Trout Angler Discovers The Myth Of The Last Frontier

The following appears in the December issue of Alaska Sporting Journal:

BY DANIEL RITZ

On day four of a one-week stay on the Naknek River just outside King Salmon, a new set of storms rolled in.

I had come to Bristol Bay in hope of connecting with an Arctic char, the last of the 22 native trout and char species I had pursued over seven months in 2021 while documenting the populations and conservation of the United States’ iconic native salmonids (Alaska Sporting Journal, August 2021).

The iconic char had bested me the year prior, and now, as days passed and storm after storm prevented us from accessing the rivers holding this elusive species, it felt as if my opportunity was slipping away yet again.

FOR DAYS, AS RAIN poured and the sun rose and fell fully behind clouds as if in a room with shades blocking all the windows, I tried to remain patient. I was tightly wound, mentally struggling with my gratefulness to be enjoying one of the most intact, functional ecosystems in the world, but all the while knowing I had come with a goal, and the window of success for it was narrowing.

This time around, as these fish were beyond my reach – logistically and skillfully – I enlisted the assistance of the guides at Bear Trail Lodge, owned, operated and managed by Nanci Morris Lyon (907-246- 2327; beartraillodge.com).

Each day, I fished with various graduates of the Bristol Bay Fly Fishing and Guiding Academy, or BBFFGA. The organization (bristolbayriveracademy .org), which was started by Lyon, Luki Akelkok and Tim Troll in 2008, aims to enable Bristol Bay youth to pursue sportfishing jobs in their own communities.

BBFFGA has empowered more than 150 future guides to share local culture and conservation challenges with visitors to the region by training them not only in fly fishing skills, but also customer service, land management, fisheries biology, lodge business management, and more.

“These kids already know. They grow up knowing where the fish are, the way the rivers behave,” Lyon shared, testifying that while her guide staff may not appear the same as others, they are top of class. “I just teach them the easy stuff. The stuff you can’t teach? They already know.”

Day after day, we fished for beautiful, girthy rainbows on the Brooks River, got our asses handed to us by hot fish on the Kvichak, Kulik and more. However, with each passing day, the window to connect with Arctic char was shrinking.

At the rate this trip was going, I would need all the help I could get.

MY GUIDE, TRISTON CHANEY, picked up my 13-foot, 4-inch, 7-weight Burkheimer Dpey rod overloaded with T-17 and casually hurled a snap-T cast a country mile across the mighty Naknek.

“Whoa,” Chaney giggled. “I like this thing. I always see guys come here with them, but I’ve never cast one.”

Throughout our days on the Naknek and beyond, the natural talents of Chaney and his academy graduate colleagues resonated loudly.

One particularly tough morning on the Naknek, after six hours without so much as a few smolt coming to our nymphs, Chaney motored us far upstream to an unsuspecting run.

There, Chaney and I howled laughing as my Hardy sang, as on back-to-back casts two nearly 30-inch rainbows latched on to deep, slow-swinging flesh flies and raced through the deep pool.

It wasn’t so much a hot tip, special fly or secret spot that led us to success that day. It was Chaney’s deep understanding of the river and the fish’s behavior.
The unteachables. Worth mentioning: We didn’t see another boat all afternoon.

EARLY IN THE MORNING of the day before I was scheduled to leave, Lyon informed me that there was enough of a break in the storm that Chaney and I would have one final chance to pursue char that would be following red salmon into their lake spawning beds.

It would be my only opportunity. I was suspicious of Chaney’s nonchalance as we flew only a few hundred feet off the ground to the river, where we sorted through sockeye for the entirety of the morning session.
As the day went on, a new wall of clouds erupted on the western horizon, and our pilot signaled that whenever that plume arrived, it would be time to go. I decided to fish through lunch.

“They’re out there. We’ll find one,” Chaney calmly told me. Either naturally, or thanks to his academy training, he could tell his client was struggling to hold it together.

Minutes before our pilot warned us we would have to leave to beat the approaching front, the line on my 6-weight pulled taut behind a salmon bed and a heavy tug raced for the river bottom.

I won’t bore you with too many exotic adjectives describing the fight and landing of the fish. All things considered, it isn’t important.

After releasing the beautiful hen char, I sank to my knees in the river and reflected on the nearly 30,000 miles of travel, dozens of beautiful rivers, hundreds of local river stewards and conservationists I had met along the way, and the hundreds of native trout and char that, to me, are the essence of the West.

MORE THAN A YEAR ago, I had set out on a mission of discovery. When it was complete, I realized that the true discovery is – with the rarest of exceptions – a facade.

After fishing with Chaney, whose family is Yupik and Athabaskan, and other native and local academy graduates like Kvichak Aspelund, I would walk away with much more than the anticipated sense of achievement.

Fishing with guides who wave to neighbors, friends and families as we drive the roads to the boat launch and can tell the long history of the rivers and fisheries showed me that my journey to connect with native trout was truly a funnel to recognizing the social, cultural and ecological webs that are inherently entangled in the conservation of native species.

One of the only things I truly discovered was that I wasn’t discovering anything.

It was just new to me. ASJ
Editor’s note: Daniel Ritz lives in Boise, Idaho, where he is the communications and outreach coordinator for the Idaho Wildlife Federation. A catalog of Ritz’s published work, including the entirety of the West- ern Trout Challenge series, can be found at JacksExperienceTradingCompany.com.