Our morning was set in concrete.....up at 6, breakfast at 7, on the road again at 8!
Today was going to take us on a two mile hike approximately 5 miles up Red creek, through bear and mosquito infested forest. The mosquito's were far worst than any bears! Even though the air temp was in the 60's it didn't take long for me to break out in a sweat. The gym prior to my adventure didn't hurt. We entered Red creek and almost immediately found a hole with Kings in it. It was way too small for 4 people to fish, so I moved about a hundred yards downstream to another somewhat larger hole. It too was crammed full of monster Kings. I had decided to use a flyrod for the remainder of the week, but was not too sure about what I would do if one of these bigboys slammed my fly. I had semi used a flyrod in Texas for bass and perch, but NEVER on big game...It was going to be a GAME! On my third cast it happened. The king slammed the fly with force of three Texas redfish and sought the nearest cover. I wanted to hold the line, but was told in not so gentle a voice, "Get your hands off the damn line....use the handle, that's what its for!"After a dozen long runs, several aerial combat jumps, and jack like bottom hugging I managed to land my first ever 30+" fish on a flyrod....I was hooked!
I decided to keep this fish...it measured 38 1/2" and we guessed the weight at about 25lbs. It was a male or buck and was just what we wanted to take home. After pictures and high fives, Larry wanted a picture of him with my fish, we continued to hit the hole pretty hard. When Eric and his group arrived on the scene I asked him the name of this hole...it was unnamed. It was christened the TBH Hole ( Texasbowhunter). I managed a couple more smaller fish from that hole before we headed downstream.
As we progressed down this truly Alaskan wilderness stream, I keep thinking that this was the way I had envisioned fishing Alaska would be. Red creek was for the most part a shallow, fast, rocky waterway with the exception of a small number of deep pools that without question held Kings on their way upstream. We fished for Rainbows and Dolly Vardens in the shallow areas without too much success.
Besides Damon slipping down and filling his waders, the only excitement was the numerous bear signs that dotted every beach we walked on, but no sightings.
After a great lunch on a forgotten beach, we headed for a spot called the Birch hole. This was simply a long deep pool approximately 50 yards long and 10 yards wide. It had a fallen Birch tree across it. This was the only fishing platform to reach the lower 40 yards of the pool. There were as in the other pools lots of Kings, but they would not have anything to do with our offerings. A couple of our team did manage to pull a few good size rainbows from the upper end. Later in the week a number of Kings were landed here, but three times as many were lost. Our goal was to reach the Ferry Hole by five and we still had a way to go. We fished another good hole before exiting the creek and heading back to the lodge. This last spot was known as Sunset hole . We spent the majority of Day 5 fishing Sunset and it turned out to be one of the best!
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