I suppose my son, Blake, was about 10-years-old when it became obvious that he was choosing fishing and hunting over skateboarding and Xbox. When he reached middle school I decided to dangle the carrot that would hopefully keep him on point. I promised him that if he made good grades, kept his nose clean, and got into a decent college, that I’d take him on a bigtime cool trip for his high school graduation present. We started saving our pennies and over the years we kicked around a lot of destinations. Last winter we finally decided on Alaska, and from there we narrowed it down to Royal Coachman Lodge. We just got back, and the trip couldn’t have gone any better.
With a fairly narrow window, we decided to go for max species variety. Blake has fly-fished quite a bit in saltwater, but he’s never cast to any of the cold-water species. Our mid-July week promised lots of action and lots of new techniques, and Blake really took to it. We caught a ton of fish, we dined like sovereigns, the guides and crew were fantastic, and the scenery was unmatched. More importantly we got to reconnect before he takes off for college. His senior year has been a chaotic blur. We often went days with nothing more than snippets of conversation. I had a couple (okay several) small speeches planned for this trip about life and college and such, but I soon realized that none of that needed to be said. More than anything, it was great to have a full week with Blake without distractions beyond an occasional bear, and scads of salmon, grayling, pike, trout, and char that were bent on eating every fly in our box.
Thanks, Blake, for studying hard and toeing the line. It was a great trip and I’m bigtime proud of your accomplishments.
Oh, by the way, I took a small mountain of camera gear along and fired a few frames. Here are the highlights, and you can click here to see the entire shoot.
Alaskan taxi cab
(L) Better than Starbucks (R) Nuyakuk River
An ambitious grayling
Guide bling
Blake’s honker pike
(L) Evening entertainment (R) Chrome rocket
Dolly or char?
Lake-run rainbow
Tuna on whole-wheat, to go
Does your dog bite?
Lots of moving parts
