An Alaskan Fishing Guides Farewell: One More Chance Before I'm Done

• Day 2: It’s Good To Be Back, but Can I Still Do This?

• Day 3: Exploring Wild Alaska by Raft and Fly Rod

• Day 4: Big Fish, Bigger Bears, and a Bruised Ego.

Day 1

Six-oh-five a.m. is way too early for catching a flight out of Charleston, SC. That means I have to be up at three-forty-five a.m. to be on time. But if I want to get to a lodge 3,800 miles away in Alaska by the end of the day, then six-oh-five it has to be. Packing till midnight didn't help the cause.

The Decision

Three summers ago, I was guiding on a remote river in Alaska's interior. It was my last trip of the season, and right then, after twenty years of guiding, I made the decision that it was to be my last guiding trip of my career.

Time To Move On

I'd been wrestling with the decision for a couple of years. I knew it was going to be sooner than later. With recently getting married, recently getting older, and recently feeling it was time for a change, that day I stepped off the river seemed as good a time as any to move on.

A Difficult Habit to Break

The problem is Alaska gets in your blood, and that's a hard thing to shake. I always tell anglers to be careful about visiting Alaska to fish; two things will happen - you will love it, and it will ruin you as an angler.

An Alaskan wild rainbow trout in the hand of an angler being released. — A BIG reason it's tough to leave Alaska. | Photo by Ken Baldwin

The High

Standing in crystal clear blue-green water and hooked to a 28" wild rainbow trout, a fish that has rocketed out of the water four times before you can get control of your fly reel, and now you are into your backing, oh yeah, there is a brown bear about thirty yards down river trying to catch salmon and paying you no-nevermind...and there is not another angler within view. It is a sweet ruining, but a ruining nonetheless.

Guide Skylar Lamont fishing with a mama brown bear and cub behind her eating salmon. — Guide Skylar Lamont sharing the river with the locals. | Photo by Ken Baldwin

A Long Walk

But it was time. I knew it, my body knew it, and I walked away.

One More Trip Up the River

That was three years ago. Today, I'm sitting in an airport at 5 a.m. because I've been given a chance to play one more time in a game that I love. I'm heading back to Alaska to guide for a week, living the life I walked away from, but one that still pulls at me.

The Ridge Lodge

Earlier this year, John and Macy Coffman, managers of The Ridge Lodge in Alaska, asked me to come up for a week to help with some extra guests they had booked. John has his hands full with guiding and managing, and he knows me from when I guided for one of their affiliate lodges.

Heck Yeah

Yes, I wanted to guide for a week. I made a quick phone call to my wife to see if we were on the same page, and then I gave John and Macy a firm commitment. I'll be there in August.

Last Minute Jitters

And now it is August, I'm sitting in terminal B at the Charleston airport, and I'm feeling a few pre-game jitters. Packing and prepping to leave brought back familiar concerns that I haven't felt since I left three years earlier. As fun as guiding is, doing it in Alaska shouldn't be taken lightly. I feel like I dodged a lot of bullets in my twenty years of guiding, and I got out of there unscathed.

Three examples of aircraft it takes to get to a lodge in the interior of Alaska's tundra. — The three types of aircraft it will take to get me to the lodge. | Photos by Ken Baldwin

The Concerns

A large Alaskan brown bear with a sockeye salmon in its mouth. — This bear fished the same stretch of river we fished. He caught his fish, we caught ours. | Photo by Ken Baldwin

Da Bears

• I will be around the Alaskan brown bear; there will be mama bears with cubs. They are cute and fun until they aren't. I've been charged twice. It shakes you up a bit, and there is no avoiding them. If you want to fish the rivers where the salmon are, then you have to fish the rivers where the bears are.

If Man Were Meant to Fly...

• Our main mode of transportation to where the wild things are is the plane—either a floatplane or one with oversized, balloon-like tundra tires. I've never been in a crash, but I have had some precarious situations that made you wish you were on the ground.

Don't Mess With Mother Nature

• Alaska will teach you how strong and temperamental nature can be. The weather will change from good to bad real quick. Add to that the average temperatures of rivers and lakes are in the 40s. Bad weather and a cold dunk in the pool can have lethal consequences.

An angler releasing a char back into the river during a rainfall. — The rain comes fast and the rivers are cold. Dress appropriately. | Photo by Ken Baldwin

Having My Doubts

These are the things I always thought about before beginning a new guiding season, and now that I have a wife to think about, I'm questioning my choice to jump back in the fire.

When In Doubt, Jump

There is nothing like denial and blind faith to help me make questionable choices. So, just like that, I kissed my wife goodbye, and now I'm headed to Alaska, more specifically to the Ridge Lodge, to experience one last time what I thought was gone in my life.

For the week that I am there, I will write a daily piece on the fishing, the bears, the plane rides, and the comedy, because there will be lots of comedy. I'll do my best to dodge the bullets, and after a week of reliving what I thought I had lost, I'll close the door again. KB

"The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent in fishing.” - Herbert Hoover