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Rainbow trout benefit from all aspects of the
red salmon spawning run. Salmon eggs, which are laid within the
gravel, provide a great source of food. I have witnessed
rainbows ramming their heads into the abdomens of female sockeye
during egg-laying in order to squeeze out these tasty eggs for a
quick bite. Fortunately for the fly fisherman, egg patterns are
easy to come by and can be used all season. Commercially tied
glo-bugs are available in a wide variety of colors. They are
easy to tie on Mustad #9174 hooks with a little glo-bug yarn. It
is wise to experiment with colors and try something a little
brighter for poor water clarity and less bright in low and or
clear water.
Another tremendously successful method is to
use small plastic beads and an egg hook. Many fly fishing
purists snicker at this method but eventually succumb to the
beads; they are probably the best imitation of a real salmon
egg. Red, cream, and pink beads are
great colors to use. Translucent red beads coated with a layer of cream-colored nail
polish are particularly effective. The nail polish imitates the
thin milky membrane that covers the
eggs. Although fishing
with beads was illegal in fly fishing only waters at one time,
it is legal now, but fisherman should always check the current
and local rules and regulations. All egg imitations should be
fished like a nymph with the appropriate weight so that the egg
bounces along the bottom. Double egg flies and cluster egg flies
can also be attractive imitations.
Rainbows are not the only fish trying to eat
these eggs. Sculpins also forage for sockeye eggs; consequently,
we have the egg-sucking leech. Basically a purple or black wooly
bugger with a small tuft of glo-bug yarn by the eye of the hook,
an egg sucking leech lures in the fish. Whether the rainbows
view this two-course meal literally or not, it has the uncanny
ability to produce strikes when all else fails. Usually tied in
purple or black, it can be dead drifted, swung in the current,
or stripped.
Now comes the real meat! When the lives of
the salmon end, nothing goes to waste. Bears and birds are not
the only animals to make use of the fish. Pieces from dead and
decaying fish often float downstream and the rainbows will dart
across an entire riffle or pool to engulf them. This talk of
dead fish leads us to the flesh fly. These easy to tie
imitations, representing a piece of pinkish or salmon colored
flesh, are dead drifted past rainbow trout with amazing results.
The white bunny leach is a popular commercially tied fly, but
for better action tie your own or use those, often secret,
patterns at your lodge of choice. Most of these carnivores are
not meticulous about the way their meat is done; yet it is
possible to match the flesh. Fungi covered salmon and flesh that has
been marinating in river water for some time takes on a lighter
appearance. Snags, eddies, and other places where the dead fish
hang up in the current are excellent places to concentrate
fishing effort. A late fall flesh fly strategy is to drift flesh
flies about an inch or two under the surface past sunken brush
piles and snags where the remaining dead carcasses have
accumulated. Swing these flies in the current at the end of a
drift and then let them sit for a few seconds. This
method is productive because strands of skin and connective
tissue are often tangled within brushpiles that effectively
anchor pieces of flesh in the current.
Fry flies, or alevins, can be quite effective
during the spring. Alevins are young salmon that still have
their yolk sac attached and are actively preyed upon by
trout. Alevin
flies have silvery bodies and a large set of eyes with some pink
or orange yarn tied under the neck to imitate the yolk sac.
Salmon become smolts before attempting their journey to the
ocean and these can be imitated using several streamers.
Despite many rumors, southwest Alaska's
stream ecology is far from devoid of aquatic insect life. Spend
five minutes on the stream and up to a pint of blood can be lost
due to the abundant and voracious mosquitos. Black and yellow
stonefly nymphs are sometimes seen on the underside of rocks. I
have witnessed green caddisfly hatches that were so thick at
times, visibility was restricted. The important thing to
remember is that the rainbows are keyed into the search image of
a particular aspect of a sockeye’s life and insects play a
subordinate role in their diets. While insect imitations are
worthy at the outset of the season, stick to the egg and meat
patterns once the sockeyes enter the streams.
Location of trout in the streams will vary
with the stage of the sockeye migration and spawning. All
streams will experience these stages at different times so it is
important to get a general feeling for the relative time-line of
events. As Sockeyes first begin to migrate upstream, the trout
will frequent deeper pools and riffles. Time will pass and many streams will be full
of ripe salmon, sometimes as thick as you have seen in National
Geographic. During this period, fish will be spotted in the
flats and on the edges of thick groups of salmon. Peek
cautiously through quality polarized lens and "the gray
among the red" will soon be apparent.
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o, they weren't
gently sipping green caddisflies off the surface or picking out
stonefly nymphs from the current. Alaskan rainbow trout
inhabiting the streams where the sockeye salmon spawn have an
entirely different menu. They thrive on salmon eggs, fry, smolts,
and the flesh of dead spawned out salmon. Inevitably, this
interesting array of protein packed foods allows these trout to
grow bigger than anywhere else in the world despite the short
growing season. 
Ten million of those fish
are expected to escape commercial fisheries and make their way
into lake Iliamna where they will then seek out the streams
where they were born. The area is serviced by many knowledgeable
fishing lodges and guides and is accessible by air taxi float
planes for unguided trips.
