Free Extreme Fishing by Robson Green Page A

been in Alaska for two weeks doing a recce, but it would seem in that time Jonathan still hasn’t gained confidence behind the wheel. The conditions are
treacherous and the van is slipping all over the place. We are all on edge. Jonathan is a luvvie like me and really shouldn’t be the designated driver. I vote for Hector, who emigrated to
Alaska with his wife twenty years ago. He’s an old-school rough, tough, no-nonsense Scot, and, I’m betting, a superior ice-driver.
    Jonathan is craning over the wheel. He can’t see the road, the windscreen is frosting over and . . . what’s that? He hits the brakes and we go into a spectacular skid, turning round
and round until we end up parked on the wrong side of the road. We have all had enough. I strongly suggest Hector drives. Jonathan is only too happy to hand over the task but starts having a tizzy
because he feels the journey is just too dangerous; he doesn’t want to be on board anymore. I know the feeling. He starts hyperventilating. In a bid to calm him down, Jamie suggests we change
the tyres to studded ones to make it a bit safer. Unhelpfully I tell him to ‘man up’, hypocrite that I am: ‘As my Uncle Matheson says, no place is worth going if it’s easy
to get to.’
    Finally, after a change of driver, tyres and underpants, we arrive at our first Alaskan angling destination – Homer on the Kenai Peninsula. The Kenai, which is as big as the UK, Italy,
France and Spain put together but only has a population the size of Newcastle, is a Mecca for salmon fishermen from all over the world. The fish are healthy and plentiful in this unspoiled paradise
and only the very lucky, like me, have the chance to cast a line here.
    It’s really beginning to sink in that I am going to places most professional and amateur anglers can only dream about, and no one more so than my Uncle Matheson. For decades he has dreamt
of dipping his fly rod in the Kenai River and exploring the unspoiled Alaskan wilderness. And what’s more he’s a trained taxidermist so he would doubly love it here, because at every
turn, from the airport to the hotel, from the shopping mall to people’s homes, there’s always a stuffed creature, or usually several, on display. It’s a fishing and taxidermy
utopia.
I’ll bring Matheson here one day
, I think,
but right now what I need is a stiff drink
.
    Home from Homer
    My first impression of Homer is, well, that I can’t see a bloody thing, save a small wooden cabin otherwise known as the The Salty Dawg Saloon Bar. I enter; the
smell of stale hops hits me. This is a place where men are men and moose are frightened. Dollar bills are pinned to the walls and hanging from the ceiling, with all manner of messages written in
marker pen: ‘Shelly loves Buck.’ ‘Noah will pistol-whip Buck if he touches Shelly.’ An old salty dawg sings Country and Western songs in the corner, strumming his guitar and
puffing on a harmonica – except that they’re more ‘Cold and Northern’ songs about being chilled to the bone and coming back from fishing and getting the dry-land blues. I
feel slightly melancholy.
    Keith Kalke introduces himself. He’s an all-American hunter with a camo baseball cap, an impressive moustache and eyes that could pierce steel. Unlike the former governor of Alaska, Sarah
Palin, Keith started hunting and fishing with his father aged just five. (In 2011, it was discovered that Sarah wasn’t quite the out-doorsy girl she’d claimed to be.) Keith orders a
beer and I order a white wine. No one including Keith bats an eyelid at this, which is disappointing as part of me (the mad part) wants a bit of a ruckus. There is none. Apparently, there are one
or two Alaskan fishermen who enjoy a glass of Pinot Grigio as much as I do. Well, it goes very well with king salmon and there’s certainly no shortage of
Oncorhynchus tshawytscha
(from
the Ancient Greek meaning ‘hook nose’) up here. We’ll be searching for the king in the