I flew to Juneau, Fairbanks, and then Anchorage for business
meetings in August one year, and I know I spent more time in that airplane than
it takes to cross Texas. After the
meetings were over I spent some time at a fishing lodge. I saw whales, and I know Texas doesn’t have
anything that big. I caught fish that
were sooooo big that…oops. Well, it’s
hard being a Texan or a fisherman without bragging, and it’s doubly hard when
one is both a Texan and a fisherman.
Add to that the problem of being a Texan bragging about the size of
something outside of Texas, and maybe you can understand my confusion. But see them I did. And catch them I did (well, maybe not the
whale).
The trip was unusual in that I had more vacation time stored
up than the company normally allowed, and I was in Alaska at the right time of
year for fishing. I had been to Alaska
before on business trips, but either I didn’t have enough space in my schedule
to go fishing, or it was just too darn cold for me. I never enjoyed standing in water with chunks of ice the size of
my car floating by.
In Anchorage I crossed paths with a lodge owner/outfitter
who had flown into the city for some supplies or something. We talked for a couple of hours about the
fishing near his lodge, and I decided to go for it. He put together a fishing package for me that he believed would
turn a Texan into an Alaskan. And he
came close.
The first day we would fly to his lodge where I would get
outfitted for the two trips I would take.
The first trip would be for halibut in the saltwater, the second trip
would be for salmon or Dolly Varden on one of the rivers. These trips would be four days each, and
there would be a one-day break in between them. A simple plan and the outfitter would fill in the details.
We tossed my things into his plane and I climbed into the
co-pilot’s seat beside the outfitter.
As I buckled in my first thoughts were not about the dented
pontoons. My first thoughts were not
about the rusty patches I saw on one of the wings and the tail. I didn’t even think about the cracked
windows. My first thoughts concerned my
entire life flashing before my eyes.
It took a few tries to get the prop to turn over, and when
it did, the noise from the engine was deafening, and the plane shuddered and
shook like a California earthquake. The
outfitter handed me a set of earphones that helped eliminate the noise, and we
could talk to each other through the attached microphone. But I wasn’t listening, and I wasn’t
talking. I was trying to figure out how
to open the plane’s door and jump before we were too high off the ground.
I didn’t figure out the door in time, and I must have given
some indication of my intentions, because we took off rather abruptly. Most airplanes taxi to the runway, and then
begin a long takeoff. We were airborne
before reaching the runway. Almost
immediately we did a hard right and flew up into a cloudbank. I didn’t see anything but gray for three
long, long hours.
Ultimately we descended through the clouds to land the plane
on an incredibly blue lake in a sea of luminous green trees. We taxied up to a pier where someone lassoed
a spike sticking out of the side of the plane, pulled us in, tied us up, and
stood there grinning like he had caught the big one. We tossed things out onto the pier where the grinning person
loaded them onto a big wagon attached to a three-wheeled ATV. And we walked to an amazing log-style
building in the middle of nowhere.
I don’t know what it took to build that big house, not to
mention the eight or ten large cabins lodged in the woods just steps from the
lake, but somehow someone did it, and I was ready to take full advantage of the
comforts I imagined were awaiting me.
I stepped into the main room of the big house and looked at
the fireplace at each end, found a huge overstuffed leather chair and sat
down. It took about half an hour to
realize I had gone from hell to heaven.
At least I would have to wait ten more days before I climbed back into
that plane. Uh-huh.
I traveled everywhere with at least one fishing rod, and
this trip was no exception. Drifuss,
the outfitter, looked at my equipment and declared it fit to be used only on
those weenie fish like they have in Texas.
It seemed to me this Alaskan had never been to Texas, so I just kept my
mouth shut. He said he would put
together the proper gear for tomorrow’s fishing trip for halibut. About an hour later he called me to go over
the things he had gathered for my use.
First he provided me with the proper clothes. After I tried on a few heavy jackets, thick
pants, and heavy boots, then added a thick wool cap and big gloves, he was
satisfied I would be warm. Then he
handed me a sixty-pound tackle box, and he followed it with a fishing pole as
thick as my wrist. It was about seven
feet long and had rollers instead of guides.
The reel was made from two truck rims welded together, and had a
telephone pole for a handle, and instead of monofilament, the reel was spooled
with quarter-inch nylon rope.
Wait—that’s a Texan talking. But
it was bigger and heavier than anything I had ever seen before.
After everything was prepared, I had a dinner of some kind
of a steak. I didn’t know at the time
what kind of steak it was, but I was certainly impressed by the size of the
thing. I once ate a 72-ounce steak at a
place near Amarillo, Texas, and I admit it was more meat than I preferred to
eat at one sitting. However, this steak
was much bigger. I thought it was to be
divided among the several men at the table, but each of the other men was also
staring at something similar. And that
was only the beginning. There was the
giant potato, the onion rings, mac and cheese, rolls, gravy, pies, cake, and
the list goes on. Someone asked about a
salad, but we found out that was the purpose of the onion rings. The ketchup doubled as salad dressing.
Then off to bed.
Feathers. It was a real feather
bed. Well, a real feather mattress,
real feather pillow, and a real bearskin top cover. The room had everything the best hotels could hope for in the
realm of luxury. I had doubts about
ever leaving this room to go fishing.
My thoughts wandered toward living the rest of my life in this luxurious
room. My thoughts were transported to a
level of ecstasy reserved for kings in palaces. I should have listened to my thoughts. Mind you, the fishing was great, but that
room…
Breakfast was on the table at five the next morning. I had another steak (much smaller this
time), biscuits the size of my plate, fried potatoes, and four different kinds
of gravy. There were stacks of
pancakes, baked fish, ham, bacon, cheeses, gallons of orange and apple juice,
and not a drop of coffee to be found.
WHAT??? NO COFFEE!?? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooo… Apparently Drifuss was supposed to bring it
back from Anchorage, but he brought me instead. I got more than a few glares from the other men.
Drifuss instructed us to go out to the pier where our gear
had already been loaded onto the boat.
Four of us headed to the pier to get in the boat, while the other three
men just hung their heads and tried vainly to stifle the laughter. Arriving at the end of the pier we looked
around for the boat, but the only boat we saw was that plane. We thought the boat may have been taken
somewhere for more fuel or something, but Drifuss informed us that the boat we
were getting on was indeed the plane.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooo…
It was a scramble to get to the back seats where we could
somewhat ignore what was happening around us.
But I was too slow and again I was sitting next to Drifuss in the
co-pilot’s seat. Until yesterday I had
never landed on water, and it was actually fun, but taking off from water is
another story, especially in this plane.
Again the prop didn’t want to turn over, and this time there were four
men agreeing with it. But Drifuss had the
stronger will, and the plane began to roar and shake. The water had some low waves, which added to the fun of our
takeoff, and the plane was overloaded, which meant we made five or six tries up
and down that lake before climbing into the air. By then my life had quit flashing before my eyes.
About two hours later we landed on a glass smooth inlet from
the ocean and taxied up to an old wharf where a strangely familiar man with a
big grin lassoed the spike on the side of the plane. We tossed things out onto the wharf where the grinning man loaded
them onto a big wagon attached to a three-wheeled ATV. We followed him about a hundred yards or so
to a very nice fishing boat that would be our home for the next few days. Within the hour we were at sea, and soon
after that we heard the sound of a struggling plane overhead. None of us even looked up. We knew what that noise was about.
We were shown where we would bunk, given a few instructions,
and told that meals would depend on what we could catch. Meanwhile, there was always coffee in the
galley. I don’t know what the captain
said after that, and I’m certain the other men knew as much as I did, because
getting to the galley was far more important than anything else the captain had
to say. Five or six cups later, the
captain resumed his short speech about safety and some other issues.
By early afternoon we were sitting on a perfectly smooth
ocean preparing to drop our lines into the water for halibut. Captain Rafe told us that the halibut are
usually active here and to expect some good action, but the bottom where they
live is many hundreds of yards down, so it will be a long slow tiring process
of bringing them up. Be prepared.
I dropped my line and watched as the line on the reel
quickly disappeared. About the time I
thought I would run out of line, I reached the bottom. The leather pads I had on my thumbs to slow
the line speed were so hot from the friction, I thought my thumbs were cooked
to well done. Once the reel stopped
spinning, I pulled off the leather
pads, took up the slack, raised my weight a few feet from the bottom and
waited. And waited.
After half an hour one of the crewmembers suggested I jig
the line a bit and see if it would stir up some action. I tried it a few times and felt a small
tug. And I mean small. At that distance I wasn’t certain of
anything happening on the bottom. I
told the crewmember about the small tug, and he got excited. “Pull it up! Pull it up!”
I started cranking the line back onto the reel, and at first
I didn’t really feel anything other than the 5-pound lead weight and the weight
of the line, but soon I began to feel something all right. It was my muscles. What goes down must come up.
So I cranked. I had reeled in
about two hundred yards of line before I knew with certainty I had hooked a
fish. Now along with the lead weight
and the weight of the line, I had the weight of a fish that didn’t have any
desire to come to the surface and visit me.
I cranked for another hour.
By now even my hangnails were hurting.
I kept cranking in spite of the tears running down my face. I lost feeling in my hands for a while from
the pain. I cranked another hour. And another hour. I thought I saw my life flash before my eyes for the third time
in two days, but this time the flash was a fish.
Actually it was a big halibut I was seeing. Captain Rafe and the crewmembers were
prepared with large gaffs and a wench to bring it on board through an opening
in the railing, and although it was a struggle, that fish landed on the deck of
the boat. They tied a rope around its
tail and hoisted it up on a boom. (I
may not be using the proper terms here, but you get the idea). It was bigger than me. The scales on the boom stopped at 304
pounds. And that was one ugly fish
besides. How could a fish be so dark on
one side, so white on the other side, and have both eyes on the same side?
I tried to get to my bunk to lie down, but the deck was
closer. It wasn’t long before someone
noticed me, and soon I was back in the galley with a crewmember helping me get
some feeling back into my arms. I
rested there for almost an hour before moving about some, and when I returned
to the deck, the big halibut was still hanging by its tail, and the men wanted
pictures. Photographs were taken, the
fish was lowered into a freezer, and I was lowered onto my bunk.
The following morning I discovered I wasn’t the only one
recovering. One of the other men with
my party had also hooked a halibut over three hundred pounds and, like me, was paying
a big price for being out of shape. We
waited until the third day before fishing again, and this time we fished much
shallower, and definitely not for halibut.
It was on this third day a large Orca, or killer whale,
surfaced near our boat. The captain
stopped the motor, and we floated and watched this magnificent creature and
several members of its family play around us.
According to the captain, we were being treated to a rare display by
these leviathans. This isn’t their
normal territory, but they do show up every two or three years, and when they
do they like to show off for the boats in the area.
On the fourth day the whales were gone, and we quit fishing
early to travel back to the wharf to meet up with our plane. All four of us had caught halibut, but the
two smartest men caught several smaller ones instead of one big one. They kept their fish, but I gave mine to the
crew, and they had it portioned out among them rather quickly. Subsistence living is not easy, and every
little bit helps.
Reluctantly we climbed back into the plane to go back to the
lodge. Again I was in the front, but
this time it wasn’t so bad. The plane
was coaxed into starting, and we were in the air on the first attempt. Still, there was this thing about my life flashing
before my eyes, but I was used to it by now.
There was one day of down time back at the lodge before we
went fishing for Dolly Varden. The
salmon run had just ended for all practical purposes, but the Dolly Varden were
moving and Drifuss knew the place to take us.
I was afraid to ask if it involved a plane ride. Of course it did.
We landed on a long narrow lake less than an hour away from
the lodge where three of us this time were dropped off along with the grinning
man who was to be our guide and cook.
He had us wait by the edge of the lake while he disappeared into the
woods for a while, and when he returned it was with a three-wheeled ATV with a
wagon behind it. We loaded up the gear
onto the wagon and followed him up a small trail to a cabin. A nice cabin. Very nice.
It was built for up to ten people, basically two groups of
four plus a guide for each group. And
it was well apportioned. Quickly we
settled into our individual rooms, and prepared to go fishing—right after
lunch.
I’ll stop calling him the grinning man. His name was Smiley. Really.
Actually it was his last name, but he used it as his handle. And he could cook. It seems that he should have been a chef somewhere, but here he
was cooking and guiding in Alaska. He
slapped together a quick lunch that I would have called a full dinner anywhere
else. Then he gave us some instructions
about fishing in competition with the bears.
And a .357.
The bears weren’t usually a problem in this area, he told
us, but don’t trust them to just wave “hello” and go their way. They are actually rather shy, and the bears
will normally go somewhere else if they hear you coming, so make noise, it
won’t scare the fish away. To help with
the noise, each of us was given a three-wheeled ATV to use, although we
couldn’t travel very far with them.
About a mile or so in each direction the lake became a stream again,
either inflowing or outflowing, and the ATV would be of little use beyond that
point. It was on those streams where we
would be fishing. Today we were going
past the inlet to the lake to Smiley’s favorite place on the stream.
When we arrived at the place where the stream flowed into
the lake, I couldn’t tell the difference.
The stream was as wide as the lake, and I will admit it was much wider
than any river I had seen in Texas. But
we traveled on and soon I could begin to see riffles and rocks visible in the
water. Gravel bars were making their
appearance here and there, and smaller streams were flowing into the main
stream every fifty yards or so. Soon we
came to a small falls with a gravel bar just above it. Here Smiley began to send us out in separate
directions.
I was a spin fisherman in those days, and so were the other
men with me. None of us were into
fly-fishing at that time, but in later discussions with these men, we all
agreed that this was the place to fly fish.
And we caught Dolly Varden until we were absolutely exhausted—not
halibut exhausted, but exhausted nonetheless.
That night at the mini-lodge, we had steaks for dinner
again. This time we asked what they
were, and were told caribou this time around.
Sometimes they had elk, sometimes deer, sometimes moose, sometimes
caribou, but mostly they had beef like everyone else. I didn’t care; it was all good.
Breakfast was fish, and I assume it was Dolly Varden, but I
don’t remember asking. Along with it
was unlimited bacon, ham, biscuits the size of…, but you’ve heard this
before. Needless to say, I was in a
state of glutinous euphoria. The thing
I couldn’t understand was how Smiley stayed so thin. Some people have all the luck.
The second day we traveled down the lake past the outlet,
this time the change was very defined, to a long series of gravel bars and
riffles where we spread out again to fish.
All day long a chorus of “Hello Dolly” could be heard by any passersby,
if there were any, as we caught and released more fish than I believed
possible. And day three was the same.
Wow…wow.
Fishing this area was a magical time for me, and I didn’t
want to leave, but all things come to an end, it was time to go face the
plane. On day four we fished the banks
of the lake waiting for the plane to arrive, and the fishing was just as
great. Then we heard the plane. God help us.
Back at the main lodge that evening we were having another
incredible dinner, this time with coffee, when we heard the sound of a plane
arriving at the lodge. Not Drifuss’s
plane, a real plane. We all walked out
to see who had arrived, and all of us were looking at the new plane with our tongues
hanging out. It was beautiful, and it
was everything Drifuss’s plane was not.
And we wanted to fly in it.
The man taxied up to the pier, stepped down a ladder onto
the pontoon and tossed a rope to Smiley.
He climbed onto the pier, exchanged keys with Drifuss, and then climbed
into the old plane. It took some
patience to move the prop, but soon he was airborne, and we were looking at
Drifuss.
“Oh, that old thing?
It was a loaner while mine was being tuned up. I’m glad it’s gone. Every
time I get in it my life flashes before my eyes.”
Decades have passed since that trip, but I ran into Drifuss at a fishing show in southern California recently, and we reminisced about that old plane. It was the only thing that kept this Texan from becoming an Alaskan.
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