Landscape with Horned Grebe Clarks Bay, Chignik Lake, Alaska Peninsula, May 14, 2019
In the photo above, we’re standing on the beach not far from where Clarks River debouches into Chignik Lake. When the lake is glassed off like this, the view from the beach in Clarks Bay gives the impression of an infinity pool, the horizon disappearing in fog or low clouds. This is the only photograph I have of a Horned Grebe at The Lake, the species indiscernible in this color rendition but the bird’s “horns” really popping in the monochromatic (black and white) version of this image.
Tundra Swan with American Wigeon at Broad Pool Broad Pool on Chignik River, Alaska Peninsula, May 4, 2019
The best place to look for returning Tundra Swans (Cygnus columbians) on the Chignik is at Broad Pool, about a mile downriver from the village. One evening the swans announce their arrival with far off, lonesome-sounding notes and by morning they’ve settled at the pool. There the slow-moving, weedy water provides food for the swans as well as for migrating dabbling ducks such as Mallards, Green-winged Teal, Northern Pintails and American Wigeons. Diving ducks, mostly Common Goldeneyes, Buffleheads, Greater Scaup and both Common and Red-breasted Mergansers are also likely to be present. At this time, the banks are covered in scraggly, winter-brown grasses, sedges, willows and alders and there may still by ice along the river’s edge. By the end of the month the ice is gone and the swans and most of the ducks will have dispersed to nesting areas further up the drainage, but at least one pair of Mallards and another of wigeons usually stay to nest along along the margins of Broad Pool. They are often joined there by a brood or two of Black Scoters.
Ermine (Short-tailed Weasel) Chignik Lake, Alaska Peninsula, August 2018
A Collared Lemming burst from a thicket of grass and swam across a narrow finger in the lake which was filled to the brim with recent rains. Just as the little rodent disappeared in a patch of thick grass on the opposite side of the water, an Ermine popped out from where the lemming had just come, paused, looked around, appeared to sniff the air, then also swam the same course. I was scrambling with my camera hoping to capture something of the surprise sighting and managed to capture the above image just before the Ermine dove into the grass.
We didn’t often encounter either of these species during our years at The Lake, but there was hardly a walk after a fresh snowfall that we didn’t come across small paired tracks left by Ermines bounding through snow, so they appeared to be fairly abundant. Cool animals. I would love to have made friends with one the way Sam made friends with Baron in My Side of the Mountain… The closest I came was when one ran across the toe of my boot and into the entrance of our house as I opened the door one morning.
Under a Broken Sky – Barbra swinging a Rocket Man streamer for Silvers at Paradise Bend, October 7, 2018
During the several years we fished the water at Paradise Bend (our name for an expansive area of tidally influenced braided runs and gravelled, vegetated islands), we only encountered other anglers on one occasion. Their guide had them casting in the wrong places – unproductive water unlikely to hold salmon. In due time their casts became listless, eventually gave way to billed caps lifted and head-scratching, and then to searching glances at each and beseeching looks toward the guide. They left fishless, and that was the only time we encountered anglers on “our” pool.
Paradise is a very special place, often beautifully lit by morning light, frequented by some of the world’s largest Brown Bears, traversed by moose, mink, fox, otter and wolf, shorelines decorated in season by magenta fireweed, sunflower-like arnica, marsh marigold and a dozen other showy blooms. At any time of year the water is free of ice you might hear the ratchety call of a kingfisher, and all summer long there are the songs of thrushes, sparrows and warblers to cheer the day. Gulls and eagles scavenge the islands when the fish are in, and in spring the wide, weedy shallows load up with Tundra Swans and hundreds of ducks. The ducks, particularly Mallards and Green-winged Teal, return en force in fall, and it was near Paradise that I encountered a brilliantly marked male Spotted Redshanks – a rare stray from Asia.
Tucked back in a bend off the main channel where boats never ran, it was easy to lose oneself during a morning at Paradise. Schools of newly arriving Coho pushing up tidal-bore-like bulges of smooth water as they arrived in the main pool were a thrill, and the fishing could be agreeably challenging in the clear, shallow water where we could watch the fish come to our flies. At the take, we would strip-set and then brace for long runs punctuated by cartwheeling acrobatics. There were more productive pools on the river, but none more enjoyable to fish.
Maybe even more satisfying than these periods of activity were the times in between, the water temporarily empty of salmon, the big sky, the vast landscape, bird song, rushing water and quiet… a place to let thoughts find their own way and perhaps to visit with a friend or love from the past who, for whatever reason, is now absent. There are a lot of reasons to take down a fly rod from its wall pegs and go to the water. There is the fishing, of course… but there are times when the promise of uninterrupted thought is the more compelling motivation.
Sunrise From our living and dining room windows, we would follow the position of the sun as it changed with each season. Autumn mornings, when the sun rises over the lower end of the lake, are often spectacular. Coho Salmon are still migrating up the lake and river at this time of year, and on still mornings such as this we would watch from our windows for wakes and bulges along the shoreline. Chignik Lake, 10/16/17
Sure Looks Like Fun With salmon roe for bait and a small jig on the end of their line, these girls were hoping for some of The Lake’s Dolly Varden Char and Pond Smelt. I’m not sure they caught much, but it sure looks like fun. Chignik Lake, 1/10/17
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