Tag Archives: Jack Donachy photography

Chignik Lake in 29 Photos: High Tide

Posted on by
3

Chignik River boat landing winter high tide
High Tide

From the bumpy dirt strip where small aircraft land and take off, about three-and-a-half miles of even bumpier dirt and gravel road threads through the village of Chignik Lake. This photograph was taken at the road’s terminus, the boat landing about four miles up the river from the ocean estuary and about two miles downriver from the village. Nine, 10 and even 11-foot tides push enough water up the river that we sometimes see ice and other objects flowing backwards up the lake.

Tides aren’t something we’re accustomed to thinking of on rivers, but we quickly learned that you’ve got to be mindful when it comes to parking your skiff: a rising tide will snatch away an unsecured boat; a falling tide can leave a skiff high and dry. Relaunching is no fun if the vessel has much weight to it. And you’ve got to be careful running the Chignik on a low tide. “Million Dollar River,” it’s been called for all the props and lower units it’s claimed over the years.

Fairly large boats are able to navigate the river on the big tides. Barges deliver building supplies, personal vehicles, heavy equipment and fuel to the landing – stuff that won’t fit on a small bush plane but that is necessary for building and maintaining a semi-wilderness village. Without these flood tides, there wouldn’t be a village here. You’ve got to watch where you park your truck though. (I bumped up the ISO on this hand-held shot. January 14, 2018. Nikon D800, 24-70mm f/2.8, 1/200 @ f/8, ISO 1000, 70mm.)

Chignik Lake in 29 Photos: Swan Barque

Posted on by
2

Found art ice Chignik Lake
Swan Barque

In the first month of 2017, temperatures dropped into the single digits and stayed there. Coinciding with this, the Chignik’s infamous winds abated for a few days. Skim ice began forming on January 16. The following morning we woke to find the lake frozen solid.

Scattered around the lake close to shore, we found a few of these exquisite ice sculptures. Intricately crafted by natural forces, they looked to us like fine crystal. Upwelling – subsurface springs – may have played a role in their formation. Beyond that, they were mysteries.

They didn’t last long. Eventually the wind came up and piece by delicate piece they were dismantled. We never again found such beautifully detailed arrangements, and so I’m glad to have made a few photographs. The ice in the photo suggested to us a swan on a placid lake, or a sailing vessel. (Nikon D5, 105mm f/2.8, 1/125 @ f/14, ISO 125)

Chignik Lake in 29 Photos: Post Office Creek

Posted on by
Reply

Chignik Lake Post Office Creek in Snow
Post Office Creek

Barbra and I call the stream in the above photo Post Office Creek for its proximity to the former post office here in Chignik Lake. The post office has since relocated, but during the first three years we lived here, we regularly crossed this creek on foot as we traveled back and forth. Although our home sits just 60 paces from a lake full of water, this tiny creek holds an especial appeal and anytime I am near it, I find myself drawn to it, approaching stealthily for a careful look into its deeper pools.

From mid-spring through fall, there are char and sometimes salmon parr and one year a pair of Pink Salmon spawned in a riffle below the culvert where the road crosses. The char are wary, but by approaching quietly and giving one’s eyes a few moments to adjust, fish a foot long and even larger might be found. A cottonwood overlooking the mouth is a favorite perch for kingfishers, and when salmon are in the lake eagles can also be found there. Loons and mergansers regularly hunt the lake’s waters outside the creek mouth and yellowlegs can often be found wading and catching small fish along the shore.

During wintertime, there generally isn’t much evidence of life in the creek’s clear waters, but it’s there – char eggs waiting to hatch, caddis larvae along with mayfly and stonefly nymphs clinging to the undersides of rocks, a visiting heron catching small fish where the creek enters the lake, fresh otter and mink tracks at the mouth some mornings.

In summertime snipe nest in a marsh that seeps into the creek, and bears use it as a thoroughfare so that even in the village, you’re wise to carry bear spray if you’re walking that way. The dense thickets of willow and alder near its banks are a good place to look for warblers and thrushes. In fall Coho gather just below the creek’s mouth, resting before traveling to larger tributaries further up the lake. As Roderick Haig-Brown observed, a river never sleeps. Nor does Post Office Creek. I made this picture on January 13, 2021. (Nikon D850, 24-70mm f/2.8, 1/50 @ f/22, ISO 400, 24mm)

Chignik Lake in 29 Photos: Speck

Posted on by
3

Chignik Lake Alaska Red Fox
Speck

By the calendar, this isn’t strictly speaking a winter shot. But on April 1 of 2017, there was still lots of snow with more to come. Ice had only just begun to relinquish its hold on Chignik Lake. No one was seriously trapping that year, and the inhospitable landscape had driven several foxes into the village where food was easier to find. Several of us at The Lake are happy to occasionally oblige these visitors with a handout of fish or whatever else we might have in the fridge. So, full disclosure, the fox in the above photo, whom we named Speck, had long ago dropped his guard in favor of scoring an easy salmon head dropped from our living room window.

We learned quite a lot about Red Foxes that winter, starting with the fact that each is an individual, distinguishable by both physical features and character traits. In all, we came to recognize (and subsequently name) five different foxes that year: Speck, Frost, Kate, King and Skit. Each had its own unique personality, and each had some special physical trait, such as the spots on Speck’s face. He was a favorite, and along with a little female (we think she was a female), Frost -named for the white on her face -, he could often be found sleeping and loafing below our window.

Is it ethical to feed wild animals? It depends. Certainly it’s a bad idea anywhere the species in question is being hunted or trapped. It’s an equally poor practice in parks or other areas where animals might become a nuisance. No one wants to sit down at a picnic table only to be besieged by squirrels, gulls or jays. And we oppose the practice of baiting animals – that is, feeding them in order to shoot them, whether with a rifle or a camera. But we feed birds in order to help them and because we enjoy their company, and in the depths of winter we sometimes put out a salmon head or something similar for foxes. Here at The Lake, most fishermen will leave salmon and trout carcasses on the beach for the benefit of eagles and bears – a practice that is illegal most other places. Foxes have evolved so that an encoded part of their behavior is to follow larger animals – bears, humans – in hopes of obtaining a few scraps of food. People have undoubtedly been sharing with them for as long as there have been foxes and humans. (Nikon D5, 70-200mm f/2.8 + 2.0 TC, 1/1250 @ f/10, ISO 1600, 400 mm)

Chignik Lake in 29 Photos: Blues & Pinks

Posted on by
2

Chignik Lake Winter landscape sunset
Blues & Pinks

I had read about artists moving to specific locations for the quality of light found in those places. It was a concept the eluded me until, rather late in life, I picked up a camera and began to try to make pictures. I lived in Point Hope, Alaska at the time – 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. There were periods during the spring and fall when the sun lingered on the horizon for a good part of the day. The soft hues of pink, purple, red, orange, gold, yellow and lilac bathing the snow and ice covered landscape was… amazing.

Although early morning and late evening periods of beautiful light would have been more brief in other places I’d lived in and visited, surely that light was present. But I had missed it. In my pre-photography days, I thought of light mainly in terms of its brightness: enough to see by or not; sufficient to read by or to tie on a fly, or not; bright, too bright, not bright enough, absent. And because that’s how I thought of light, that’s how I saw it – an example of selective, self-imposed blindness that might apply to anything from preconceiving the results of a scientific experiment to being incapable of observing a solution right in front of one’s eyes… or whether or not the object of one’s affection is returning that affection.

If I ever go back to Pennsylvania, it will be one of the first things I look for: morning and evening light. Surely there must be moments when it softly colors the landscape -the rounded mountains forested in mixed trees, the trout streams, a lady’s slipper orchid or an abandoned apple orchard. Now that I can see…

The most challenging element in making a photograph such as this is the camera. Put simply, there is no camera sensor that can fully capture the subtle and brilliant range of colors the human eye can discern. This is where the photographer – at least this photographer – admires the painter who is in possession of a broader and more subtle palette of colors. Still, even with a Monet, the end result is only a proximation of what was seen by being there. Chignik Lake, January 9, 2017, 3:07 PM. (Nikon D800, 17-35mm f/2.8, 2.0 @ f/22, ISO 100, 22mm)

Chignik Lake in 29 Photos: Melon-colored Dawn

Posted on by
2

sunrise chignik Lake alaska
Melon-colored Dawn

September is very much a transitional month at The Lake. There can be days of summer-like sunshine and warmth followed by days of cold, wind-driven rain. The Coho run is at its peak as each day hundreds and even thousands of fresh salmon enter the river. Almost all of the Chignik’s Sockeyes have come home, and by now they can be found throughout the upper river, including every major tributary and both lakes. Pinks may still be abundant (depending on the year), but the fish that remain are drab, nearly spawned out husks of their former selves. There are even a few ragged Kings still clinging to life, the females doggedly expending the last of their life energy protecting their redds. Day by day this effort becomes greater as they struggle against the current, are pushed downriver, find the strength to swim back upriver and regain their nest… only to be pushed downriver again until eventually they’ve given all they have to give. The Chignik gathers these great fish in her flow and carries them back toward the sea from where they came.

September is a time of promises realized on the Chignik, the entire valley burgeoning with life. It is a good month to look for bears on the river. Maybe the best. By now they’ve grown fat on salmon and are feeding regularly on an abundance of nearly spent Pinks, spawning Reds and an occasional fresh Silver. Cubs that survived the lean spring months have become roly-poly balls of fur and are beginning to occasionally find their own fish.

As the days begin to grow discernibly shorter, late summer and early fall sunrises linger a bit longer above the mountains surrounding the lake. I made this picture on September 4, 2020 at 7:26 AM, Gillie in the lower left foreground. (Nikon D850, 24-70mm f/2.8, 1/10 @ f/8.0, 55mm, ISO 100)

Chignik Lake in 29 Photos: Autumn Char

Posted on by
2

Chignik Alaska Sea Run Char
Autumn Char

Perhaps there is no species of fish more stunningly marked than a char in spawning colors. Regardless of their size or the particular species (there are dozens scattered across the Northern Hemisphere), the beauty of a fall char offers a special reward for a fly-fishing outing to the cold, clean rivers, streams and brooks they inhabit. The term char is thought to derive from the old Irish ceara or cera, which refers to the blood red coloration sported by some char.

The specimen in the above photo is of the species Salvelinus malma, Dolly Varden, caught on September 25, 2016 on a local creek. While many char inhabit only fresh water, others, such as the 18-inch male in this picture, spend part of their lifecycle at sea. This fish had migrated to a small stream where he was fattening up on salmon eggs prior to his own spawning event. While the char of the Chigniks don’t attain the massive size of certain populations elsewhere (30 pounders have been recorded), their spirit as a game fish when taken on a light fly or tenkara outfit and their striking coloration make char of any species among our favorites. And by the way, if you’ve never treated yourself to a meal of char, check for farmed Arctic Char where you purchase fish. Unlike farmed salmon, which we strongly advise avoiding, farmed char are a sustainable, ecologically smart choice. Served whole or filleted, the meat is sumptuous.  (Olympus Tough TG-3, 1/320 at f/32, ISO 100)

If you’d like to read more about cooking and fishing for char…

Broiled Char for Two

Rustic Char with Root Vegetables

Shioyaki Char

Beading the Dolly Varden… and how did they get that name?

Chignik Lake in 29 Photos: Cherry Coho

Posted on by
4

Salmon fishing Chignik
Cherry Coho

In the early days of my Pennsylvania youth, I thought that a salmon was a salmon was a salmon. That’s generally the way they were presented back then – in texts, on restaurant menus, in other contexts. Salmon. Gradually, (in large part thanks to outdoor sporting magazines given to me by my grandfather), I came to understand that there are seven species worldwide, and that’s not including the many genetically distinct races within those species.

As fascinating as this genetic plasticity is, the changes salmon undergo throughout their life cycle are equally captivating. On October 9, 2020, the Coho in the above photograph was no longer feeding. Her stomach and digestive track had atrophied to almost nothing. The salmon  intercepted Barbra’s streamer for reasons fly anglers have long puzzled over. Meanwhile, day by day her roe sacks were swelling, her scales were being absorbed into skin which was becoming thicker and more leathery, the tip of her jaw was developing a distinctive hook known as a kype, and the silvery sheen along her flanks had begun taking on a pallet of color worthy of fine art. (Nikon D800, 105mm f/2.8, 1/50, ISO 250)

 

Chignik Lake in 29 Photos: Orbs

Posted on by
4

Chignik Lake Spider Web
Orbs

Some years they are abundant. Other years less so. But the appearance of small, brown spiders and the circular webs they weave are a seasonal marker indicating the transition from summer to fall at The Lake. These webs, often spun among the dry, gray-brown stalks of Cow Parsnip, are yet another sign Barbra and I have come to associate with Silver Salmon season on the Chignik.

I made this image on September 21, 2016, the day before the autumnal equinox. It had been not quite two months since we’d first arrived at The Lake. As is true of many other photographs I took back then, there are technical and compositional shortcomings in this capture. And yet, there are elements in this picture that I like, and it brings back memories of a beautiful fall day and a pleasant hike along the trail to Clarks River. Looking at this image, I can almost see the clouds of midges that hung in the air that morning as the sun rose, the air warmed and iced over puddles began to thaw. There was color everywhere – scarlet geranium leaves, fat blueberries sugary with frost, perfectly ripe cranberries against the green of their foliage and fireweed leaves in all the colors of an autumn forest in western Pennsylvania. I took a picture of an icy bear track that morning, and of a frost-bitten shrew, perhaps caught and discarded by a shrike or a fox, discarded on the path. There was wolf scat on the trail, clumped with hair, fresh. On the way home, a flock of southern-bound robins landed in a copse of alders – a surprise, the first of that species I’d seen at Chignik Lake.

It was a good day. I think it is this power that has alway drawn me to still images… that a single photograph can cause one to smile, and in a moment the tension is released from one’s shoulders and a little sigh of contentment passes from one’s chest.

Chignik Lake in 29 Photos: Summer’s End

Posted on by
7

Chignik Lake Alaska
Summer’s End

Our first year in Chignik Lake, we attempted to cram ourselves into a tiny, one-bedroom apartment. We were soon spilling out of it, prompting a move to a slightly larger home. In addition to offering more square footage, our present place serves as a terrific wildlife viewing blind. Situated just 30 yards from the lake, we’ve seen 13 mammalian species from our living room/dining room windows. Add to that loons, ducks, falcons, eagles, cranes, snipe, passerines and other avian species, and the view out the picture windows is kind of like having the National Geographic Channel on 24/7. When the Coho are in, we can actually see them from our place, prompting us on several occasions to drop dinner forks, pull fly rods down from their wall pegs and have a go at the migrating salmon. At night, sometimes ambling bears pass by so close that we can hear their paws crunching in the sand outside our open bedroom window.

But the view from the windows of our first place was also lovely, and although it didn’t offer the wildlife viewing our current home offers, a very cute, high-spirited ermine once ran right over the toe of my boot as I entered the mud room. Here was the window view on August 15, 2016, our first month at The Lake. I was just beginning to get into more serious photography at the time and made several technical mistakes in composing this picture. Yet, it remains one of our favorites. (Nikon D4, 17-35mm f/2.8, 1/320 at f/9.0, 17mm, ISO 1600)