The following article, penned by Tom Lewin, appeared in the December/January 2009 edition of Flyfishing magazine and relates to Tom’s trip to the Alaska West fishing lodge in Alaska in June 2009.

“Welcome to Ted Stevens International airport, Alaska”. The voice sounded like it was coming from the far end of a tunnel. I had been travelling by plane for over thirty hours, had endured a screaming baby with colic and, thankfully right at the end of the trip, a passenger in an adjacent isle projectile vomiting. The trip had been excruciatingly long – possibly the longest plane trip I’d ever undertaken and I still had further to go. At the luggage carrousel there were rod cases, expedition duffels and the serious looking characters that you’d expect to find hanging around the airport of a frontier town like Anchorage. Taking up most of one wall was a massive, life-size grizzly bear. It glared at me, teeth yellow and claws extended. Across from the bear was a mount of an enormous 87 lb king salmon. Some state record or other if I remember correctly. I looked at that fish for quite some time, imagining what it must be like to latch on to a creature like that. Suddenly I felt light-headed, sleep deprived, and my time clock was on its head. I looked at the bear and the huge salmon. The setting seemed surreal and I felt like Alice walking through the looking glass.

Alaska. The word alone is enough to get the attention of any fly-fisher. For as far back as I have fished, I remember dreaming about fishing in Alaska. The place is known for remoteness on a scale that boggles the mind, and scenery that takes your breath away, but it’s the legendary fishing for salmon and rainbow trout that had captivated my imagination. I was headed for a tented camp in remote western Alaska, opposite Russia’s Bering Sea. The camp is located on a river a few miles from an ocean that freezes for 10kms out to sea in a bad winter. It operates for a scant seven weeks and that’s because everything is frozen solid for the rest of the year. “It’s not your typical National Geographic image of Alaska,” said Andrew Bennett, the camp’s owner. “But the landscape has its own unique beauty – you’ll see,” he offered.

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