Forget kings, flyfishers fave grayling

Is it that beautiful and unique dorsal fin, or the voracity with which they leap out of the water and attack a dry fly floating down the stream? Is it their prehistoric look, or the fact that they are "our" fish?

Nobody can pin down the answers to those questions, but one thing can be said for sure -- in Alaska, a land known for its mighty chinook and feisty coho salmon -- the arctic grayling, a fish that tops out around 20 inches, holds the fascination for many.

"Ya know, I don't know why I like fishing for grayling so much, but I do. I really do," said Jackson Anderson of Anchorage, who was fishing for grayling at Willow Creek two weekends ago.

"I'd rather spend an afternoon fishing for grayling than battling the people fishing for kings," Anderson said. " It's relaxing."

Grayling are considered kings to many flyfishers. Those preferring to tie on a dry fly often target grayling because the fish tends to eat almost anything -- and they have a willingness to rise to the surface to eat.

"We don't fish a lot of dries up here like I did when I was growing up in Montana. With grayling, you don't even have to reach for your streamer box or your nymph box if you don't want to. You can fish dries all day long, and that, to me, is what fly fishing is," said Lester Binghs, Anderson's fishing buddy. "Fishing for grayling reminds me a lot of fishing when I was a kid. We would use small dries and catch small fish all day."

Yes, floating an Adams parachute pattern, a mosquito pattern or a Griffith's Gnat through a pool holding grayling will elicit a fierce strike, and a nice fight. But once you get a grayling into your landing net, there is one big thing you notice -- that beautiful dorsal fin that stretches wide like a fan, unlike any other fish species you will ever find.

The fin is often dotted with bright red or purple spots. Grayling are dark on the back and have gray sides, with black spots scattered along their bodies. The unusual fin and bright color pattern make grayling one of the "prettier" fish in Alaska streams.

"Look at this. Isn't this a beautiful fish?" Anderson yelled to Binghs as he netted about a 12-inch grayling. "And on a [size] 20 [fly]."

While arctic grayling captivate flyfishers with their unusual look, they have also impressed scientists with their ability to survive. If grayling tend to look a bit prehistoric, that's because they are -- they survived the Ice Age, and have adapted to meet every habitat condition since. During the Ice Age, grayling survived in unglaciated areas of Alaska in the Yukon River valley and the North Slope. From there, they have spread throughout Alaska, except in Kodiak, Southeast Alaska and the Aleutians.

Being able to adapt to their surroundings has been important to the success of the grayling as a species.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, grayling can be "highly migratory, using different streams for spawning, juvenile rearing, summer feeding and overwintering. Or, in other areas, they can complete their entire life without leaving a short section of stream or lake."

Despite their heartiness, grayling aren't all that big. The state record grayling is 23 inches long and weighed four pounds, 13 ounces. It was caught in the Ugashik Narrows.

The largest grayling in Alaska are found in the Ugashik Lake and river system in Bristol Bay -- more than 70 percent of Alaska trophy grayling were caught in that area. Large grayling can also be found in Interior Alaska, on road-system streams.

In Southcentral Alaska, the grayling are smaller but abundant. In addition to a wide assortment of dry flies, grayling will also strike nymphs such as hare's ear and prince patterns, mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies and even Illiamna pinkies.