Having never visited Alaska, Glacier Bear Lodge in the small town of Yakutat has left a lifelong impression on me. Traveling solo with my Australian cattledog "Wrangler," I booked the trip only a couple weeks in advance without a plan and flew by the seat of my pants. I've always thought of steelhead anglers to often be a bit of a grumpy bunch, but with the plentiful numbers of the Situk River, the atmosphere of the community and it's visitors is a different story. Drivers of every passing vehicle wave at each other in this relaxed rural environment, yet there's still a few flights a day that come in and out of the small Alaskan Airlines airport daily.
After getting a ride from the lodge shuttle, I had a couple drinks at the Glacier Bear Lodge bar, where I ran into Jared Cady of Get Em Dry Jigs and Lael Johnson of Bait Ballz, who were preparing to fish the tidally influenced lower end of the river and invited me to tag along with them. Speckled belly geese flew overhead, as bald eagles towered over us in the trees, and greater yellowlegs roamed the gravel shorelines, a welcoming scene of abundant wildlife that set the tone for our evening quest for chrome.
Lael and Jared hooked a couple fish swinging flies, and I brought in my first Alaskan steelhead on a spinner. Having thought I was just going to have some beers at the lodge, I had only been in Alaska since lunch and only been at the river for an hour before smooching an oryncus mykiss hen and sending her on her way upstream to spawn. A brown bear ran across the road in front of us on the way out, as if it was chasing our report and heading to the river. A sign at the ramp warned visitors of an aggressive bear in the area recently, so seeing my first grizzly from the safety of the vehicle was satisfying. I was in awe of the beauty of this place and the diversity of wildlife species. Being my first day in Alaska, I felt as if mother nature rolled out the red carpet for me.
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