Nature Pictures Added July 21st, 2016

Small lake seen along the boggy hike into the river

Typical mosquito coverage on my hat during the hike in

The "trail" often disappeared completely into large swaths of muddy marsh grass or peat bogs

A very typical section of the six miles of "trail"

First view of the Canyon Rapids

Canyon Rapids

Josh fishing a good hole

Josh's first Gulkana rainbow, small but colorful

Seagulls were perched on the rocks watching for outmigrating juvenile sockeye salmon to get disoriented in the whitewater and bubble up to the surface where they can be grabbed. I caught one of them that hit my fly in mid-air and got hooked in the wing, but didn't get any pictures because I was too focused on releasing it. It was fine.

A 17-inch rainbow I caught Thursday evening

Another nice rainbow around 16 inches

And another

The fish really turned on Friday morning, and I caught this very pretty 17-incher

My biggest fish of the trip, a 21-inch rainbow. I caught this one after hooking two others that were at least as big and losing them when they took off downstream through the rapids.

Releasing the big one

One of the next casts after that 21-incher produced this 18-incher

Our campsite. Although nobody in their right mind walks the trail we took in to the river, the fishing spot and campsite see quite a bit of traffic from people doing a popular 4-5 day float trip.

Josh fishing the tail of a big pool in the rapids

Looking upstream

Another view of Josh's big one

Closeup of Josh's big rainbow

I spent at least an hour standing on this rock trying to launch ~75-foot casts of a big streamer and split shot (with a narrow windoer for the backcast) into a piece of deep, calm water across the river, where at least two rainbows kept chasing my fly but missing as the whitewater in between grabbed my line and ripped it away from them. A great trial-by-fire for my new 5-weight rod. When I finally got the hang of the casting and presentation, I caught one around 13 inches and eventually hooked the one I was after, a beast in the 21-23" range or so. But it took off downstream on me faster than I could follow and got the angle it needed to spit the hook.

The target of those long casts was the far end of that dark piece of flat water behind the rear boulder.

Wolf tracks we found on the trial during the slog out