This summer, my son and I travelled to Alaska for the “fishing trip of a lifetime”. We flew to Anchorage and Bethel in commercial jets, and then to a remote lake in a Beaver pontoon plane. We were dropped off with a raft, food, and camping gear. With the help of an experienced guide, we floated 8 days down the Kisaralik River, reputed to be one of Alaksa’s best streams for rainbow trout and salmon, camping streamside each night.
Sounds like a dream trip.
It wasn’t. The plane dropped us off on what was the 30th consecutive day of rain. The stream, which had been fishing OK even 3 days before our trip, “blew out” on the day we arrived, and for 5½ days we barely caught a fish. The weather broke towards the end of a grim and chilly drift through the wilderness. We finally experienced one day of pretty good fishing, and two half-days of fair fishing (when I had at least some expectation that focused effort might result in catching a fish). But nothing like we expected when we booked the trip and wrote the big checks.
Is this unusual? Maybe not. As preparation for writing this blog entry, I reviewed and rated my personal experience booking 20 years of fishing trips. For this exercise, I counted only trips which were scheduled principally for the purpose of fishing. I ignored outings that were scheduled for other purposes (i.e. tagged onto family vacations or business trips), when arguably one might not expect optimal conditions.
When I added it all up, I realized that my adventure fishing date picking hasn’t been all that great. I counted 85 days of fishing over 20 trips in 20 years. Of those 85 days, I rated only 23 days (27%) as “good”. 35 days (41%) were “poor”, days when conditions were so bad that there was no expectation of catching a fish (even if you pick up one or two by “accident” in the course of the day). The balance, 27 days (32%), I rated fair. …continue reading There’s No Place Like Home (Water)
