There I stood knee-deep in the frigid Kenai River gasping for air and shaking with adrenaline on a crisp, sunny October day. Spent and arms throbbing, I stared admiringly at a listless, football-shaped Dolly Varden, its steely grey body pierced with bright pink spots. I have been fishing since age three, but it took twenty-four years for a fish to take me on a run.
Minutes earlier, I had been standing 400 yards upstream. Rainbow trout and Dolly Varden are not known as “fish of a thousand casts,” but that moniker seemed well deserved that day. For hours I had been futilely fishing a usually productive stretch of the Kenai without so much as a nibble. The locals around me were having an equally tough time – at times muttering curses under their breath and at times cursing more audibly. I had tried a variety of egg bead patterns hoping to find one that would induce a take. Finally, I tied on a large peach colored bead and threw on an extra split shot. I awkwardly chucked the heavy concoction into the deeper water, mended, and intently eyeballed my pink ping pong ball sized “strike indicator” as it zipped through the fast current.
As my line drifted parallel to me, the gargantuan bobber suddenly disappeared into the glacial blue water. I lazily lifted my rod tip expecting to be hung up as I had been dozens of times that day when all of a sudden the water exploded with a leaping fish. Within seconds, I was well into my backing, my reel singing as line ripped off at a blazing speed.
Last spring I bought my first true fly fishing reel, a Lamson Litespeed. For six months the reel dutifully sat on my rod as a glorified and expensive line holder. While I had landed many fish, from smallmouth to shad to striped bass, none had managed to take out an inch of line. But here I stood in the Kenai 150 feet into my backing totally dumbfounded about how to land this hot fish. So I did what I had seen in the steelhead videos I watched– I took off after the fish.
As a former college soccer defender, chasing after a streaking opponent is a pursuit I have relished for decades, but I have never had such an exhilarating chase in my life. With my rod held high above my head, I raced down the rocky shoreline nearly tripping several times. After five minutes of tug of war, I had the fish within a few feet. With my heart pounding and my arms throbbing, somehow I managed to forcefully yet carefully coax this fish of my lifetime out from the fast current and into my grasp.
Standing in this picturesque Alaskan river, I knew instantly that I had reached my personal fly fishing zenith. Thoreau famously said that many men go fishing all of their lives without realizing that it is not fish they are after. But that day standing in the Kenai, I was acutely aware of why I fish. It’s the pursuit that drives me. Not the pursuit of record-setting fish and the subsequent grip and grin shots, but the pursuit of connecting with nature; the pursuit of wild places and the pursuit of wild fish on a planet where the wild is disappearing at an unbearable and unspeakable rate.
That day on the Kenai I felt more connected to nature’s majesty and sheer power than any day I can remember. Pulled and pushed around all day by the rushing river and its feisty residents, I returned back to my lodge physically and emotionally drained. I poured myself a tall glass of Jim Beam Black and went to sit by the campfire overlooking the river. Staring glassy-eyed into the glacial blue water and reflecting on what had transpired mere hours ago, I was content and at peace with myself and the world.
My first run and the fish it produced was not caught on video. The fight’s stirring images will never be viewed by fishing buddies or by my kids or grandkids. But it’s tattooed on my brain and will stay with me forever.
