Words: Chris Hunt 2017-06-26 18:41:26
There’s an iron pipe tunneled through the rocks at Chena Hot Springs Resort that heaves hot-spring water into a large bathing pool. Here, in the middle of a swath of manicured gardens cut from the white-barked birches and the ancient black spruces of Alaska’s boreal midsection, an international crowd gathers to soak tired bones and, when the late-summer sun eventually sets, watch the dark skies for dancing lights.
If you stand just right against the hot water as it bursts into the pool, it works its way under your shoulder blade and eases those muscles beaten down by a week spent casting badly to legitimately porky Arctic grayling. The muscles simply sizzle after a while—a hot pain that ibuprofen will chase away for a couple of hours. A stiff gin and tonic before bedtime might enable some restless sleep.
The springs are a sweet respite after days spent trudging through the rain-swollen Chena River finding where the grayling have decided to take up feeding—it’s different each day. One morning they were in every soft slot along the river’s edges, sometimes in just a foot of water and usually under overhanging alders that seem to reach out and grab dry flies like Hungry, Hungry Hippos. The next day, they were gone. I found them again in the dark runs under foot-wide foam lines in over-my-head water. The next day they were gone again, relocating to plunges and deeper water behind wood and rock. Then they were gone altogether—a thousand casts hindered by a pinched nerve right behind my right clavicle turned up one small fish.
The next day, they magically reappeared, not coincidentally, I think, with an epic green drake hatch that lit up the West Fork starting around noon. It continued into the half-light of dusk around 11:00. The bugs just kept popping. So did the fish. Any fly would do. Any fly did. I moved up and down a 100-yard stretch of gravel bar over the course of four hours, lost in the casting and the catching, oblivious to the building pain. Only when the dim light hid my fly did I quit. By then, I could barely lift my arm.
That night, I stood under the pipe, the hot water violently slapping my back like an enthusiastic, single-minded Eastern European massage therapist. The spray from the collision erupted over my head and ran down my face, leaving a tinge of sulfur in my beard. I stood there for what seemed like hours, that pulse of angry goodness reinvigorating a shoulder that, quite frankly, is growing more and more prone to flyfishing misbehavior. It’s been rebuilt once—a second scope is on the schedule.
As the water worked its magic, I wondered through closed eyes where the damned fish would be the next day. Back in the seams? Hidden under cutbanks? Tucked under deadfalls?
I’d find them and their lacy, electric blue-sail fins, wherever they took up feeding lanes. And no matter how painful, I’d cast to them.
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Hot Water Music
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