More Fishing, More Hiking, No Fish
It was a much nicer morning today and Denali was visible again. Considering that only 30% of the people visiting the Denali area actually see the mountain due to the clouds that often surround it, we are very lucky. We have been able to see it from our campsite three out of four days.
After breakfast Ellen and Sally decided to hike the Curry Ridge Trail again, hoping to get better mountain views and more birds. Harry and I decided to go fishing.
While Ellen, Sally and Nina went up the hill, we went down to the highway. A couple of miles back north on the road is Troublesome Creek, a nice clear flowing stream that crosses under the highway and flows into the Chulitna River. The Lower Troublesome Creek parking area/campground is right next to the highway and the creek and that is where we went.
As a campground, it leaves a bit to be desired...it is actually a parking lot with spaces labeled "campsites" with picnic tables and fire pits behind them. There were a few people actually camping there when we arrived.
We parked at the end near the bridge Out came my Tenkara rod and Harry's fly rod and we walked down to the creek. It was quite shallow so I crossed over the bridge to a deeper pool on the other side and Harry walked up the creek under the bridge. Neither of us had any luck and after about 20 minutes headed back to his van.
We knew that there was a trail that led down to the river along the creek and started walking over to the signboard in the camping area to see where it began. Harry noticed that there were a pair of truck campers with fishing poles and stopped to talk about fishing.
They said that they had been up the creek yesterday and caught trout in pool not far up the creek on the other side of the highway. When harry told them he'd walked up that way they asked if he could still see the bridge. When he replied that he could they told him that he hadn't gone far enough.
The way to go was to follow the path alongside the stream around the corner and there was an obvious pool with trout in it...you just had to bushwhack a bit through the Alders and don't forget to make noise as there are bears.
So off we went. It really was a narrow path through the bush, but we saw no bears. The path petered out at a little stream coming into the creek and there was a deep spot there and recent boot prints along the shore. We gave it a try, but still no fish. Not being equipped to bushwhack further, we folded up our rods and admitted defeat...no fish for dinner tonight.
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