Fly-fishing for Small Stream Coho in Southeast Alaska - Gary Lewis

You can’t walk across the river on the backs of salmon, but you might trip over the pinks.

 

Brian Cathcart teased this coho out of pocket water with a front-heavy coho streamer. photo by Gary Lewis

 

I had a sense if we looked upriver, we might see a bear and I told a couple of the guys to go take a look. Sure enough, there was a big black female and a couple three cubs on the gravel bar upstream.

Letting the bears go upriver, we rigged rods and walked together downstream along a well marked trail and then spread out in the river.

Six hundred miles north of Seattle, a land mass of 2,600 square miles and 990 miles of coastline, Prince of Wales island is 130 miles long, 65 miles wide. It is the fourth largest island in the United states after Hawaii, Kodiak and Puerto Rico.

The island is walled by mountain peaks and cut with fjords and carpeted with dense forest. About 6,000 people live on the island. Craig is the largest community with 1,500 people. Klawock has 900 people then there is Hydaburg, Hollis and Thorne Bay.

  

A purple streamer with a chartreuse head proved the undoing for this silver. photo by Gary Lewis

 

In terms of the river salmon fishing, the coho run only gets better later in September and October. Which brings me to the next subject. Rain. It’s not the rainiest place in the world. But you will think it is. Annual precipitation is an average 148 inches.

What’s the rainiest month? That’s October with more than 18 inches. Temperatures though are mild running 64 degrees in August and 59 degrees in September and a soggy 51 in October.

An angler has to wade through the pink salmon to get to the silvers and although they are not always visible, the coho are there. Every piece of dark water has coho in it. Maybe a couple. Maybe a couple dozen. Maybe a couple hundred.

Drift fishing. Beads. Bait. Flies. Spoons. Spinners. Every one has their go-to for coho and our group was no different. The trick is reading the water. And reading the fish. And then decide what to use. 

 

Bear tracks can be found on any sandbar on Prince of Wales Island. photo by Gary Lewis

 

When I saw a coho chase my spinner out of the churning boil at the bottom of the rapids, saw it snap at the lure and turn away, I knew we had a biter.

I put the rod down and grabbed Brian Cathcart. He had a heavy lead-eyed purple streamer that would get down to the fish fast.

“Stand here on this rock and run your fly in that fast water,” I said. He didn’t need anymore instruction. I turned my back and when I turned around again, he had a bright silver on the end of his line. 

That set the tone for the trip. Everyone in the group saw Brian land that fish and carry it back. The group split up after that, some fishing larger rivers and sometimes the saltwater off the seawall at Klawock. For me, the smaller streams were where I wanted to spend my time. Brian Cathcart said, “It wasn’t just fishing, it was spiritual.” And I had to agree.

   

Gathered for dinner at Harlequin Lodge after a day of fishing the rivers and the salt water too. photo by Gary Lewis

 

There are ways to catch salmon faster. There are places in Alaska - like the Kenai - to catch bigger coho. But there are no better fish than the ones you might tangle with a quarter mile out of the ocean. And if there are no fish in the lower reach, drive up or walk up and cross that rapid or walk out on that gravel bar. The river or creek may be only 20 feet or 30 feet across and no one needs to take casting lessons to throw a fly into the holding water.

Island Spirit

For my annual September trip, I booked our small group into Harlequin Lodge outside of Hollis, Alaska. Harlequin Lodge  opened in 2022 and offers charter fishing, good cooking and hospitality. In 2012 the father and son team Doug Wagner and Lucas Wagner bought a small parcel of property outside of Hollis and began to put up a cabin. Over the next dozen years, Doug and Lucas expanded the cabin and built more outbuildings which have become the lodge. It is one of the homiest lodges I have seen.

Getting to Hollis is part of the fun. First you have to go to Ketchikan. Fly into Ketchikan International which is a short hop from Seattle.

 

Randy Knight, of Redmond, Ore., on the ferry from Ketchikan headed to Prince of Wales Island. The ferry sets sail in the afternoon at 2:30p.m. Three hours later the fisherman lands in Hollis. photo by Gary Lewis

 

Because we arrived later in the day, we stayed at a hotel on the waterfront and spent the first morning of the trip walking around the city of Ketchikan.

We happened to arrive on Prince of Wales a couple of days before an important totem pole raising. A number of people were on the ferry headed to the ceremony and we chanced to meet the family of the principal carver who introduced us and invited us to the ceremony.

Reg Davidson, who makes his home in Haida Gwai, was brought up in a family of artists

One of his first solo projects was a 30-foot totem pole he was commissioned to carve in 1980. Today his work is much sought after including totem poles, masks, drums and dance capes. We also met Clinton Cook, the Craig Tribal Association president who shared the history. The association acquired the one-acre parcel in 1996 and built a hall for the community.

   

A first for this angler. Gary Lewis participated in a totem pole raising in Craig, Alaska. This is the view from the back of the rope. photo by Gary Lewis

 

The day of the totem pole raising was clear and we all enjoyed a rare blue sky with puffy clouds that skidded over ahead of the next rainstorm.

Prince of Wales Island is home to the Tlingit and Haida people. The Haida count Haida Gwai as their homeland, just off the coast of British Columbia, and south of Prince of Wales Island. The Haida who have lived in the Craig area since the 1880s, have two moieties otherwise known as descent groups: Eagle and Raven. The Tlingit moieties are Raven, Eagle, Wolf, Killerwhale, Frog, Thunderbird, Hummingbird and Butterfly

While I have long been acquainted with totem carvers and a great-great-great-great uncle was a carver, I never foresaw myself participating in a raising, but all of a sudden there was a call for help on the ropes and I lent a hand.

The carving, which probably weighed as much as an F-250 and a drift boat together had to be lifted into place by good-old fashioned brute strength. There were at least 40 lifting the pole and 80 or more of us on the ropes and a master of ceremonies calling for more muscle here and less muscle there and so on until everyone held their collective breath and the massive carving settled into place.

Rods And Rigging

I like to bring a fly rod and a spinning rod. Catching salmon on spinners is a thrill akin to swinging a streamer. But I always bring Pro-Cure to cure salmon eggs and this time we brought Pro-Cure’s Last Supper cure, which is the last thing they gobble before they go in the ice box.

On the last day, my batch of eggs had cured perfectly. I set up with a sniper-style float and a gob of eggs under the egg-loop and caught a coho on the tenth cast.

I was feeling a melancholy in the afternoon, anticipating the trip home and all I wanted to do was walk up the little river one more time and hop from sandbar to sandbar. Cathcart came with me, and Trevor Barclay followed with the camera. At about river mile 15 or so, where the road crossed over the river, we clambered down the slippery bank at the bridge and then walked upstream fishing the pocket water till a rainstorm made us seek the shelter of the bridge again. There, Cathcart probed behind a school of pinks, and picked off a 13-inch dolly varden with an egg-sucking leech. Another fish to tick off his life list. 

The river was full of spawning pink salmon and dolly varden were there in the pockets waiting to pick up the spawn that didn’t go in the gravel.

   

Puff Patterns And Egg Suckers

Fishing small stream coho, I like a 7- or 8-weight rod  with a floating line or a short sink tip. For the leader, I will start with a butt section of 25- or 30-pound test and taper quickly down to a 10-pound tippet. The leader doesn’t need to be more than seven feet long and can be readily cut back to five feet. In pocket water, a shorter leader is better.

The fly box should be stuffed with front-loaded leech patterns like the Fat Cat Leech from Rainy’s Flies in pink and purple and simulated egg pattern like Jan’s Puff Daddy in chartreuse, pink or purple. Hugely important is how heavy they are. The difference between catching fish or not is how fast they sink.

 

 

When plumbing the depths of the deeper pools on the Harris, Klawock or Thorne River or on one of the dozens of creeks that hold coho, a strike indicator is a big help. Why I like the 1/16-, 1/8- or 1/4-ounce West Coast Floats as an indicator is that the dark underside is pointed to the fish while the orange and chartreuse colors present to the fisherman. It is more stealthy than a round plastic bubble. Make sure to slide the float up or down the leader to match the depth of the pool and/or where fish are holding in the water column.

Egg-sucking leeches are always good in Alaska, for virtually everything. The Warpath’s Egg Sucka Whammy in purple is another great version of the ESL. And for those blessed moments when bright coho are fresh out of the salt and looking at the ceiling, have a couple of dry fly options like the Poly Wog Pink and Miyawaki’s Coho Beach Popper. Expect to break off fish and hang flies in tree limbs, so make sure to bring extra floats and a handful of each pattern.

Gary Lewis is a co-author and publisher of Fishing Mt. Hood Country and Fishing Central Oregon and is host and producer of the TV show Frontier Unlimited.

Visit garylewisoutdoors.com