P.O.W Island is massive. It’s the kind of big that you can’t really
imagine till you fly over it or work up the coastline in a ferry.
Water was everywhere: from bogs to lakes to dozens upon
dozens of creeks that all have steelhead; albeit some run very
small, others much bigger. Combine that with limited intel and
a truck at our disposal…and we had a week of crazy island
exploration ahead of us.
Every day we tried to hit a new drainage to keep working
through the Rubik’s cube of P.O.W steelhead. Some of the rivers,
like the Thorne, had amazing access and others, like Hatchery
Creek, were unbelievable slogs through muskeg and deadfall
that lead us to unfishable water.
EVERY TIME WE LEFT THE TRUCK, WE HAD NO
CLUE WHAT WE WOULD FIND AS WE EMERGED
FROM THE TRAIL TO THE RIVER.
More than once, we got a call on the radio from one of our
partners saying he could see steelhead in the creek, but had
no way to cast them. The thing was that we’d find a pool in the
middle of the rainforest jungle, and the first thought we had as
we started into the tannic water was, “If I hook one, then what?”
Every once in a while, things would line up. And they were
interactions that are impossible to forget. Downstream, we’d
see our partner in a cage match with a 15 lb. steelhead. The
low water and intimate stream size had made these fish very,
very mad. So when we would tussle, within those seconds, they
would be stamped onto our brains with a hammer.
Just because we went through all the trouble of going to Alaska
didn’t mean we caught a lot of fish. In truth, I hooked only a
couple all week and the same went for our entire crew.
No matter where you go to steelhead fish, success is not
always in line with how much effort you give or how far you
traveled. Your one-week might not line up with run timing, water
conditions, moon phases, or any of the fickle reasons why
steelhead are such a mind-bender of a fish. Did you count up
the bananas you ate in the last 6 months and divide by 3.14?
Neither did I.
As the week neared its close, it was clear to me that this place
and its fish were in my head. Situated in the Tongass National
Forest, it is a natural beauty that is hard to understand unless