#7 South East Alaska

Living on the water year after year up here, does something to you.  This place stays with you.  Synchronized swimming Humpbacks, a pet baby octopus, a pod of Orcas playing with their food, a landscape lined with an endless number of rivers and lakes home to some of the largest fish in the world.  Although a cliche, it is "Like stepping back in time", when one visits the upper reaches of the North West-Coast: South East Alaska

 

 

#6 The Babine: Another Epic Steelhead Trip With The Boys

This was some of the coldest weather I ever encountered steelheading.  After spending almost a month further exploring the rivers in the Skeena system, I hooked up with the boys for a quick trip to the Babine.  Before hitting the road we stopped early morning and fished some of my favorite ghost spots around Smithers to warm the boys up.  We all caught bright, chrome fish and quite a few of them.  After an hour or two on the road towards Babine Lake, the temperature dropped and everything around us was still frozen solid, winter wonderland style.  Although the scenery spectacular, it was late in the season and most of the fish had been in the river a while.  Those factors compounded with the fact that the temperature had taken a sharp dive, caused a river-wide steelhead lockjaw.  Only one fish was hooked our first day, and very few anglers lasted long outside in those frigid temperatures.  Most had all but written off the trip as a loss, until halfway through the second day.  Situated in a perfect spot that I was sure must have fish, I revived a technique I had learned from an old angler on the Seymour River in North Vancouver years ago.  Six casts later, I had six powerful, Babine Steelhead to the bank.  Although most were dark, that ancient, wild blood could be felt right through the fly-line, as every fish took me into my backing, most catapulting out of the water once or twice.  In the end, that trip turned out to be one of my most productive for large, summer-run steelhead.  Sometimes persistence and a little diversity in technique is all it takes..........

-Alexei Boyanowsky, Hella Fishing 2013