I love a good fishing tale, especially when the catch gets bigger every time the story is told. This is why photographs are useful - not only to help us reflect back on our good times, but also to keep our friends from accusing us of stretching the truth. One past summer, I called up my friend, Karlin, a seasoned fly fisherman and photographer in Anchorage, to see how his recent trip to Cordova and the surrounding region had panned out. I was hoping to get a doozey of a fish story from him and maybe even a look at his photos. What I got was much more than a story. It was an adventure full of fascinating people, hungry bears and feisty salmon. It began with a road-side fishing adventure at Ibeck Creek (also known as “7 Mile Creek”) in Cordova, Alaska and moved to a remote fly-out fishing trip to the remote Tsiu River (pronounced “si-u”) in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.
Mining for Silver, Roadside
Karlin is a skilled fisherman and a former fly-shop employee, so he knows how to make the fish bite. His attention to detail is impeccable. Small adjustments in his fly-tying really seem to make fish hammer the line. Karlin typically enjoys some of the accessible streams on the Kenai Peninsula, but that’s usually the extent of the travel that his fishing budget will allow. One day, his long-time friend, Jeremy, invited him out to fish with a couple of friends (both named Dave) who were flying into Anchorage from Pittsburgh. Jeremy’s parents had retired years ago and made the decision to move to Cordova. They could have retired anywhere, but they chose Cordova because it was a remote but charming town in a beautiful location. The kindness and support of the local residents was overwhelming, so they settled there.
Jeremy had been traveling to Cordova for years to visit his family. His father, a retired pastor and commercial pilot, turned bush pilot, would fly them out to their cabin on the Tsiu River to fish the run of silver salmon that return each year. When it worked out for Jeremy to offer Karlin an invitation to come out and fish, he accepted and the date was set for early September. The first week in September is peak fishing for Coho on 7 Mile Creek and the Tsiu River, but it can also be good from late August and through late September.
Karlin arrived in Cordova with his gear and met up with Jeremy. They stashed his luggage at Jeremy’s parent’s place and geared up to fish 7 Mile Creek. They had a good five hours to wait until the two Daves landed on the ground, so they decided to give the best local prospect a try.
Jeremy and Karlin began fishing that afternoon at the bridge over 7 Mile Creek, and they immediately discovered that the fishing was hot. People were drifting cured salmon eggs right near the bridge, and they were doing well. Others were horsing silvers up the bank near the road. Deciding not to fish right near the highway, the two friends took the short five to ten-minute walk to where there was plenty of elbowroom to fish.
The creek had obvious holding water and pools where people gathered to target the fish, but with a little creativity, Jeremy and Karlin were able to sneak in and begin hooking some silvers. Karlin had brought along his spey rod and there were beautiful spans across the river for him to cast it. It probably wasn’t necessary, but he enjoyed using the 13ft 6wt spey on 7 Mile Creek. Switching between a spool with floating line and spool with sinking throughout the day, there were plenty of options for Karlin to try.
The silvers were aggressive and changing things up helped to keep the bite fresh. Where the water was deep and fast, Karlin would opt for floating line with a 30ft sink tip and allow the fly to swing through the run before stripping it back. Casting, mending and stripping line through the water, Karlin and Jeremy waded further from the crowds. Where the water contained lethargic fish in deeper holes, they presented their flies by slowly twitching them in the benthic areas of the water column. Switching out to a reel with sink tip line seemed to work better in faster water, with stripping the line generating success with more aggressive fish. The most exhilarating times were when fish would chase after a stripped fly, snapping at it and causing a wake before inhaling it at the very last minute!
The glacial silt in 7 Mile Creek was an important factor playing into the guys decision on how to fish it. The water was very turbid and highly silty. Even on the best day, it’s not possible to see bottom, but that doesn’t mean a bright-colored fly is out of the question. Karlin’s personal gauge was whether he could see his boot tips while wading up to his knees. With that amount of clarity he could effectively read the water and predict possible holding areas, as well as give the silvers a visible target. The siltiness of the river bottom also had it’s plus side – there weren’t a lot of snags, so the guys lost very few flies and got away with using generous weight. They just casted, presented flies right off the bottom and fished across the sand.
In terms of fly selection, Karlin and Jeremy brought along a case full of delectable “Coho cookies” to throw. They began with pink and purple leaches and white rabbit strip, either wound on the fly or straight off like a leech. But by far, the most productive fly they threw the entire week was a chartreuse-over-white Clouser minnow. In addition to being sensibly simple and easy to tie, it outfished all the others, hands down. It’s popular for kings, trout, even pike, and it absolutely slays the silvers. In other words, if you don’t think the chartreuse Clouser is awesome - you need awesome lessons.
At the beginning of the day, Karlin had turned to Jeremy while putting on his waders and asked, “Do you really think I’ll catch one?” Just three hours in, the two friends had hooked up with about five fish each and had their limit of three per person on their stringers. They got cleaned up and were ready to pick up Dave 1 and Dave 2 from the airport, who would almost certainly need to see the photographic evidence to validate such stellar fishing right in town. The two friends had a few minutes before getting to the airport that evening, so they stopped at one of a few places in town to have their day’s catch vacuum packed and frozen.
Taking Off to the Tsiu
After getting their fill of 7 Mile Creek in town, the four guys boarded an air taxi and flew for an hour southwest towards the Tsiu River. The plane traveled over the Bering Ice Field and the southern end of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park before touching down near the river’s mouth. Their destination was a remote and underdeveloped cabin belonging to Jeremy’s family. There was no water and no electricity. A propane stove, lanterns and a nearby well provided sufficient shelter and decent sleeping quarters, not to mention a good place to relax, tie flies and talk when the wind picked up.
Neighboring structures along the Tsiu were scarce. They included a high-end fishing lodge, a few shacks belonging to set netters, the family cabin and a rustic lodge referred to as “Harold’s Place.” Harold, who happens to be a faithful friend of Jeremy’s family, rents rooms to anglers in the summer. He’s one of those old timey independent Alaskans that can pretty much fix or do anything. He’s a carpenter, a pipefitter, a mechanic – and he is key for both fishing and weather reports. Harold’s Place is “classic Alaska” for hardy fishermen, and Harold has quite a few stories to tell. Like the one time he woke up in his bed with a brown bear so close to his face that it was literally drooling on his head. While that sort of thing rarely occurs, the bears truly are everywhere along the Tsiu in September. Karlin witnessed several each day, chasing fish, strolling down the banks and out swimming in the river.
The bear threat is a big reason four-wheelers are used to get around the Tsiu. The noise and motion tends to keep them at bay. Four-wheelers also provide the option of a quick getaway and an easy haul of the daily catch down to Harold’s fillet table. The bears along the Tsiu during Coho season often coax fishermen into heading in for an early evening cocktail rather than sticking around to try and fish at dusk. In fact, the bears are such an issue that Harold keeps his fillet table on a small knoll out in the middle of a tidal area near his place. This way he can hear them coming in the water, splashing through the flood plain for fish scraps when it’s getting dark. Having it there let’s him process fish late into the night and hear the bears walking through the water. If the table were on sand, they would be right on top of him before he or his old hound dog knew that they were there, and by then it might be too late.
Karlin immediately found the glacial water of Tsiu River to be incredibly dynamic. The water flowing over the soft sand meant that the river’s path changed daily. For instance, a place where the foursome of guys was standing on dry land, hooking into fish on one day, was submerged the next. The immediate topography along the Tsiu was also mostly sand dunes. It was brutal to hike in and at times felt like quicksand. Within a moment’s notice, one could be thigh-deep in sand. Since the sand is everywhere, one can’t just go out there with trout equipment - large arbor reels are required. Without a higher-end reel with a sealed drag system housed in its own compartment, a little bit of sand would make a standard reel sound like a coffee grinder.
The first day of fishing on the Tsiu, the boys lit up the Coho. For hours and then days the foursome fished with the Wrangell St. Elias Mountains dwarfing them in the background. Back and forth they switched between spey casting and standard fly gear. Their supply of Coho ammunition was endless, and the aggressive Coho kept hitting: purple and pink bunny leeches, zonkers, even some foam dry flies and of course… the dreaded chartreuse Clouser minnow. By fishing only the Clouser minnow or other wet flies, Karlin estimated that he could have easily caught and released 15 or more silvers per day during this peak of the run. But Karlin wanted a challenge. He wanted to confirm the rumors he had heard that these fish were catchable with dry flies on the surface. Hooking and landing an anadromous fish from the surface is exceptionally challenging. It’s a huge deal, and few people get to experience it.
Karlin soon learned that his standard pink pollywog (foam dry fly) was not aggressive enough. The locals have been known to use saltwater poppers, so he next decided to have a go with one of them. It worked! The fish were so fired up that he was, now and then, able to tick them off and pick them up on a pink, hard body popper or a more aggressive surface fly, such as a bomber. These are essentially beefed-up dry flies that ride the surface and entice the fish a bit more. Karlin got a couple of good looks putting in his time skating a dry fly, but his strike ratio really increased when he threw the more aggressive poppers. All of the variables came together to score Coho by fishing surface patterns that week.
The surface poppers were a good challenge for a while. Karlin could get one an hour this way as opposed to maybe three per hour on a dry fly. To increase strike frequency, the guys sometimes switched back to the streamer patterns, leeches, and minnows. Throughout the week, it seemed like the conditions all had to be just right for the dry fly, whereas the streamer patterns, leeches, and minnows were always great. The group hooked almost all silvers that week, many of them monsters. The only exceptions were that one of the Daves landed a humpy and Jeremy, a Dolly Varden.
A Tale of Two Rivers
During his return trip to Anchorage, Karlin weighed the trip in his mind. He matched up the first couple of days fishing on 7 Mile Creek with his later adventure of fishing the Tsiu River. The solitude was incredible on the Tsiu, but if he hadn’t had a friend with a local connection he still would have had spectacular Coho fishing in town. The fishing on the Tsiu was fantastic, but 7 Mile Creek had its advantages. I asked Karlin if he would have felt disappointed had all he gotten to experience was 7 Mile and not the Tsiu. “No way,” he said. Sure, he would have missed out on the grandeur of the Bush plane ride, the isolation, the bears and the views of the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains, but in terms of pure fishing – he would not have missed much by staying close to town. But both streams were fantastic to fish. And the fish were in!
I love a good fishing tale, especially when the catch gets bigger every time the story is told. This is why photographs are useful - not only to help us reflect back on our good times, but also to keep our friends from accusing us of stretching the truth. One past summer, I called up my friend, Karlin, a seasoned fly fisherman and photographer in Anchorage, to see how his recent trip to Cordova and the surrounding region had panned out. I was hoping to get a doozey of a fish story from him and maybe even a look at his photos. What I got was much more than a story. It was an adventure full of fascinating people, hungry bears and feisty salmon. It began with a road-side fishing adventure at Ibeck Creek (also known as “7 Mile Creek”) in Cordova, Alaska and moved to a remote fly-out fishing trip to the remote Tsiu River (pronounced “si-u”) in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.
Mining for Silver, Roadside
Karlin is a skilled fisherman and a former fly-shop employee, so he knows how to make the fish bite. His attention to detail is impeccable. Small adjustments in his fly-tying really seem to make fish hammer the line. Karlin typically enjoys some of the accessible streams on the Kenai Peninsula, but that’s usually the extent of the travel that his fishing budget will allow. One day, his long-time friend, Jeremy, invited him out to fish with a couple of friends (both named Dave) who were flying into Anchorage from Pittsburgh. Jeremy’s parents had retired years ago and made the decision to move to Cordova. They could have retired anywhere, but they chose Cordova because it was a remote but charming town in a beautiful location. The kindness and support of the local residents was overwhelming, so they settled there.
Jeremy had been traveling to Cordova for years to visit his family. His father, a retired pastor and commercial pilot, turned bush pilot, would fly them out to their cabin on the Tsiu River to fish the run of silver salmon that return each year. When it worked out for Jeremy to offer Karlin an invitation to come out and fish, he accepted and the date was set for early September. The first week in September is peak fishing for Coho on 7 Mile Creek and the Tsiu River, but it can also be good from late August and through late September.
Karlin arrived in Cordova with his gear and met up with Jeremy. They stashed his luggage at Jeremy’s parent’s place and geared up to fish 7 Mile Creek. They had a good five hours to wait until the two Daves landed on the ground, so they decided to give the best local prospect a try.
Jeremy and Karlin began fishing that afternoon at the bridge over 7 Mile Creek, and they immediately discovered that the fishing was hot. People were drifting cured salmon eggs right near the bridge, and they were doing well. Others were horsing silvers up the bank near the road. Deciding not to fish right near the highway, the two friends took the short five to ten-minute walk to where there was plenty of elbowroom to fish.
The creek had obvious holding water and pools where people gathered to target the fish, but with a little creativity, Jeremy and Karlin were able to sneak in and begin hooking some silvers. Karlin had brought along his spey rod and there were beautiful spans across the river for him to cast it. It probably wasn’t necessary, but he enjoyed using the 13ft 6wt spey on 7 Mile Creek. Switching between a spool with floating line and spool with sinking throughout the day, there were plenty of options for Karlin to try.
The silvers were aggressive and changing things up helped to keep the bite fresh. Where the water was deep and fast, Karlin would opt for floating line with a 30ft sink tip and allow the fly to swing through the run before stripping it back. Casting, mending and stripping line through the water, Karlin and Jeremy waded further from the crowds. Where the water contained lethargic fish in deeper holes, they presented their flies by slowly twitching them in the benthic areas of the water column. Switching out to a reel with sink tip line seemed to work better in faster water, with stripping the line generating success with more aggressive fish. The most exhilarating times were when fish would chase after a stripped fly, snapping at it and causing a wake before inhaling it at the very last minute!
The glacial silt in 7 Mile Creek was an important factor playing into the guys decision on how to fish it. The water was very turbid and highly silty. Even on the best day, it’s not possible to see bottom, but that doesn’t mean a bright-colored fly is out of the question. Karlin’s personal gauge was whether he could see his boot tips while wading up to his knees. With that amount of clarity he could effectively read the water and predict possible holding areas, as well as give the silvers a visible target. The siltiness of the river bottom also had it’s plus side – there weren’t a lot of snags, so the guys lost very few flies and got away with using generous weight. They just casted, presented flies right off the bottom and fished across the sand.
In terms of fly selection, Karlin and Jeremy brought along a case full of delectable “Coho cookies” to throw. They began with pink and purple leaches and white rabbit strip, either wound on the fly or straight off like a leech. But by far, the most productive fly they threw the entire week was a chartreuse-over-white Clouser minnow. In addition to being sensibly simple and easy to tie, it outfished all the others, hands down. It’s popular for kings, trout, even pike, and it absolutely slays the silvers. In other words, if you don’t think the chartreuse Clouser is awesome - you need awesome lessons.
At the beginning of the day, Karlin had turned to Jeremy while putting on his waders and asked, “Do you really think I’ll catch one?” Just three hours in, the two friends had hooked up with about five fish each and had their limit of three per person on their stringers. They got cleaned up and were ready to pick up Dave 1 and Dave 2 from the airport, who would almost certainly need to see the photographic evidence to validate such stellar fishing right in town. The two friends had a few minutes before getting to the airport that evening, so they stopped at one of a few places in town to have their day’s catch vacuum packed and frozen.
Taking Off to the Tsiu
After getting their fill of 7 Mile Creek in town, the four guys boarded an air taxi and flew for an hour southwest towards the Tsiu River. The plane traveled over the Bering Ice Field and the southern end of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park before touching down near the river’s mouth. Their destination was a remote and underdeveloped cabin belonging to Jeremy’s family. There was no water and no electricity. A propane stove, lanterns and a nearby well provided sufficient shelter and decent sleeping quarters, not to mention a good place to relax, tie flies and talk when the wind picked up.
Neighboring structures along the Tsiu were scarce. They included a high-end fishing lodge, a few shacks belonging to set netters, the family cabin and a rustic lodge referred to as “Harold’s Place.” Harold, who happens to be a faithful friend of Jeremy’s family, rents rooms to anglers in the summer. He’s one of those old timey independent Alaskans that can pretty much fix or do anything. He’s a carpenter, a pipefitter, a mechanic – and he is key for both fishing and weather reports. Harold’s Place is “classic Alaska” for hardy fishermen, and Harold has quite a few stories to tell. Like the one time he woke up in his bed with a brown bear so close to his face that it was literally drooling on his head. While that sort of thing rarely occurs, the bears truly are everywhere along the Tsiu in September. Karlin witnessed several each day, chasing fish, strolling down the banks and out swimming in the river.
The bear threat is a big reason four-wheelers are used to get around the Tsiu. The noise and motion tends to keep them at bay. Four-wheelers also provide the option of a quick getaway and an easy haul of the daily catch down to Harold’s fillet table. The bears along the Tsiu during Coho season often coax fishermen into heading in for an early evening cocktail rather than sticking around to try and fish at dusk. In fact, the bears are such an issue that Harold keeps his fillet table on a small knoll out in the middle of a tidal area near his place. This way he can hear them coming in the water, splashing through the flood plain for fish scraps when it’s getting dark. Having it there let’s him process fish late into the night and hear the bears walking through the water. If the table were on sand, they would be right on top of him before he or his old hound dog knew that they were there, and by then it might be too late.
Karlin immediately found the glacial water of Tsiu River to be incredibly dynamic. The water flowing over the soft sand meant that the river’s path changed daily. For instance, a place where the foursome of guys was standing on dry land, hooking into fish on one day, was submerged the next. The immediate topography along the Tsiu was also mostly sand dunes. It was brutal to hike in and at times felt like quicksand. Within a moment’s notice, one could be thigh-deep in sand. Since the sand is everywhere, one can’t just go out there with trout equipment - large arbor reels are required. Without a higher-end reel with a sealed drag system housed in its own compartment, a little bit of sand would make a standard reel sound like a coffee grinder.
The first day of fishing on the Tsiu, the boys lit up the Coho. For hours and then days the foursome fished with the Wrangell St. Elias Mountains dwarfing them in the background. Back and forth they switched between spey casting and standard fly gear. Their supply of Coho ammunition was endless, and the aggressive Coho kept hitting: purple and pink bunny leeches, zonkers, even some foam dry flies and of course… the dreaded chartreuse Clouser minnow. By fishing only the Clouser minnow or other wet flies, Karlin estimated that he could have easily caught and released 15 or more silvers per day during this peak of the run. But Karlin wanted a challenge. He wanted to confirm the rumors he had heard that these fish were catchable with dry flies on the surface. Hooking and landing an anadromous fish from the surface is exceptionally challenging. It’s a huge deal, and few people get to experience it.
Karlin soon learned that his standard pink pollywog (foam dry fly) was not aggressive enough. The locals have been known to use saltwater poppers, so he next decided to have a go with one of them. It worked! The fish were so fired up that he was, now and then, able to tick them off and pick them up on a pink, hard body popper or a more aggressive surface fly, such as a bomber. These are essentially beefed-up dry flies that ride the surface and entice the fish a bit more. Karlin got a couple of good looks putting in his time skating a dry fly, but his strike ratio really increased when he threw the more aggressive poppers. All of the variables came together to score Coho by fishing surface patterns that week.
The surface poppers were a good challenge for a while. Karlin could get one an hour this way as opposed to maybe three per hour on a dry fly. To increase strike frequency, the guys sometimes switched back to the streamer patterns, leeches, and minnows. Throughout the week, it seemed like the conditions all had to be just right for the dry fly, whereas the streamer patterns, leeches, and minnows were always great. The group hooked almost all silvers that week, many of them monsters. The only exceptions were that one of the Daves landed a humpy and Jeremy, a Dolly Varden.
A Tale of Two Rivers
During his return trip to Anchorage, Karlin weighed the trip in his mind. He matched up the first couple of days fishing on 7 Mile Creek with his later adventure of fishing the Tsiu River. The solitude was incredible on the Tsiu, but if he hadn’t had a friend with a local connection he still would have had spectacular Coho fishing in town. The fishing on the Tsiu was fantastic, but 7 Mile Creek had its advantages. I asked Karlin if he would have felt disappointed had all he gotten to experience was 7 Mile and not the Tsiu. “No way,” he said. Sure, he would have missed out on the grandeur of the Bush plane ride, the isolation, the bears and the views of the Wrangell-St. Elias Mountains, but in terms of pure fishing – he would not have missed much by staying close to town. But both streams were fantastic to fish. And the fish were in!
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