Fishing the Tongass. Photo courtesy of Jim Klug
Kevin Maier, The Drake
I pay my bills here in Southeast Alaska, at least in part, by having short and intense conversations on airplanes. I help wedge wadered clients from all over the globe into DeHavilland Beavers, then drop in on some of the planet’s most spectacular temperate rainforest to make brief, intimate connections with the salmon, char, and trout that thrive in this unique environment. The conversations on the plane are of course just prelude to the main act—visiting the forest itself. Yet the flights offer important moments to contextualize the experience for folks visiting the Tongass National Forest. From our sub 2000-foot cruising altitude, it’s so much easier to see connections between the glaciers, steep mountains, spruce-and-hemlock-clad hillsides, and our short high-gradient, salmon-producing streams.
Like any worthwhile guide, I want my clients to feel the fight of a good fish, and to get their trophy shot for Instagram. But it’s equally important to me that they understand that image’s place in the larger ecological picture. Recounting the details of their trip—sharing a run with a brown bear teaching her cubs to catch chum; rapidly retreating as a 22-foot tide floods a thousand yards of flat; watching salmon and dollies repeatedly slash at slowly stripped poppers—my hope is that my clients could string the moments into a larger story about our day fishing. I’d hope they could describe an ongoing Tongass narrative about providing average Americans amazing recreational opportunities on public lands.