Time: 9:00AM – 6:15PM

Location: First Five Miles of Copper River above Lake Illiamna

Fish Landed: 20

Copper River 06/22/2011 Photo Album

On Wednesday Dr. McKenzie, Michi, Don, Mike, and Jared took off for Big Pike Lake while Jordan and I returned to the Copper River. There was a lot of attractive water that we hadn’t explored yet. The temperature was 45 degrees when we left and my feet got quite cold in the morning. The sky cleared in the early afternoon and the sun came out by mid-afternoon.

Jordan Busy Setting Me Up in Morning

By Wednesday I realized that Jordan was an all-star guide, and in addition to catching lots of nice fish, I was learning many new techniques I could apply in Colorado. Jordan is 23 years old, but wise beyond his years due to growing up fishing in rivers and streams flowing into the Great Lakes and fishing for steelhead. In addition, he is 6 ft, 3 in. tall and towers above the river. Jordan’s ability to spot fish and read water surpassed mine and is among the best I’ve witnessed.

A Moorish Mouse

I booked the Alaska trip through Taylor Edrington of Royal Gorge Anglers, and Jordan worked for Taylor at a different lodge in a previous summer. Because of this association, Mark assigned Jordan as my guide, and I was definitely the beneficiary. This was Jordan’s first summer with Alaska Rainbow Point Lodge.

Copper River Spreads Out Here

Perhaps the greatest lesson I learned from observing Jordan was the attention he paid to weight and placement of the indicator. Whereas I am prone to put on one split shot and fish a river with the strike indicator in the same spot for an entire day, Jordan was constantly making adjustments based on water depth, current velocity, and our physical approach to a stretch of water. I will definitely apply this to my future fishing outings.

22" Rainbow That Hammered the Moorish Mouse

A second important lesson was making stack mends. When fishing with nymphs and an indicator, Jordan taught me to cast across the river and then make one or two big mends to get the fly line bowed above the indicator. The trick after executing the initial cast and mends was to then feed out line at a constant pace while making short flicking upstream mends. This kept the indicator and flies moving downstream drag free. By the last day on the Copper River I was making 30 yard drag free drifts. This technique carries numerous benefits. First, one can approach fish from above because you are very distant from the downstream fish. Second you cover a huge amount of water on a single cast. It is both efficient and less likely to disturb the water. Third, I believe I will be able to fish areas of the river on the far side of a strong mid-stream current using this method.

The third lesson Jordan taught me was to be confident in fishing streamers. Here again he taught me how to cast across stream and allow the streamer to sink and then let it swing until directly below. He taught me to point the tip of the rod down and toward the line and watch the line carefully where it enters the water. We tried varying the retrieve by stripping sometimes and also twitching at the end of the drift. When we used Jordan’s rods, he installed a sink tip line, and I discovered the value of that addition to my equipment. I rarely fish streamers and use it as an offering of last resort. Hopefully this will no longer be the case.

Jordan allowed me to cast his two-handed 12 foot spey rod and taught me one of the many casting techniques. I have much to learn in this realm, but it demonstrated the power and distance that can be gained with this technique.

So on Wednesday Jordan led me back to the sweet long run where I’d landed two 20+ inch rainbows on Tuesday. We worked the whole run top to bottom. For the close in fishing I used the style of nymphing I am familiar with in Colorado; three quarters upstream, then lift the rod as it drifts across from me, then lower the rod and release line. For the area requiring longer casts Jordan instructed me on the stack mend technique described above. We were using the same pheasant tail combination that had worked yesterday and this yielded six rainbows by lunchtime with the largest being around 16 inches.

Toward the end of the morning we switched to the spey rod, and I struggled with this technique, but did land one fish on the spey. After lunch we moved upstream to the “mouse eddy” below a small island. Here we noticed a decent amount of rising fish with quite a few caddis in the air, so Jordan tied on a black foam body caddis with a tuft of orange poly over the wing for visibility. This proved to be quite effective, and I landed three or four fish on the black caddis.

Pretty Rainbow Landed on Wednesday

We continued upstream and returned to the eddy across from Tuesday’s lunch beach where I landed a couple more fish. Next we hit a different wide run where Jordan set me up with the spey rod again and a sink tip line with a white and green Clouser-style streamer. I took one rainbow on this set up when it struck while the fly dangled below me.

A Mouthful of Mouse

Our final location was near the mouth of the Copper in some slack water next to the right bank facing upstream. There were fish rising in this area, so Jordan had me return to fishing the caddis with the pheasant tail dropper. I landed 3 or 4 small rainbows in this area that I counted, but many more too small to count. At this point in the day we were approaching quitting time, and I’d landed 19 of 28 hook ups. It would be my highest total of fish landed, but the fish were on average smaller than the previous days.

Stretched Out Before Me, the Mouse Mauler

A Better View of the Fraud Mouse

We had a small remaining slot of time to catch number 20, so Jordan tied on a Moorish Mouse and had me work the bottom 20 yards of the slack water with the high bank. I began casting the mouse hard against the bank and immediately wiggling and stripping back toward me. Jordan watched, but I wasn’t getting any response, so he decided to go back upstream to get the jet boat and then come back and pick me up. When he reached the boat, I’d covered 90% of the targeted bank. I tossed another cast and it began to streak away as I wiggled. The mouse had traveled no more than three feet when a huge mouth appeared and chomped down on the mouse. I set the hook and shouted to Jordan who rushed the boat down and helped me land a 22” rainbow with a mouse stuck in its mouth. What a thrill! I’d read articles about this, but actually got to experience it. We took a bunch of photographs and streaked back to the lodge. 20 fish were landed on the Copper River, and a 22 inch monster ate a fake mouse.

Time: 10:00AM – 6:15PM

Location: First 5 miles above lake

Fish Landed: 11

Copper River 06/21/2011 Photo Album

After going to bed at midnight with the sun still up on Monday, breakfast was served at 7AM on Tuesday. It was still raining lightly and very overcast as we set out on the jet boats for the Copper River again. The weather did clear gradually as the day wore on and the sun actually came out in the middle to late afternoon.

Jordan Enjoys Lunch Fire

I landed three smaller rainbows before lunch (small by Alaska standards are 12-13 inch fish) as we worked some runs with streamers. One rainbow took the purple leech and then two took the white marabou flesh fly while I fished the spey rod. After lunch Jordan introduced me to two spots where an eddy was formed below an island. The most productive place was directly across from where we ate lunch where a huge eddy resulted in a backflow along the far bank. I was positioned at the point of a gravel bar where the current swept back and met the main current.

Pretty Dolly Varden

Jordan spotted the two Dolly Varden just below our feet where the current dropped off and I managed to land both on the rubber leg pheasant tail and another small pheasant tail with a red thread band behind the bead. Trout were rising sporadically in the eddy as we fished, and there were yellow sallies and caddis in the air along with a few of BWO’s. When some fish began rising deep in the slough by a sunken log, Jordan tied on one of my Letort hoppers and I duped a 16 inch rainbow that I landed. This fulfilled one of my goals of catching a large rainbow on a dry fly. A caddis dry also produced a rainbow in the eddy. The best fish sucked in the small pheasant tail in the riffles formed below me where the eddy and main current merged. This rainbow measured out in excess of 20 inches.

A Very Nice Rainbow with the Sun Out

Eventually the rising activity slowed and with it the fish catching ended so we pulled up anchor and moved to a beautiful stretch where a run ran down the center of the river and then swung closer to the far bank. In this area 30 yards of prime fish habitat screamed for nymphs, and that’s exactly what we did. Jordan kept the double pheasant tail nymph combination in place, and using the high stick nymphing technique I landed another three fine rainbows, two in the 20-21 inch range.

Sun Still High at 9:15PM, June 21

We called it a day around 6:15 and headed back for a fine dinner prepared by chef Slam.

Time: 7:00PM – 10:30PM

Location: Lower end of Copper River above Lake Illiamna

Fish Landed: 2

Copper River 06/20/2011 Photo Album

This story begins in Anchorage, AK on June 19. My Alaska Air flights from Denver were flawless, and I found a taxi that took me to the Lake Hood Inn on Sunday afternoon. I met my fishing companions for the week at the Lake Hood Inn. They were Michi and Don Henley and Dr. Steve McKenzie from Hemet, CA. Don and Steve were fishing buddies that spent a lot of time on a southern California lake fishing for bass and striped bass.

Lake Hood Inn - Welcome to Alaska

We commissioned a taxi that took us to downtown Anchorage to the Glacier Brewhouse for dinner. Anchorage is a small city that seems even smaller than a city because of all the open spaces with evergreen trees and lakes. It was partly cloudy and cool on Sunday with highs probably in the low 60’s.

On Sunday morning I awoke early and prepared to be picked up by 7AM. The innkeeper arranged for a friend to shuttle the four of us to the Illiamna Air Taxi terminal near Ted Stevens Airport. I arrived at the airport and checked all my bags and waited for the others to arrive. It didn’t take long, and the four of us met pilot Nick and boarded the Pilatus airplane. I was selected to sit in the co-pilot seat up front. Nick ran through his checklist and discovered a flap light that remained lit on the instrument panel. He found the procedure for rebooting, and I actually had a role holding a switch in during this process. After running through the checklist a second time, another light remained on that was not to Nick’s liking, so we all exited the aircraft and returned to the terminal for a short period of time until Nick could locate the owner of the air taxi service.

Dave As Co-Pilot

At 9:40AM all systems were go, and we took off under cloudy skies. The departure was 1:40 later than scheduled. I watched the GPS navigation system, altitude instrument and fuel gage during the entire one hour flight. When we reached Illiamna and dropped out of the dense cloud cover, we were almost on the ground!

Once in the Illiamna terminal I discovered that we were grounded indefinitely due to low cloud cover. The Beaver floatplane that was scheduled to take us across the lake could not be flown by instruments, so visibility was imperative. The Socal group and I hung out in the airport watching it rain and reading, but it was difficult to remain patient being this close to my long anticipated week of fishing. There was another group of six fishermen from the California bay area also waiting in the terminal for a flight to Copper River Lodge. The group somehow commissioned a van and picked up some snacks at the only store in Illiamna. They shared with us, and I was so hungry I ate a cold uncooked hot dog for the first time since I was a kid.

Finally late in the afternoon, Mark Higgins, the owner of Rainbow Point Lodge, called to inform the terminal that he was going to bring his boat across the lake and pick us up. We all jumped into our fishing waders to stay dry, and piled into a pickup truck driven by one of the Illiamna Air Taxi workers who drove us to the dock on Lake Illiamna. We all climbed into the cabin cruiser and enjoyed a 40 minute ride across the lake to the Rainbow Point Lodge. It was still raining steadily, but since there is daylight virtually 24 hours a day on June 20, Mark said we could go out fishing as long as we wanted. The guides were ready to work.

Shaggy Bear Swims to Gravel Bar Ahead of Our Boat

We elected to have a satisfying dinner prepared by Slam, the cook, and then jumped back into our fishing clothes. I was assigned Jordan Carter as my guide, Michi and Don had Mike, and Dr. Steve would work with Jared. Jordan led me to his jet boat and we were off to the Copper River. The ride from the lodge to the mouth of the Copper River was roughly 15-20 minutes. I had my face tilted down and used my left hand to pull my rain hood down over my face as the rain was pelting quite strong due to the speed of the jet boat. Jordan gave me a shout to look up and watch a bear that was swimming across the lake in front of us. By the time I got out my camera and snapped a picture, the scraggy creature was on a protruding gravel bar.

Dr. Steve was already out and fishing, so we cruised by him and ran the boat on the shore of an island and began fishing. Jordan started me out casting a purple articulated leech streamer and I hooked but failed to land my first fish. It didn’t take long, however, before I hooked and landed a nice 13” rainbow on a white marabou flesh fly. We moved the boat to a new position further upstream, and while fishing near Dr. Steve and Jared, I hooked a nice 20+ inch rainbow on the purple leech. Jared took my camera and snapped some nice photos of Jordan and me holding the beautiful wild Copper River rainbow. It was quite damp and chilly so we quit fishing at around 10:30PM and headed back to the lodge satisfied in knowing that we’d reached our destination and had a bit of success. I had four hookups and landed two fish, one in excess of 20 inches.

Guide Jordan, Dave and 20" Rainbow

Also during this first Alaska experience, Jordan let me use his two-handed spey rod, so I received a bit of instruction on a new type of fishing.