Memorial Day camping at Chena River State Recreation Area

Spring in Alaska is short, and we have a small window of time for gardening.  We should have been finishing gardening before the summer starts, but the weather was so nice that we decided to go for two nights of camping over Memorial Day weekend.  On Friday night after fixing up the camper, we considered several camping spots such as Nome Creek, Chatanika River, or Denali National Park.  But Taiga had his mind set to 48 Mile Pond along Chena Hot Spring Road, which is a part of Chena River State Recreation Area.  It is one of Taiga's favorite fishing spots and I wrote about it previously (link).  The beautiful boreal forest of Chena River State Recreation Area can be reached within 1 hour of drive from Fairbanks, and it provides many outdoor opportunities.

"We fished a lot" describes this camping trip.  We had a late start and arrived there after 5PM on Saturday, and it was crowed. There were about 3 large groups and 3-4 other families.  Fortunately we managed to find a site to park out old camper.  Taiga was ready to fish as soon as we parked the camper.  We caught quite a few fish in a brief time before dinner.  When we went back for dinner, our neighbor kid, Dylan, offered us to join their camp fire.  We had a good time roasting hot-dogs and making s'more.  Dylan and Taiga also had fun fishing together next day.  Unfortunately, Dylan's parents didn't want him to go far from their camp site, so they had to stay in the area where they couldn't catch fish.  But it didn't matter too much because Taiga loves this kind of social fishing.  The first night was very noisy with some kids riding four-wheelers till midnight, and also generator noises.

You can guess what Taiga wanted to do as soon as he woke up next morning.  Yes, more fishing.  But we managed to convince him to eat breakfast before fishing.  Other people seemed to stay up late last night, and most of them were still asleep.  We quietly paddled through the mirror-like pond, listening to bird calls, woodpecker pecking, and ducks' wings thrashing the air.  For some reasons, fish weren't actively jumping.  Taiga quietly dropped a dry fly.  While Taiga was intensely focusing on any movement around the fly, I enjoyed the morning bird calls.  After repeating this a couple times, Taiga started to hook fishes.  Also we spotted several schools of trouts, and we chased them with our canoe. Taiga was sight-fishing and casting the dry fly ahead of the schools.  This was a lot of fun.

After lunch, we decided to go to 45.5mi pond.  It is a nice small pond, which has plenty of room for back cast, and one can fish without a canoe.  Somehow, they weren't biting (he caught one small Arctic grayling), so Taiga wanted to go back to the camp site.  I wanted to fish in the Chena River. Even if I told Taiga that upper Chena is known for big graylings, Taiga preferred to go back to the pond where he can surely catch fish.  So we went back to the campsite, and Taiga fished with Diana while I went to fish in Chena River for 1.5 hours by myself.   It turned out that it was a good decision since I had to cross the river with rapid flow 4 times.  Indeed, at the second crossing, the current was so strong that I got into the situation where I would get swept down if I moved one of the legs.  I got stuck in the middle of the stream, and I couldn't go forward or backward.  I tried to move the feet a couple inches at a time, but eventually the river won.  I got dunked under the water, but it wasn't too deep, so I could manage to stand up and reach to the other shore.  After getting the water out of the wader on the other shore, I thought that it might be stupid to keep going because nobody is around there to rescue me.  But I didn't want to make the same crossing back, so I kept going, hoping that there would be an easier way to get back to the road (it was the case).  Most of the river was too rapid to fish, but I eventually found a promising spot.  After 8 or so cast, I finally got a bite on bead-head brassy with copper-wire body.  It took quite a time to land it.  I didn't measure it, but it was at least 14", close to 15".  I have fished upper Chena a couple times, but this is the first fish I landed!  I got another one, and then I went back to the camp.

Taiga thought that completely soaked dad was funny, but he asked if I caught a fish (he was expecting that I wouldn't catch any).  I handed him my camera, and as soon as he saw the photo, Taiga wanted to go back to the spot after dinner.  Taiga kept two fish from the pond for dinner, so we cooked them and crab cakes on fire.  I wasn't sure if there would be more fish in the small hole I found.  We had to hike in about 7 minutes along the river.  Taiga and I played virtual fishing (looking at the river and guessing where he would cast flies).  I didn't tell anything when we got closer to the hole, but Taiga correctly identified the hole, and sure enough, he spotted a fish swimming there.  He tried a dry fly at first, but no bite, so he changed to the nymph I used.   The first one he caught was the biggest, 14", and after that he caught about 4 nice size fish (about 12").  He was very excited to catch them, but I was even more excited that he caught them.  He is still more interested in catching smaller stocked fish for sure than exploring new fishing spots (with no fish most of the time).  But I'm looking forward to the time when we all can roam around the pristine wilderness looking for new fishing spots.  Maybe in 3 years?

fourteen incher.

Compilation of fishing video.  This is my first try with Open Source Video Editor, OpenShot.  It is a simple and intuitive editor.

In the third day, we fished in the pond in the morning, but we packed up around 11AM, and headed to Chena Hot Springs.  After the swimming, Taiga was practicing his navigation skill with a map of the resort.  He managed to navigate us to the cafe where he got snow-cone. He also had fun feeding goats.