IGIUGIG -- For four days, I lived the life of a trout bum on an Alaska dream trip to the Kvichak River, 50 miles northeast of King Salmon. Along with five friends -- surveyors, civil engineers and a railroad cop -- we were fishing on the cheap, sharing the river with CEOs, pro football players and hedge fund managers who can afford lodges that charge $6,800 for five days of fishing, flyouts, a guide, a comfy bed and extravagant meals. We flew in to test the water and test ourselves – aiming to catch some of the big rainbow trout for which the Kvichak is known.
We live in Anchorage, with trout and salmon streams half a gas tank away, but we sought epic fish and the Kvichak was one river where we would find them. The youngest in our group guided for three years on the Naknek River and counted Dan Rather as a client. I was eager to pick his brain and watch him work. The others had fished a fair amount in Alaska waters. My fishing partner came along, too: a Montana native, born with a fly rod in one hand and a .22 rifle in his other. That rounded out the six of us who boarded the flight out of Anchorage's Merrill Field on a clear Friday morning in October.
I brought a puny fishing resume compared to this group. Days before we set out, I gathered my gear, tied flies and packed my fly rods. The Kvichak fomented a deep fear within me, intimidating me with its blue-ribbon reputation and its size. There was so much water to fish, so many ways not to catch anything. My brother-in-law talked about hooking a rainbow more than 30 inches long, which would typically weigh more than a dozen pounds. I think we all wanted to put that goal to rest, to catch the big one, to catch a trout to confirm our credentials as hardcore fishermen with the skills to match.
The mighty Kvichak
We stayed in a two-story plywood-floored bunkhouse in the village of Igiugig, a Yup'ik word that means "like a throat that swallows water" -- so named because Iliamna Lake, Alaska's biggest lake and the eighth largest in the U.S., pours down the gullet of the Kvichak and on to Bristol Bay. Fewer than 100 people live here. Commercial fishing and a subsistence lifestyle support their needs.
Iliamna Lake stretches some 100 miles, more an ocean than a lake. Rollers crash into gravel shores, a slash of whitecap topping each wave. It's one of a few lakes with freshwater seals. The Kvichak River runs spooky deep in some places and clear as tap water. The silent slide of water over the bottom belies its tremendous volume, enough water to support the largest salmon run in Alaska, typically 3-4 million during an average year, but up to 10 million in an extraordinary one. But that's not why we came.
For $90 a day, we rented two thrashed 16-foot flat-bottomed boats outfitted with 30-horsepower Evinrude motors. The transparent plank of the Kvichak slid by, 150 yards south of the bunkhouse front door and across from Saint Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church.
The river runs through big country with undulating plateaus, swales and rises highlighted in mustard and brown. When the land flattens, the view opens up. From the back porch you seemingly could watch a moose run away for three days.
Along with the big terrain comes the quiet. When the guide boats aren't whining and the sky is clear of floatplanes, a holy silence descends. Maybe with so little sound bouncing around this great expanse, it gets lost and gives up trying to find an ear.
Near the river, the land is so flat that the weather rolled in like a movie preview. We knew what was coming 30 minutes before it arrived. On our second day, a squall drifted across the landscape, vertical bands of rain pitchforked by dazzling shafts of light behind the clouds, rain pelting the water to a patina like hammered tin.
Right away, I felt this country entering me. My pulse quickened. It wasn't just the beauty of the landscape, but the life-altering feel of something bigger than you've ever seen, something that shoves aside old ideas and replaces them with a scale to measure everything else from here on out. Perhaps my fishing partners came to the river with no expectations other than to fish for trophy trout, which is reason enough. I was here for that reason, too, but I always leave myself open to other possibilities.
Worth the wait
Our pre-trip research pointed us to what seasoned guides called the Braids, a 30-minute boat ride downstream. At the beginning of the Braids, a gorgeous lodge sits atop a ridge, the main building a freshly varnished prow-front dream, surrounded by smaller cabins connected by boardwalks. Two glistening de Havilland Beavers sat tethered to the dock waiting to fly out to inaccessible (to us) hotspots. At our upstream lodge, visitors cook their own meals, wash their own dishes and make their own beds. That put us squarely on the other side of the tracks.
We were three to a boat; one person rowed while the other two drifted, one in the bow and one aft. I was the worst oarsman, spinning us downstream, bumping off the shore. If I were a guide I'd be fired the first day. No one ever let me run the boat motor. This isn't delicate fly fishing and because it's fall, we fish with beads, the occasional flesh fly or a black leech.
We'd drift and fish a run, start the boat motor, buzz back to the top of the run and drift again, our split shot tick-tick-ticking off the bottom. We prospected these new waters, exploring this river so far from home. And we began to catch fish, the first a 24-inch rainbow, a honey on most any other river, but average for this one. This isn't a river of plenty, but it is a river with fish worthy of the wait.
Smaller rainbows charged the boat, twisting arcs of silver, panicking like they'd landed on a hot stove. Large rainbows pulled like the tug of war at a firemen's picnic. They rarely surfaced, creating a mystery of anticipation until they tired and we reeled them to the boat.
Grayling pestered us, too, their halfhearted fights collapsing into resignation, no match for our eight-weight fly rods. Although they would warrant a photo op on any other river, all we wanted to do was shake them off our hooks so we could resume our business of fishing for honking rainbow trout. For this trip, size did matter, and a 16-inch grayling wasn't going to make it into the photo album.
Besides the grayling, schools of neon red salmon darted in front of the boat in a frenzy like a crazed crowd running from Godzilla. I caught one and dragged it to the boat. The fish worked its hooked jaws in a gasping menace as I manipulated the forceps to release the fly without shredding my fingers on its teeth.
While we were in remote Alaska, we were not alone. Guide boats buzzed from one run to the next, driven by burly, college-age men who stood with one hand on the throttle and the other tucked into their chest waders. The anglers hunkered on the bench seats, heads down, clutching their rods and holding onto their hats. They paid no attention to the ragtag interlopers in the crappy boats.
As we drifted a particularly productive run, I overheard one guide compliment a client who had just landed a rainbow, saying, "That's a nice fish." As his wife looked on, the client quietly replied in a refined European accent, "and I flew halfway around the world to catch it."
We fished 12-hour days, leaving the boats only to take a leak. We ate lunch as we fished, sipping from Thermoses filled with cocoa and shots of Baileys Irish Cream. At day's end, we motored upstream to our bunkhouse. We gathered at the dinner table, eating, poking fun and discussing what worked, anticipating the next day. With the dishes cleared, glasses of Gentleman Jack inspired more swagger to our stories. The playing cards appeared and toothpicks substituted for poker chips. One by one, we climbed the stairs to our bunks in a mellow haze, set to replay the day in our minds as we fell asleep.
The big one
On the third day I caught the largest rainbow trout of my life. The fish hammered my bead, stripping line from the reel like it was running away from a bad dream. I shared the boat with my regular fishing partner and one of my brother-in-law's coworkers. My rod bucked as I choked up on the butt and reared back. The fish rocketed downstream, the line creating a V as it sliced the surface, the fish gathering itself up and putting muscle into it. The fight wasn't a continuous struggle but a huge pull, then a pause, then another huge pull.
The snagless bottom makes the Kvichak a dream river because you can fight the fish without fear of wrapping the line around a submerged log or a random boulder with jagged edges. But it's not a gimme. Plenty can go wrong. I hoped I'd prepared well enough to eliminate all but bad luck, a smart fish or both. The fish took me into my backing and all I could do was use the backbone of the rod to slow it down.
No one said much, no coaching or criticizing or even jesting. The next fish might be theirs. So the oarsman kept the boat parallel and away from the shore to ensure I had every advantage, and all kept their eyes on the line, waiting for that first look of glinting silver scale.
The first glimpse evoked gasps of "holy shit." Someone said, "It's almost too big for the net," which is like hearing Scarlett Johansson say, "Yes, I'll come home with you to have your babies." My breath quickened, my forearms ached.
Two of us slid the net beneath it and lifted the fish into the boat, one on the handle, the other supporting the end of the net. My partner measured it. Thirty-five inches. A hog. A fish of a lifetime. My lifetime.
I posed for photos and then leaned over the gunwale of the boat, set to revive the fish. As I lowered it, I lost my grip and it slipped out of my hands and dropped away. By then it was a done deal; I had accomplished what I'd traveled so far to do. Then, with a half-twist, I caught a flash of white belly as the fish descended. A bad sign. It disappeared in the depths, and I prayed that it regained its strength and swam toward the bottom to rest.
I used an undersized fly rod, a six-weight. So I fought it long, longer than I should have fought it. The fishing wags said you need an eight-weight on this river. I brought mine, but it cast like a totem pole, so it lay at the bottom of the boat.
Every time the image of that white flash comes to mind, I think of my parents' rule: Always put something back in better shape than you found it.
Now a photo of that fish lights up my computer screen. Part of its mouth curves into a misshapen smile and I don't know if that is from birth or from the damage caused by battles with other fishermen.
I am mesmerized, hoping it's still alive, but it lies still, frozen in my arms. The lens caught me with a tightly closed mouth, hat and sunglasses on my head, my face scratchy from a three-day stubble. Sometimes I think after that moment I was at a loss for what to do. A friend of mine said a fish that size is likely on the last years of its life. I was placated for a time, but I still return to that last image of it drifting to the bottom, like a fall leaf floating to the ground.
Scott Banks is an Anchorage-based freelance writer.