Fish Camp Chronicles Vol 5.

 The Fish Camp Chronicles Vol 5. (Photos by Rachel Harrison)

set net candy corn

Loaded to-the-gills with coolers of ice and important people on-board I powered up the skiff and settled into a good run down the Susitna River.  Once again we were returning to our fish camp on Ivan River for the first opener of the 2014 season.

     Along with the President of the Susitna River Coalition Mr.MikeWood and esteemed founders of Harrison and Sons fish Co. Rachel and Steve Harrison, there was also young sir Corey Harrison (crewman) and Hazelee Harrison (gill puller).  Soon we were passing the mouth of the Deshka and things were looking up.

Rockin the Su

   Water was still high.  This is a mixed blessing when you run a prop like we do on the Su.  Sure the channels are deep but where the hell are they?  Armed with a GPS and a depth finder I was groping for a clue but I’m no expert.  I’ve got a collection of mangled props hanging on my pole barn to prove it.  These soldiers of war are casualties that have served their time and have not been forgotten.  Most of them can be repaired but there are two hanging there that will never feel the silty waters again.  This is probably a happy-thought for them.  No self respecting prop should have to endure as much.  

Ol'Roy hasn't been the same
since the Indian run of 07.

    Before we turned the corner into Cook Inlet itself we always poke into Tide Creek to stage gear and gas.  As I pulled around the corner I quickly noticed that a big tree was blocking its entrance.  I gunned the motor and then at the last minute killed the engine and lifted it up as we glided over it landing us into Tide Creek proper.  As we passed over it we became victims of a seagull’s dive-bombing efforts.  There, tucked into the crook of the upturned tree’s roots were three neatly organized seagull eggs in a nest.  Aha.

      We dropped our extra gas and as we left I towed one end of the tree around the bend to we could pass more easily. From there we would exit the mouth of the Susitna River hugging the shoreline that would take us to our fish camp on Ivan River.

towing the seagull egg log.

Mike and Hazelee performing at a high level.

Bunk house among the Lupine

Newly repaired net rack

Grilling a freshie at camp

Mom found this cool sign beachcombing

The main cabin

Intimate Susitna

     

Corey photo bombing me on the Su

Some things can't wait. I decided to take the family on a float trip that would descend 35 miles of the Susitna River.  Snow machining and jet boating this section before just wasn’t enough.  Floating a river versus running it in a powerboat is akin to walking versus driving in a vehicle.  “A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.”  Edward Abbey, outspoken environmentalist and National Parks champion knew what was up.

    “Have a good trip!” She said waving to us from the bank at the end of the Talkeetna Village airstrip.  My wonderful mother-in-law Pam Rannals had happily volunteered to not only drop us off and pick us up a few days later  but she was also watching our two dogs. A good time was had by them in our absence apparently when they both discovered an unguarded bag of dog food.   Rosemary, our new golden retriever puppy submerged her entire head into it chomping and feasting furiously with her tail wagging.

      We would have to settle up on that one later.  We were floating down the Susitna River and it commanded our full attention.

     The water was high.  The flowing silty waters dispersed themselves into a myriad of channels.  The entire watershed itself was littered with scads of uprooted trees, roots, and drift.   The upper end of the channel's braids were stacked with drift wood in the form of sticks, logs, and whole trees making route decisions imperative.  We did not want to be the next log in the stack.  The gentle hiss of the sandy silt swirling against the bottom of the boat serenaded us as we made our way down river.

    I pulled on the oars correcting our line as needed.  “Michael rowed the boat ashore.....guys?” Nothing.  “Guys, help me out here with the next line.”

    “What?”  said Corey.  I quickly realize that it might be a long trip but this is the stuff of good family camping isn’t it?  I’ve seen enough of the National Lampoon’s Vacation series to know that these were memories in the making and I must persevere. Clark W. Grizwold doesn't have shit on me.

    “Hallelujah.” I said. "Michael rowed the boat ashore Hallelujah."

    “Gazunteight.”  said Corey.  Okay. Just then we heard a thunderous crack. As we turned to look, an enormous birch tree, succumbing to the eroding bank fell and snapped as it toppled backwards onto the shore exposing it's upturned foundation. "Whoa." said Tamra.

      Slowly we floated our way downriver with Hazelee in the bow, Corey in the stern and Tamra and I were holding steadfast a midships.

    After my last float I couldn’t help but think that inadvertently, we were tracing the route of the old stern wheelers that plowed their way upriver over a hundred years ago.  I wondered how different the river was for them back then.  I wondered how their progress would have been in times of high water such as we were experiencing now.  How did they deal with giant cottonwood trees drifting at them downriver?  How were they able to negotiate the swift, shallow channels? Their boats were long and heavy.  As a person that is intimately aware of the forces involved in running the Susitna River I can’t even imagine how they could have done it with those lunky behemoth's. I’ve seen the pictures so it must be true.

     Nowadays the river is not a major freighting route for miners and trappers like it was back then.  The construction of rail and road put an end to all that.  Today the river is utilized mainly recreationally to access areas near salmon streams.  By-and-large cabins and lodges up and down the Susitna (and Yentna) Rivers are situated as closely as possible to salmon producing tributaries.  A quick search of remote property sales tell the tale.  Properties located closest to salmon streams fetch the highest dollar.  These are the areas that see the most boat traffic too.   It seems that the salmon have had quite an effect on human activity and development along the mighty Susitna.

     We made our way towards one of these salmon streams called Birch Creek which would be our first camp spot.  “Hey there’s a good spot.” I said and we pulled over on the sandbar staking our claim to Harrison camp-spot number one.

    As far as camp spots go this one was exemplary.  Essentially an island, this sandy, gravely beach was be speckled with lot’s of driftwood and even some beach coal.  Before long we were roasting hot dogs, playing bocce ball and carrying on as only we can do.   Hazelee quickly lost all of her clothing and was happy to be a stark naked child of the earth.  Tamra and I got a solid start on a bottle of Fireball next to the fire.

        The next morning a modest river boat zoomed by us on the far side of the river and it was quite later-on that a super cub dove and swooped over us.  These were the only others we saw on the river since leaving Talkeetna.

        It was cool to be checking out this section of river up-close.  The lion share of my Susitna River time has been spent on the lower river commuting to and from our fish camp on Ivan River.  It’s interesting to note the boating traffic on all the different stretches of river.  By far the busiest section of the river is the four mile stretch of river from Deshka Landing to the Deshka river.  Day trippers routinely zip down to the Deshka to sport fish for salmon.  This traffic has been booming in recent years due to the proliferation of the Deshka River salmon returns.

    The stretch of the Susitna from the mouth of the Deshka down to the mouth of the Yentna sees the next heaviest traffic.  These folks are accessing cabins and lodges up the Yentna drainage. We have cabins up the Yentna and are part of that traffic. 

    Across from the mouth of the Yentna is the old Susitna Station town site.  There are still a few ramshackle buildings left but it is but a shadow of its former self that once saw over 700 residents in the early nineteen hundreds.  Currently there are two cabins down river a half mile or so from this site, below that there is nothing and we are the only boat traffic from there there down to the mouth.

    Point of consideration: Behold such a great river so very near the main populous of Alaska and yet still so wild. Development along its banks are but a side note to the river itself.  The Susitna River remains a wild and free flowing river!

        In the morning the sun woke us from the tent.  A thousand mosquitoes had found refuge between the tent and rain fly over the course of the night.  When we detached the fly from the tent they quietly dispersed away from the sunlight like the little vampires they are.  Today would be a hot one.  We packed up camp and pushed off into the current.  Midday we passed under the Parks Highway bridge.  We stopped to fish for a bit at the mouth of Rabideax creek but couldn’t really stand it.  Like many of the mouths of fishing streams accessible along the Parks Highway, this one has fallen victim to the anything goes clause.  Without a monitored campground with rules and facilities this place was trashed.  People like to bitch about over regulation and government over-stepping their bounds but where is the balance?  

     With fishing poles in hand Corey and I walked past the abandoned fire pit littered with a Marlboro Light box and some charred beer cans.  A series of four wheeler tracks disappeared into the creek itself along with some old fishing line.  Just then a large man with a scowl on his face putted by us on a kiddy four wheeler. “I think that guy is ready to trade up.”  I pointed out as we piled back into the raft and pushed back off into the wilderness.  

      We floated another four hours until we became so hot we started to become bothered also.  The GPS on my phone told me that we were close to the mouth of Goose Creek.  We had to drag the raft upriver a little ways to make it over there but it turned out to be a great spot to camp.  We dragged the raft up a couple of bends to get out of the sun.  Tamra and I began to set up camp as the kids swam and floated in the cool waters.

     A couple of dudes working for ADF&G showed up and set some fish traps near the mouth.  They caught a few juvenile salmon over the course of the hour that they were there.  Their findings along with many others would be passed on to the scientists working on the Susitna Watana Hydro project.

    I didn’t realize until just recently that all the millions of dollars of science being conducted on the dam project so far isn’t to decide whether or not the dam should be built.  It’s already been decided despite ample public outcry.  As long as there is enough political will in the legislature in upcoming years it will be built.  My understanding now is that the science is being conducted mainly because it’s required as part of the regulatory commission’s licensing process and also to possibly figure out the extent of the mitigation efforts to restore all the salmon it kills.

     Salmon restoration and mitigation efforts are already being planned and budgeted for.  How much isn’t quite clear.  Wayne Dyok, project manager for the dam couldn’t be pinned down in an interview by KTNA’s Phillip Manning recently.  Dyok who comes across as a nice guy on-air, admitted that mitigation efforts on the Columbia River in Washington have been extremely expensive.

   When the Susitna Watana dam proposal came about just a few years ago, I assumed that the science would be used to find a way to preserve the wild salmon and if it wasn’t possible then the dam wouldn’t be built.  But after I took off my rose-colored glasses I realized that wasn’t the case and that saving wild salmon stocks hasn’t worked on any other dam and there is no reason to believe it will work here.

*********************************

It's hard to be humble when you
are too cool for school.

        “Haze, wouldn’t it be cool to have a house in a river?”  She was perched up in the bow tucked among the mounds of gear.  “That way you could go swimming right out your front door!" Haze loves to swim. " Corey what do you think wouldn’t it be cool to fish right outside your bedroom window?”  Corey loves to fish.

     Finally as we floated around the corner it all made sense.  There in the river was a large cabin....in the river.  I had checked it out this winter and wondered if it was still there.  Apparently someone learned the hard way the reason main reason why you should never build on a cut bank of a river.  This 24 by 16 foot cabin had fallen victim to the will and power of the mighty Susitna. It was biding its time among the drift. 

     I wondered if there was any kind of fine or punishment handed down to said property owner.  During the spring time it was frozen into the river solid and I was able to snow machine up to it.  That would have been a good time for the owner to remove any trash and other environmentally hazardous building materials.   It is a fully insulated and wired building and all of it will be in the river soon.   

I would have been glad to help.

Lately I guess I've become sensitive to the issues of the river. A river that I've taken for granted my whole life is now in jeopardy and I feel more connected to it than ever.

We floated past the sunken house, around the corner and down to our pullout at Susitna Landing where Pam met us there with the truck and a friendly smile.

Sunken cabin this spring

Not Thirty

   

   The trees were bending and whipping as I peered through the windshield of the truck.  It was spitting rain.  The wipers were on their highest setting.  I was on my way to Bartlett for the start of the Mayor’s Midnight Sun Marathon.  My mother-in-law would say: "It is nasty." She would be right, it was nasty. Shit.  I looked over at the passenger seat.  The Walmart bag nestled there contained a brand new hat and gloves.  I'd pulled over on a whim. I hate being cold.  The five dollar hat was cool and I thought that the same would be true of the five dollar neoprene gloves... until I pulled them on my hands at the beginning of the race.  One was a size large, the other one wasn’t, it was an artery constricting size small. Nice.

    Due to construction at Bartlett High, no parking was allowed, so I sat in the Takatnu mega-complex parking lot along with everyone else, rain pouring down.  I was there forty minutes early and I had to pee.  I decided to dart over to the McDonald’s.  There were six women standing in line outside the women’s bathroom.  For a moment, I thought I was at a Bon Jovi concert.  I wondered if there has ever been a McDonald’s overrun by such a fit running crowd before. There were over fifty marathoner’s milling around inside the Takatnu McDonald's.  Some were actually in line ordering food (Egg McMuffins?), but most of them, like myself were looking to off load.  

     Eventually I would make my way over to Bartlett where I would first be met by a barrage of twenty port-a-potties in a row that were backed up twenty women deep.  In the periphery, men could be found tucking in shirts and everything else as they returned from various sections of the Bartlett woods.  Everyone had been diligently hydrating and was trying to squeeze out every last drop before the race.  It’s no fun making a pit stop during a race.

    A gigantic sound system cranked thumping beats interspersed with witty DJ commentary.  “Five minutes left!” He announced.   Finally the Alaska Flag song sounded followed by the National Anthem. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan.” During the awkward pause four people clapped.  I’m pretty sure it was the four Japanese runners that cut-me-off at the expo the night before.  I’m sure everyone else would have clapped too but they were preoccupied with important last minute race details, like blowing snot from their noses, or picking their shorts out of their butt-cracks.  “Remember, our motto is Big Wild Life, so look out.”  OK Dan.

        “5,4,3,2,1...bam.”  The gun sounded like one you might find in the bottom of a cracker-jack box.  The guy next to me looked over at me and said “really?”  We took off out of the parking lot, into the wind and rain and towards the inevitability of our respective racing destinies.

        Despite the rain and wind, I was feeling good, ticking off 7:20’s and 7:30 minute miles.  At mile nine I saw Hazelee waving and smiling and cheering.  She had made a sign and she was waving it proudly as I ran by.  My dedicated support crew of my Mom, Dad, and daughter were with me all day long in and managed to make it to the majority of viewing areas to cheer me on and monitor my progress.   All was going great until I hit mile 12.

Nipples McGee

      I felt a dull pain in my left leg, it wasn’t my knee but it was just below that.  It hurt to put weight on it.  I wondered if I would have to quit.  I discovered that I could stop, stretch and alleviate some of the pain for about a mile.   So went the progress.  Stop, stretch, slowly run another mile.  My dreams of beating my first marathon time disintegrated with each passing mile.  Shit.

  About mile 16 I glanced down and noticed two strawberry sized red stains on my shirt.  Coincidentally they were located over each nipple. “Huh?” I thought.  Some of the powerade I’d slugged down on-the-run was a reddish color, maybe I spilled some.  “That’s funny.” I thought.  

     As it turns out it wasn’t funny at all. An hour later when the pain hit, I realized that I'd rubbed the skin off my nips.  Not only was I in pain but I realized that I’d run the whole second half of the marathon with two big red nipple-stains front and center for all to admire.  

Like some kind of sick Rudolph the red nosed reindeer I was Steve the red-nipped fruit loop. Luckily I was focused enough on all my various pain to not really care what anyone else thought.

Hazelee supporting her dad
as he pulls over to stretch his
weary bones. 

    Several days before the race I had considered downgrading to the half-marathon.  Although my overall training mileage seemed adequate I had, essentially taken the last three weeks off floating the Yentna, visiting my family in Ellomar and sport fishing for kings at the cabin.   

     “You’re not thirty anymore”.  The advice from a trusted coach was well received but I’ve always been stubborn.  For me thirty years old was 12 years ago.  My first marathon was only five years ago and I did pretty good posting a time of 3:31.  I surprised myself on my fast-ish time.  

    This year I was supposed to be ready.  I had logged in almost 600 miles of running since August and I had competed in several races including the inaugural running of the Kasugi ridge race, the Willow Winter half, and the Mission Gorge 15K in San Diego.  I had to be ready right?
I made my way past miles 18, 19, and 20. My pace had slowed considerably. I noticed several of my running compadres nursing similar pains. "What a wuss." I thought about myself. Somehow I'd pigeon-holed myself into the gimp-crowd. Finally, as I made my way up the final hill leading to the finish line. I could hear the cheering crowd and the bumping party music. I managed to pick up my pace to something that resembled a kick as I narrowly squeezed my way past several middle aged ladies that were running the 5K and blocking the whole chute. I darted past them to the finish.
Nips bleeding, legs in pain, and dogs-a-barking, I collected my ridiculously large medal and shirt and hobbled my way over to the beer tent. Let the healing begin.

The Third Cast

                                  The Third Cast

    

Corey, successfully harvesting a King Salmon.

It was the third cast. I flung the spinner high over me and winged it as far as the old line would allow.  Wait for it, wait for it, ....as the lure sunk towards the bottom I began my retrieve.  The action of the lure I was using was fickle today.   In the name of conservation, ADF&G announced that single hooks only could be used.  The standard treble-hook was more balanced, and made the whole thing spin better.  The rules had changed.  Oh well.

    In addition, retention of the coveted King Salmon would only be allowed on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Okay.

     The Deshka River had gone the other way with it’s regs.  Reaching their escapement goal early-on, Fish and Game opened the Deshka King fishery to treble hooks and even bait.  My common anecdote for the Deshka River King Salmon fishery goes as follows:  10oo fishermen on 300 boats casting for 100 kings.  I chuckle to myself each time I drive by the mouth of the Deshka.  Boat after God-forsaken boat pack the mouth like a true riverboat version of combat fishing.  

      A familiar tug pulled down on my rod and I knew what was in store.  Before I could even announce my success or play-it-cool by not announcing it,  another fished jumped into the air.  Tamra had one on too.  Holy shit!  There we were fishing by ourselves, without another boat in sight, and we both had one on.  Hazelee was in attendance and can bare witness to said story because she was in charge of the landing net.  “Haze, grab the net!”  Tamra barked at her.

     “ I am, it’s stuck on my boot.”  

     Meanwhile, as Hazelee was untangling herself from the dipnet Tamra and I were playing nice Kings on either side of the boat.  One would peel drag in a panicked frenzy as the other one seemed to be losing ground.  Hazelee was fumbling with the net along with a canister of Planters salted peanuts.  Just then, a third King jumped nearby.

   “ Here Haze, take the pole.”  I saw the handwriting on the wall and quickly decided that action must be taken.  Haze took the fishing pole and immediately felt the strong pull from the King on the other end.  Feelings and words of self-doubt threatened to get the better of Haze as the fight continued.   I got the net over to Tamra who swiftly guided her fish into it. After another minute or two I was able to land Hazelee’s fish too.

    “Whoo-hooo!”  said Hazelee as she sat down on the boat’s bench to take a breather.  Two bright silvery Kings flopped around on the bottom of the boat. They were just as surprised as we were.

All said and done, the King Salmon Hazelee caught received only a fraction of the attention of Hoppy Hopperton, the frog I found for her out by the outhouse, much to the chagrin of Hoppy himself.

Cruisin the Yankner

  The super cub bounced down gently on the gravel bar.  The oversized tundra tires looked like they would fit on a Boeing 737.  They were under- inflated purposefully to absorb the uneven terrain and did a beautiful job of setting me down in God’s country.

    “Brent and Brian are right up around the corner.” Tom pointed upriver to their approximate whereabouts as I helped him pivot the plane around.

    The breezy afternoon had made for a bouncy flight and he couldn’t land in the same spot that he had when he dropped them off the day before.  I grabbed as much of my stuff as possible and headed up river to find my buddies as the black and yellow plane took to the sky and disappeared in the distance.

     The mile-wide river bottom was a myriad of braided channels. Only a few of them contained the silty waters of the Yentna.  It was easy to see that during times of high water the whole floodplain could be underwater  but for now it was easy hiking on beautiful gravel bars.  Twisted white driftwood of all sizes was littered on every bar like it was sprinkled from a big shaker high in the sky. The mountains of the Alaska range hemmed in both shores and overlooked the river valley from all sides.

      I had agreed to this trip with enthusiasm.  In the name of filling-in-the blanks of my geographical sense of place, this one was huge.  Approximately 100 river miles up the Yentna river via the West fork, we were tucked up into the Alaska range with rafts and time and beer.  Oh yeah, we had guns and fishing poles too.

     All three of us have cabins on the lower Yentna (some 80 river miles downstream) and seeing its source and all the new country appealed to all of us. The plan was to make our way down the river all the while looking for black bears and good clear tributaries to fish.

   Sure enough, around the corner sitting among the giant pile of gear was Brent Mason and Brian Gornick.  They were both lounging in their camp chairs and had situated themselves in the middle of a big pile of gear.  With the wind at their back and the sun in their face, it looked like they’d been there a while.  Each was clutching a beer.  “Hey guys, I couldn’t wait for the plane, I decided to walk-in.”  I was betting that they hadn’t heard the plane land around the corner in the 20 knot winds.  I knew that I looked ridiculous wearing my orange float-coat and my bright orange helmet. I had a giant green water-proof bag on my back and I was carrying two cases of beer.

    “Welcome.” said Brian as they both got up to help shuttle my gear.

     At least part of my interest in the upper Yentna region stems from its early exploration by those who were in search of high places.  

In 1906 Dr. Frederick Cook, Belmore Browne, and the good Professor Herschel Parker were among seven hardy souls to set out to be the first to the top of the continent.  Like me, they had a desire to tromp their way to North America’s highest point: Mt. Mckinley.  

      Unlike me, they weren’t fortunate enough to have K2 aviation buzz them out to the East fork of the Kahiltna glacier landing them at a comparatively comfortable striking distance from the mountain.  Their story was a little different.  They had to route find their way from tidewater. The West fork of the Yentna was their first guess as to how to penetrated the Alaska range.

       After sailing to Seldovia from Seattle and steaming over to Tyonek, they split their party in two.  One group had twenty burly pack horses, the other had a wooden skiff with a shoal-draft motor boat  The plan was to meet at the headwaters of the Yentna which was precisely where Brent, Brian, and I were staged.  

    “The conquest of Mount McKinley”, by Belmore Browne is an interesting and detailed account of their efforts. If ever I thought that my wilderness forays were remotely burly, tough, or impressive in the slightest, all I need to do is pick up this book and refresh my memory of what the true definition of hardship and adventure really is.  

     After a month of bushwhacking their way up stream, their West fork aspirations ended when it narrowed into a harrowing canyon with steep walls and crushing glacial rapids.  Their efforts at this point were riddled with near-drownings with horse and man.  Their food supply was dangerously low, so Belmore shot a giant Brown bear that he’d spotted on a hillside. When he discovered that the bear had a series of infected slash wounds from an obvious bear-fight and couldn’t stomach eating it, he left it for dead.  It was at this point that Belmore Browne declared something like, “This sucks.”

     Eventually after being slapped-down again and again they retreated back downstream, crossed all the braids of the West fork and endeavoured to try the East fork.  At this point one passage sticks out:  “The quicksands were our principal difficulty and some of the pack horses sank so deep that only their heads were visible above the water...”  When we floated by their possible crossing point near the confluence of the East and West fork we pulled over for a sandwich.

Belmore Browne's horses don't have shit on Brent

Puffing up the rafts

    “Michael rowed the boat ashore Halla-loooooo- yah!”  I pushed off down stream in lackluster form.  Someone had tied my left oar into the gear pile and after a brief panic I managed to pull it out and collected my self....It must have been Brian.  Off we went commencing downriver progress winding our way out of the Alaska range slowly joining with other braids of the river, splitting away from others.  “Michael rowed the boat ashore....” The age old childhood jingle repeated itself as I negotiated my way downriver.  Occasionally a bad decision was made and we would have to hop out and drag our inflatable canoes over the shallows.  These times were few and far between.   Mostly our travels were long stretches of easy going.
Both boats were equipped with mini stereos and I suggested that Brian should be in charge of the music selection for the trip. He phoned me before we left to inform me that his computer wasn't talking to his I-pod and that we would be relying on Brent for music. "I hope you like Willy and Johnny."

     Slowly we made our way downstream.  Lacking the ability to speed-up, we were resigned to taking it all in and catching up with each other.  It had been a long time since I’d been able to catch up with these two friends.

    I had dropped a few pins on my GPS on the flight in.  I hoped to mark some of the clear water tributaries that we could fish.  On the second night we set our sights on one of them and were rewarded when we found a nice back-eddie chock full of Dolly Varden and Grayling.  We set up our tent on a nearby gravel bar and quickly discovered that the fishing was pretty good right outside the tent door too.  For dinner that night we had pasta primavera with chunks of Dolly Varden- Dolly Primavera!

     That night around the campfire we watched a pair of beavers slide in and out of the water in front of us eating mouthfuls of green leafy twigs on the bank.  A pair of swans honked and as we turned to look also noticed a cow moose and her calf crossing the river on the upstream side of the sandbar.

    In the morning after coffee and a little more fishing, we pushed off back into the Yentna and continued our journey towards our cabins.

    Although we had enjoyed a wonderful float trip thus far, our adventure was far from over.  We made our way down past Youngstown bend where we encountered our first power boat.  From this point down, there were lots of interesting cabins.  We shared our opinions on what we thought each cabin owner did right and wrong in the creation of their own Yentna river palace.  Some of them looked like shacks that had been abandoned, while others were nicer than our homes.  

      I was excited to check out an old paddle-wheel steam boat that was anchored in a clearwater back-slough above Fish Lake Creek.  I had seen it when I flew over it on the way in.  I was hoping it was the S.S. Alice Susitna, an old sternwheel steamer that serviced Talkeetna in the early nineteen hundreds.  The Alice was reknown in Talkeetna history for ferrying loads upriver from Susitna Station.  Brian Okonek who spoke last winter at the Belmore Browne slide show said that it was rumored to be rotting in some slough around Lake Creek.  This little nugget of history had me pretty excited when I spotted a floating sternwheel steamer from the air.  “Hey, I think I found the Alice!” I told them one night after recalling my discovery.  My enthusiasm was met with blank stares as I went on to explain my limited knowledge of legendary sternwheeler the Alice Susitna.

      It turned out to be a different boat; the Susitna Belle.  I climbed around on it and took pictures. Preliminary research hasn’t turned up any information on it yet but it looks cool.  I am amazed with the idea of these big paddle wheel boat being able to push up through the swift waters of these glacial rivers.  Some stretches of both the Yentna and Susitna are extremely braided, shallow and swift moving.  I can’t imagine these giant boats making headway upstream but they did and they routinely pushed big loads of supplies.

    Finally we made our way down past cabins and lodges until we arrived at the mouth of Fish Lake Creek.  The kings were in as we cast shiny lures from our inflatable canoes.  Brian had two fish on.  One got off and the other broke his line.  Bummer.

    All was not lost because an hour later as we were back-trolling a sweet mixing line of the mouth of Lake Creek he hooked into another one.  Coincidentally I hooked one at the same time but as I was trying to hold the rod and maneuver the boat around an overhanging tree, it broke my line.  I was resigned to “support crew” and I quickly rowed over to the bank to help Brian land the dime-bright 20 pound king without a landing net.  Hell yeah!

   Once again we pushed off the bank and resumed our progress.  We would be back at Brent’s cabin soon grilling up a delicious King salmon dinner.   Little did I realize that, to cap off the trip I would get to shoot a nice six foot black bear the following morning which was not nursing infected wounds and was delicious.