|
On
this trip up the Yukon, Bill Huhn and I were traveling in our jet
riverboat. Our destination was the Dahl River about 20 miles upstream
from Yukon River Bridge. The fish we were after were Northern Pike.
Little did we know at this point that there would be no Pike on this
trip. The Yukon is As you approach the Dahl River, the Yukon widens to about a mile across and the Dahl flows in from the left. The Dahl is relatively small and slow moving at the mouth, it is noted for it's excellent Pike fishing. The Dahl flows through the Yukon Flats for a long long way in a direction that is generally away from the Yukon River. I have known people who have fished as much as two hours upstream and done very well, some of the Pike in the upper reaches of the river can grow as large as 4 feet. We would be fishing the mouth of the river where it enters the Yukon. The Dahl is a clear water stream but very dark in color. The Yukon on the other hand is very muddy and where the two rivers meet is a swirling mixture of clear water and mud that undulates in billowing clouds. It is here, in these muddy clouds, that the Pike as well as the bait-fish that they feed on can hide. The
land on either side of this river is native owned and there is no
camping allowed without a permit. Even with a permit you are not made to
feel very welcome when the occasional native boat
We
fished most of the afternoon for Pike. We used top-water lures as well
as spoons....but no luck. The water was very high, which is not usually
good for pike. In the late afternoon I made a fortunate discovery. I was
wondering if perhaps the fish were down deep, so I let my spoon sink to
the bottom Sheefish look very much like a saltwater Tarpon, they are bright silver with white meat. They can grow to lengths up to five feet, these that we were catching were between 2-3 feet long. We began casting out and dragging our spoons as slowly as possible in the thick mud on the bottom. I don't know what it was that they liked about that, but we caught a lot of Sheefish just reeling in in super slow motion. I am going to place a line of thumb-nail pics under this text. You can click on them to see the larger photo, this way the page does not take so long to load.
That night as we slept, we heard a noise outside. We looked out to see a cow moose and her calf walking right through camp. They passed through and then walked into the Yukon and swam across to the main shore as effortlessly as you would swim across a pool at home. The current is strong in the Yukon and by the time they reached the shore they had drifted almost a mile downstream. The author is a member of
Copyright © 2004
|
narrow at this point as it flows through the Rampart Canyon, but just
before it gets to the Dahl it widens out to it's normal size which is
very wide and braided for the most part. We passed native fish camps as
we traveled upstream, some were operating fish wheels and some gill
nets.
happens
by, so we chose to camp on an island in the Yukon that was not native
owned. The mosquitoes have to be experienced to be believed on this
island. They are a continual drone in your ears and it is almost
impossible to breathe without inhaling mosquitoes. The only way you can
sleep even in a tent is to make sure everything is done for the night so
you won't have to open the tent until morning, then you both get in the
tent and practically commit suicide with a can of Raid to kill the
hordes that got in when you did. There is no fresh water on this island
and the Yukon is too muddy to use, so any water you need has to be
brought with you. The boat we had was a 21 foot inboard jet and it could
make good time. We got there about 11 am and started fishing right away.
then began to retrieve it about a foot off the bottom....nothing. But on
one of the casts, I guess I was sort of day-dreaming and actually pulled
the spoon along the bottom, right in the mud. Suddenly I had a very hard
hit, I thought at that point that it was a large Pike, but Pike tire
easily and this guy did not seem to be tiring at all. When I got it up
far enough to see it, I was pleasantly surprised to see a medium sized
Sheefish. I was surprised because I had never heard of anyone catching
Sheefish here in the Dahl River. Anyway, this was the beginning of an
all night fish-a-thon. As you view some of the photos notice the time of
day stamped in the lower right corner. We fished well into the night, I
think we finally quit about 2 am. But here in Alaska it is light 24 hrs
in the summertime. One other break we got was that when we were actually
on the water there were no mosquitoes....didn't break my heart at all.
