A quarter mile from the Alaska Airlines terminal at the Yakutat Airport there's a World War II-era hangar. Inside of that 40,000-square-foot hangar is the home of the Alaska Warbird Museum, the Situk Fly Shop, and Bob Miller.
Miller, the founder of the non-profit museum and owner of the shop, sells gear and provides fishing reports for thousands of anglers who visit -- or wish they could visit -- the Situk River, a 16-mile river famous for its massive production of steelhead trout and salmon. Miller has big dreams of some day tapping into that traffic and taking people on glacier tours in his authentic WWII aircraft parked inside the hangar. But that's another story.
This story is about fishing, not only because it's that time of year, but also because it's the Situk (pronounced Sea-Tuck) that wins the war as the main attraction in the remote coastal community of Yakutat nestled halfway between Juneau and Cordova. The only way to reach the town is by boat or plane.
"We love airplane noise," said Miller from inside the hangar.
Thousands of anglers
This time of year, flights into Yakutat usually means business for Miller. And business is about to pick up, not only for him, but also for the Yakutat fishing lodges, guides, and taxi drivers that cater to thousands of anglers who arrive from now until Labor Day. The season officially kicked off this month as the first steelhead returned, and it usually lasts until the end of May.
How big a steelhead run is it? For starters, the Situk River produces the largest steelhead catch in the state, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. As much as half the state's steelhead catch comes from the Situk. On an average year, Fish and Game will count about 7,500 kelts (steelhead trout that spawned successfully and are leaving the river for the ocean). Biologists have seen as many as 12,000 to 15,000 in some years.
"It's a pretty small stream to have that amount of steelhead," Miller said.
Numbers like those attract anglers from the West Coast, the Midwest, overseas, and other parts of Alaska, too. They come for the kings, sockeyes and silvers, too, but visitors this time of year are looking to land steelheads, a bigger cousin of the rainbow trout.
The steelhead and rainbow trout are of the same species, but the steelhead differs from its relative because it migrates to the ocean, allowing it to grow much larger. Steelhead can weigh up more than 40 pounds. The average length of both male and female fish is about 30 inches. The Alaska record rainbow/steelhead trout is the oldest record among those tracked by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game -- a 42 pound, 3 ounce whopper caught in 1970 by David White at Bell Island in Southeast Alaska. Unlike salmon, steelhead don't die after spawning. Steelhead can complete the fresh-to-saltwater circuit several times in their lifetime.
The fish thrive in gravel-bottomed, well-oxygenated waterways, which is exactly what the Situk River offers. About every mile of its river bottom is percolated gravel, Miller said. From Situk Lake to tidewater, its pristine water meanders through a flat, broad floodplain. The elevation within that distance drops only one meter per kilometer, a characteristic that turns the river into a perfect spot for spawning fish.
"The whole river is productive," Miller said.
Situk River: one of a kind
So how does the Situk match up to other steelhead rivers along the western coast of North America? The simple answer is that it really doesn't compare, Marston said.
There are several tributaries in the Skeena River system in Canada with similar steelhead runs, but those rivers are probably 10 times the size of the Situk, said Marston, who works at the Fish and Game office in Yakutat. Other rivers such as the Nass in British Columbia, the Ho in Washington and the Smith in California, also have significant steelhead runs. But Marston pointed out that those rivers are all large watersheds.
"The Situk is really a spawning tributary that just dumps right into the ocean," he said. The topography of the river is also unique to Southeast Alaska.
"Typically the water comes straight off the mountains and into the ocean," Marston said. "It's probably one of the longer rivers in the Southeast."
Another reason the Situk thrives is because the land that surrounds it hasn't seen much development. A bridge, a few U.S. Forest Service cabins, and some fish camps near the mouth amount to most of the development in the area.
'My crappy sales pitch'
Miller first fell in love with Yakutat as a child. He was 4 years old when his family started spending summers there. While his dad worked as a commercial setnetter and troll fisherman near the Italio and Alsek rivers, he learned how to fish with a rod.
Now 45 years old, Miller has lived year-round in Yakutat for 14 years. After selling off his share of a fishing guide business, he started the Situk River Fly Shop in 2008, which he said was hardly an ideal year to start a business. The national economy collapsed a year later and hammered Yakutat tourism. In an attempt to boost business, he turned to writing and the Internet. He created Bob's Blog to relay fishing reports for anglers interested in the Situk River.
Alaska has its share of online fishing forums, but spend an afternoon reading Bob's Blog posts and you will find the detailed information -- part small-town news, part fishing reports -- entertaining to read and hard to beat for a single river in Alaska.
Bob's Blog was such a hit last year, he had 73,000 readers.
"There aren't even 2,000 visitors who come to Yakutat," Miller said.
He's not too far off. Marston said the river sees about 3,000 anglers a season. Nevertheless, the readership is impressive for a small-town blogger. Purchasing an airline ticket to Yakutat is a big commitment, Miller said, so he does his best to avoid sugarcoating the fishing conditions. Walk into his fly shop and he will likely spout off the same sort of report you would read online.
"We work really hard to give people quality information so they can have a good experience, whether they buy anything or not," he said.
Sometimes Miller is so honest with his reports that it upsets local lodge owners.
"If the fishing sucks then I tell them the fishing sucks," he said. "That doesn't make the lodge owners very happy when people start thinking about cancelling because of my bad fishing reports.
"I'd rather be honest even if it hurts in the short term. Financially, in the long term, it builds respect. But you don't necessarily get that from fly shops. Down in the real world, they do whatever they can to get people to the river. So we end up turning away a lot of business, I guess.
"That's my crappy sales pitch."
Spoiled on the Situk
When the fishing is good, Situk steelheads hit a wide variety of flies. Miller said the top fly is the Garcia Glo Bug on a No. 4 hook with Jerry Garcia colors. It has wild, Deadhead-like colors -- dark blue, dark purple, chartreuse, steelhead orange, cerise -- that are all mixed together in one ugly ball.
Another favorite is the Dolly Llama, which is five inches long, articulated, loaded with all-white bunny fur and featuring a heavy cone head. Anglers are also fishing anything from six-inch pink rubber worms to spoons and spinners to Bead Head Prince Nymphs and Black Crystal Buggers.
"Sometimes anything with rubber legs is working," Miller said. "You just bring your whole box of flies and they'll hit just about anything except for dry flies. It's really fun. You get to fish with some crazy, outlandish stuff."
The Situk River has two steelhead runs: one in the spring and one in the fall. About a third of the run arrives in late October through November and December. These fish winter beneath Situk Lake ice, where they loiter for six months. On the way, the fish rarely have to worry about running into an angler's hook.
"Almost nobody comes here to fish it," Miller said. "All of these fish are biters because they're going to be here for a half a year. They're just here to carouse and feed and hunker down for the winter."
One day last fall, Miller and a buddy of his landed seven to 10 steelhead between the two of them. During peak season in April and May, fishing can be so productive that anglers have bragged to Miller that they've landed 10 to 20 fish in a day.
"You get kind of spoiled on the Situk," Miller said.
Situk steelhead must be at least 36 inches to be kept, and there's a limit of one fish daily, two in possession, with a two-fish annual limit.
Yakutat is, and will probably always be, known as a commercial fishing town. Steelhead fishing tourism has only developed recently, Miller said. But he still worries about the future of sport fishing in the area. Go to Yakutat High School and ask students if they sport fish, he suggest. You might see a few raised hands.
"We live in paradise and we have absolutely no idea," Miller said. Maybe it's just human nature, he said, recalling the time he lived in Seattle. "I didn't go up the Space Needle either."
One year the University of Alaska Southeast hosted an outdoor week for kids in Yakutat. Organizers asked Miller come talk about fly fishing, but he spent most of the day explaining to kids that people pay big money to come fish for steelhead and salmon in their hometown. Miller wants to motivate the younger generation to enter careers that cater to tourists. "There's a lot of money to be made here," he said.
And lots of fish to be caught too.
Freelance writer Kevin Klott wrote the weekly fishing report in the Anchorage Daily News for several years.