A First Time for Everything on Alaska Fishing Trip : Plentiful salmon and grizzly bears make couple’s jaunt to Katmai one to remember

It was the briefest of conversations--a 10-second exchange with the maitre d’ of a San Francisco restaurant:

“There’s fishing,” he said, “and then there’s fishing in Alaska. Even my wife likes fishing in Alaska.”

My husband, Jon, and I had long considered fishing a sport we might take up in our old age, but with a trip planned to Alaska, we decided not to wait. A friend who lives in Alaska told us about Kulik Lodge in Katmai National Park, and we booked a five-day stay there last July at the height of salmon season.

We left for Katmai on a small chartered plane operated by Angler’s Paradise, the outfit that runs three of the park’s four fishing lodges. We were happy to get away from Anchorage--which felt like any overgrown suburb on a foggy morning--and glad to be heading for an area of the state that was impossible to get to by car, and therefore little-visited.

The pilot headed southeast, to the Alaska Peninsula, the finger of land that sweeps southwest from the rest of the state and trickles out to the Aleutian Islands. Just across the Cook Inlet from Homer, we plunged through the clouds and emerged over Katmai, a vast expanse of reddish-brown tundra cut by rivers that swirled through it as if a child had finger-painted them. There were glaciated mountains peeking out of the clouds in the distance, but we were heading for a spit of land between two big lakes.

We had expected that Katmai might be crowded in July, at the height of salmon season, and our friend had warned us about the packs of wildlife photographers. Katmai is the best place in the world, she said, to take photos of grizzly bears catching salmon. But when we touched down at a grass airstrip behind Kulik Lodge, it seemed that we had landed at the end of the earth. It was cold and gray and the only trees we could see were stunted. Kulik Lake was draped with mist, like a great, steaming caldron.

Kulik is “the Cadillac” of the four fishing lodges in Katmai National Park, and it isn’t hard to see why. For a maximum guest load of 20 people, the lodge maintains five floatplanes, five guides, a dozen boats, a staff of pilots and mechanics and an extraordinary amount of fishing gear. The lodge itself is informal, though extremely comfortable; ditto the tiny sleeping cabins. The food, however, is ostentatiously spectacular. Everything is homemade, and there is plenty of it--from bread to pureed soups to filet mignon to strawberry shortcake.

After dinner that night, one of the guides asked us what we wanted to do the next day.

“Fish,” we said.

“For what?”

“We don’t know for what. We just want to be sure to catch something.”

And so we learned that we had our choice of king salmon, sockeye salmon, chum salmon or rainbow trout. We could also spend a day bear watching if we wanted, or visit the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes--the reason Katmai was declared a national park in the first place.

The valley was discovered in 1916 after geologists visited the site where Mt. Katmai had exploded four years earlier. The eruption had been one of the greatest of all time--so loud that people heard it 750 miles away in Juneau--and it left a valley the geologists described as “one of the most amazing visions ever beheld by mortal eye”: a moonscape full of plumes of hissing smoke. Today, the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is quiet and the smoke is gone, but it’s still an awesome place to explore--or so we were told.

We never got there. We were too busy catching fish.

That night, we were outfitted with some heavy-duty neoprene waders (like thick scuba-diving coveralls with feet). The next morning we were awakened by a knock on our door and a pot of hot coffee. By 8 a.m. we were on our way to the Branch River with a guide in a floatplane.

We were going for the biggest fish first: the king salmon.

The pilot dropped us off by an Inuit summer camp, where some Native Eskimos were netting and smoking salmon. There, we got into a boat and started trolling (running the boat very slowly against the current). I dutifully put a large silver spinner in the water and let it sink almost to the bottom. Then I waited . . . and waited.

“We caught at least 30 salmon here yesterday,” said Jack, our guide.

“It’s not your fault,” I replied. “It’s my luck.”

I’ve always liked the idea of fishing, mostly because I love to be on rivers, especially those that take me through otherwise impenetrable wilderness. But the joy of actually catching a fish had long eluded me. As a kid, I’d begged my father to take me fishing, but when we finally got to a lake and hired a rowboat, all I caught was a headache and a sunburn. Mostly I remember the smell of decomposed worms in a peanut-butter jar.

In Montana, Jon and I once spent big bucks to hire a guide and fly-fish on the famous Yellowstone River. But the only thing I caught was Jon’s cheek. The guide had to twist the barbed hook out of his face with a pair of pliers.

Now, here I was in Alaska. Suddenly I felt a pull, then an enormous tug. As the line raced out of my reel and I stood up with the rod digging into my chest, I tried to figure out how to keep the line taut and give the fish enough play to wear itself out. It was a little like trying to keep my head up in the middle of an avalanche; I couldn’t figure out whether the fish had me or I had the fish.

Miraculously, the fish stayed on the line. When I finally landed it, after about 10 minutes, it was a good 38-pounder, almost too heavy to hold up.

The rules at Katmai are fish and release--that is, catch the fish and Let it go--except for one king salmon per person. Jack suggested that this one was a keeper. It was a big male and its flesh was firm, he said. So he killed it, gutted it and tossed it into an icebox on the boat.

Next Jon hooked a big keeper. The rest of the afternoon we caught and released, spending most of our time with our rods curled down in a half circle, stumbling around on the boat, our faces contorted with glee and excitement.

That night we ate dinner with two women from Fairbanks, water-quality testers who said that the rivers and lakes in Alaska were just about all clean and pure. We couldn’t believe them at first: No pesticides, no toxic waste, no poisoned ground water, no nuclear radiation?

“There’s stuff going on here that’s harmful to the environment,” one of them said. “There’s drilling and logging. But so far, I have to say, the water in the state is clean.” Jon and I were silent as we pondered the miracle of a state with waterways free of pollution.

The next day we decided to go fly-fishing for chum salmon, which have a reputation as being good fighters and fun to catch. Because the sky was overcast and the cloud ceiling low, the pilot flew over a network of rivers at about 300 feet, which was dangerous but thrilling. We were so near the treetops that I saw an owl sitting on the tip of a pine like a Christmas ornament.

We practiced casting, this time with Steve as our guide, and must have caught and released a dozen salmon each. It was cold (“September weather,” Steve complained), and a little difficult to cast with five layers of clothing, but that didn’t stop us. I remembered saying, not so long before, that I couldn’t imagine why duck hunters would want to get up at dawn and stand thigh-deep in freezing water. But here I was, on a cold, gray day, thigh-deep in freezing water and thrilled to be catching fish I couldn’t even take home and eat.

Our third day at Kulik, we went to Brooks Camp to see the bears and fish for sockeye. It was only a 45-minute plane trip to Brooks River, but when we got there we felt as if we’d arrived in Hollywood. People were walking around with tripods and cameras, and park rangers were patrolling with walkie-talkies. Almost immediately we saw a grizzly bear lumbering toward a group of tourists who were grouped around a ranger and walking backward, cameras clicking, almost in lock-step. When the bear stopped, they did, too, and when the bear finally turned and went in another direction, the ranger got on her walkie-talkie to track him.

Steve looked nervous.

“I don’t like being this close to grizzlies,” he said. “Last year one charged me. They’re big.”

“You mean it tried to attack you?”

“It was what they call a bluff-charge: It ran after me, stopped about 10 feet away and stood up on its hind legs.”

For some reason, this anecdote made us head directly to the heart of bear territory--to a platform set up at the edge of the Brooks River by the National Park Service. When we arrived there, after a quarter-mile walk, the platform looked like someone was holding a news conference on it. It was crammed with cameras on tripods. There was room for us, however, and when I finally found a place with an unobstructed view of the river, I gasped: We were 10 yards from eight immense grizzly bears.

One was standing at the top of a low, wide waterfall with his mouth open, waiting for a salmon to leap right into it. Another was at the bottom of the falls, diving down occasionally to catch a fish in his teeth. A third was trying to get a fish by swiping the water with his paw. Others seemed content to stand in the water, digesting.

I started chatting with the photographers, talking film speed and light readings, and discovered they were from all over the world. Most were staying at Brooks Lodge, which was convenient and less expensive than Kulik, but a little too crowded for my taste. When we’d gone inside for a cup of coffee, it felt like a ski lodge.

We stayed on the platform for about two hours, watching the bears like we might have watched a cricket match--mostly waiting. Whenever a bear caught a salmon or raised up on his hind feet, there was a chorus of clicks and small gasps.

After we had used up two rolls of film, Steve took us back to the lake in front of the lodge to do a little fishing for sockeye. We waded out to our chests in the ice-cold water (a tribute to wool pants under neoprene), but after 10 minutes or so of peaceful casting, we heard Steve call out “Bear!” and saw a grizzly swimming right for us. We got out of the water and gave him wide berth. We returned to the water only to vacate for another passing bear. And then another. Finally we gave up. The grizzlies had the right of way and there were a lot of them.

Back at Kulik that night, we discovered that all of the guides were nervous about Brooks Camp. Grizzlies are everywhere in Katmai, they said, but only in Brooks Camp are they completely unafraid of man.

“In September,” said Bo Bennett, the manager of Kulik Lodge, “the bears all come to fish for trout right here in the Kulik River, right next to the lodge. But we don’t let them come that close. It’s unnatural.”

“How do you keep them away?”

“We kind of puff up and yell and let them know who’s boss. With so much food around, they’re not looking for a fight.”

I agreed that mixing grizzlies and tourists might be a little dangerous. On the other hand, I have to say that my photos came out magnificently and I’m extremely glad to have them.

On our last evening at Kulik, I left Jon in bed, reading, and went night-fishing for trout. There were about eight of us in the Kulik River, casting our lines in the long evening twilight, and for the first Time I had a chance to compare myself with real fishermen. It was humbling. We were all using the same flies and fishing in the same river. But some of us were catching a lot of trout while others--me, for instance--weren’t catching anything.

When one of the guides came over to check out my casting, I asked him to tell me what I was doing wrong. He watched me for a few minutes and said, “Nothing, really.”

“But what is it I have to learn,” I asked, “other than getting my fly out there and pulling up when I feel a bite?”

“Well, there’s how you present the fly to the fish on the water, and there’s knowing exactly where the fish are in the first place,” he replied.

He watched me cast for a few more minutes, then took the rod and made a few languorous loops and a cast. We both watched as the fly sailed out over the water, landed in the current and made ripples that changed colors like a kaleidoscope. But even he didn’t get a fish on his first cast, or his second or third, and I watched him move around in the river, listening to the faint whiz of his line.

When I started heading for the shore, the guide didn’t notice. He’d been fishing the Kulik every summer for six years, but something primal had kicked in and he was caught up in the chase. I walked back to the front porch of our cabin, stripped off my boots, waders and layers of wool and polyethylene, checked out the lavender sky and went inside to kiss my husband, who was fast asleep. He woke up for a moment and asked how the fishing was.

“Great,” I said. “Even though I didn’t catch anything.”

GUIDEBOOK

Catching a Big One in Katmai

Getting there: The only way to reach the fishing lodges in Katmai National Park is by chartered airplane from Anchorage or King Salmon, a small town just outside the park on the Alaska Peninsula. Angler’s Paradise, which operates three of the four lodges in the park, including Kulik, offers various fishing packages, all of which include a round-trip flight from Anchorage. The fourth lodge in the park, Enchanted Lake, has prices similar to Kulik for one-week packages.

Where to stay: Because prices include round-trip air fare from Anchorage, the Angler’s Paradise lodges are expensive. Kulik is the most costly. Three days and nights run $2,250, and a week is $4,150. Prices include meals, fly-outs, fishing gear and boat, and guide service. From Sept. 26 to Oct. 3, when there’s still prime rainbow trout fishing on the Kulik River next to the lodge, a weeklong package (without fly-outs) is $2,700.

Grosvenor Lodge, which is less posh than Kulik and accommodates only six guests at a time, is great for families and fishing buddies. It costs $1,425 per person for three nights and $2,325 for a week. There are no fly-outs, and the food is not as fabulous as it is at Kulik, but there is a jet boat that takes you to nearby rivers where there are plenty of rainbow, char and lake trout and sockeye salmon.

Brooks Lodge is for those who are interested in bear watching, canoeing and exploring, as well as fishing. The cheapest way to see Katmai would be to fly in from King Salmon, stay in a room at Brooks Lodge with three other people and bring your own food. Angler’s Paradise offers a package for two days at Brooks Lodge, including round-trip air fare from Anchorage, for $708 per person, double occupancy. Meals at the lodge are extra: $10 for breakfast, $12 for lunch, $22 for dinner. For $50 you can get a full-day tour of the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

For information on Enchanted Lake, call (907) 246-6878. (The phone may not be answered when owners are out with clients on fishing trips.)

When to go: July is best for bear watching and king salmon fishing. For rainbow trout fishing, it’s mid-August through September. There are fish in the park at all times, however, including salmon, and in August the weather will likely be moderate. Brooks Lodge offers cheaper rates in June and September. Katmai can be rainy and cold in the summer. Bring layers of clothing plus a rain jacket, gloves, scarf and hat. All fishing gear can be purchased, or is provided, at Kulik and Grosvenor lodges.

For more information: Katmailand, Inc.: (800) 544-0551, fax (907) 243-0649. Reservations for all lodges should be made as soon as possible; for 1993, it’s wise to book rooms by the first of the year. Brooks Lodge fills up early for July, and Kulik Lodge is often booked up a year in advance for mid-August through September. The season runs from June 8 to Oct. 1.