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We unload our camping gear onto a small island and bust out the The Yukon’s First Kayak Fishing Outfitter
tackle and start tying leaders and piecing together high-end travel rods. Stacks of Plano boxes full of hooks spread out on the moss alongside Rubbermaid totes packed with of heavyweight jigs and plastics. It’s the same routine no matter where you come from—only Alaska-cold; everyone’s on autopilot rigging boats and pulling on the Gore-Tex and neoprene. Te water’s glass-calm and gently agitating from some old, far-off
blowup. Te sun burns through a high haze. Jigging for groundfish in an exposed kelp bed with an 8-ounce bullet head, it’s laughably easy. Every time I drop my grub to the bottom, a bite. We haul in a rain- bow of rockfish. Ten, just like that, I fight and boat a mini-monster, a toothy green 41-inch lingcod. Minutes later, Lucian holds up its twin. Meanwhile, Jesse’s smiling ear to ear, double-fisting a couple of poul-
try-sized yelloweyes the color of aquarium goldfish—one of which followed a smaller one onto the hook, so that Jesse pulled in two at once. Everywhere I look, someone’s lipgripping, releasing, threading a stringer, and Wali’s snapping pics with a waterproof point-and-shoot. Jeff’s beaming around us in the Zodiac like a winning soccer coach because his winter cabin fever has finally broken and his one-day-old fishing team is cleaning up. Grilled rockfish and cod are on the menu for dinner. We clean a buck-
etload of fillets on the beach. Ten it’s time for an evening session. Tere’s a deep channel off camp that’s a spawning-salmon highway,
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one of the many features that made Jeff choose this particular secret spot amongst this mass of islands. Lucian works the edge of the under- water canyon with quiet Yugoslavian-American determination, apply- ing all his Great Lakes salmon-fishing know-how. It’s the same drill he uses back home on Lake Michigan. He cranks his downrigger to 50 feet and trolls a spoon back and forth with military precision until I hear him yelling my name. I find him struggling with a lap-load of silver muscle, grinning through the black mesh of a giant net. He’s got a tyee for sure, what turns out to be a 37-pounder. Te strict and gentlemanly definition of a tyee—according to the
85-year-old Tyee Club of British Columbia—is a 30-pound or larger chinook caught on an artificial lure from a rowed boat on 20-pound- test or lighter. In the famous Tyee Pool near Cambell River, B.C., where fisherman J.A. Wiborn started the Tyee Club in 1924, anglers aren’t al- lowed motors. Most use old-school rowboats. Fishing from a Prowler Trident 15 with 15-pound braid and a 20-
pound fluorocarbon leader, Lucian’s just redefined the rules. “Yeah baby,” Jeff motors in and gives Lucian a high five. “Now that’s what I call a true tyee. A tyee caught from a kayak!”
ROUGHING IT IN THE BUSH
Aſter that first good day, the storm blasted away a week’s worth of fish- ing. Tis year’s La Niña weather pattern has trashed Jeff’s carefully plot- ted 30 years of seasonal norms. He says the island old timers have been calling it the wettest summer in 80 years. Our camp is no fancy pants fishing lodge either. We see the lodge
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34 … KAYAK ANGLER spring 2009
boats and hear them on our VHF radios, ranging far and wide to find biting fish. Tey have five-star chefs, helicopters, hot tubs and sexy massage therapists. We’re hunkered in tents on a ragged little island, spending our vacation with four other smelly guys in dry suits. And now the fishing’s gone bust.
“OUR CAMP IS NO FANCY PANTS FISHING LODGE EITHER.
Tey have five-star chefs,helicopters, hot tubs and
sexy massage therapists. We’re hunkered in tents on a ragged little island, spending ourvacation with four other smelly guys in dry suits.”
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