Tail Walker: Adventures Fly Rod in Hand: First Fun-fishing Day

The Week Flew By!

The first week of real work went great. We had an awesome group of clients from all over, and we all enjoyed our time on the water. This week we were blessed with dang near perfect conditions all week, with low temps and rain only intermittently. Everyone caught some fish, some bigger then others, on of our clients first fish of the first day, was a 29" arctic char that was between 8 and 10 pounds, a true trophy fish. The char around here don't get much bigger then that. No matter how much fun we have all week with the clients, theres always one day we look forward to, and thats saturday. We get to fish for ourselves. After change-out chores are done and the crew is all done with packing groceries and other stuff like that up the hill we get to go out.

This was my best fish of the day, and honestly its below average on the size side of things, but man do these char pull hard. This was also my buddy Coby's first time ever fishing with a fly rod, and he landed a bunch of bruisers. We weren't planning on fishing the char spot for long, but after a few drifts of the river and realizing it was pretty dead, we decided to focus on the char spot. Once we got down there we realized we only had one rod and reel set up with a heavy enough sink tip to get the job done, but a light went off in my head and i took out my MOW tips, and attached the 12ft section of t-11 to my loop on the fly line, and the 10ft section of t-11 to the 12ft piece. We were in business.

These guys are deceptively powerful for their size, i would say that they are probably pound for pound one of the harder fighting fish out here. They grab with authority and take your line like you owe them money. Just a great fish to target with a fly rod.

It was nice to get back out fun fishing, its definitely refreshing to get to fish for myself after a week of doing the dirty work. We stayed out until around 9:00 and then made the journey across the lake back to the lodge. Its pretty rare to enjoy the trip across the lake in one of the sleds, as its normally pretty rough, but we were greeted by glass calm water and a smooth cruise back to the lodge. One interesting thing we saw was what looked a big V moving over the surface, and i had a suspicion of what it was. Mike had a trip down to the Muklung river that some day and saw them too. Sockeye. They are here.

Well week 2's clients get here in a few hours, so its going to be back to work for another 6 days until its fun-fishing time again. Its a tough job, but i guess someone has to do it.