PAXSON -- The first time I walked into the Grayling Room at Stan Brown's Paxson Lodge was in the 1960s. The Grayling Room was a fancy name for the local bar, but on the wall, in glass cases, were two of the largest arctic grayling I had ever seen.
When I moved to the Paxson area in 1970, I'd been fishing the area with my dad and friends for a half-dozen years or more. I had come to assume those large grayling at the lodge had come from the Ugashik drainage on the Alaska Peninsula. Another half-dozen years would pass before I had a glimmering suspicion that those giant grayling might have come from the Denali area.
The Denali Highway/Paxson area is home to the best grayling fishing in Alaska, with big and plentiful fish. Tangle Lakes is the system that comes into most folks' minds. To be sure, Tangle has good numbers of fish. I have fished all the Tangle Lakes extensively and feel that while extremely productive, the lakes are overfished and overrated for large grayling.
I would classify big grayling as fish more than 18 inches. A correct measurement is from the end of the top jaw to the fork of the tail. Don't get me wrong; a 16-inch grayling is nice. But it won't win many grayling contests.
Paxson Lodge hosted a grayling contest for a few years in the 1980s. I entered a local fish that measured 19 inches. Another local guy beat me out with a fish a half-inch larger.
State record grayling
The state record grayling came out of the Fish River on the Seward Peninsula, a fish was just over 5 pounds and some 24 inches long. I have not fished for grayling in that area, but I have worked Ugashik Lake and its side streams, where some huge fish roam. However, they are not as plentiful as grayling in the Interior. ?
The Interior is loaded with grayling, the most widespread sportfish in the state, because there is little competition from other fish in most of the streams they inhabit. Grayling grow fast too. They can reach 4 inches by the end of their first summer. They can spawn as early as their fourth year at a length of 10 inches. Female grayling release between 1,500 and 30,000 eggs and can live for 30 years in favorable habitat.
Cold, clear streams are optimal. They also are plentiful in most Alaska lakes too. Their size varies with water temperature and the availability of food. Insects are preferred, but grayling will also eat other fish, shrews or voles.
I have caught a couple of grayling capable of swallowing a vole. Both came from Paxson Lake. The largest weighed 3 pounds, 10 ounces and the other was exactly 1 pound lighter. Brown checked the weights on his post office scale.
I caught both in mid-October. The first and largest was an accident, caught while float jigging for trout.
Enormous grayling rare
A couple years later, I caught the second big fish in the same location, using the same method -- a 1-ounce lead-head jig with a white trailer. I have used this set-up with good success in other lakes, but never have I approached the size of those two fish.
Enormous grayling are scarce, and I doubt they move much, rarely coming to the surface. Paxson Lake has a plentiful supply of sockeye fry for them to feed on. Anglers should target warmer bays close to shore early in the season. I have found fish stuffed with lake trout eggs in late September. My October fish were eating sculpins, right on the bottom.
These whopping, bottom-feeding grayling are not the bright, pretty fish that come from Denali Highway streams. They tend toward gunmetal gray with dull, pinkish spots on the dorsal fin. However, anytime you can catch a grayling over a pound and a half, it is a beautiful fish.
John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskan who lives with his family near Paxson. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and two-time winner of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.