Overdue Fall Steelhead Report

We have Thanksgiving coming in a few days.  And it is cold.  Granted it has been negative double digits in Anchorage,  so our 3+ last night sounds balmy compared, but our first official frozen water pipes this morning was plenty cold for me.  Most of the chest equipment is in the hangar bay, so today’s workout was miserably cold!  Tomorrow is shoulders day for those playing along at home…

Jeremy Cook sent me a couple pictures that are now nearly a month old…  They were here at the end of October,  creeping into November 1st.  Everything was looking good back then with flows and water temp perfect.  Fish numbers were a bit weak,  but they did pretty well I thought…  Here is what he said:

“Hey Bob, we went 10/18 between 3 of us this past Th-Monday, not huge numbers but there were fish around and all were bright and feisty.  All were caught between 9 mi bridge and where the trail disappears 2 mi upstream.  Walked to the confluence but too many dollies around.  Tried upstream of the landing one am but I think we were right at high tide instead of catching the incoming tide, regardless no fish

Anyway there are some fish around so hopefully you can get out there this fall!  Thanks for all your help.”

Here are the two photos he sent…

Since their trip,  I have had two other reports…  First up…  the guys from Anchorage came down and stayed at the Forest Service cabins for a week.  Caught a couple steelhead,  but didn’t see a lot.  That would have been about two weeks ago.  They were planning to return for Thanksgiving,  but just cancelled based on the weather forecast this coming week…  Snow every day.  Also briefly talked to a couple guys who hadn’t been here before…  They ran into a lot of dollies and salmon,  but as of our visit in the parking lot in front of the shop,  hadn’t seen much in the way of steelhead yet.  Then we didn’t see them again before their trip ended.

So…  conditions as of right now aren’t that bad…  Flow right now is at 243 CFS tonight and even with the air temp hitting 3F this morning at the airport (the 9 Mile gage air temp isn’t working),  the gage water temp was 35F today…

Cold,  but not that bad considering…  Now,  we’ll be much warmer as the next storm hits tonight.  

Not supposed to be much for accumulations.  1-2 inches tonight before turning to a mess of snow and freezing rain.  Then rain and snow tomorrow.  Sounds kind of miserable (aka steelhead weather).  Haven’t had any actual FISHING reports in over a week,  so I would assume we have a few more fish in the river,  slow-lethargic fish in the cold mornings with them waking up a bit as the water warms later in the afternoon.  Flows are good.  I wouldn’t be afraid to make a trip right now,  but expect it to be miserable.  

And for an update around the hangar…  Our first two bigish snow events came and went.  Cancelled Alaska Airlines flights as the State DOT struggled to get the runway clear,  only to have it buried by the time they got to the other end of the runway…  8 inches of wet snow on the ramp when ACE was prepping to take off in Anchorage with our morning mail and UPS,  so they cancelled a couple mornings as well.  Then it turned to rain,  so we had a ton of leaks again.  Puddles in my new gym!  And the Toyo heater is waiting on parts,  so freaking cold in there!  Then the next wave of snow hit with another foot,  then it cleared off for a couple days and single digit nights.  Winter is definitely here in my big unheated barn.

Have all but one piece of equipment assembled now.  Yay!  And I’m not exactly sure what the heck this last piece even is…  Have a list if missing parts,  but everything is functional.  Will be laying down the rest of the flooring for the temporary walled area in hopes of fitting everything inside that area and getting a little heat on it.

This is essentially where everything will go until we get the new permanent space completed…  This is a drawing I made for the State to show the change to what areas will be “public” and what areas are “secure”.

And that’s about it…  Tanis has some interesting winter projects going on,  so I may post some photos of that.

It’ll Be A Busy Winter

Winter is doing what she can to rear her ugly head in Yakutat.  We woke this morning to work the ACE plane (mail and UPS) to find a dusting of fresh snow.  The first to stick this year.  We have had a couple flurries,  but this is the first to stick.  It continued to snow off and on most of the day,  enough to have the State DOT plow the ramp.

OK,  today was back day!  Yay!  Second time to do back since we unloaded the container.  I have a LOT of equipment yet to assemble,  but we have a couple rooms all done and set up,  with just a couple pieces to complete.  The rest all will end up inside the hangar bay.  Right now,  we have no heat there,  so working out this morning was absolutely miserable below freezing!

We have another year at least of work on the new final gym space in the hangar bay.  The entire 1st floor for the new building at the back end of the bay will be the weight room,  about 40 feet by 120 feet.  In the meantime,  we are putting the equipment in the other 1st floor spaces along the southwest side of the building.  So essentially the 4 rooms on the same side as the fly shop.  It’ll be EVERYTHING other than the fly shop space…  The room pictured below is the “leg room”…

Leg Extension and Leg Curl on the far left under the windows,  unassembled 45° leg press at the far left corner,  huge double-squat rack to the right far wall with the seated calf hiding in the far right corner.  Smith Machine near right and standing calf in the middle foreground.  I also have a Sissy Squat in the hallway behind me.  And I have another Leg Press on order, along with Adductor and Abductor.

And this is the dumbbell/bench room – the largest room along this side of the building.  Dumbbells to 150lbs,  two sets of fixed barbells (one straight and one EZ-bar),  two flat,  two incline and two decline benches,  Preacher bench,  two VKR’s (one with pull-up and dip bars),  selectorized Bicep Curl,  Triceps Extension and Ab Crunch machines.  That was all I could really cram into this room and still have space to do stuff.

Finishing up the two smallest rooms along this side of the hangar…  the 10’x20′ room has two private treadmills.  Will eventually have a couple bikes as well,  but for now,  just the two treadmills.  Then the larger corner room is 20’x20′ and has one more treadmill and all the aerobic steps,  benches,  small neoprene dumbbells,  bungees,  etc.  My mirrors didn’t come with this container,  so the far wall will eventually have mirrors and the long wall on the right will have a couple big TV screens for DVD aerobic classes,  etc.

And then there is “the rest”…

Hangar Bay is a little dark (and a lot cold)…  Above is my 8-stack with two Lat-Pull-downs,  two seated rows,  two Triceps press-downs and cable cross-over.  Because of the space issue,  I’ll try to cram two selectorized pieces against the wall between the two row seats.

Then we have parts sorted and piled out in the hangar bay proper…  17 more pieces to assemble and fit into a 40’x20′ room I’m going to build around the equipment that can 1) maybe be heated and 2) secure access to the hangar bay and therefore the ramp.  Can’t allow public access until I have the area secure.

Most of the equipment has their bolts and nuts still attached.  These are just the “other” bolts,  washers and nuts…  This is going to take me all winter…

And even if the reigning Mr Olympia was to work out here,  he’d still have no chance of having the biggest guns in the gym.  Right now,  our 80 year old Normandy survivor carries that title.  Thank you Pratt & Whitney.

Loading/Unloading the Container

It has been a VERY long process to get the gym up and running.  And we’re still a long way from that…  Started working with the company down in California back in 2018 to get our particular wish-list together.  We were nearly ready to pull the trigger,  then something happened,  where the entire world locked down their economies all at the same time.  Then,  they locked up gyms throughout the country,  including the one at Yakutat High School that I had been using for years to try to stay in shape.  Time to move forward with another option in Yakutat.

Then…  “they” started paying people not to work.  The company I was using in CA couldn’t get any laborers to show up.  Gym chains were permanently closing locations right and left in an effort to stave off total bankruptcy.  You’d think used gym equipment would be easy to come by,  but that wasn’t the case.  All those gym nuts that weren’t allowed to go to a commercial gym started grabbing anything they could get their fingerless gym gloves on.

Chest Press and Triceps Extension

My Iso-Lateral High Row in the foreground

Pieces of misc equipment not assembled yet

The 8-stack without the weight stacks

VKR on this end, the Smith Machine at the far end

Strength Industry takes in equipment from mostly 24 Hour Fitness and LA Fitness locations that close.  They strip everything off,  bake the frames to remove the old paint,  sandblast,  powder-coat everything in whatever color you want,  then reassemble with all brand-new parts – seats,  rollers,  cables,  pulleys…  everything.  They do beautiful work,  all the equipment is as good as brand new and ends up costing half what a new gym would cost me.  Yay!  Except it took them an extra 5 1/2 months to finally get everything finished with conditions as they are in CA.

Deep in the container-3 boxes are the treadmills

Building a second floor to stack things

One of the pallets of plates

Everything (almost) in

Doors actually closed!

A friend sent me a link to an auction in the Seattle area for a gym that went under (Normandy Park).  Cheaper equipment than I was looking for,  but it wouldn’t hurt to pick up a few pieces at a cheap auction.  Ya,  about that…  Things ended up selling for up to 4 times the new retail price…  People are nuts!  I ended up winning one shoulder fly machine and the lockers from the locker rooms.  They came up on the barge right away.  My big order out of CA…  Nope.  The equipment was ready,  but Lynden Transport (Alaska Marine Lines’ parent company) couldn’t get a container delivered to the warehouse.  The plan was to have a container dropped off,  taken to the train,  transport to SEA by train and loaded onto the AML barge.  We missed two more barges.  Instead,  AML had to hire a trucker in SEA,  drive all the way down to San Bernardino,  wait two days while they load the container,  then drive it back to SEA!  Because you can’t get a truck to deliver a container in CA period.

So…  it made the barge.  Barge made it to Juneau.  Barge turned back to Juneau and offloaded the container because we had 20 foot seas.  Yakutat was cancelled.  The following week,  they scheduled an extra trip to Yakutat,  but turned around again when seas were expected to be 30+.  Our storms were scheduled for Thursday and Friday every week,  while the rest of the month was beautiful.  But following week,  they made it in.  Our grocery store shelves were again full and the bar had booze.  And I had my container.

Here it is!

Oh, dear Lord!

Offloading, but 5 feet off the ground

40 endless feet, 31,000lbs

At last!

Now,  the work really begins…  When we’re done,  we’ll have the best equipped commercial gym in Alaska…

Getting Old Sucks…

You know,  there are so many reasons that it sucks to get old.  And then you look out the bathroom window in the wee hours of the morning and see this:

I have been wanting to get a new – real – SLR camera for so long.  Almost did before the Tahiti trip,  but decided tickets to Tahiti were more important…  In the meantime,  all I have is an Olympus waterproof digital “instamatic”.  Great for carrying along on fishing trips to snap pics of guys holding their steelhead up,  but generally not much good for anything else.  Maybe photos of the kids blowing out candles (gee,  remember when we blew spittle on other people’s cake?  Good times!)…  So this was the best I could do for the Aurora over the hangar last night…  It literally covered every inch of the sky from horizon to horizon to horizon to horizon…  Then it would fade out and erupt again.  Even had some red and purple!

Then I went back to bed…  ‘Cause I’m old.

No control over exposure,  just trying to make the “scenic” setting work…  You REALLY needed to get up to pee and see this with us!

The Barge Arrives…

The original barge cancelled out of Juneau because the outside ocean seas were over 20 foot.  They rescheduled last week and we were again hit by another storm right on schedule.  But…

Entering Yakutat Bay

Calm seas,  so the Pacific Titan tug is bringing the Skagway Provider barge into port as I’m typing this.  We’ll have groceries in the stores again!

And Life Goes On…

Yesterday was a tough day.  I didn’t feel like doing much on the hangar.  Just kind-of going through the motions.  Decided it was time to polish off the last of our Gravensteins,  so baked a couple pies.  With only Tanis and I eating pie,  we have two slices left.  Today,  I was a little more ambitious and worked on the door frames for all the bathrooms in the building.  I had big pans to build the doors from scratch from our local spruce,  but decided a year ago that door companies make doors for a reason…  Thus,  the sliding barn doors downstairs are actually in instead of me thinking I can build everything from scratch and they would be in in another 5 years.

When the doors are done,  I’ll post some photos.  In the meantime,  here are the pies…

I don’t know why I can’t get the tiled thumbnail feature to work…

Introducing the “Poodle-Llama”

I’m brilliant!  Just ask me!

We have been out of black and white Dolly Llamas since spring.  It takes 5 months between placing a fly order and actually receiving the flies,  so zero chance of getting these flies this season.  We’re trying to sell down our inventory before closing anyway and still have just about every other fly imaginable for silver season.  Lots of “other” Dolly Llamas,  just not the famous and sought-after black and white “skunk” color.  I do have a LOT of all-white ones…  Hey,  if I get some black fabric dye,  I can dip one of the bunny fur strips in it and voila!  Black and White!  See?  Brilliant!

I had my wonderful mother-in-law send me some Rit Dye by expensive express mail,  that came in last night.  I broke out a pack of white Dolly’s and…  all the other Dolly’s have two strips of straight-cut bunny hide.  The whites…  Just one.  So much for my “brilliance”.  Should have thought about actually looking at a fly before making my big plans…

So… dipped the trailing hook and bunny strip in the boiling black slime anyway and created what I can only really call an ugly Poodle.  We now EXCLUSIVELY carry the new – inventive – wonderful – unique – spectacular – never been fished “Poodle-Llama”!  Get ’em while supplies last!

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!

What Storm?

The forecast was calling for 40 knot winds and up to 4 inches of rain Thursday night and Friday.  And…  Maybe 1/2 inch and virtually no wind.  Flow on the Situk popped up just a bit,  then went back to dropping.  We’re at 336 CFS right now,  the sun is out and we’re actually BELOW NORMAL for water flows.  Absolutely perfect conditions right now,  with a nice big run this season.  Turning to rain (according to the forecast) Sunday night,  but then it is supposed to alternate between rain and showers through the coming week.  I think this week is going to be really good out there.

Did I mention we’re having a really good run?  Lots of fresh fish coming into the outlying rivers like Italio and Akwe.  Situk is doing just fine too.  Tsiu is hot.  Talked to one group on the Yana that only did OK,  not great.  Not seeing much traffic in the shop,  so not talking to a lot of people who have been flying out.  But right now,  if you aren’t doing great,  I think it is user error…

2 1/2 weeks left of the fly shop.  It has been good to say hello (and goodbye) to so many of our friends.  And I may have a lead on getting some black and white Dolly Llamas in the coming days…  I’ll keep you posted.

Bob

Beautiful clear skies, just as it was 20 years ago… Only planes are still flying.

AS 66 on the ground. Rusty isn’t impressed.

Our carrot harvest from the planter boxes in the parking lot.

Nope! Didn’t Feel It

17 quakes in the past day or so…  All clustered under Malaspina Glacier.  Very shallow.  Biggest one clocked in at 4.1 with five more in the 3-range.  Didn’t feel a thing. In my defense,  I was busy planing trim wood for the downstairs bathrooms,  making a lot of noise with the planer vibrating.

Here is the link to the USGS earthquake site,  if you want to follow along at home…   *****LINK*****

Otherwise,  a pretty quiet day around here.  Shop was closed being Sunday,  but had one guy stop in for some flies he had on hold.  Water is still a little high,  but very fishable at about 450 CFS.  A LOT of coho out in the ocean that should be hitting the river in big numbers this week.  Looking like a good run,  although a little on the late side.  A few people have remarked on the large % of smaller fish.  The fish should be smaller though in the early days of the run.  Today’s weather was pretty nice after some initial fog and rain in the morning.  Shop will be open tomorrow (Labor Day) because I forgot to include it in our closed day list…  We’ll be here every day 10am to 6pm except Sundays and September 15th (our anniversary).  Got another call from someone who was told by a lodge that we were already closed…  Not yet.  Still have a LOT of flies to move.

50 years ago… About an Hour from Now…

Hard to believe,  but 50 years ago already,  Alaska Airlines flight 66 took off from Yakutat within about 15 minutes of when I started typing this tonight.  35 minutes later,  111 souls perished when the 727 slammed into mountainous terrain while on approach to the Juneau airport.  I was only three years old,  but I can remember the mood and feelings of the adults around me at the time.  No details of course.  But even at 3,  the event affected me.  Rather than typing up some bull from my noggin,  I’ll just post some text from a book I have on the shelf…  This event had a dramatic impact on Yakutat that lingers to this day.  May they rest in peace.