What crap do you get into?

[Greg Armstrong]

Devils club is not that bad, it usually isn't that thick and spread out compared to other species!.

Now who has crashed their bikes into a forest of stinging nettles as a kid rais your hand! ️

Well, grab ahold of one on your way to the creek when you’re 7 or 8 years old and see if you’ll still think they’re not that bad 60 years later… I’m not changing my mind!

 

[Old Man]

Devils club is not that bad, it usually isn't that thick and spread out compared to other species!.

Now who has crashed their bikes into a forest of stinging nettles as a kid rais your hand! ️

Don't ever fish the Miller River. I waded through a nice bunch of them spiking things close to the river. They are no fun to play in. I used to fish the Pilchuck River in the winter. They had tunnels cut through the Blackberries. That made it easy. I could bend down. I don't think I could do that now.

Now a days I fish close to my truck. I don't venture very far away from it.

 

[longputt]

I picked up a Euro rod a few years ago and immediately noticed a difference; the extra foot and floppy tip seems to find everything!

 

[mcswny]

12 miles man, 12 miles.



Sculpzilla which is a great streamer for the backcountry. Can fish on a floating line and still get down in deep in pools/lakes if need be.

It's as if you like the pain.
Don't get me wrong, I have no qualms with bringing my crocs on a 10, 20, or 30 mile hike. But shit, those bad boys aren't going on until AFTER I'm in camp.

Last year I upgraded to a pair of Hoka Kaha's for backpacking and hiking and while they won't last as long as a traditional boot, they are VASTLY superior.

https://www.hoka.com/en/us/men-hiking/kaha-gore-tex/1112030.html

 

[G_Smolt]

Very few roads, a LOT of bear trails, and saltwater-only access for nearly everything I fish. Walking in shitty conditions is part of the attraction, and serves as a great poseur repellent.
In some of the smaller, high-gradient systems, logjams span the entire stream. If ya wanna fish, ya gotta get past em.


The Simms fellas followed me around in a couple of my offices for a few days in 2019, and B. Grossenbacher made some great images of the cost of access as well as the reward.


Peace

 

[mcswny]

Very few roads, a LOT of bear trails, and saltwater-only access for nearly everything I fish. Walking in shitty conditions is part of the attraction, and serves as a great poseur repellent.
In some of the smaller, high-gradient systems, logjams span the entire stream. If ya wanna fish, ya gotta get past em.
View attachment 4653

The Simms fellas followed me around in a couple of my offices for a few days in 2019, and B. Grossenbacher made some great images of the cost of access as well as the reward.
View attachment 4652
View attachment 4651
Peace

That third image is pretty epic.

 

[Tom Butler]

Salmon berry thickets, thick Willow patches and Himalayan Blackberries really stink. But aptly named Devils Club are the worst thing we got going on the west side. Those things are to be avoided at all costs!

Interesting thing about Devils Club.. when the Brits discovered them, they were seen as a newly discovered prized horticultural find. They were sent back to England as precious specimens to be planted in the finest gardens . Same thing with Skunk Cabbage. Nothing but the best!

Spent more than a few weekends in the devils club and slide alder up off the mountain loop highway!

The worst is overgrown 5yr old reprod that hasn't been thinned or underbrush ckeard yet, mixed in with Himalayan blackberry that's over 10' high!

That reprod stuff is awful, ran a lot of survey line through that with hand tools as it always seemed to be in fire season.

 

[Clean Willy]

Very few roads, a LOT of bear trails, and saltwater-only access for nearly everything I fish. Walking in shitty conditions is part of the attraction, and serves as a great poseur repellent.
In some of the smaller, high-gradient systems, logjams span the entire stream. If ya wanna fish, ya gotta get past em.

Peace

If you're trying to convince me to finally come up and fish with you, it isn't working.

 

[Long_Rod_Silvers]

Don't ever fish the Miller River. I waded through a nice bunch of them spiking things close to the river. They are no fun to play in. I used to fish the Pilchuck River in the winter. They had tunnels cut through the Blackberries. That made it easy. I could bend down. I don't think I could do that now.

Now a days I fish close to my truck. I don't venture very far away from it.

Last time I was up on the Miller was years ago. Walked down what looked like a trail to the river. Instead of finding the river, I found a beat up old trailer with two guys standing outside. One of them had a shotgun. He suggested I leave. I did - quickly. Haven't been back.

 

[Long_Rod_Silvers]

If you're trying to convince me to finally come up and fish with you, it isn't working.

Funny, it had the opposite effect on me.
Love it when there are no trails.

 

[troutpocket]

Very few roads, a LOT of bear trails, and saltwater-only access for nearly everything I fish. Walking in shitty conditions is part of the attraction, and serves as a great poseur repellent.
In some of the smaller, high-gradient systems, logjams span the entire stream. If ya wanna fish, ya gotta get past em.
View attachment 4653

The Simms fellas followed me around in a couple of my offices for a few days in 2019, and B. Grossenbacher made some great images of the cost of access as well as the reward.
View attachment 4652
View attachment 4651
Peace

I saw those images in a simms ad recently and wondered about the chances it was you. Confirmed!

 

[Clean Willy]

Funny, it had the opposite effect on me.
Love it when there are no trails.

It's the bears. I have an unnatural fear of being food.

 

[Matt B]

The worst is overgrown 5yr old reprod that hasn't been thinned or underbrush ckeard yet, mixed in with Himalayan blackberry that's over 10' high!

For me the worst crap ever was surveying lowland wetlands on formerly cleared sites where it was basically nothing but "old growth" blackberry way over head high. The dead canes are worse than the live ones because the fragile spines are happy to break off in you. My approach was to wear my thick PVC rain gear and back into it.
Have you ever had a "brush fit"? I have and it's not pretty.

 

[Old Man]

Spent more than a few weekends in the devils club and slide alder up off the mountain loop highway!

That reprod stuff is awful, ran a lot of survey line through that with hand tools as it always seemed to be in fire season.

I fished all over that area. Drove up to Monte Cristo also. This was a very long time ago. Back in those days there was lots of steelhead in that river.
Fished the Sauk also. Used to wet wade. Sloan Creek is one of the coldest pieces of Skinny water out side of the Wallace river.

er.

 

[Paige]

Well, grab ahold of one on your way to the creek when you’re 7 or 8 years old and see if you’ll still think they’re not that bad 60 years later… I’m not changing my mind!

I had them in my back yard, I learned after only 1 encounter!

I have done the bush wacking in SE AK in MR g's neiborhood, plus you have bears to worry about.

I was dropped off on a lakes outflow to do an exploratory trip. The boss said theirs a trail that follows the short river of about a mile and a half. I dropped down below a small waterfall and hooked a couple little drinks and moved on to find the trail as the water didn't look good below that pool.
I was zigzaging my way river looking for the trail and staying within earshot of the river and could tell by how loud and steep the terrain was There wouldn't be much fishable water.
The Alder thickets kept getting thicker and intermingled with willows, I wasn't worried about bears as I was cussing up such a storm no living thing would have messed with me. I mean I was one pissed off guy, soaking wet from sweat and trying not to fall into all the caves that intermingled in all that brush, I would never be found if I fell in!

The gradient finally mellower out so I fought my way to the river to cool off. I promptly took of my pack and light jacket and sat down in the river up to the top of my waders, damn was I pissed off LOL. Once I cooled off a bit I had an attitude adjustment and tried to walk down the river but was just as bad being all giant boulders and steep chutes and after a hundreed yards decided to bail.
I headed back into the dense vegetation and within 20 feet found the trail and in less than 200 yards was at the mouth of the river in a tiny little enclosed bay that the beaver could barely fly into. I had about a 3 hr wait so I had another attitude adjustment and put on a Leland Miyawaki popper and proceeded to hook pinks one after another, I got tired of that so I took a nap.
The deep rumble of the de Havilland Beaver woke me up from a deep sleep and was glad it wasn't a bear, after helping the beaver to shore the boss hops out and asks how it was. I promptly tell him to never, ever, ever take anybody there again, at which point he busted out laughing.

Fuck that guy LOL

 

[Brian Miller]

There is to me an idyllic "Curtis Creek" with a ton of native Coastal Cutts. I've fished it since the late 90s. There is easy access at only one location about 1/2 mile upstream from this location. There's a nice pool just out of the frame to the left. I've never seen another angler or evidence of anyone fishing there.

Problem is in 2016 high runoff eroded the banks and caused a lot of deadfall over the creek. Now its real difficult to get to that point shown in the pic above while down in the ravine. And the best holes starting with this pool that regularly holds 13" to 14" fish are another 1/2 mile from there...

through this


Almost no pics of me doing it because I'm usually alone.

Since 2016 I've taken to using a rope to descend into and ascend out of the ravine to bypass the worst of the deadfall, and will strap a pack golok machete in a side pocket of my (tactical) sling fishing pack to hack my way through the Devils Club to the water.

I use the saw on my Leatherman Wave to cut my way through curtains of strainer branches to get through so I can make my way up & down stream.

It can be a lot of work for hungry 6" - 14" native fish. But it's worth it for me!

 

[Old Man]

Back in the day I used to fish Woods Creek. It was just like that every time I went. We didn't whack down any trees or willows. We left it like it was. It was an adventure to say the least. The fish were small but it was fishing. Every once in a while you would hook up with a 10 incher I used gear back in them days. You couldn't cast. It was just a lob into the water.

 

[G_Smolt]

Besides guiding and general goofin' off, I also spent a LOT of my work time in very small, difficult to access water, looking for fish. There is still a lot of anadromous habitat to be documented in Southeast AK, and this little stream is a pretty good example. Not on any map, no hydrographic or fish data, just a tiny, easily-overlooked tributary of a short but fertile (7 anadromous species) stream.

Looking up the trib from about 100yds upstream from its confluence. Sucky, yeah, and not super-conducive to a happy workday outlook, but slope/elevation occupancy models say this place *should* have anadromous fish, and it ain't gonna ground-truth itself.


Up on the bench and about 1/3 mile in, it leveled off and started to look like fish habitat. Still not super-easy to get around in, but easier than the shitshow of moving around in the ravine reach.


...and all the way to the source at the toe of the major slope, about a mile in and over 400' elevation gain. There were other water contributions, but most were seeps or barriered to anadromous passage so I stuck with the main channel.


All the sweating, slipping, bushraking and cursing is worth it in the end, though. Several coho and cutthroat juveniles were sampled along the way, and the last 2 coho, a YOY and one just starting the pre-smolt "silvering", came out of a small pool about 200 yds below the source.


Many more miles and streams to go!

 

[clarkman]

bumped into 3 of these this particular day...2 (including this mellow fella) were on our original camp site we rolled up on and thought, wow, this one looks great!

then again, I'm always looking for slithery friends...

 

[swimmy]

Fuck. That.