Nature Pictures from Trout Streams, Page 78

A whitetail deer takes a cool drink on a hot August afternoon.

An anonymous dipnetter works the bank near the access point at O'Brien Creek.

Two garter snakes rest on the warm rocks alongside a path through a trout stream gorge.

Home sweet home... the back of the car is half sleeping bag, half salmon on ice.

Here's another beautiful trout, a 17.5 inch stream resident rainbow. He took a grouse & brown soft hackle during a Hendrickson spinner fall over a riffle--probably as a drowned spinner, but maybe as one of the caddis pupae that I suspect were hatching earlier in the day. This fish was in amazing condition, and it leapt clear of the water at least three times.

This is the home base for the Chitina dipnetting fishery that supplies thousands of Alaskans with much (if not most) of their annual protein. Many people pay a jetboat charter to ferry them down to prime spots in the canyon, and ferry their hundreds of pounds of fish back up. Others follow the trail to which this bridge leads and negotiate the steep canyon wall themselves, with their fish, and haul them back with the help of an ATV.

This is the delta where O'Brien Creek flows out into the Copper River's channel. It may be one of the most intense graveyards for filleted salmon in the world.