Most of the people I know who fish have a soft spot for a few particular fishing locations. Often it is a result of having done well there or of having spent a lot of time fishing there. This will vary as life and time go by and indeed may seem to have no real permanence other than the fact that it is close to where they are or that they fish there more than other places. However I think there are some waters that are indeed more married to the soul of the fisherman rather than proximity or frequency. This is how the Anchor River on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska feels to me.
On one hand it is a pretty but unremarkable river that is a steady but not heavy producer of fish. Given this, I will say that it does have, at least what I consider to be at least three real claims to fame.
The first is that the river has a good run of king salmon that is accessible to any fisherman. The run occurs in late spring and continues through July, but famously is part of a group of rivers that open for king salmon fishing on Friday night at midnight on Memorial Day weekend. I caught my first king salmon there in 1982 at 12:10 am on Friday night; it was a bright, fresh, hard fighting twenty five pound fish straight out of the salt. There are so many people on the river at this time that it is hard to find a place to fish, this is further complicated by the fact that the river is not open above the bridge, (about two miles of river are between the bridge and Bristol Bay), you cannot fish above the bridge until August and therefore everyone is crowded into a fairly small stretch of the river.
The second is that the river, even though it does not produce the heavy fish runs of other rivers, does have catchable runs of many species of sea run fish including king salmon, pink salmon, silver salmon, arctic char and most famously steelhead. The anchor river remains one of the last roadside fisheries where truly native steelhead can be caught and holds a rare claim of not having had any hatchery fish released, therefore if you catch a steelhead in the anchor river, you will have caught a fish that is a real native run fish in every sense of the word. I have caught some steelhead in the anchor river and although the fish are not considered big they are bright, colorful and are truly wild fish, the kind of fish that remind you that there are still places where life goes on as it always has and may, hopefully, continue to do so long after we are gone.
The third is how the anchor river got its name, the Anchor River is named after an anchor that Captain Cook lost off of the mouth of the river while exploring the coast of Alaska on one of his expeditions to map the Northwest Passage. The story goes that he could not retrieve the anchor and therefore had to cut it loose. He then named the river after the lost anchor.
The anchor river is not a big river in fact it is relatively small it can be easily waded in many spots even though it has many deep pools and some rough and rocky fast areas that are impassible. It is divided into two main areas, basically the area above the bridge and the area below the bridge, an interesting note is that the bridge is the most westerly bridge in the North American highway system. Below the bridge the river has many familiar if not locally famous pools and is a great place to catch fresh sea run fish. Above the bridge the river gets more complex and less well know, it also tends to be fished more sparingly and therefore has less fishing pressure. The pathways and trails become more grown over and less travelled and there are some pools that do not get fished often during the year, if at all.
The river has a copper tinge to it and is a freestone river punctuated with many large boulders and fallen trees or logs that can either divert or create holding areas for fish. It freezes over completely in the winter and can be muddy after a rain but for the many times I have been there it has been fishable and navigable.
One of the things that attract fishermen to the anchor river is that the native Dolly Varden trout and Arctic Char are fairly abundant and easy to catch so it is not unusual to catch and release many of these fish while targeting steelhead or Silver Salmon. Because they are attracted to the same flies it is not at all uncommon to get fairly frustrated with catching Dolly Varden one after the other while trying to hook an elusive steelhead. The fact that you can be catching too many 15 to 18 inch trout is one of the interesting things about the Anchor River. I look back on the many times where this has happened and feel some slight degree of shame for this. If you have never caught a Dolly Varden trout then the fish would amaze you with how pretty it is, it is bright and vibrant, more so than a brown trout and has vivid neon colors surrounding its many numerous spots, the males get red underbellies and a slightly hooked jaw during the spawning time and grow larger and more aggressive than the females. They are a really pretty fish and deserver more respect that I have at times given them. However I have come to really appreciate them and now consider catching one a true pleasure.
The flies that the fish bite on in the fall are fairly straightforward. The later in the year the more common it is to catch fish on flesh fly patterns and egg patterns; however the Dollies can be caught on dry flies and the more common types of steelhead wet flies. I use a modified mayfly pattern with a striped light brown and dark green quill body or a dubbed body with dark green and a light green floss thread. Both of these patterns seem to work well in sizes 14 to 18. There are hatches on the river but because of the amount of salmon eggs and decaying salmon in the river, especially later in the year in the river they seem to prefer some sort of streamer or wet fly. The Steelhead I have caught have been on small yarn bodied or chenille streamers with either a white, orange or red colored body and a light colored wing, either hair wing or feather in size eight to twelve. Most of these are tied with a lead body to get down in the water quickly and are tied on a medium thickness streamer or nymph hook. This is not to say that a green butt skunk or a smartly dressed Jock Scott would not do the job, it is just that the flies listed above are in more common use by the local fisherman.
One if the most fascinating things about the river is the diversity of fish that are present and catchable at any one given time. You can move from King Salmon, to Pink Salmon to Silver Salmon to Steelhead throughout the year and there is a good native stock of Dolly Varden and Arctic Char as well as some Rainbow Trout. I will have more on this river and how, when to fish it, getting there and where to stay in other posts coming soon. – KD5YDN
