After crashing at our cousin Tyler's in Anchorage after our arrival, we set out to get fishing right away! We had an Alaska Atlas, a copy of "Flyfishing Alaska", and a spunky little compact car loaned to us by our generous cousin, who is a prince among men. We motored on down the trail, looking for fish on all the creeks and rivers of the Kenai Peninsula.

We jumped in the car and drove east down Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet. We wanted to get outside the reaches of the city quickly, so we blew by crowds of people looking at Mountain Goats along the roadway. Finally, we hit a stream we liked the looks of - Ingram Creek.

The Corolla heaves to a stop at Ingram Creek. Despite a few missing parts (headlight, tail light, door handle, suspension) this car was a great Alaskan vehicle; it valiantly carried us all over the south-central part of the state while barely sipping gas. Tyler loaned us the car, with only one stipulation - we needed to deliver some CD's to his friend Chunk in Cooper Landing. Almost everyone pegged us for native Alaskans when we pulled up in The Corolla, and immediately started quizzing us on how to catch fish on every stream we stopped at. Imagine their surprise when we told them this was our first visit to Alaska! But we gave them good advice anyway, and by the time we left we were handing out flies and helping the folks from Illinois and Texas catch fish. We decided to fish Ingram when we saw it was full of salmon; we spotted a lot of pinks in the stream, and there were a few people there catching them. Already familiar with pink salmon from fishing them in Lake Superior, we broke out the egg patterns. We thought the humpies would be a great warmup for Alaska fishing, and we could get updated lifelist photos for this species in the process.

On my second drift in Ingram Creek, this spunky Pink Salmon took my glow-bug egg pattern and made for a nice update to my lifelist photo for this species. We'd caught our first fish in Alaska! The bright sun and clear water made finding the fish easy. I found a deep slot next to a big boulder and made another drift.

I hooked another fish on my next drift! This one rocketed out of the water and went berzerk! I had it pegged for a Dolly Varden as soon as it hit, and I was right. This was a new species for me, and a beautiful fish.

Andy quickly joined the fray with a couple of pinks of his own.

Ingram Creek was a blast, but we had a lot of fishing to get to! Still, our first stop had produced two species and we were ready for more. The sunny weather had us in a great mood. Little did we know, we wouldn't see the sun again for over a week! We drove around Turnagain Arm and south into the Kenai Peninsula under cloudy, hazy skies. We took the Seward Highway South, where we thought we might find some Sockeyes and Rainbows at Partridge Creek.

Partridge Creek was devoid of Salmon. We caught a ton of little Rainbow Trout and Dolly Varden in this beautiful little blue-water creek, but after hiking a mile or two of it, we decided to move on. We planned on heading for Seward, but I took a wrong turn and so we got lost and ended up at another creek, in the genral vicinity of Kenai Lake. It began to rain.

We had found the salmon. Dolly Vardens and rainbows vould be seen flashing as they snatched salmon eggs from the current behind the active redds. Andy charged out into the rain to go after them. I took one long look at the angry gray sky and decided to put on my brand-new raingear.

By the time I got to the river, Andy was already battling an acrobatic Dolly Varden.

Then a big sockeye grabbed his fly. I still hadn't made a cast!

The rain turned into a downpour, and a storm moved in. We fished right through it. I finally started catching fish - including this spunky Dolly Varden.

And a huge sockeye for the lifelist! The storm abated and a steady drizzle began. We caught a few more fish, and then packed up and headed west to meet up with the mysterious man known as Chunk.

We found Chunk's place. Chunk lives in an old army tent. In Alaska. All year long. He climbs mountains, kayaks down raging rivers, hunts, fishes, and generally scrapes by out in the wilderness doing what comes naturally. Chunk is my kind of guy. When we got there, he had armored his tent with spruce poles and scrap siding. Chunk was not home when we got there, so we left his CD's on the porch. We hung around awhile, hoping to meet Chunk, but it got dark and started raining hard. We pressed on to Soldotna, but didn't get there until one in the morning because the fog was so thick we couldn't read the road signs. The rain was flooding the road and lightning was ripping across the lowlands constantly. Tyler had offered his unfinished cabin as a place to stay if we were in the area and needed to crash, so we pointed The Corolla southward, not wanting to disturb our relatives in Soldotna at such a late hour. We crossed the mighty Kenai, found the right dirt road, and finally flopped down on the concrete floor of the cabin and turned in for the night. What a day!