By Staff
Much to my dismay, forest fire fighting duty in the Upper Peninsula snuffed my plans to fly fish some of my favorite country, Alaska's North Slope and Prudhoe Bay area in early September. By the time the fires died in mid-September it was too frigid in the Arctic for this boy so I began looking at Alaska's more temperate areas further south for fly fishing opportunities. I dismissed the Kenai Peninsula, great fishing but too touristy for us. That pretty much left just Southeast Alaska, also known as the Panhandle. I knew nothing about this area but there's this most marvelous book, Flyfisher's Guide to Alaska, that accurately details just about every piece of water in Alaska worth fishing. Perusing the book, I noticed there are darn few roads in Southeast Alaska. What ones there are simply run several miles out of the major towns and dead end, at best only accessing a couple of streams. Pretty iffy. Then I noticed Prince Of Wales Island off the coast from Ketchikan. It's the third largest island in the U.S., bested only by Hawaii and Kodiak. During the early 1900s logging denuded most of the island but left over a thousand miles of gravel roads crossing dozens of fishable streams. The book indicated good timing for coho and pink salmon runs, too. 'nuff said, the wife and I were soon high in the "Friendly Skies."
The Panhandle is a maze of ocean channels, fiords and islands and life revolves around ferry boats. You take a ferry from Ketchikan's island airport to the city of Ketchikan, also on an island. After renting a car you load it on a ferry for a three hour run to Prince Of Wales Island. Accommodations are not plentiful on Prince. In fact, the outside world has passed Prince Of Wales by. There are a couple small, full service tourist lodges that cater to the summer ocean charter fishing but we like to play things looser than that. Of the half dozen little villages on the Island only one had both a hotel and a restaurant, Craig. Someone called Ruth Ann pretty much has a corner on Craig's accommodation market. We stayed at Ruth Ann's Hotel, an antiquated, two story, clapboard building seemingly untouched since the early 1900s. You have to ask where it is for the little neon sign in the window is obscured by brush. We ate at Ruth Ann's Restaurant across the street and swilled from Ruth Ann's Bar next door to it, all with the same, antiquated atmosphere. REALLY antiquated is the old Craig Hotel. Almost windowless and with peeling pink paint it looks long abandoned. Ruth Ann's water hole closes at 9 p.m. but when the locals are feeling especially whiskey frisky whispers start circulating about perhaps opening up "The Craig." I don't know who has the key but several nights the ruckus at The Craig went into the wee dawn hours.
I love the friendly, unassuming people in such off the path places. Within minutes of sitting down in a five booth diner the commercial fishing boat captain in the adjacent booth is telling you about his cancer surgery, raising his shirt to show you his scar and inviting you aboard his boat. A local in another booth freely gives you the latest fishing tips. The Forest Service had run out of the only map that decodes the road maze so the check out gal at the general store gives you hers, a bit tattered but serviceable (the map). The driver of every vehicle, though granted not many, waves as you pass.
We also learned it rains a lot on the Island, like every day, though it tends to sputter intermittently most days. I asked someone if it always rains like this. He replied, "No, I remember one year, 1992 I think, we went five days straight with nary a drop."
That gives you a feel for the setting of Prince Of Wales Island, a place lost in time. Next week we'll go to rivers seething from top to bottom and bank to bank with endless masses of salmon and walk streamside bear trails through primordial, dank, moss-draped, rain forests. Carpe diem.