Ep 172: Fly Fishing the Tongass, with Kevin Main
Kevin Main is the co-owner of Tongass on the Fly in Petersburg, AK. They focus on fly fishing in the Tongass National Forest, particularly multi-day trips. In this episode, we cover the species available, seasonality, fishing techniques, how to get to Petersburg, DIY opportunities, the Anadromous Waters Catalog, and the importance of public lands.
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Website: tongassonthefly.com
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Katie
you're listening to the fish untamed podcast your home for fly fish in the backcountry this is episode 172 with Kevin Main on fly fishing the tongas all right well I start every episode by getting a background on my guests and how they got into the outdoors and into fly fishing specifically so I'd love to hear your backstory how did you get introduced to the sport?
Kevin
Yeah. So I grew up in Colorado, outside of Denver in Lakewood. So it was my dad that got me into the outdoors and fly fishing. He was always a big elk hunter. Archery elk was his thing. And I think he wished I would have probably pursued that a little bit more, but it was always the fishing that interested me. And then later in life, it was always fly fishing. So that's where I focused my efforts. I ended up graduating from Colorado State with a degree in natural resources. And I had even back then kind of dreamed about opening my own fly shop. That was what I wanted to do. after a failed attempt at an economics degree, I realized that the outdoors is kind of what I wanted to pursue. And then about 15 years ago, I was fortunate enough to take a trip to Alaska for the first time. And it was actually to the Tongass. And that kind of changed the entire trajectory of my life. It was a 10-day steelhead trip up here, and it only took a day or two before I knew this was a place that I wanted to be and spend a lot of time and ultimately live. So that's kind of what kicked off the next 15 years of my life, and I found a job to get me up here. I guided out in Bristol Bay, but the Tongass and coming back here and having the opportunity to start our outfitter is, I mean, I can truly say it's a dream come true. It's easy to look back and see how I got here, but there were a lot of, you know, moments in time and forks in the road that I never would have guessed that this is where it would have ended up. So.
Katie
What really captivated you when you went up there? I mean, I'm sure people can kind of imagine, you know, Alaska is known for its kind of like grandeur and everything, but you know, what specifically, you said within a day or two of arriving, you knew that that's like where your trajectory was heading? Like what about it really caught your attention?
Kevin
Yeah, that's a great question. And we could spend probably the whole hour just talking about that. But it was there were a few things, you know, number one, and to be honest, most of them don't even deal with the fishing, right? I mean, Alaska has incredible fishing. And that's, that's what we do now. But that's almost just the vehicle, right to get out and enjoy the area. That's, that's what gets us out. But being from Colorado, landlocked state, I remember being on the ferry. This was one of the first things we did. We were on the ferry moving through Southeast Alaska on the ocean. I saw a whale for the first time. And it was like we were looking, you know, it was April. So all the mountains were still snow-capped. And it was just wild. It was a sense of wild that I had never experienced before because it wasn't just, you know, an area that we drove to, backpacked in, spent a few nights. It was like everywhere you looked, there weren't signs of people or man. It was just forest and trees and mountains for as far as you could see. And I think that was probably the initial like holy shit moment where it was, I mean, this is just unbelievable. you hear the stories about it, but experiencing it, I don't know. It woke something up inside of me, I guess. And it was like this, I want to explore these places. That was what it was. And then to top it off, you know, you find your very first steelhead after catching 14, 16, 18 inch rainbows your whole life. And it's like, wow, I mean, this is just incredible. You know, like it's it was pretty magical. And that's yeah, I still haven't lost that feeling for this area. And I, you know, Alaska is incredible and I've been lucky. I've been able to guide in Bristol Bay. I've fished on Kodiak, a few other areas around the state. And they all have really amazing places. But there's something about Southeast that to me has just been really special. And it's where I always wanted to be and call home, not just fish, but like this is where I want to live.
Katie
Yeah, it's really easy out here to feel like we're in the middle of nowhere, like when we backpack in somewhere. And it's like, yeah, but most of the time we're still probably within five to ten miles of a road at least. Even if it feels really remote, you're not seeing a lot of people. Like at the end of the day, you could just like start walking in a direction and you'll eventually like make your way out. And that's not really an option in Alaska. So it's, I mean, I've never, I haven't been up there yet, but I can imagine the feeling of like the overwhelming space up there. It would just be even more overwhelming. Like coming from the East Coast originally out here felt super wild. And I imagine it's just like a hundred times that going up to Alaska. Has it felt like it's shrunk at all since you moved up there? Like, did it feel more grand when you first visited? And then now that you're living there, has it, has it like shrunk for you or does it still feel just as like vast and wild as it always did?
Kevin
Yeah, I think that there's a two part answer to that, because number one, any any experience that we have for the first time is always going to be the most overwhelming, overwhelming, like mind blowing, you know, because you didn't know that this existed. Right. So in that sense, it's it might feel a little bit smaller just because I've learned a lot more about the area. I've been able to visit a lot more of the area. So when I look at a map, it's not just a blank check of places that I've never stepped foot on anymore. That said, the more rivers that I go to, it feels almost more overwhelming because you realize how small of a percentage you've actually covered. right so there's i mean the tongas is enormous over 3 000 rivers they all have some species of fish most of them anadromous fish plus all the lakes that are there and the reality is like we scratched the surface you know and so in that sense it's given me a better perspective of how big this place truly is. And like, yeah, I mean, it's enormous. And that's still with me.
Katie
How many of those like 3000 streams do you feel like are like visited by people? I don't know if that's something you can answer. But you know, you're talking about all these places you've been and you are realizing that you've still just scratched the surface. Is this just like your experience? But then there's like other people are scratching the surface in different areas? Or are there areas that are still essentially untouched and like might see, you know, one person a year or might never see people? Like I have no sense of like the scale or how remote some of these places are. And I'm just kind of trying to gauge like how untouched are some of the harder to get to places.
Kevin
Yeah, I think number one, it's a sliding scale, right? So there are a number of communities in Southeast Alaska. There is a few road systems. They don't connect the communities, but there's some roads that will connect to certain rivers. The rivers that are near those communities, I would say typically are frequented a fair amount. Right. But then there's a lot of places that are just out of the way. And most people in Southeast Alaska, and I'd say this is true for the people that live here, as well as the people that come up and visit, are looking to harvest. Freshwater fishing isn't a huge draw here. There's not a lot of people that do it. Catch and release is kind of a foreign concept around here. So going up the rivers is not something a lot of people do, right? Like you'll see maybe some people in the tidal areas or on some of the more easily accessible rivers. But there's places where it might take 8, 10, 12 hours to get to on a big boat where you're going slow, you know, and where you have to fly in with a float plane. And I'd say some of those probably don't get fished at all during a year. Other ones maybe have a couple people that'll go check them out. And, you know, these are we're talking about pretty productive systems, right? Like these aren't and there are a lot of small streams that are you do in an afternoon. They're pretty quick. But there's some really beautiful rivers that probably rarely get touched or get any any sort of traffic on them at all.
Katie
And I also want to ask a little bit about the Tongass in general. I feel like it's a word that a lot of people have heard. But, you know, what is the Tongass? What is the landscape like? What would someone experience if they came up and visited?
Kevin
Yeah, yeah. The Tongass, especially in the fly fishing world, I think is still relatively unknown. I don't think it gets talked about a lot, you know, and understandably, right? We have Bristol Bay, which is one of the premier fisheries in the world. So that's where a lot of the focus is. You have South Central with some really incredible rivers there and a little bit easier to get to and access. The Tongass is America's largest national forest, and it's not even close. It's 16.7 million acres. The next largest is the Chugach. And I think that's, I don't know, not even, anyway, it doesn't matter how big it is, but it's nowhere close, right? So it's enormous. It's made up, it's an archipelago, so there's a lot of islands. And then there's also a mainland section that goes kind of in borders Canada there. And it's a rainforest. So I would say that's the biggest, I hesitate to say drawback, but it is wet here. Like very, very wet. I can look outside. It's been raining a lot recently, this whole year, really. But it's a lot of old growth forest. I mean, a lot of big, sick spruce and western hemlock glaciers, big coastal mountains. I mean, it's really a mix of terrain, but it's all, yeah, I mean, still pretty, pretty wild place and untouched and undisturbed. And it's, you know, nicknamed America's Salmon Forest. There's a big commercial fishing fleet here because there's so many fish that return here. So there's salmon everywhere in every stream that you can look at. There's going to be some fish that are returning too. So I think that's a pretty good overview. You know, there's some of the rivers, like I said, there's some trails that lead up them and are a little bit more accessible. But for the most part, you're walking through a deadfall. You know, it's not easy to get up a lot of these places, which keeps them tough, you know, or untouched. I even think about a lot of the rivers that we go to. And we can only go so far because we're typically, even on our multi-day trips, we're coming back to the boat at the end of the day or, you know, trying to get back to town. So you can really only walk up so far. And in some of them, there's still like miles and miles that you would have to spend a few days just on that one system to really see everything, which is always exciting. That's always like in the back of my mind. You know, it's always that question, right? What's around the next bend? What's around the next bend?
Katie
I think most people probably aren't, you know, under the illusion of like a tropical rainforest because you're obviously in Alaska. But most people, when they hear rainforest, like that's where their mind goes is a tropical rainforest. What is your like seasonal weather like up there in a rainforest that's much different than what people would typically imagine? Like maybe each season, what's kind of like an average temperature that you're dealing with?
Kevin
Yeah. So, you know, right now through winter, I guess that's the other thing is the daylight. So just like Alaska is known for short days and during the winter, long days during the summer. We definitely have that. We're still pretty far north, but we're not, you know, Fairbanks or the Arctic slope where it's 24 hour darkness or 24 hour light. So, you know, during the winter, we probably, I don't know, sunrise is at 930 sunset might be around 330. And the temperature stays fairly stable for the, I mean, again, this is all generally speaking, but wintertime, you're looking at mid to high thirties into low forties with a lot of rain, um, snow, we can get a lot of snow. It really depends on the winter spring. Uh, the weather is starting to improve. It can be very variable, you know, but you might get some days in the high forties, maybe low fifties with ideally some more sunshine, some break in the, in the rain. And a lot of times the summers can be pretty nice. June, July, August, it's not as wet. You have a lot of time to go explore, a lot of beautiful days. And that's another thing. You really do appreciate the beautiful days up here because it's not 300 days of sunshine. So when you do get a bluebird day, it's pretty special. And then fall, fall is always tough for me because it's that transition period going from nice weather, the runs, the fish are starting to kind of disappear. And it's usually, we usually get a few storms late September, early October. And you just know that it's only going to get worse from there for a few more months. So that's where we're at right now, actually.
Katie
Gotcha. That would be a good transition into the fishing itself. And there's a lot of different ways we could take this. I often like to do kind of a seasonality for fishing as well, but I know you have so many different species that I'm not sure if it makes sense to go kind of species by species or seasonality and talk about what the fishing, like what you'd expect in each season. I'll kind of let you determine that. But, you know, if someone's just thinking about a calendar year, what's going on if you're fishing, you know, at various times of the year?
Kevin
Yeah. Yeah. it's probably best to just do it uh seasonally because that's kind of how we think about our calendar and and what we're planning to do and for us i would say things really get going in April um that's when the season kind of kicks off in full swing and that's when the steelhead are showing up so not only are we starting to get a little bit better weather some birds are starting to show up but the steelhead are the first big anadromous species to be here and so it's an exciting time that runs you know basically into mid-may um and there's also dollies around so all the the salmon that have spawned the previous fall or summer especially the pinks and the chum There's a whole talk we could have about salmon life cycles and everything. But for all intents and purposes, that's when a lot of the smolts and fry are starting to out migrate from the rivers. They're coming out of the gravel and they're making their way out to saltwater. And so the Dollar Barton and the Sea Run Cutties are pretty aggressive. You know, they've been losing some weight over the offseason. And this is their first like real big food source. So you'll see them when you're going up a river, usually in the estuary areas or the tidal zones or pinch points where kind of those fry or smolts are getting funneled and they'll be hammering those. And it's one of those deals where, I mean, you can just have a blast catching aggressive dollies and sea run cutties. So that's April into May. Usually, most of the rivers are starting to, the steelhead are leaving by mid to late May. And then the Sea Run cutties, the Dollar Bar, and they're still around into June. The sockeyes start showing up late June into July, but they're not really where we are specifically, a target fish that we go after. We'll see a few of them, but they're not really something that we're chasing. Then the kings show up. I mentioned earlier that the Tongass has a big mainland section, and a lot of the mainland rivers here do get king runs. And so these mainland rivers, some of them are huge and they'll go, you know, hundreds of miles into Canada. And so, you know, the glacial rivers, the kings are starting to show up. Where we are, we don't fish for kings just because they're not doing so well. So we just tend to leave them alone. But it is really neat to go up some of these tributaries or rivers and see king salmon in a river that's like three feet wide. I mean, it's, it's pretty amazing. Just, I mean, it's a sight to see, right? These wild fish doing their thing. Um, and then after the Kings, when you're getting into kind of late July, August, you start seeing the other salmon species. So pinks and chum are showing up and then mid to late August, basically through October, even now there's probably still some around, uh, is when the coho or the silvers are showing up and really start to focus on them, you know. And then the dollies and the sea run cutties, they're kind of just there throughout the whole season. So they're always kind of a fun species to go catch, even if it's kind of between runs or you don't really know what else to do. They're always a good option.
Katie
And then during the winter, is it kind of downtime or how does the winter work? Is it too dark to do much in terms of fishing?
Kevin
Yeah, it's not fun. It really depends on the winter, I guess. So if it's a mild winter and we're still able to get out and things haven't frozen over, you might be able to find some cutties or some dollies that are still around. But yeah, I would say that that's usually a break where try to get somewhere warm, go somewhere else, try to do some flats fishing if possible. Or, you know, we'll set crab pots and do some stuff in the saltwater just to pass the time and stay busy. But yeah, the fly fishing opportunities, I would say, are pretty much wrapped up by then.
Katie
Does your operation just kind of shut down for a couple of months? Is that how it works as an outfitter?
Kevin
Yep. So, yeah, we'll run trips through September. But the other reality is usually people aren't as interested in coming up here the later end of the year that you get. And especially Southeast Alaska is also known. I should say it's famous for its cruise ships. Right. So there's a lot of cruise ships that come here. That's the majority or the how the majority of people experience Southeast Alaska is on cruise ships. So they wrap up where we are around mid-September, which when it comes to like day trips and stuff like that, you know, a lot of the tourism is wrapped up. So there's not really a whole lot of people to take out the later in the year that you get.
Katie
Oh, so you're getting a lot of clientele off cruise ships.
Kevin
We don't.
Katie
Oh, okay.
Kevin
Personally, but there are outfits that do. I would say it's a big driver for tourism in general. you know, we try to focus more on multi-day trips. We like the experience of spending longer periods of time with the people. We're able to get out into more inaccessible places if we have more time. So that's kind of what we focus on. But, you know, the cruise ships are, you know, that's a whole discussion. But they do, they bring a lot of revenue and people into these communities. And But we, you know, where we are, we don't get the big cruise ships either. So some of these cruise ships can be 4,000 people, three or 4,000 people. We only get, you know, the ones that are a couple hundred. So it's not quite as large of an influx of people all at once. But yeah, it's all that to say, just everything around here kind of slows down in October. And yeah, we're no different.
Katie
Tell me more about the trips you offer, the day trips versus the multi-day and what does each one of those entail?
Kevin
Yeah. So the majority of what we do is boat based. So we have a 45 foot liveaboards that will go out for a week on. And then we have a couple of jet boats and skiffs that we use to access the rivers and, you know, run the jets up the tide flats or as far as we can up the rivers, usually until we're stopped by log jam. That's kind of a lot of times our end point. So that's all our steelhead trips are based off of the big boats. And then during the summer, we offer kind of private cruises and then coho trips in the fall. We also do a couple raft trips on the Stikine, which is one of the big mainland rivers that I had mentioned. So we'll do a week on the Stikine, which is a 40 mile float. And we'll do that, stay in forest service cabins and use jet boats to access some of the fishing locations around there. It's a really cool trip and the Stikine is one of my favorite places. But that's what we try to do. And then here and there, June, July, we'll do some day trips out of town here. But I always, when I was in Bristol Bay, it was a lodge that would have week-long guests, right? It was like Saturday to Saturday. And after that, I started doing some day trips and I just really enjoy it. I don't know. Day trips were always tough for me because it's like you go out with these people, you spend the day with them, they turn into your friends. And then at the end of the day, it's like, all right, you know, that's it. We'll see you later. And then a lot of times you never hear or see from them. And it just seemed a lot more transactional. So I, like I said, really like doing the multi-day because I like building the relationships with people and having, yeah, it's just a different experience from both sides, guide and client, right?
Katie
So. So are you typically fishing out of a boat or is the boat transportation to get to where you're going to get out and like walk and wade?
Kevin
Yeah, Katie, that's a great question and one that I don't even think to talk about anymore, but it's all walk and wait. So we're hardly ever, yeah, fishing out of a boat, which I know is strange for a lot of people. But the boats for us are pretty much just tool. And that's what we're using to access our locations. And then from there, yeah, we're on our feet. So I would say the majority of our trips are fairly physical. You know, we can really ramp it up and there's there's places we can dial it back and not have it be so physically demanding, but there's no shortage. If somebody really wants to, to go for it and push themselves, we, we can absolutely do that because that's, that's what's going to get you to these places after we can't go any farther in the boat, you know, walking. So yeah, it's, it's fun. People are usually pretty tired after a week tromping around in the woods.
Katie
Tell me a little bit about the techniques you use for the various species. I don't know how much they differ in terms of like what kinds of flies, what kinds of presentations you're using for them, or even like rod weights and stuff like that. I know we could do a whole like 24 hours of talking about all the different things you do, I'm sure. But kind of a high level view, like if someone came there and wanted to know, like, how are we going to be fishing for steelhead or salmon or the different species of salmon or Dolly Varden? You know, how much do they vary in terms of like what they're taking?
Kevin
Yeah, yeah. So I would say to start, that's kind of why I love guiding up here is there's so much variety. You know, we not just with fishing styles, but with our locations. It's very different than fishing the same river over and over and over again. Even ourselves, we might fish one of these rivers once or twice in a year, right? And so we don't, there's so many variables. You just don't know what you're going to walk into. But to get back to your question, I would say, you know, if somebody was going to come up here, if they were, you know, moving up here, you're going to spend some time up here, kind of the best overall rods just kind of cover it all would be an eight weight, nine foot eight weight single-hander that that will check a lot of the boxes and you can you can do a lot of different things handle just about every situation with that you know you might be a little overgunned for the dollies and the the sea run cutties um and a little undergunned if you did find some kings somewhere but you know for the rest of the salmon species for steelhead that's a pretty go-to setup. We'll use a lot of streamers. So whether it's dead drifting streamers or stripping them or swinging them, we'll do that. Our rivers, a lot of them are pretty small. So again, that's why just a single hand nine foot will even be kind of swinging with that or stripping with that. For our steelhead season, we try to swing as much as we can, but a lot of the rivers just aren't conducive to it. There are a few rivers that we fish that are very conducive to it, but we'll usually walk around with during steelhead season, three different setups. So we'll have, you know, either 12 and a half foot two hander or 11 and a half foot switch rods, a nine foot eight weight, and then also a nine foot six weight for the dollies and the cutties. That's kind of our go to setup for that. Just with a little fry pattern or smolt pattern for them. But yeah, I would say you don't need to overcomplicate it, right? Like going back to that Decker story, I always flash back to that because we're not fishing, you know, size 22 or 24 midges with, you know, three flies on the rig and everything like that. So it's a little bit simpler than a lot of the Western fishing can be.
Katie
Are you primarily controlling what you catch based on what you're presenting or how you're presenting it? Or is it more about the seasonality? Like, you know, things aren't there, but, you know, you could go out and what's on your line could end up being a steelhead or Dolly Varden. And you kind of don't know apart from like maybe sizing up a little bit for a steelhead or maybe sizing down a little bit. Like how much how much control do you have over what you're catching based on what you're throwing out there and how you're presenting it?
Kevin
Yeah, yeah. That answer does vary a little bit depending on the time of year. During steelhead season, we absolutely will catch a lot of cutthroat on steelhead flies, right? like everybody's ravenous. So the searun cutties are pretty aggressive. They'll hit a swung fly. A lot of times they're sitting in some of the same water that the steelhead will be in. So for that one, you're not really controlling a whole lot. And I always feel bad for the cutties because we catch some beautiful cutties that like in June or July, you would be very excited to catch. But because we're targeting steelhead, people are always like, okay, let's move it along. Get this guy out of here. It's like, I'm always like, these guys aren't getting any respect. But then later in the year, I would say a lot of it is dictated by the time of year. The runs will overlap. But the big one where you kind of are thinking about trying to target one species and not another is when you're talking about coho and pink salmon. so a lot of times they'll be in the river at the same time and you know same deal pinks get a lot of disrespect because there's so many of them but if you catch bright pink salmon they're a blast like they're a lot of fun but when people are really wanting to catch silvers you know they're kind of in a league of their own and they'll be hanging out with the pinks and so then it's kind of a game to try and keep the fly away from the pink salmon where the silvers will eat it so you know there's a few things you can change the colors although depending on the day that doesn't really matter you know the pinks will be interested in in whatever you're throwing out there but how fast you're stripping where in the pool uh you're fishing so you know if you're fishing more towards the tail out versus the head of the pool sometimes that can change what you get into um but it can be fun because a lot of what we're able to do is sight fish so we're able to see you know and kind of spot where these fish are uh and cast to them that way and you know even then you you can only control bycatch to a little bit if you want to call it that right but um it can be pretty exciting because guys will start seeing a pink salmon swimming towards their fly, and they'll try to strip it away from that, or trying to get it right in front of the coho and have it ruined by a pink that comes out of nowhere and hammers it, or vice versa. Yeah, it makes for a fun day out on the water.
Katie
So it sounds like you have some control over what you catch, but at the end of the day, it's not as easy as saying, well, there's pike and there's trout in here, so I'm going to throw a pike fly, I will not catch trout because they're just not going to hit that thing. It's like you might end up with a surprise on the end of your line, regardless of what you're doing.
Kevin
Absolutely. And I think it kind of goes to the idea behind how we're catching these fish too, right? Because these salmon aren't feeding when they come back to freshwater. So they're done. So we're not trying to trick these fish into eating so much. It's more of an aggression response. Like it's just an instinctual thing where they're going to go after a brightly colored fly. The dollies and the sea run cutties, they are still feeding, but they're so aggressive that it doesn't need to be a perfectly tied or imitated bait fish pattern for them to think, hey, maybe that's that's something that I would like to eat. So, yeah, there's a lot of overlap in in flies and what a work for just about anything.
Katie
I realize this is going to be a really subjective thing. So I'm just looking for your opinion on this. And obviously it's going to vary. If somebody's like a diehard steelhead angler, then like they want to come during steelhead season, obviously. But what do you think is like the best time to come fly fish there? Like if just everything, all things considered, like weather, maybe cost of getting up there, what you're going to catch, ease of fishing, just like the whole package. if you said like this is the best month to come fly fish the tongas like what what's your opinion on that
Kevin
yeah yeah well i'll start i'll answer your question and give you my thoughts and then maybe i'll give you the pros and cons okay perfect season because different people are motivated by different things right so for me steelhead season is is number one it's my favorite time it's like what got me to move up here you know it's my favorite fish I I just love everything about steelhead and um number two it just so happens it's you know the return of spring so things are are getting better we're coming out of of winter it's there's there's a lot of hope and optimism in in the air right and so I always love that and you need a lot of that hope and optimism of when you're still ahead fishing even up here you know it's not i wouldn't say it's as difficult as fishing a lot of other places for them um but it's still far from a guarantee right so the pro is there's a lot of it's cool to see the forest coming alive again in the spring it's it's incredible to catch these fish the drawbacks are you know it's not a numbers game by any means we're not trying we're not like banging out a dozen fish a day or anything anywhere near that um and the weather can still be very hit or miss especially earlier in the season so you know beginning mid April you might get terrible weather i mean it might be horrible right feel like winter still but that's also when the fish are usually the freshest and it can be a lot of fun if you get into them as they're moving into the system for the first time. The summer, you know, I would say some people really like that. You get better weather. There's more fish. So that is more of a numbers game. You'll wear yourself out catching all the fish that you want. And there's, I don't know, it's just cool to see mid-summer up here. And that's also where a lot of the big rivers are open. So, you know, we'll be going to fish those and you see some really, really neat country. And then silvers is probably the next area where people are, get really excited to come up here. You know, they're just, they're probably, I would say one of the most popular game fish, especially in Alaska, like silver salmon, people just go crazy for. And same deal. You're kind of getting into tough weather. The silvers around here can be a little finicky at times. Like you You can have days where you really, really get into them and do well. But you can have other days where they haven't shown up to the river yet. And this goes back to, you know, we haven't been on this system the entire year. So a lot of times we're showing up with the clients and seeing the river for the first time. And we're making our best guess based on what the year has been like so far, what the tides are doing, what the forecast is for the next few days, what the river levels are currently and what we expect them to be at and the location because different locations kind of have different run timings. But it's not like, you know, somebody comes on board and we're like, all right, well, this river had X amount of fish in it yesterday. Last week it had this amount of fish. It's like, hey, we're going to this place on the map and here's why we think it's going to be good or why there's going to be fish in there. But You know, there's times we show up and it's like, we're early or we're late or, you know, it's like, well, let's pack it up and we'll head to the next one.
Katie
Sure. So in that case, if you were to show up at a spot and the fish aren't there yet, you can just like take the boat out and go try a different system. Like, you know, you have a couple different like shots at different systems with different fish.
Kevin
But yeah, depending where we are, some of the bays have a couple of different rivers we can check out. But the reality is you usually don't know until it's pretty far into the day because, you know, we might get there and it's like, well, we didn't see anything down low. Maybe they're higher up. Let's keep walking a little bit. And it can be pretty time intensive to confirm that you're not going to see anything that day. Right. So, yeah, a lot of times it's it's not something like you can just show up and be like, OK, this this isn't looking good unless you show up and it's like there's no river or there's no water in this river. Clearly, this isn't going to be good. Let's get out of here. But if the river looks decent, then it's kind of just an exploratory mission. See what the next pool is going to look like. Maybe they're holding in there. And yeah, then we usually go back and we have a discussion in the wheelhouse about where we should head to next or what area to try after that.
Katie
I'm sure if someone books a trip, you walk through details of this with them, but just a high level view. How do people get to this part of Alaska? Like, where do you book a flight to? Do you take a boat after you get off that flight? What are the requirements for getting somebody from lower 48 to where you are?
Kevin
Yeah. So it's not terribly difficult, but it is inconvenient. So where we are in Petersburg, we do get two Alaska Airlines flights a day, one northbound, one southbound. But for the majority of people, and this changes every year depending on how Alaska Airlines does their schedules, but you can plan on spending a night either in Seattle or Juneau, probably before the trip, before you reach Petersburg. And a lot of people ask us, you know, are there any direct flights? And it's, it's complicated because the flight from Seattle is direct, but it touches down in a couple other communities on the way. So it'll stop and catch can you stay on the plane. Some people get off, some will get on and it'll go to wrangle and it'll stop where we are in Petersburg. So to us, that's just normal, right? It's like, oh yeah, you're on the milk run. This is what you do.
Katie
It's like catching the train.
Kevin
Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. It's a bus, right? It's like a bus stop coming up and down. And so people look to book their flights and they're like, oh, this says I have four flights. And it's like, well, you have three stops, but only one flight. You're not going to get off. You're staying on the same plane the whole time. But yeah, that can be a tricky one to explain to people.
Katie
So it actually doesn't sound like nearly as hard as I thought. I was picturing like a flight into some like nearby city and then maybe having to catch a smaller flight somewhere closer by and then having to get on a boat. And it sounds like you can just like get on a plane in Seattle and then get off that plane when you get to Petersburg.
Kevin
In Petersburg. Yep. And then from there, you'll hop on the boat and we'll head out on the big boat to wherever we're deciding to go on that trip.
Katie
Wow, that sounds way more convenient than I expected.
Kevin
I didn't think that that was an option. It's a pretty good middle ground. I think we're lucky where we're located that we do have Alaska Airlines and we're still pretty small. Petersburg is still only 3,000 people. So yeah, we're lucky to get two flights a day.
Katie
I obviously want to encourage people to come check out your outfit or book a trip with you. But I do have to ask, are there any like DIY opportunities for people if they wanted to come up and just like give it a shot? Or is that like, are they probably going to be disappointed if they come and try to do it themselves and just end up like, you know, if you don't have a boat, you're not going to, you're not going to have success. Like what are the DIY opportunities like around there?
Kevin
Yeah, there, I mean, there's absolutely some DIY opportunities. Not everything requires a boat to get to. There are some places on the limited road system. So, you know, just about any community that I should say the bigger ones, maybe where, you know, Alaska airlines flies into there's, there's probably an opportunity to at least rent a car. And there's probably some rivers, uh, in the near area that you can drive relatively close to, you know, there's, there's maybe not going to be pullouts at the fishing hole, but yeah, you can, you can probably get close and, and do some exploring. Um, you know, it, it, there's also forest service cabins that you can book stays in. Those usually really usually require either a float plane ride to get to them or some sort of water taxi. So a boat's probably going to have to take you in, but they do a really good job of putting those forest service cabins in pretty incredible places. Like there's some on some really spectacular rivers and lakes and stuff like that. So yeah, it's not impossible to do it.
Katie
So it sounds doable, but you're going to have to put in quite a bit more work kind of planning logistics and figuring out how you're going to get to it and from the water and stuff like that, versus kind of having that taken out of your hands so you don't have to think about it. And you could just be fishing the whole time and not thinking about it.
Kevin
Right. And there's not going to be a lot of information online, especially about the fishing, right? Like you're not going to find a fishing report about X river, you know, there's not going to be a local fly shop that's telling you what the hatch is or, you know, it's like you can get a general sense for the area. What I said was very specific to kind of where we are. And it does change if you go farther north or farther south from where we are. But generally speaking, you know, it's not going to be like completely different where, you know, oh, silver's here show up late August, but down there, they're in April, right? Like it's going to be just a little bit of a swing. But yeah, if you're willing to do the research and put in the work, you can definitely put together a cool trip.
Katie
And obviously, I mean, you said that this is the largest national forest in the country. So I'm sure what you're talking about is specific to your location, but there's probably many areas that you've never been to. And so it's like, it's hard to, I'm sure it's hard to describe like planning a DIY trip to this place when this place is massive. And what you're talking about for your outfitter is like a very small portion of it. So it would be kind of like up to you to figure out like what would be needed for the specific place you're going if you're not going to the Petersburg area.
Kevin
Yeah, a hundred percent. And I mean, you hit it on the head. There's a DIY trip, reach out. Maybe we can put together one. Because yeah, that's still what we do on our off time is go do trips to places that we're never going to guide or maybe see again, but that we want to experience and go check out for ourselves.
Katie
The last two things I wanted to ask you about are kind of unrelated. They don't really fit in anywhere else, I guess. But you mentioned ahead of time, the Anadromous Waters Catalog. I think that's what it was called and how you're kind of like helping out with that. Tell me more about what that is. I didn't do any research ahead of time because I wanted to hear it from you. So fill me in on that.
Kevin
Yeah, it's really cool. So the Anadromous Waters Catalog is something that the state of Alaska, Alaska Department of Fish and Game has, and it's basically a compendium of all of these rivers that anadromous species are in, which here in Southeast is, like I said, thousands. I forget the number of river miles it is, but it's pretty astonishing. I think there's over 3,000 rivers and streams that are listed. And that's just in Southeast. And they all have anadromous species. So what this catalog does is it's trying to collect which species, which anadromous species, whether it's king salmon, dolly varden, sea rung cutties, Pacific Lamprey even is on one of the species listed, which rivers they're going up. And you can imagine just because of the magnitude, this catalog is pretty incomplete, right? There's Fishing Game doesn't have the resources to send people to all of these places, especially during the different points of the year to catalog what's actually in there, you know, throughout the year. So they take nominations from citizens, right? Citizen science who are out there. And if you're able to prove, so like a couple of photos and some information about what you've seen in there, you can make a submission and say we're going up a river that doesn't say steelhead's not listed in there, right? And we go up, we happen to catch two steelhead in there that day. So we can, we can take note of that, document it, send them, you know, where we were photos of the fish. They, again, you know, they need to be able to verify that you're not full of it and that you're credible. And a lot of people do get species mixed up. So they want to have their biologists confirm. Yeah, that is, you know, a steelhead. Then it'll go through a review and they'll add that species to the catalog, right? So then it'll be, it'll be listed. And what the catalog does is basically it, it's not a full protection, but if there's any sort of development projects or anything that's going to happen that could affect or disturb that stream, if it's listed as having an adramus fish in it, there's certain protections that it's afforded then. So, I mean, it might be as small as they're not able, you know, to build a covert this time of year because X species is in there. which is why documenting both the species and the stream is important because, you know, obviously number one is just making sure that the stream has any anadromous fish in it at all. But then beyond that, it's like, well, it says that there's pink salmon. So maybe in April, they will go ahead and do a construction project in there because it won't mess with the pink salmon. But if it's also listed as having steelhead, that shows that year round, there's some protections that should be in place for that.
Katie
You eased my transition into my second question by mentioning development, because I know you want to talk about the roadless rule a little bit. And I don't know how, I guess, topical, how quickly things are changing. This episode probably won't come out until early next year. And I know public lands and things of that nature have been very fast moving for the past couple months. So say whatever you will today, being late October 2025, with listeners taking a grain of salt of things are changing rapidly. But tell me about the roadless rule, kind of what's at stake right now, things like that.
Kevin
Yeah, absolutely. And I would say just to preface this as an umbrella statement, I think regardless of if this is October when the episode comes out, our public lands are being threatened, I mean, constantly, right? So I would say that even if it's not specific to this, anglers, outdoorsmen, outdoors women, like, should be aware that these things are happening and that we need to speak up. And it truly is one of the issues that there's no party lines. Like, the American public is against most of these things period right whether it's the public land sale the rescission of the roadless rule like this is a these are unifying topics and i think we need to make sure that our voices are heard on that front right because there's very few things that almost everybody agrees on nowadays but when it comes to public lands that's pretty unanimous so i'll start with that the roadless rule and the tongas basically the roadless rule affects about 58 million acres of national forest across the u.s in the tongas it's a little over 9 million and what that is is they designate an area roadless if it's over 5 000 acres so it has to be a pretty big tract of land if there's no human disturbance there. And essentially, if it's still a place where somebody can find solitude, find wilderness, it's not a designation like wilderness that comes from Congress. It's a designation that is an administrative term that comes from within the Forest Service. So, they inventoried all of these roadless areas. They placed these designations on it. And what it does is basically protect them from development, from building roads, whether it's for clear cutting and logging, which the Tongass is a prime target for and has had a big history of logging around here. And there's a bunch of studies about how detrimental that was, both for the fish and also for the deer populations. I mean, if you look at Prince of Wales, which is the most heavily logged area in the Tongass, Like it's been really harmful to their black-tailed deer populations. And it's not just like a one-time thing. Like they're expecting that population to continue to decline because of the problems from clear cutting that's happened a long time ago. Right. So essentially these protections are there to save some of our last old growth for us. Right. And I would encourage people, if you come up here, if you're thinking about coming up here, like you'll see some forests here that are just incredible. I mean, you'll be walking through woods that'll blow you away. And I think for me, it really kind of showed how important having these places are, right? And so what's happening is that they want to remove the row of this rule, which would open up about 9 million acres in the Tongass to things like logging or other developments, which would just change the entire landscape, right? And to use Colorado as an example, because we talked about it earlier, Colorado is gorgeous. It's stunning. And I've had this conversation with people because I think if you took Colorado and had it as undisturbed as Alaska is, it would be one of the most beautiful places in the world, right? But even if you're in wilderness, you're hiking up some of these mountains and you see like a highway going through one of the valleys, right? When you get these big sweeping views, it doesn't explicitly take away from the beauty, but it does kind of change the feeling, right? Like if you get to the top of one of these places and you look around and it's like, wow, this is the same as it has been for forever and ever. You can't recreate that feeling. And I think that's why it's important. Additionally, you know, the economy in Southeast Alaska is changing. It's not based on logging anymore. You know, we're, we're, the economy is, is shifting to tourism, to more sustainable industries that rely on these places being as pristine as possible, right? Like that's, that's why we're here. It's, it's the trips that we're trying to get people out to experience. Um, and so I think it's a very short sighted idea that is going to have hugely negative long-term effects that I just really hope doesn't go through. So I would ask some people to reach out, you know, there was a comment period recently and to go back to how unifying this was during the comment periods, over 99% of the comments were against removing the roadless rule. It's not up for debate if people want this to happen.
Katie
Yeah, I agree. I think when public lands come up, it's one of the least divisive topics I feel like I hear about. There's not a lot of arguments for the other side that I've heard that have really landed for anybody. So yeah, I would encourage people to speak up, write to your politicians when you have the ability to. And the world isn't going to run out of roads anytime soon, but it could run out of wild places. So it doesn't go the other direction. Well, on maybe a more positive note, where can people find you if they want to come check this place out? You know, assuming that it does get to stay wild and people get to keep coming up and enjoying it for years and years, where can they find you? Where can they book a trip with you? Things like that.
Kevin
Yeah. So going to our website, it's the best way, just tongasonthefly.com, you know, reach out through email. I'm guessing there'll be probably some contact info on the show notes and stuff. You know, that's, that's the best way. In Denver, we're, we're doing, this will probably be out after the Denver fly fishing show, but we do a couple of fly fishing shows. So come say hi to us there. You know, if you have any questions, we love talking about this place, about the fishing and not just to get people to come up and fish with us. I mean, we truly love it, right? So we love talking about it. Yeah, yeah, I would say that's our passion.
Katie
All right. Well, Kevin, thank you so much for joining me. Every time I talk to someone from Alaska, I'm like, man, I need to get up there and do it. I still haven't pulled the trigger on it. So I enjoy living vicariously through all of you who are living up there. I love Colorado, but I'm jealous of you for sure.
Kevin
Yeah, Katie, make it happen. I mean, there's, you know, there's a lot of issues. So I would say see it while you can, because every year, you know, you just never know if you're going to have a chance. So make it happen.
Katie
Well, thanks again for coming on and let's keep in touch for sure.
Kevin
Definitely.
Katie
All right, that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes, you can find those on fishuntame.com. You'll also find the contact link there if you want to reach out to me. And you can also find me on Instagram at Fish Untamed. If you want to support the show, you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app. And if you'd like to leave a review, it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise, thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody. you
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