Left beautiful Soldotna yesterday and made the Homeric journey to Homer, Alaska. High and white cone-shaped mountains off to our right (west) as we drove. They are across the Cook Inlet, on the mainland end of the Alaska Peninsula, and they are on the eastern end of a long chain of volcanoes known as the Aleutian Chain. The impressive mountains we saw are still active volcanoes.
Homer is also partially surrounded, on its other side, across yet another long, fjord-like inlet called Kachemak Bay, by the Kenai Mountains. They are merely ordinary Alaska spectacular.
Today's amazing Alaska fact: the city of Homer is named after a guy who started a gold mining business here, failed miserably, and left after two months. Homer Something-or-Other. Homer Simpson would have been a more inspiring exemplar.
Jim went out yesterday with a fly fishing guide and a guy from Texas who looked and talked like the reptilian politician Lindsay Graham. Fortunately this guy was not reptilian. The guide, one Bruce, was great. In his sixties, wiry, and just as excited about fly fishing the Anchor River as when he started here some 30years ago. He showed us a spot where salmon stack up, and he told us how to present flies to them, and he gave us a variety of the most likely flies to try.
Yes, our guide did everything a guide should do, and more. Including telling a joke. This one has been around but he told it well. The gist is a guy gets busted for shooting an endangered peregrine falcon. He tells the judge he was lost and starving, or would never have done it. Judge sympathizes, gives him just a $50 fine. But judge is curious. "So what did that perigrine falcon taste like,"he asks the guy as he's leaving.
"Well," says the poacher,, "it's not great. Kind of a cross between bald eagle and spotted owl."
And under our jocular guide's tutelage we caught ... None. We saw large salmon jumping and rolling all around us, but apparently the fish had already eaten.
And then suddenly, Jim had one! It was clearly big ( they all are) and extremely uneager to come to shore. It turned out the beast was actually hooked in the back of the neck. And eventually she came unhooked. But it was the kind of thing that could easily make a salmon fishing addict out of someone less disciplined.
So Jim thought about salmon all night, and was back at it pretty early this morning, certain that he could quit any time he wanted. This time withoutBruce but with new knowledge.
We found a spot, again on the Anchor River, where Salmon were lined up. At firstthey look like brick colored rocks in the water, but then you notice they move around. great spot. We got one to bite, and she leaped out of the water and spit the hook. Again, it's lucky that Jim has the iron fortitude to resist becoming salmon obsessed.
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