Pictures of Trout, Salmon, and Grayling, Page 4

This king salmon was the only one I landed in a day of fishing. I hooked and lost 7 others in heavy rapids.

Even stocker grayling are pretty. I planned to keep this one for dinner if it was the first of many, but the others weren't biting and the stringer hadn't done any permanent damage, so I released it unharmed.

Here's another beautiful trout, a 17.5 inch stream resident rainbow. He took a grouse & brown soft hackle during a Hendrickson spinner fall over a riffle--probably as a drowned spinner, but maybe as one of the caddis pupae that I suspect were hatching earlier in the day. This fish was in amazing condition, and it leapt clear of the water at least three times.

It's nice fishing for salmon in such clear water, and really fun when they're as aggressive about chasing the fly as these fish were.

This pretty male Coho salmon took a purple egg-sucking leech.

The Kuparuk is known and written up in the guides as a good grayling fishery, but this is the only one I caught when I fished half a mile up from the road. Grayling can be fairly migratory, and perhaps they were already elsewhere preparing for winter when I fished.

This beautiful 20 inch brown put up one heck of a drag-screaming fight. This was one of almost a dozen big trout that hit my flies this evening... and the only one I successfully hooked and landed. That was partly my fault, though. I cannot complain about the action!

This juvenile Chinook salmon was one of many attacking my fly in a surprisingly fast, deep pool on the Jim River, a tributary of the Koyukuk. There's no fishery there (or anywhere along the Dalton Highway, really) for the adult salmon, because they're too few in number and protected.