Lower estuary fishing for pinks, cohos and chums in Alaskan and Canadian waters by Eric Bigler (ebigler@clackesd.k12.or.us)

'Nother One': Ted Giesel Beaches a Bright Pink

It took about an hour to pick up the car, drive into town for the licenses, and head out again.  As the road changed from asphalt to gravel and the scenery went from stacked crab pots to Sitka spruce and willow, the excitement started to build. My wife and I came to this place ostensibly to sight-see and discover something from the great cultural traditions that  underlie this long settled land, but rumors of great shoals of salmon off the river mouths and the serene beauty of the day put those good intentions on the shelf like a book I ought to read someday.  We were on the hunt now, and with every mile our focus increased.  I'd read as much as I could about this fishing - Barry Thornton had some good stuff on the B.C. Adventure site and Tony Route had done an excellent job describing the scene in Flyfishing Alaska - so I knew we were looking for big flats at creek mouths. That's where the salmon would be staging-milling in the low slack and then venturing, sometimes timid, sometimes bold, into the confines of the river channels. Barry had described the spy-hopping humpy, calling them "Locator Pinks", and said if you found them you found the fishing, as these little missles marked the main body of the shoal, and I couldn't wait to see for myself. So much of what you read in fishing stories happens only in print and then maybe not at all. Damn straight I'd investigate and look hard for the signs, but if I never saw a Locator Pink, I won't be all that surprised. 

Topping a rise on the road, we knew we were there.  It was perfect.  Below us, stretching out across a substantial stretch of landscape, was a tide flat that must have collected half a dozen creeks as well as a named river.  Brown marsh grass and drawf willows covered acres as they followed gravelly stream beds down to the shore.  From the limit of vegetation, gray beds of sand, shell, and mud eased gradually into the still retreating tide.  Gulls, shorebirds, crows and sparrows went noisily about their business, their whirling bodies scattering over the grass like leaves in a wind.  From the road bed, as far away as we were, we could imagine the salmon turning and pacing and waiting for the change.  The whole estuary breathed with life and expectation.    

Parking at the bridge, with no other cars in sight, I pretty much succumbed to my typical nearly-terminal "let’s go fishing" klutziness.  I fumbled the get the rod cases out the car, dropped the reels on the ground and stomped on them trying to pick them up again, nearly split my waders trying to put both feet in one hole, and then snarled the leaders deep in the lines.  After I removed the spools and dug out the leaders, I craftily strung up the rods, leaving only the penultitimate guides out of the set-up.  Jeeesh.  Slow down, restring the tops, get vest, lock car, check for keys (probably locked safely inside), say "the hell with it" and clomp off toward stream, trailing leader from all vest pockets.    

Arriving at the stream, my wife immediately noticed the road pool was full of fish and thought she might like to try it right there at the bridge.  I thought not, since my mind’s eye still was holding the image of the Locator Pink bright and shining like some religious icon.  "I’m going on down to the mouth," I announced.  "Try it here if you want; if you don’t catch anything, then head there."  I left my wife with her Pixies and set off across the grass flats for the nearest beach, some half-mile or so away.  I was not about to be distracted from my goal by something so inconsequential as a bunch of easy fish.  I wanted to see those salmon jumping on the flats and I was not to be denied.    

I walked a hell of a long way and finally did come out on the shore.  The tide was still ebbing and the water seemed to retreat from me even as I tried to step into it.  The water was clear and revealed little crabs scuttling and bits of foam and weed swirling as I waded out across an extensive bar at the river mouth.  I was pleasantly surprised by the firmness of the bottom.  Being used to California bays, I was really expecting sucking ooze rather than hard pack, and delightedly ventured out further, searching for signs of fish.  What I came to realize, very shortly, was that I had been looking at them from the moment I stepped in.  They were everywhere, once I adjusted my eyes and focused on what I needed to see.  As if cued, a Locator Pink, in all its glimmering glory, vaulted into the air an easy cast away, but, given that I was looking a several hundred mixed pinks and chums threading across the flats, my LP seemed like icing on the cake.  "My God," I thought, "So this is what it’s all about."    

I had tied on a double General Practitioner, a fly that’s done well by me in times past, and I hurried to work out line across the school that was streaming past.  I managed to plop the fly down out beyond them somewhere and commenced stripping the line back in, thinking "make it a shrimp", and watching the line-leader connection for any sudden movement.  I managed to retrieve the fly safely, without ambush, and, a bit bemused, fired it out again, this time in the direction of even more fish.  I retrieved with the same result.  This was pretty weird – I mean, with all those fish around, you’d think one would have charged the fly.  But no; studied indifference seemed the order of the day and I started to get frantic.    

Maybe I should change the fly, I thought.  Put on a Kalsin Charlie or a Swiss Mint or something smaller, maybe.  I kept casting the GP, though, because there were so many fish going by so close that one just had to grab it.  At about the twentieth cast or so, the expected pull finally came and I set back into my first fish.  There was a dull silver flash as the pink turned in the water, and the reel chattered its teeth as the line tore away over the flats.  After a couple of minutes, I released a beautifully shaped little fish of about four pounds.  Only three colors to it: blue-green on the back, black on the spots, and silver everywhere else.  Cool.    

Fortified, I returned to serious fishing, watching the schools and their paths and trying to place the fly ahead of the leaders.  Every so often I connected.  A fish would break out of the pack and charge the fly.  I caught maybe half a dozen before I noticed the tide had turned and the dry shore where I entered was completely under water.     

Something was going on with the fish now, that was obvious.  The sandbar at the river mouth was submerged under about a foot and half of water and there was bulging and splashing for several yards all around it.  This looked like a text-book definition of nervous water, and I could see fins and backs poking out in the troughs of the little waves set up by the shoals.  Gradually, the fish started streaming in across the bar, until finally there was a gray-blue ribbon of pinks headed up away from me into the river.  I followed in complete awe, as I’d never seen fish in anywhere near this abundance before.  I followed them into the first tidal pool where I met my wife, coming down.    

I asked her how she was doing, and she said "not so good".  The fish were following her Pixies but not taking well and she was wondering how I was doing with my flies.  The pinks were now rolling all over the place in the tidal pool.  I said I was doing so-so with the flies and this is how I was doing it.  I cast a green Kalsin Crazy Charlie across the pool, made one strip, and was into a fish.  Karin though that was pretty neat and was even more impressed when I repeated the trick three times in a row, giving her the rod each time.  "Give me some flies," she said.  "This is fun."  We scrounged around and found a small float, rigged a short leader, and tied on a Crazy Charlie and her spinning rig was medicine.  She proceeded to catch about two fish to my one for the rest of an unforgettable afternoon.      

We fished the area for about a week and learned a little of the behavior patterns of the pinks and chums.  We got some help in this from our college friends, Ted and Jean, who altered their itinerary a bit to meet up with us for some fishing.  We crashed around in the rental car, going from flat to flat and tide to tide, nearly always finding some willing fish.    

Probably the most interesting fishing we had was for the chums.  When I first picked up our licenses, I asked the clerk what flies were best for chums and he just laughed.  Actually, he sneered.  "Jeez," he hissed, "we’ve got better things to do than figure out what flies work for dogs.  Use anything; good luck."  I was a little nonplused, because I happen to like chums, having fished for them in the Tillamook Bay feeder streams and having found them to great entertainment.  I wanted to see what these northern cousins could do, particularly out on the flats.    

The odd thing was, that whenever we ran into other fly anglers out on the beachs, the big topic of conversation was always how to catch the chums.  Turned out the dog fishing was a pretty big deal and a lot of experimentation was going on trying to find ways to hook them consistently.  I was lucky enough to blunder into a good strategy on the first day, when I saw a small school swimming across a shallow bar, with the sun lighting up the water like an aquarium.  I could see both the fish and my fly clearly. I’d made a mess of the cast in my excitement to cast out ahead of the school, and the line had snarled on the shoot, leaving me with a cat’s cradle jammed in the stripping guide.  As I worked out the knots in my line, I kept an eye on my General Practitioner, which was slowly sinking toward the bottom.  As I watched, the lead fish in the school swam over and calmly sucked the fly in.  An instant later the line came tight and the fight was on.  This was a very different fish from the pinks I’d been catching—this character just took the line over his shoulder and swam out of sight.  After several minutes, the backing knot came back on and I was breathing a bit easier.  More minutes later, the fish was standing me off about a dozen feet away and not coming any closer.  I was in water about two feet deep with the beach about 50 yards away; I did not want to beach the fish, and I especially did not want to break my rod by having him swim crosswise on me while I tried to release him.  I’d broken a few rods on the Miami trying this trick, and there had a be a better way.  I finally pivoted the rod down, so that the leader crossed my left thigh, and grabbed the leader, freeing tension on the rod.  I was then able to lead the fish in by hand, with the rod clamped under my arm, and then work the fly out of his jaw without lifting him from the water.  The fish was pretty big, between 15 and 20 pounds, and to steady him, I grabbed on to his lower jaw with one hand while twisting out the fly with the other.  This seemed to annoy him somewhat, and he turned and slashed me pretty good as I worked to free him.  There had to be a better way to this, but I never found it.  Blood in the water.  Mine.    

Later in the week, Ted and I worked out some more strategies for hooking chums, although all of them seem now a variation on the old sinking fly trick.  The chums were easy to recognize, even in bad light, by their behavior.  They caused a lot of commotion in the water, and often jumped, launching themselves in a twisting, sideways lunge that was distinctly different from the clean jumps of the pinks and cohos.  Whenever we’d spot a chum in casting distance, we’d try to guess direction and fire the fly about five feet off its bow.  The idea was to get the fly roughly into the fish’s swimming lane and wait for it to do the rest.  Strikes were often tentative; you could feel the salmon nibbling at the fly, like a bluegill after a worm.  Eventually, there would be a good yank and off he’d go.  Other times you would feel nothing, just see the leader give a quick jump.  This fishing was a lot more challenging than feeding the pinks, and we missed a lot more than we hooked and flat-failed to interest most of the fish we cast to.  Once in the river, the chums were easier to hook, I thought.  All you had to do was locate a school and drift a fly through them close to the bottom.  The hard part was getting the fly through the clouds of omni-present, omnivorous humpies.  Since I returned, I learned from friends that Pink Polliwog dry flies are effective for chums in the salt.  Wish I known that then.  Would have been fun.    

Some notes on tackle and flies: 

When we started out, we were using five weight rods for the pinks, and this seemed about right.  However, when we started targeting chums, we switched to eight weights, as these salmon are big and play rough.  We used floating lines exclusively, with leaders about ten feet long.  Our reels were anodized, proofed against the salt, with reliable drags.  We spooled on about 150 yards of 30 pound dacron backing behind weight forward lines; for tippet, I used Maxima clear and fished either six pound on the five weight or twelve pound on the eight weight.  The best flies we had for the humpies were No. 4 Kalsin Crazy Charlies in either chartreuse, pink or fuchsia.  The best chum flies were the General Practitioner and fuchsia bunny leeches, sizes about No. 4 to 1/0.  Consensus flies for coho were chartreuse bunny leeches, flash flies, and Coronations.  For the pinks, we fished the Crazy Charlies with a slow strip.  When fishing for dogs, we worked the flies very slowly, if at all.  The cohos liked a lot of motion – cast and strip like mad – when out on the flats.  Once the coho were in the river, a slower strip was effective.   We picked up as much advice as we could from the locals, and these techniques all seemed to work.    

The fishes’ behavior was definitely dependent on the tides.  They would be very aggressive from low slack to about two hours after high tide, and then suddenly cool off as the water really started to drain.  You could still catch them, but it was obvious they weren’t as eager as they were on the flood.     

The wonderful fishing we enjoyed is fairly commonplace along beaches and estuaries of the northwest.  From northern Washington, through British Columbia and on up into Alaska the creek mouths begin attracting shoals of salmon from early-July on through October.   Depending on the river system, Sockeye run first, followed by the pinks, chums and coho.  In Alaska, pinks can be incredibly abundant, particularly during even numbered years.  Farther south in their range, pinks are more abundant in the odd-years.  Finding them probably starts with doing some research on the estuaries near your destination and consulting local tide tables. The classic estuary has several small creeks or delta channels furrowing a broad, gently sloping flat of sand or fine gravel.  These gradual slopes provide good wading and access to the fish without so much danger of being trapped by an incoming tide..  On your first trip to a flat, follow the tide out and learn the topography of the place.  We never felt nervous about the rapidly rising water, but we always knew in advance where the nearest high ground was.     

You can drive to much of this fishing.  Vancouver Island offers many possibilities, with its hundreds of small creeks and rivers.  The northern end of the island, in the Port Hardy area, has many likely places to fish—even the boat basin in town boils with pinks during the big years.  

Up the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia, there are bays and estuaries galore just made for the prospecting fly-fisher.  For anglers wishing the more exotic, combining some beach fishing with sight-seeing adds value to an Alaska trip.  Anchorage, Valdez, Sitka, Homer, Kodiak, you name the place, and as long as it is on the coast, you’ll find fish off the beaches.    

Heading back to the B&B that first evening—tired, fished-out, but excited about our success and prospects—we passed another small estuary just two miles from the center of town.  As we drove  by, as if in salute, a Locator Pink launched himself into the glomming, his body glinting in the setting sun like a signal mirror.  "God," I thought, "this is just too perfect to be real", and started reveling in plans for the morning.

- Eric Bigler

Copyright Eric Bigler June 2001 (all rights reserved)

Ammunition: Kalsin Crazy Charlie