Nature Pictures from Trout Streams, Page 17

This might be the most impossible fly-casting situation I've ever seen, a thicket along a creek which normally has relatively easy casting.

Here I am soaking wet holding up a hard-earned 17 inch brown trout. An hour or so before I caught her, I attempted a treacherous crossing over loose gravel, and the river was running high. I found myself treadmilling on my tiptoes to maintain my footing as the gravel slipped beneath me, and I was swept off downstream and swam to shore with a few gallons of 55 degree water in my waders. Being me, I kept fishing.

This incredibly expensive estate holds most of the land on a prime upper stretch of one of the midwest's best trout streams, and it's the envy of hundreds of anglers who float by it every summer.

The Gulkana Glacier is an iconic landmark for north-bound travelers (or, I suppose, south-bound travelers looking north) on the Richardson Highway. Thankfully, its silty runoff drains not into the Gulkana River drainage but into Phelan Creek in the Yukon drainage instead.