“Then I swallowed it.”
“You swallowed a hook?!”
“Yep. Sure did,” my guide Lewis Lincecum clarifying his accidental ingestion of a Tiemco size 12 hook while holding it in his mouth during some on the spot fly repair. “Swallowed it whole.”
“What’d you do?” I asked, thinking of the logistics involved in removing someone with a hook in his throat from this remote part of Alaska.
“I pounded six Cokes, one after the other. Thought the acid in it would dissolve the metal. It worked.”
Crisis averted.
Welcome to Lake Illiamna, Alaska where the guides are so tough they eat hooks for breakfast – albeit inadvertently - the landscape is breathtaking, and the fishing some of the best on Earth. Located southwest of Anchorage, Lake Illiamna is the largest lake in Alaska and one of the largest in the world. It’s over 1,000 square miles runs to depths of more than 900 feet, is home to numerous species of game fish, and to one of only two known worldwide populations of freshwater seals. It is a place as unique as it is beautiful. The only access to this natural wealth is through Rainbow Bay Resort, a fishing lodge so esteemed that it regularly makes the “best of the best” lists including Field & Stream’s Top 25 Best Lodges in North America. I came to Rainbow Bay at the invitation of Dallas Safari Club member and lodge manager Jim Kern. The plan was for Jim and I to fish all day while working on a book about his time as a pitcher for the Texas Rangers at night. Also joining me – although not saddled with having to do any editing work – would be DSC members Dave Mellum and Frank-Paul A. King.
Dave, Frank-Paul, and I met up in Anchorage along with a few other anglers for the short bush flight to Rainbow Bay. The flight was only an hour and, for a first time visitor to the forty-ninth state like myself, an opportunity to see some absolutely gorgeous vistas. We flew over the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve and skirted Katmai National Parks. I’ve never seen as much forest in all my life. This flight would be the first of many for us as some of the best fishing locations are reached from the lodge via floatplane. Other locations are reached via boat. I learned more about these arrangements and why Rainbow Bay is so distinctive when we landed at the lodge. We were met by Jim who immediately went into proud...
general manager mode by detailing what makes his lodge so special.
“There are ten species of game fish within a short boat or plane ride from the lodge,” Jim began. “We’re the only lodge in Alaska that gives anglers that type of opportunity. This makes it a great destination for a first time Alaskan angler like yourself. Or for experienced anglers trying to top their last catch.”
I reminded Jim that I was already and the lodge (and not in need of a sales pitch) and followed him into the lodge to meet owner Jerry Pippen. Jerry originally opened the lodge in 1984 to serve as a launching point for the area’s great brown bear and moose hunting but in his scouting trips found the location prime for fishing. “Within thirty minutes of each direction,” Jerry began, “You can find rainbow trout, Arctic char, grayling, pike, and all five species of Pacific salmon (pink, chum, sockeye, king, and silver) and pike. And shallow water halibut. There’s nothing else like it in the state.”
My first full day of fishing was spent with Dave and the famous-hook-swallowing-guide Lewis. After boating across the lake and past the world renowned Lincoln Rock – an outcropping that resembles President Lincoln – to the mouth of the Illiamna River we jumped into a jet boat and sped upstream to tackle rainbow and char. These two species live almost exclusively on the eggs deposited by the thousands of red-backed sockeye salmon that move upstream to spawn. This alone was worth my trip as I’ve never seen anything quite as striking as gin clear water teeming with such vibrant red fish. In some places it looked as if you could cross the river on the backs of spawning salmon.
We began our day of fishing on a cutback of deep water teeming with sockeye. The bank was littered with fresh bear track and the temperature hovering at around 65 degrees. Although new to fly fishing, Lewis’s and Dave’s instructions had me...
doing so quite impressively in no time. By ten a.m. I had caught several char and lost quite a few rainbows. Dave fared much better. The reminder of the day was spent catching fish, moving to new spots to catch more fish, eating a shore lunch of freshly grilled jalapeño salmon, and celebrating the day’s success on the way back across the lake. At the lodge, we were greeted with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and asked about our day.
It was great. Thanks for asking.
While day two was a successful repeat of day one, day three found Frank-Paul, new friend Jim Shulin and I on Long Lake, tackling pike with the help of guide Derek, who as he told me had never swallowed a fishing hook. We made the short fifteen minute flight in Jerry’s newly restored Beaver float plane and like my flight from Anchorage I enjoyed soaking in the Alaskan frontier from the sky. We saw moose, bear, caribou and a few seals. Our observations grew once we switched from the plane to the boat. The most impressive of these was a juvenile bald eagle with an affinity for just released pike. Derek said he wasn’t sure where the bird learned the skill but the fledgling predator was very good at it.
“He gets three or four pike a week like that,” Derek assured us.
“He gets three or four pike a week like that,” Derek assured us.
Despite Frank, Paul, Jim and I catching and releasing close to a hundred pike during our day trip the eagle never partook. He came close a few times but never truly committed. Regardless, this day was great fun and catching pike of ten to twenty pounds on a fly rod is now a new favorite activity of mine.
I spent day four at the lodge working on baseball with Jim. The weather was pretty bad and I felt working on a book inside a palatial lodge would be more productive than fishing in the rain; I was wrong. I should have gone fishing. Although Jim and I got a lot done, those that went...
out in the rain did very well indeed. That night the lodge celebrated all their catches with freshly flown in King crab legs the size of my arm.
My last day at Rainbow Bay proved to be my favorite. It was a real Alaskan adventure in the truest sense. Frank, Paul, Jim, and new friend and TFO president Rick Pope, and I left the lodge early and ferried across the lake to the base of the only road built to connect Lake Iliamna to Lower Cook Inlet.
This one lane road of patchwork gravel serves to ferry materials overland from the coast to the lake. It’s an extremely narrow and perilous highway and the dangers of traversing it witnessed in the rusted hulls of tractors, trucks, and trailers and in the lost wares littering the sides of the road. It took us more than an hour to make our way across this road and once we reached the ocean we had to wait for the tide to come in. When it did, we took a small fishing boat into the bay and out to the Rainbow Warrior, a six-bedroom yacht outfitted for shallow water halibut fishing.
The area regularly produces 100 plus pound halibut with most, however, averaging between 50 to 60 pounds. The waters are also ripe with shark and skates, the latter I found the equivalent of pulling a sheet of plywood up from the depths. The largest of these triangle shaped members of shark family I landed measured 52 inches across. The largest of the halibut I landed – and I landed more than a dozen during the morning – weighed about 65 pounds. With all of us limiting out by 1:00 pm we turned our attention from catching halibut to frying them. This proved to be the best meal during my entire trip and yes, even better than the kind crab legs I gorged on earlier in my trip.
After stuffing ourselves silly on halibut, Frank-Paul, Rick, Jim, and I made our way across the mountains and back to the lodge where we packed for our return trip to the real world. It had been a great week and for me a great introduction to fishing in the last frontier. During my time at Rainbow Bay I’d caught five of the ten major game species of the area, seen bears and moose on a daily basis, made some new friends, and made plans to...
return to do it all again.
Visit Rainbow Bay Resort at www.rbrlodge.com
Visit the author at www.gaynecyoung.com
Visit the author at www.gaynecyoung.com