“ Ladies First “
A Gentlemen’s Guide To Providing First Water
Story and Photos by George Cook
"Yeah sweetie, you get first water all week on this gig", I stated proudly as I stepped from the boat on Alaska’s Nushagak river. Why worry, I knew I could cast further with bigger-longer sink tips. Didn’t even occur to me to think this through from the prospect of “All Week”. Should have, as I have an exceptionally gifted Spey casting bride who can just flat huck and tends to bring her big fish aura A-Game with her most outings.
This week had been planned for quite some time as I had guided this region in the 1980’s and had a close relationship with one of the more exceptional operations there. The crew at Alaska’s King Salmon Adventures are a dedicated group of longtime guides who flock north each summer to tackle the largest King run in Alaska, if not the world .
The Nushagak is a monster of a river system found in the Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska. The lower river below the forks is big, like almost Columbia River big. Even the respective East and West forks are plenty big-ass water that to step upon the shore with mere Spey rods is akin to being armed with club and spear, ok, maybe a recurve bow. The key here for the fly angler is to turn the big ditch into small workable pieces, where an angler can reasonably expect to place a swung fly in reach of the post tide traveling Kings. As a former guide on a multitude of Western Alaska rivers this was a game honed by being the requisite gear guide coupled with a reasonably keen observation of travel patterns along with thinking “Out of the box”.
Matching lines to rods ensures that your casts are clean and true with minimal wasted effort. Now is the time to practice your casts and experiment with leader configurations and sink tips. Do you have a sink tip for every situation you might face? Or is your floating line leader matched and balanced with your rod and line so that it turns over cleanly every cast? Poorly matched tackle means wasted opportunity and could cost you the fish of a lifetime.