Surviving the Nush

The pleasures and perils of roughing it in western Alaska

Each year as Alaska's sport-fishing season draws to a close, outfitters and guides tend to be a tad strung out; any little thing can set them off. They can smell the end of the season and, for many, that distinctive odor is a tremor-inducing amalgam of sex, beer and bonefish. You really can't blame them. They've already had their share of 16-hour days and annoying clients. They've chopped plenty of wood, patched dozens of waders and dressed too many perfect salmon destined for eternal damnation at the bottom of a freezer.

They've also battled the depressing summer weather in Alaska--the rain, the sleet, the wind and that incessant overcast sky. And the only thing standing in the way of the guides' migration south is . . . us--the last group at camp. It was September and my father, Fred, my friend, Troy Leatherman, and I were on a trip to fish the upper Nushagak River in western Alaska. No surprise then, that we were treated to a full dose of the end-of-season attitude.

Take for instance our pilot from Dillingham to our cabin on the banks of the Nushagak River. He arrived in a DeHallivand Beaver, ushered out a few departting fishermen and inspected our gear. "Well, this is a pile of shit," he declared. I wanted to say, Nice to meet you, too, but I kept my mouth shut. One word and we'd have been out of a plane ride and that pilot would have been a few hours closer to Mexico. An hour and a half later we stood in a rustic cabin set a few yards above the banks of the upper Nushagak. We listened to the plane retreat, chose bunks and watched our breath. "It's cold in here," I huffed. My father whispered, "I wouldn't use the pillows."

Our outfitter, who was scratching a wiry, unkempt beard and wearing a musty T-shirt that could have stood in the corner on its own, grumbled, "The last guys burned so much wood it just boiled in here. I had to cut more for you guys. The last wood run of the season." As in, Don't burn a single extra piece of wood or I'll take that double-bitted axe and cut off your ugly head. A few minutes later we settled around a plywood table and received some surprising news.

The water was low on the upper Nushagak, we were told, and access to the prime rainbow trout locales, especially in the tributary streams, would be restricted by the limitations of a skiff--the only boat in camp that could negotiate the shallow tributary water. In addition, the outfitter admitted, he didn't have the guide he'd promised. The guide left a week early with a broken foot, he explained. And for some unexplained reason he took the cabin's auxiliary skiff--the skiff to be used in case the other broke or sank. But perhaps most significantly, the promised cook also was listed as AWOL.

When my father asked if there was a towel and a place to wash his face, the outfitter pointed to a pail of dirty water and grabbed a musty towel off a nail. Nice. I've been on enough trips in remote locations to understand that we were not only at the mercy of a tired outfitter but we were also set up for one of two situations: We would either stick the fish and forget about any inconvenience, or we would spend nine days in a cold cabin with few fish and an overload of regret. But despite the risk of running into the end-of-season-attitude and a depleted camp, there are good reasons to visit the upper Nushagak in the third week of September.

In order to put on weight to survive another brutal winter, the river's rainbow trout and grayling feed heavily on the eggs and decaying bodies of silver and sockeye salmon at this time. And that's precisely what we hoped to find--rainbows and grayling feeding indiscriminately and often. The Nushagak, a 275-mile-long behemoth of a waterway rated as the ninth-largest river in the United States and located on the north side of Bristol Bay, isn't known for producing monster rainbows. Other streams in the Bristol Bay region, such as the Naknek, Brooks, American, Moraine and Kvichak, commonly kick out 25- to 30-inch steelhead-size rainbows. On the upper Nushagak, which twists through open tundra and beneath timbered hills before spilling into Bristol Bay, anglers should be pleased with rainbows measuring better than 20 inches. There are stories of 28-inch fish being landed on the upper Nushagak, but it's the odd specimen that reaches 20 inches or more.
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