Star Queen Memoirs #3: Anan Creek

Mondays, we’d always cruise to Anan creek. Our itinerary varied from there depending on the mood of our guests. That first day, we really wanted to show them something special and Anan Creek delivered. With one of the highest populations of Pink Salmon in the world, it attracted great populations of Black Bears, seals, Bald Eagles, and Brown Bears—though I never saw a Brown Bear there.

There’s a natural harbor at the mouth of Anan Creek. And it’s surprising to see a Forest Service Cabin on the shore. Southeast Alaska actually has a lot of austere cabins you can rent inexpensively (you just have to get to them), but most are well hidden from boat traffic. The exception here is because Anan Creek is known throughout the world; known to biologists, ichthyologists, photographers, and other naturalists because it’s such a rich eco-system. And the Forest Service built a bear observatory: a semi-open platform, overlooking waterfalls where bears feast. The Forest Service actively studies the bears and maintains trails and the observatory.

From the harbor, it’s a short walk. Not even a mile. Sometimes we’d take the jetboat to the shore and start on the trailhead; others we’d take the jetboat into the natural lagoon and anchor it there. It just depended on the tide. You wouldn’t think it at a glance, but you can get stuck in the brackish lagoon if the tide goes out, leaving your with the sole option of running down a set of rapids (or minor waterfall) that wasn’t there six hours earlier.

We would fish Anan, but the concentration of fish is so great that it’s really not practical. In most places below the falls, if you cast and stripped your line, you’d foul hook a fish immediately. The only way to invoke a strike with that many fish is to walk out in the middle of them; cast directly upstream and let your fly dead-drift back to you. Though that left me scratching my head too, as there were so many fish you could, instead, just reach in the water and grab one by the tail. But that’s no fun.

The only decent place to fish the creek without challenging a bear for their spot is the tail out of the lagoon. The fish thin out and you can pick one and cast to it. It’s great fun. And Pink Salmon are very under rated sport fish. You can almost catch a fish a cast and each one, while small for a Salmon is the size of an enormous trout:18”– 24” and 3.5lb – 4lbs., occasionally bigger. The point of Anan Creek is not to challenge a fisherman. It’s to say “I really saw someplace amazing” and it never failed.

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