As recorded in Wayne’s Journal, on 28 July 1993, a friend of mine (Jim) and I (Wayne) caught a flight from Seattle to Anchorage at 9:30 pm. We arrived in Anchorage at 1:00 am. We picked up a car rental and drove to a 24 hour Supermarket. We bought food, beverages and a cooler.
We headed out of Anchorage at 3:00 am. We stopped at a restaurant at 7:45 am, and had breakfast. We were on the road again at 8:30 am.
We arrived at our destination. The camp office had informed Nik that “2 rich clients were going to arrive from Seattle”. We were in on the joke, and Nik was very surprised when we got there, because he knew we were from Seattle — and not “rich”. We all had a good laugh. Jim and I bought a 3 day fishing license.
Our intent was to go on a guided trip one day during this trip. We previously had made a reservation. The next morning, Jim and I climbed into the jet boat and were heading up river at 6:30 am. Nik was our guide. The boat dropped us off downstream a short distance from the fishing hole we intended to fish.
At 7:15 Russel [another client of Nik’s] had a fish on, but he lost it. At 7:30 Russel hooked and landed a 30 lb Chinook salmon, which he kept. At 8:00 am I hooked a nice Chinook. I was impressed with how hard this fish fought. At one point, my hip boots got stuck in the mud on the bottom of the river, which caused me to lose my balance, fall and get wet. Nevertheless, I was abe to get back on my feet and land the fish (with Nik’s help). I kept the ~35 lb Chinook.
I then helped Nik move the fish we kept down river to where the boat would pick us up. When I returned, Jim was playing a 20 lb fish. He lost it, but 20 minutes later he hooked and landed a 18 lb Chinook.
Nik prepared some coffee for us using his stove.
The jet boat picked us up and we were back at camp at 11:00 am.
On 31 July, we fished from the bank during the morning for 2 hours without success. We packed a lunch and drove to a fishing hole and fished from 2:00 pm to 8:30 pm without success. That evening we had a nice BBQ in camp. The dinner included moose, salmon and salad.
On 1 August we packed our gear, then drove to Anchorage. Jim and I had a nice dinner at Stuart Anderson’s restaurant in Anchorage. We caught our flight at 1:00 am; and we landed in Seattle at 6:30 am.
Note 1: The “Alaska” web page can be viewed by selecting Sitemap->States (US)->Alaska from menu bar at top.
