Mike Mercer’s Alaskan Trip, 2008
Dave and Kim Egdorf’s Nushagak River Camps

Well, it’d been a few years since I’d done one of my Alaskan “tours” in the very first month of the season, and I was pretty pumped up about it; those mid-June to early July dates typically offer some of the best streamer and mouse fishing for big rainbows of the entire season. I’d be experiencing some lodges new to me, as well as visiting old friends from the past 20 years of traveling north, people who have made their livelihoods sharing their corner of the wilderness with a handful of fortunate clients. I know, I know, but hey…if I don’t do the job, someone else will!!

My first destination was Dave Egdorf’s Western Alaska Sportfishing on the headwaters of the Nushagak River, one of the most remote tent camp operations to be found in all of Bristol Bay. I’d visited Dave’s camps several times over the past couple of decades, but never this early in the season. During a weeklong stay here, guests typically split their time between each of Dave’s two wilderness camps, one located on the Nushagak itself, the other perched on a promontory overlooking a pristine tributary. Each has untold miles of water for the nearly exclusive use of their clients, accessed via the Ford Escorts of the north, a complete stable of 16’ jet boats. There are still trout here that will never see a fly – beautiful, unmarked leopard ‘bows averaging close to 20 inches, fish still naïve enough to crash a mouse pattern off the surface, and eat a monster sculpin swung on a sinking tip. In short, this is the place for the angler who wants to see what Alaska fished like 25 years ago, before the proliferation of lodges, and the popularity of the plastic bead egg. It truly is a step into the past.

During the months of June and September, Dave cuts his weekly occupancy from 12 to 8, and runs everyone out of the Nushagak Camp. During these weeks the best rainbow fishing in the entire watershed is concentrated in the twenty miles surrounding this facility. It is a paradise of magnificent leopard bows, and in June, before the salmon arrive, they are all about eating big…big streamers, big mice – nearly anything, so long as it is white (or sometimes olive, or black, or tan, or…) and at least three to four inches in length. It is for this fishing that I am coming; the vicious tight-line subsurface attacks, and mind-blowing topwater fireworks.

Piloting the hour-long flight to camp from the remote outpost town of Dillingham, Dave points out immense grizzlies wandering the hillsides below, fresh from their winter dens, loping across open meadows before vanishing into dense thickets of willow and alder. Enormous moose, knee deep in muskeg bogs, gaze disinterestedly skyward at our passing, quickly returning to their watery feasts. Once there is even a quick blur of motion as something smaller, a wolf, ducked out of sight beneath a canopy of pines. I love this place!

Landing his Cessna on one of the few straight reaches of the river near the camp (with everyone sharing the same thought – is this river wide enough for the plane?!), Dave taxies to the bank, where we unload into waiting jet boats, making hurried introductions with the guides we’d be spending the following 6 days with. On the run upriver, slightly too-cool wind blowing through my light traveling clothes, it feels unbelievably good to be back.

Coasting into camp, guides lifting the motors as we slide into the bankside shallows, we’re greeted by Dave’s wife Kim (also the woman responsible for treating our taste buds to a week of unbelievable wilderness gourmet), daughter Camille (a top-notch guide in her own right), and a handful of other guides. As we are helped from the boats (the guides here are courteous to a fault, all but physically transferring you from the boats to shore and not allowing you to carry anything from their boats – you’ll dependably find everything arranged neatly on your tent deck minutes after arriving home each day), we’re assaulted by hors d’oeuvres fit for a king, and cold drinks all around. This is the Camp’s first week of the season, and it’s hard to know who is more excited - the guests imagining what is in store for the days ahead, or the guides anxious to show us what they have discovered in the prior weeks of exploring. The atmosphere borders on giddy, and the pent up anticipation is not helped by what we are to discover is Camille’s nightly foray to a grassy spit of land at the downstream end of camp, to make fifty casts and, inevitably, hook into something large. Drowning my fishing anxiety in an unbelievable medley of Cornish game hen, wild rice and vegetables, I retire to my tent and read well into the night before exhaustion finally overtakes me.

Because Dave’s camp is the only operation even remotely this far up the river, there is no need to get up early to beat the competition to the best water…it is always just waiting there, a short boat ride away, reserved for us alone. So it is that 8:00am finds me stumbling to the cook tent, following my nose to a belly-busting breakfast of pancakes, quiche, bacon, cold cereal, and fruit, a morning feast far more sumptuous than the Pop Tart cuisine so familiar to me back home. I gorge like I won’t eat again for a week (when in fact I will pretty much do nothing BUT gorge for a week). Sliding into my waders and lacing my wading shoes, I am momentarily overcome with the dilemma of which fly boxes I should bring, finally throwing hands in the air and simply opting to take them all. It proves a good decision.

I’m fishing with Camille the first day, and it is a treat. She has spent nearly every summer of her 18 years at the camp, and knows the river like a close friend. We watch an eagle feed it’s cartoonishly oversized chicks, startle a huge moose from a bankside wallow, talk (for what I’m sure must have seemed endlessly to her) about what it has been like to grow up splitting her life between this and small town Montana, and catch fish after beautiful fish. Almost as memorable as the scarlet-flanked rainbows is a twenty-inch grayling she finds for me in a nondescript slow, deep run. A monster of its species, I marvel at the luminescence of the turquoise spots and orange-tinged edges of the long, flowing dorsal. I am reminded that this fish may have been swimming the river for almost as long as Camille has been returning, and release it with the utmost care it deserves. Towards the end of the day I browbeat her into fishing a run herself, and am not surprised to find that she is a “stick”, hooking and landing several fish in quick succession. After the third trout, she looks up suddenly, breaking from the reverie so familiar to all serious anglers and, slightly embarrassed, reels in and slogs to the boat. I am touched by her true and unaffected love of the fishing, and the wilderness surrounding it. By day’s end I’ve already managed to go through all of her favorite flies from my boxes, and this is my first day of a month fishing in Alaska! I may be in trouble…

The week passes in a blur, each day spent with different guides, all equally competent yet with widely divergent histories. As I come to know them personally, I also re-learn the river through their eyes, each imparting their unique knowledge and eccentricities. One is obsessed with mousing, and reminds me of the virtue of patience, urging me to forego the “sure thing” streamer grab in deference to fewer but more memorable surface explosions. I manage to farm the first several takes, but finally connect on a brute of a fish that slips out from beneath a logjam and annihilates my drifting rodent. I actually was looking away when it took, so just struck the sound of the take, and for 30 seconds the fish dug deep, unseen, trying to regain the safety of the massive tangle of drowned cottonwoods. When it finally showed itself in a breach of spotted vermillion, I caught my breath – it was an exceptional trout. Of course, once you allow yourself to want a fish, you are sure to lose it, and as Zach reaches for this one, the hook simply pulls free, and we watch as the leviathan slowly merges back into the wood. It was a fish worth twenty taken on a streamer, and I thank Zach for reminding me.

Another guide, Nick (who runs Wilderness Camp in July and August) brings me far upriver, to water so small it is only navigable during the higher flows of early summer. These fish are very large, on average, and seem incredibly special, tucked into little riffle drops and under beargrass cut banks. I glance around at the virgin wilderness as I fish, overcome with the realization of where it is I am; no footprints in the mud, no trash, no anything having to do with man. We spend all day throwing huge white streamers, mostly in shallow, fast water cobbled with dark rocks; the fish are perfectly camouflaged, so I learn to simply follow the white fly drifting along underwater, and strike when it suddenly, disconcertingly, vanishes. Amazing stuff, and these fish are hot! Feeling the hook, many rip line and fling themselves into the air, appearing even larger than they actually are in the narrow confines of these headwaters. I break the first rod of my trip (though certainly not the last) snubbing down on a twenty-incher in midair –Nick is amazed how well I take it. I assure him there are certain advantages to being in the industry, and besides, I’ve never been one to get all sentimental about a rod.

Tonight the Nushagak Jam Band fires up – Kris and “Chile” Nick on guitar, Kim working the moose jaw, and Camille playing…well, I’m not exactly sure what it was she was playing. Suffice it to say it was the most memorable sound I’ve ever heard emitting from a 5-gallon bucket, an oar, and a length of twine. Kris and Nick were only just short of remarkable as vocalists, with lyrics that defied description…imagine Gordon Lightfoot and Lil’ Bow Wow throwing down together. It is a night to remember…

Finally, it is the last day, and I am overcome with that peculiar mélange of urgency and melancholy familiar to the final moments of any great life event. Kris Kennedy, the head guide and a longtime friend from back home in Redding, describes how our day will, probably, unwind. I am ecstatic to hear we will spend the afternoon plying the petite flows of McGeary Creek – it has been a decade since I last explored this tiny tributary, and the memories are etched forever into my mind. It is something special. The morning passes at a pleasant pace, rich with laughter, memories and a surprising number of chunky rainbows, and we even spot the first pair of bright chum salmon of the season, pushing relentlessly upriver past our boat. Then it’s time to make our own migration, up into the trout-rich meanders of McGeary.

The ride alone is epic, a relentless sequence of narrow chutes, shallow riffles, and seemingly impossible angles. The guide must stay full throttle and on-step continually, or pay the unforgiving price of the inches-deep graveled bottom. Imagine skiing a four-mile Black Diamond run down a particularly steep slope…through a forest. At one point Kris yells something unintelligible above the guttural roar of the motor – looking back over my shoulder at him, I see he is pointing upstream. Following his indication, I observe the creek splits – to the right a tiny trickle, to the left a jumble of logs spanning the channel, several inches above the water’s surface. Obviously, we have reached the upper reaches of navigable water, and I reach down to grab my rod. Much to my surprise, Kris screams even louder, and guns the engine, catapulting us directly into the only partially-submerged tangle of trees. I fleetingly wonder what terrible offense it is I’ve perpetuated on Kris to drive him to commit this bizarre murder/suicide, and then things go into slow motion; I feel the sickening watery scrape of the massive limbs through the aluminum floorboards, suddenly hear the motor stall, more tortured shrieking of wood on metal, then the clunk of the outboard slamming back into place, and re-igniting. And we’re back on step. I am totally dumbstruck…what just happened?!! Swiveling on my seat, I look back to see Kris, broad Cheshire-cat grin spread across his face, lifting his shoulders in mock puzzlement at my obvious astonishment. We’d just performed a perfectly timed, full-on, Dukes of Hazzard log vault, and lived to tell the story. Only in Alaska.

The rest of the afternoon we spend drifting undulating flesh fly streamers into miniature holes and over pebbled riffle drops, unfailingly startled each time scarlet jaws materialized from nowhere to inhale our offerings. About every sixth or eighth pool a trout of true immensity would slide in behind our flies, and usually take them. And we would usually find a way to lose them. Towards the end of the day, Kris pulls to the bank of a particularly large hole, one requiring a cast of nearly 30 feet to cover (all is relative, on McGeary); this is it, he declares, our last hurrah. My first three casts I have three solid strikes, in the exact same place, and miss them all. Kris, knowingly, tells me to switch to a smaller streamer, one imitating a tiny baitfish. First cast, a solid hookup and a strong, lunging battle – coming to hand, I realize it’s a searun dolly varden, my first of the week, a gorgeous anadromous specimen seemingly just dipped in pearlescent paint. They are normally schooling fish, and sure enough, we hook dolly after shiny dolly in the little pool, laughing at the ridiculous numbers and amazing aggressiveness of the fish. Finally, it is enough; we reel in our tattered flies, and head down to a hot shower and another of Kim’s remarkable offerings.

It’s hard to capture such an experience in a few short paragraphs, as I don’t want to leave out all the little episodes that helped make it so special: “Chile” Nick being attacked by hyper-aggressive Arctic terns while innocently eating his lunch; watching Camille dive into a malfunctioning outboard armed only with a screwdriver and a wrench, all intense focus and greasy hands; Wilderness Camp Nick, consumed with nervous energy and using only a chain saw, a true eye and a small tree he’d felled for firewood, sculpting a beautiful peeled bark nightstand in just over an hour that I’d be proud to have in my house; and the sight of Dave and Kim, working daily as a team in such a harsh and demanding environment, making the flights, and the beds alike, day after memorable day. In the end, though, it has to be about the uncompromised wilderness, and all that goes with it…without that, all is merely pedestrian. We go to the Egdorf’s to catch fish, yes, but more than that, we go to fish in a place that has not yet been trampled, an environment that has not yet been sullied by the hand of man, or forced to conform to his will. It is a wild place, a place where we have to play by rules not of our making, and be grateful for the opportunity.

As I write this, the final month of the 2008 season at the Egdorf’s Camp is fully subscribed, but we are taking bookings now for 2009. Some weeks are already booked solid, so I would suggest contacting us soon, if you have specific weeks you need to travel next year. As well, we will be more than happy to tell you what to expect from a fishing standpoint, from one portion of the season to another. It is all wonderful, though varies considerably, from June through September. Call us here at (800) 669-3474, or email me direct at mercer@theflyshop.com - we will talk you through the options and/or send out a comprehensive informational package, complete with pictures and details.