Saturday, Sunday, and Conclusion

Nope. Up at the crack of what we would consider pre-dawn, in the water by 6am, and we ended the day at oh and three. That’s right, we hooked three of those sneaky bastards, and not one of them was kind enough to surrender. And that’s pretty much how our Saturday morning went.

That’s okay. It just means I’ll have to go back someday.

After lunch we packed up the car, gave our hosts a manly grunt of approval, and headed back towards Anchorage. That night, we’d head back to the Marx Bros, and then get some sleep before we had to be at the airport in the morning. The flight home was a long one, taking us through seattle, Atlanta, and then finally home to Buffalo. Seeing darkness for the first time in a week was odd, as was the idea that we were heading to Buffalo, NY to find warmer weather.

Naturally, there’s a good deal that I wasn’t able to get into on this web site. A lot of it was pretty perverse, so, believe it or not, I’ve saved you from the majority of our sophomoric humor. If you ever run into me, though, ask me about these, and I’ll give you a fair story:

1. “Full on Waaaaa”
2. Do you like jazz?
3. Hey John, more coffee? How about a Thai breakfast?
4. Drs. Frick and Frack
5. Only 280 more feet to go…
6. Let’s put spinners on the boat!
7. Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just superstitious?
8. Don’t think that meal was on the menu.

The list goes on. While I’m thinking of the rest, here are a few more pictures that I’ll close with. Enjoy, y’all.

Back to the beginning?

Only you can prevent peeing yourself

Guess what I got to do on Friday?


Holy Hot Damn, friends – as if just being in Alaska wasn’t enough, I got to simulate Superman and fly above it. Part of the whole lodge package included a “fly out” in a pontoon plane just large enough to fit 6 normal sized guys (so how we got in, I’ll never know). It…


was…


awesome…



The plane took us inland to a part of the river that connected with the mountain streams. The plan was to find a place where fresh glacier water was feeding into the river, and hook as many sex-crazed red salmon (sockeye) as we could before they all managed to flop their way upstream to spawn. Before we found such a place though, we got to pass by some amazing scenery.



Okay, so we found a good place to drop our lines, but as we were coming in, we saw that we fisherman and our opposable thumbs and developed brains were no match for the local competition. Yeah, in case you can’t see that, it’s a bear. A wild, freaking bear. But, we were told by our guide, Steven, the rule is that so long as there are salmon to be had, humans are second on the menu. Even still, I kept a close eye on my pickanick basket, just to be safe.



After the bear left, we were left to our own devices and managed to catch quite a few reds. In fact, everyone limited, so we came away that day with a lot of fish. At one point, Smokey jumped into the water about twenty five feet away without my noticing. I should say, I didn’t notice until he jumped into the water. Then he had my full attention.

Having shown Alaska what it sounds like when I scream like a little girl, we packed up and inched away. At that point, we were more than happy to watch from a distance.


So, if we look at the score card, I see I’ve caught four different kinds of fish so far; I’ve seen moose, sea lions, eagles, and now a wild bear; I read by sunlight at midnight; and I made friends over good booze and cigars. My only task left was to catch that elusive king salmon, and only half a day to do it. Click here to read about Saturday and find out if I was able to make that happen…

Nine out of eleven ain't bad...

Thursday was one of my favorite days and by far my favorite night. Let’s go in chronological order.

We got to sleep in a little bit, but had trouble getting up anyway. By this time, we’d all pretty much gotten more sleep either in a car, in a boat, or on a plane than any of us had in a bed. We were going on adrenaline, though, and happy to do it. Thursday morning, we headed up, altitudinally, to a mountain lake called Skilak (it sounds much more Klingon than it is). The water was like glass – or as the locals say – you could ride a bike on it. There’s a Christ-on-a-bike joke in there, but I’ll leave it for now.

Anyway, Skilak Lake was everything you’d expect an “Alaskan mountain lake” to look like, only bigger. Expansive, powerful, calming, the stuff of rugged car commercials. This was right before we took off.


John wasn’t the first to catch a fish (actually Louis was schooling us at first) but his was the biggest at 24 inches. These were rainbow trout, by the way.


I made up for a shitty couple of days by catching the most trout that day. I hooked eleven, and brought in nine all told, one more than Lou. Unfortunately, these tasty little buggers are protected, so we were solely catch and release all day long. We caught a couple of Dolly Varden, too, but same deal.


Later that night, after dinner, we bonded with the other families staying at the TRL. The old guy below was known as Old Joe, and was there with his son, Young Joe. Not in this pic were Sonny, his son, Mike, and Mike’s sons, whose names I’ve forgotten. We all got toasty off of these bottles of port, and dad even managed to score four pre-Castro Cuban cigars.


Good times were had by all, and it wasn’t long before we hit the “I love you man!” portion of the night.


Cameras really should be outlawed at these things.



Waking up the next day was tough, but worth it. Click here to read about Friday.

Yeah, I guess I'll go fishing. I could use the sleep.

One benefit (among many) that the Tower Rock Lodge could claim was its proximity to the Kenai (pronounced “keen-eye” or “home to only one fish”) River. We fished the stank out of that river all morning and came away with nothing but a decent nap. Later that afternoon, we went back in and tried a different technique, which worked for dad in about two minutes, but came up flat for the rest of us.

Wednesday morning, we were excited to sleep in until 5:15am.

Late night + early morning + rocking boat + sport where you sit still unless you need to sip your coffee or eat a skor bar =

This was about as exciting as our morning got (I was happy to have the winter cap, though). But, hell, even if I knew I wasn’t going to catch a damn thing all week, I’d still have gone and enjoyed every minute of it.

Dad finally caught one sometime after lunch. He fought with it for a good five minutes before that suckah gave up and accepted its fate as our future grilled meal. Just to keep everyone honest, the Fish and Game municipality says that if you catch any salmon between 44 and 55 inches, you have to throw it back. This one was literally 43 ¾ inches, so it was a keeper.

That night, we celebrated our sorrows with a couple of rounds of poker. Around 11pm, a moose walked right in front of our cabin, and logic dictated that we run out to say hello. Here’s a rather unsuccessful attempt to take a pic of myself and said moose.


And here’s a pic john took of me, trying unsuccessfully to take a pic of myself and said moose. I didn’t win at poker that night either.



Thursday was a bit more exciting! Click here to read about it…

The Kings of the Kasilof

Editor’s note: Here’s another bit that I wrote while up in Alaska. I had hoped to post to my journal every day, thus making this blog a lot easier, but it just didn’t happen. On a similar note, it was pretty funny that the four of us were roughing it, but still needed an extension cord and a power strip to charge all the toys we brought. A laptop, two cameras, three ipods, one ipaq, a couple pairs of thump glasses (excellent for airplane sleeping – I suggest Thievery Corporation), and three cell phones (dad intentionally forgot his)…

Okay, so I may not be the greatest fisherman in the world, or even in my group, and I may be pretty badly sunburned and mosquito-bitten, and I may have gotten hypothermia today, but c’mon…that’s nothing new. More interestingly, here are a few things I can officially cross off my list of never-dones:

Saw a wild moose and her cub (kid? kitten? mooselit?), saw a wild sea otter, saw a whole phalanx of wild eagles, saw a wild puffin (which are more like seagulls than penguins, it turns out), and I even saw a man shoot a fish.

I tried and fell in love with salmon that had been caught (not by me), cleaned and smoked all within a matter of hours. I did catch two halibut, standing next to a man who worked for Halliburton. I bought salmon jerky, though I haven’t yet tried it. I text-messaged people from more than 4000 miles away.

Today I sat in a small boat with my brothers and my dad and we talked with our native guide about things as importantly mundane as how to smoke pulled pork, and we shot the shit over how fishing is a metaphor for life, even though they were just trying to make me feel better about the king salmon I hooked and lost. Fishing, by the way, is a metaphor for nothing, but rather an entity unto itself meant solely for
brothers, fathers and local guides to bond over statements like “fishing is a metaphor for life”. Whiskey helps. Catching a lot of fish helps more. But at the end of the day, you really just need enough rods for everyone, and a tolerance for “hee-hee, I said rod” jokes.

Tomorrow we’re going to try for more king salmon on the Kenai River. My big salmon catch is still out there. (My FIRST salmon catch is still out there…) And even though I’m about to fall asleep on my keyboard, I’m going to poor another whiskey and go re-join the group. Maybe I’ll take the salmon jerky out with me.

The day actually started out pretty foggy. We were on a river called the Kasilof (about a half hour away), where we met up with Tyson, our nine foot tall guide. John took this pic, which was about 5am, if I remember right. It never got much darker than this.


It turned into a nicer day pretty quickly, and we started peeling layers off as the sun came out. (later in the day, it started to rain, and the breeze on this river keeps the mosquitos away, but made it feel like about twenty below. We decided then and there to buy winter hats and gloves before the next day.)


This was a neighboring family staying at the same lodge. I forget where they were from, but they were San Antonio fans, in direct but friendly smack-talk competition with another family staying nearby from Detroit. Those two boys knew their basketball. And their smack-talk. On the left is a TRL employee named Aaron, who came to be a pretty good friend of ours.


We pulled over for a pee break. Always check for moose first. That’s Tyson on the right, who, like an ice burg, is actually 90% under the water’s surface right now. That kid was huge.


Neener neener. I didn’t have to hold a fish and get my hands all dirty… sniff. I actually did hook one, but the bastard broke my line before I could get it into the boat. If fish had middle fingers, that one would have shown me his.


Later, back at the ranch: a celebratory whiskey shot. That’s a bottle of Middleton Rare, by the way. It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.



Go on to Wednesday!

Fish Picasso would be proud of

I had a blast on Monday, riding high on strong coffee, the promise of 100+ lb halibut, and the warmth that comes from knowing I’m not the hungover one. Louis, John, and the TRL (“Tower Rock Lodge”, not “Total Request Live”) owners, Mike and Mark, laid the groundwork for our entire trip by getting silly drunk and staying up all night. I’m told they killed off a case of wine, and most of a bottle of really good whiskey. Part of me was actually pretty upset that I went to bed so early and missed the real party, but when the two of them crawled onto the halibut charter, white as ghosts later that day, I decided I’d made the right decision. Man, they were miserable.

And yet… the bastards still caught more than I did. The one halibut Lou caught was larger than the two I pulled in combined. I forget exactly how much John caught, but I know I only beat his total if you subtract out the vomit he donated back to the chilly waters of the Resurrection Bay. Dad beat us all by hooking a 100 pounder.

On the drive to and from Seward, we saw 9 moose, and umpteen bald eagles. While on the water, we saw sea lions and at least a half million gulls. Those things can poop like nobody’s business.

All of these pictures were taken by John’s camera, though not all by him. He’d passed out in the cabin for a bit, so I commandeered it and snapped a few since I’d forgotten my camera. Yeah, we were all on top of things this whole trip.

This is a shot of Seward that was actually taken after we got back in and everyone was a little more alert. It’s a good intro to the day though, so I’m starting off here. Just to the left of the photographer is where they weighed and cleaned the wheelbarrow of fish we hooked that day. Quaint, no? Good coffee, too.


This wasn’t posed, by the way. If it were, I’d have looked less pensive and I’d have sucked in my gut.


Dad caught this bugger and he was so big the cap’n actually had to shoot it with that mini-shotgun. The fish my dad catches are bigger than the fish your dad catches. Neener neener.


Right after dad hooked Gargantua the Halibut above, I swooped in and fought twice as long with this 20 pound beast. Hey, the water was cold – shrinkage is natural.


I love this pic.

And I love the next two pics. That’s a borrowed flannel John is wearing. He’d forgotten his jacket.


Again, Lou was a hurtin’ boy, wishing for merciful death… and he still caught a bigger fish than me.


Back in Seward, on mostly dry land, we got to be minor celebrities for a few minutes while they hung up and weighed our haul. A crowd actually gathered, snapped a few photos, and some even asked if they could pose for their own mementos. The 5th and 6th bad boys in the middle (not including us, that is) were caught by a couple of other tourists on our boat named Rena and Dick, but the rest are ours.



It was a long day, and we didn’t get back to camp until later on that evening. I drove back while the boys slept and dad and I talked about how we’d get the 105 pounds of subsequent halibut filet back to Buffalo. (There’s a meat processor up the road from our lodge – we had them freeze some, smoke some, vacuum pack the rest, and then ship it all back so we didn’t have to worry about checking it.)

Click here to read about how we fished for king salmon on Tuesday

North To Alaska, Sou'west to Soldotna

Editor's note: not everything included here was written while on the trip, but the bit below I pounded out during my first night in the wild reaches of the Kenai Peninsula. The pictures' captions, though, are so fresh and so clean.

My friends, I no longer fear Hell, because I’ve survived a 13 hour flight where they made me watch Hitch and Million Dollar Baby, but I no longer wonder about the existence of Heaven, because surely Soldotna isn’t far off.

At the moment, (June 5, 2005 – 3:40pm Soldotna time, 7:40pm Buffalo time) I’m comfortable in the confines of our cabin, hidden from the slight rain and the mosquitoes, and sufficiently liquored up. Since it’s only our first day in the outer reaches of civilization, we won’t be fishing until tomorrow (we only just now got our licenses). Today, we’re supposed to rest, make sure we have all the gear we need (read: “make sure we have all the jerky we need”) and force our bodies to accept the four hour time difference. Jet lag wasn’t really that bad, but add to it the fact that it was still light last night at 11pm when we passed out in a port-induced stupor, and we can see why our collective physiologies might be a bit ticked off.

We actually touched down in anchorage yesterday, around 2:30pm by the local clocks. That gave us enough time to rent our annoying-tourist SUV (an escalade or an excursion, I think. It’s red.), and take in some of the native sites. I thought it would take at least a few hours for us to stop saying, “My good Christ, look at the mountains”, but if that point exists, we haven’t crossed it yet. Last night, we found our way to the swanky part of the metropolis (no hunter’s orange camouflage allowed) and had dinner at The Marx Brothers Club. Sorry to say, it wasn’t the Marx Brothers you’re thinking of, so the “how he got in my pajamas, I’ll never know” jokes
wore off pretty quick. But these Marx Brothers had a wine list to die for, and perhaps the best duck I’ve ever had in my life. We drank like sailors, a task made easier by the copious sunlight – “it’s still early afternoon, I can have another bottle…”, said the drunk boys at 10:30pm. We didn’t make it to midnight, but I’m told it didn’t get even remotely dark until 2 this morning.

The drive from anchorage to Soldotna was memorable for three reasons. 1) The view. My good Christ, look at these mountains. 2) The moosen. We saw three! Those fuckers are big, I’ll tell you what. 3) The quotes. My two favorites were: a) “Even in the Wal-Mart parking lot, the mountains are amazing.” and “Out of my way, jerk-ass! We’ve got a ton of alcohol!” I’m pretty sure any other conversation among our troupe so far has been in some way a Simpson’s reference.

Tomorrow, we’re meeting our guide in Seward at 6:15am to catch halibut. Seward is along the southern edge of the Kenai Peninsula, about two hours away. So, yeah, wake up call in 11 hours. Take that, collective physiologies...

This pic was taken as soon as we got out of Anchorage. The mountains really were breathtaking - at one point I was actually mad at myself for never seeing them in person, and upset that we didn't have any real rock climbing scheduled for the trip.



In retrospect, I imagine I'd suck at rock-climbing, so I was still pretty happy looking at them from afar, warm and drunk.


John took this one. His camera is better at shooting photos from a moving car, and if I was more artistic about these things I'd talk about how well he used nature (the tree, the coulds, etc.) as a frame. Or whatever.

This was actually our second moose sighting, but no one had their cameras out in time for the first one. We pulled over to get a picture of this one, a move that probably made the locals roll their eyes. Yeah well, when they're in Buffalo, oohing and aahing at a chicken wing, we'll see who's touristy then.


The Tower Rock Lodge had four or five individual cabins, a mess hall, and this main house, which kind of served as a common area for everyone.


So that was our first day in Soldotna. I passed out pretty much right after dinner, but even though we had a 3:45am wake up call the next day, John and Louis pulled all-nighters partying it up with the lodges owners. Click here to go on to Monday and read about how they both out-fished me, hungover and half-asleep.