Searching For Silver

The author travels to Alaska’s famed Bristol Bay to land a tundra trophy.

- JR Sullivan

THE SECOND I felt the jolt, I raced to take up slack line. I’d always dreamed of hooking a big coho salmon on the fly, and now—wading knee-deep in the Egegik River, which feeds Alaska’s Bristol Bay—my rod was bowed deeply. Around my feet, swarms of crimson sockeyes moved upriver, but my fish was farther out, in dark water. I tried to gain line, but the salmon hardly budged. I was stunned that I’d already hooked a fat coho, much less without the help of bait.

To my surprise, though, the fish made no big charges for open water. After a five minute struggle, I eased the salmon into the shallows, where I could get a decent look, and saw that the big coho I knew I’d hooked had transformed into a midsize humpy, the ugly sister of the salmonid family. The fish bobbed in the current, my fly snagged through one of its fins.

David Stumph, one of our guides, couldn’t keep from laughing. Another fisherman joked that he wouldn’t serve a humpy to his mother-in-law. I turned the fish loose with a pang of defeat and watched it disappear into the Egegik.

THE RUNDOWN