The famous nocturnal Hex hatch of the Midwest (and a few other lucky locations) stirs to the surface mythically large brown trout that only touch streamers for the rest of the year.
This one was surprisingly straightforward to identify. The lack of a sclerite at the base of the lateral hump narrows the field quite a bit, and the other options followed fairly obvious characteristics to Clostoeca, which only has one species, Clostoeca disjuncta.
I had good photo weather for the 7-hour drive from Fairbanks down to Chitina for the dip-netting trip detailed in the August 12th update. I stopped for a few hours at the upper Gulkana River along the way, hoping to catch grayling in a promising new spot I'd found (but not fished) on an earlier trip. That stretch of river is so enchanting one could spend a lifetime on a single mile of it and never want to leave. I was amazed to find no sign of grayling, except for another angler who said the spot fishes well earlier in the summer. I fished behind spawning sockeye salmon and caught only a round whitefish, and was treated to the sight of caribou crossing the river upstream. I think the spawning salmon have something to do with the lack of grayling, no doubt an interesting story I have yet to figure out.
Oldredbarn on Aug 16, 2011August 16th, 2011, 5:58 am EDT
Jason,
Gorgeous! You are a lucky, lucky, man to get some real time to nose around up there...Whenever the market goes especially schizoid, as it has lately, I dial up your Alaskan photos and pretend I'm tramping around up there with you...Better than aspirin or a shot of bourbon!!!
Thanks!
Spence
"Even when my best efforts fail it's a satisfying challenge, and that, after all, is the essence of fly fishing." -Chauncy Lively
"Envy not the man who lives beside the river, but the man the river flows through." Joseph T Heywood
Shawnny3 on Aug 23, 2011August 23rd, 2011, 4:59 pm EDT
I don't know if the piece you wrote about dipnetting can be commented on, so I'll just comment here. What a fascinating piece and photo essay! I learned a ton from it about everything from the larger management issues of the fishery to the gory details of the techniques used. I showed it to my wife, who recently ate salmon at a fancy restaurant here in PA that bragged that the fish came from the Copper River, and I also shared it with some others I thought would find it interesting.