ITINERARY
coho heaven
AK’s Yakutat Peninsula
Silvers pour into the Yakutat
Peninsula by the thousands
starting in August and con-
tinuing through September
making this region one of the
most popular places in Alaska
to fish. Here are three rivers to
make a bee line to this fall.
situk river
This river sees one of the
state’s largest coho runs
(50,000+) and can be fished
on foot or by boat. It’s an
easy drift boat river and the
lower section can be waded.
Drift boats can be rented at
Yakutat Lodge or you can
drive to the lower river where
you’ll catch coho on the tides.
Fish the last mile of river, but
watch for bears.
yakutatlodge.com
Five Best Fishing Books
Subjective certainly, but nonetheless definitive, here is our list
of the five best fishing books published. In no particular order
either. When traveling this summer, we recommend you bring
at least one of these along.
A River Runs Through It Be-
cause Hollywood fell in love with the
story and made a movie out of it this
book receives some undue and unfair
criticism. But make no mistake, Nor-
man McLean’s tale was a beautifully
crafted story than what was portrayed
in the movie. A River Runs Through
It is a story about family and fishing
and how the two intertwine and flow
together. It is arguably one of the
most famous fishing books of modern
time and it is without a doubt one of
the best written books of our time.
The River Why Written by James
David Duncan, The River Why starts
out as a fishing story and turns into a
coming of age story that sometimes
borders on hilarious and always
insightful. Young Gus Orviston copes
with a mother who bait fishes and a
father who fly fishes, and eventually
leaves home to live in a cabin in the
Coast Range Mountains of Oregon
where he immerses himself in fish-
ing. Over time he meets a beautiful
woman who teaches him there’s
more to life than just fishing. Great
story, well written, and certainly
worth your time.
The Old Man and the Sea This
is Ernest Hemingway’s classic story
of an aging Cuban fisherman named
Santiago and a giant marlin doing
battle in the Gulf Stream. The story
culminates when Santiago lands the
fish and brings the fish home to be
sold. Along the way the marlin is rav-
ished by sharks, however Santiago’s
dignity is restored when he returns to
shore. The Old Man and the Sea was
first published in 1952 by Life Maga-
zine, and catapulted Hemingway into
a celebrity having won the Nobel Prize
in Literature.
italio river
A River Never Sleeps Written by
Roderick Haig-Brown, A River Never
Sleeps is an enduring classic first
published in 1946; it is as pertinent to-
day as it was then. Haig-Brown takes
the reader on a month by month tour
of steelhead, Northern pike, salmon
and sea-run cutthroats (among other
topics) in his adopted land British
Columbia. It is beautifully written and
without a doubt one of the best fish-
ing books ever published.
The Earth Is Enough Harry
Middleton writes of old men, trout
fishing, farming and how the three
are interconnected. When, as a
12-year-old boy, Harry is turned over to
his uncle, grandfather and their crazy
neighbor he is thrust into a meager
existence on an Ozark farm. He learns
that what is provided on earth—a
family, a trout stream and a farm—
provides everything he needs to be
happy. It is a wonderfully-written
book that is funny, sad, warm and
insightful. Read this and you’ll imme-
diately become a Harry Middleton fan.
Fishing trips here border on
the insane crazy in terms of
numbers of fish hooked. Do
not think that a goal of 50 a
day is out of reach. It’s very at-
tainable, and if you were any
measure of a man you’d notch
100 fish a day. Fish are fresh
from the ocean and they’re
incredibly aggressive to flie