and the upper part of the Kenai River. A sleepy settlement of 370 in winter, the town triples in size and never sleeps in summer, during which locals and non are interested in two things and two things only: fishing and talking about fishing. As the launching pad for fishing trips on the Kenai and Russian rivers, key services at the time were open for business all day and night, including thebar at Gwin’s Lodge, which on a hopping night back in the day would close at five in the morning and reopen in time for breakfast.
We pulled into Gwin’s around 6:30 that evening. Burgers and beer at the half-century-old log roadhouse had become an end-of-the-day fishing tradition. We headed into the bar, parked ourselves at a table against a wall, and ordered without bothering to look at the menu since we knew it by heart. The place was abuzz with anglers comparing notes and guides dropping in for beers after work, several of whom we either knew or recognized, all of whom talked fish. Halfway through our burgers, we overheard a couple of guys talking about how the reds were holed up at The Sanctuary. From the sounds of it, they had limited out without much trouble.
John and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing. I didn’t have to be at work until ten the next morning, but John was due back at the hotel later that night for the graveyard shift. It was just after seven, it was a gorgeous evening, and the sun wouldn’t be setting for about four hours, and even then “dark” would be relative. John threw it out there.
“What do you think about running down to the Russian real fast and trying to get those last three fish?”
“Hell yeah,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
John, who had no problem keeping his priorities straight, called in sick.
“We should swing by and see if Jaha wants to wet a line,” I said.
Jaha, short for Jeremy Anderson Hard Ass, a nickname earned in middle school for holding his ground against bullies half again his size, was the most natural-born fisherman I’d ever known, an angling genius who could practically talk a fish into skipping the drama and hopping straight into his cooler. My favorite image of him came from a day at that same fishing hole we’d just left down the highway. Standing atop a boulder at the water’s edge, he’d cracked open a can of Coors Light, raised it toward the heavens, hollered out the motto, “Tap the Rockies!,” tipped it straight back, chugged the whole thing down, crushed the can against his chest, tossed it over his shoulder next to his pack, cast into the river, and instantly nailed a
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