Bead fishing nearing its peak on the Parks

We’re over halfway through August and the salmon continue to pour into the Parks Highway streams. Everyday I see fresh pinks and silvers push in from the Susitna and hold along the confluences of its tributaries. Many salmon have already made their way up and I anticipate the runs to continue into September.

The trout are very fat and very happy this year. They are a bit harder to find than in years previous, but the ones we are finding have full bellies and look as healthy as ever. Many are sitting below the pink salmon, waiting for the eggs to bounce downstream. With low flows due to a lack of rain, many of the trout are holding in the riffles and deeper pockets just downstream of the pinks.

I’ve transitioned to using more faded bead colors, like the Rey’s Solstice, Mae’s Solstice and Su Reel beads from South Central Bead Co. As the eggs sit in the water, they become milky and pale, turning almost white. I’ve watched trout sitting behind salmon pick the eggs off of the stream bottom, sucking them up like little toothy vacuums. Some trout wear a hole through the bottom of their jaw from the repeated plucking of the eggs from the rocks and sand.

I have yet to see a silver on a spawning bed, but I have seen them in the upper reaches of the creeks in numbers I’ve never seen before. The trout really, really needed this source of food after a poor run of all salmon species last year. There are still fresh silvers pushing in and should continue spawning into the end of September.

The creeks are pretty pungent right now with dead salmon that are washed up on every bank and wedged in every logjam. Some of the trout we have been catching are so full of dead salmon flesh that they puke it up when we get them in the net.

Eagles, ravens, gulls, foxes, bears and other fish benefit from the salmon, and the ecological impacts on the ecosystem stretch for miles past the creek’s banks. With such a good run of salmon this year, I’m excited for what’s to come in the next handful of years.