Fly fishing season starts early

First Arctic Grayling of the season.

It's the last day of March, and we were already fly-fishing this year!  This winter in Alaska was crazy warm; I feel that it was about 11C (20F) warmer than usual.  A little bit of warmth makes the winter life in Fairbanks Alaska much more enjoyable. But I do worry about suffering of the next generation and the earth due to the climate change.

My son, Taiga, was feeling a bit sick last Friday, and he didn't want to go to school.  He was unusually quiet, but I promised him that we would go fishing if he wasn't sick over the weekend.  This encouraged him a little bit and he could handle the school.  Then he managed to recover next day!  I was planning to go ice-fishing, but Taiga wanted to bring fly-fishing gear and see if the ice is gone from Badger Slough.  This spot is great for kids to learn fly-fishing.  There is a wide-open area next to the stream, so they don't have to worry about snagging the back-cast.  It is catch-and-release, so there are plenty of fish.  Also, the fish are close to the shore, so beginner kids can easily catch them. Indeed, Badger Slough is the place where Taiga tried his first fly-fishing 2 years ago, and I wrote a blog post here.  He managed to catch a couple, and he has been hooked since then.  It is the place where we always hit for the first fly fishing of the season (here is the link to 2018).  In 2017 and 2018, we were there in May, so I wasn't expecting to swing the rod in March 31.  When we get there, people were already fishing there! Taiga was so excited that he quickly put his wader on and got everything set up by himself.

The water was ice-cold, but we waded into the stream and started to cast close to the edge of floating ice.  Taiga had forgotten a little about the good practice in casting, but his casting started to improve after I pointed out a couple things he have to keep in his mind (wait for the line to stretch out instead of whipping around quickly, don't drop the rod tip for the back-cast and hold the wrist stiff etc). 

Within 20 minutes, he hooked a good sized fish!  It was about 12", but it gave a good fight for #3 rod.   I'm impressed how calmly and gently he handled and landed the fish (he remembered that the mouth of Arctic graylings aren't too strong, so he can't pull hard), even thought it was the first fish of the year.   Well, compared to 2 years ago, he has had lots of experiences.

After a while, he had to go potty, so we decided to walk to the closest shore.  But it was a mistake, our feet get sucked into deep, soft mud, and one of Taiga's wading shoes was left in there...  The water was so cold that my arm became numb quickly. But I kept kicking the mud with my feet while Taiga was doing his business.  I wasn't too optimistic about finding it, though.  I felt something harder at 1.5-2' deep in the mud just when I was almost giving up.  So this is the biggest catch of the day for me.

Taiga's wading shoe retrieved from deep in the mud.

We were getting cold, so we decided to fish from the shore after lunch.  He wasn't catching any, and realized that the fish were deeper than his nymph was reaching.  So we changed it to heavier, bead-head, copper-wire body nymph (Bead-head Brassie).  Now he was catching one every 10 minutes.  I was catching ok with an olive damselfly nymph with weighted eyes.  It seems that early in the season, they seem to prefer shiny or bright colored nymphs.  Other people were catching a lot with Pink Butt nymph.  The water flow is slow here, so we have to use relatively small stripping action instead of dead drift.  Also, bead-heads or weighted nymphs seem to have better actions.

I knew that there could be whitefish around here, but this is the first one I caught with a fly.

My first whitefish on fly (I used a small Beadhead Brassie with copper-wire body)

It is usually quite crowded, but it wasn't too bad today, and there were quite a few friendly fly-fishers.  After Taiga caught quite a bit (I think he caught close to 10 fish), he decided to socialize.  There was a person who wasn't catching any, so he decided to show him the fish he caught.  Then he was hanging around there fishing next to him, and giving him advises.  Later, he thanked Taiga because Taiga told him to change the fly, and he started to get fish.  It was his second time fly fishing.  Then Taiga moved to the next person, and had fun fishing next to him for a while.  While he was leaving his daddy alone and enjoying social fishing by himself, I decided to try a dry fly.  There were a couple fish rising, but I didn't catch any.   But it was more fun for me to cast a dry fly without catching any than nymphing.

Taiga socializing with other fly-fishers

I am thankful that there is still something which can peel him away from playing Minecraft, and I fully enjoyed a warm Alaskan spring day.  I can imagine what he wants to do next weekend, and this is the beginning of weekly commute there.  I hope that insects will come out soon, so I can use dry flies!