Return to Anvik River
Friendships and fishing congregate at Alaska's most remote lodge
By Andrew Tarica
When I first picked up a fly rod, way back in the late ‘80s, I experienced zero luck at catching fish. In fact, my record was so bad that during a fishing trip near Anvik, Alaska, one of my buddies dubbed me “The Fishing Jinx.”
It stuck for a long time.
I thought about that nickname recently as I embarked on a return trip to the Anvik River Lodge, for the first time in over 25 years. As the twin-engine turboprop glided over the raw Alaskan wilderness, I recalled fishing these serpentine, pike-laden rivers with Jens Laipenieks back in 1997.
Jens and I met soon after college. At the time, I was eager to learn more about fly-fishing, but I still hadn’t caught a fish yet. We’re talking a few years!
A Colorado native, deeply passionate about fishing, Jens took me under his tutelage like Yoda to Luke. Before I could touch a river, he made me read The River Why, the quintessential novel about the Zen of fly-fishing by David James Duncan. Then he taught me how to tie knots, the fundamentals of a proper cast, and preached about his philosophy that “in order to catch a fish, you must be the fly.”
Once I was deemed worthy, he let me tag along on trips with his fishing buddies, to wonderous places in the Pacific Northwest such as the Hoh, Skagit, Kalama, Sol Duc, and Stillaguamish rivers.
Jens was by my side – his float tube next to mine – when I finally landed my first fish on a fly, in a backcountry lake near the town of Republic, Washington. All day long, I felt tiny nibbles at the end of my line, but never enough to set the hook. I started to panic and complain.
“Andrew. Calm down,” Jens said. “It’s one of the cardinal rules of fly-fishing. You need be chill.” He was right, of course. Once relaxed, the moment arrived – it was a rainbow trout just 2 inches long. “It still counts,” Jens said. With his blessing, I proudly stuck the fly on my cap, memorializing the moment for years to come.
A few seasons later, Jens and I traveled to Anvik, where I covered a story for a Seattle-based inflight travel magazine. It was there, on the river and in the shadow of the Nulato Hills, that I celebrated my 30th birthday. Cheryl Hickson, co-owner of the lodge, surprised me with a party in the Alaskan bush, complete with homemade chocolate cake, Middle Eastern music, and her belly dancing and fire breathing with swords.
“It’s something I picked up performing in the circus as a kid,” said Cheryl, a native of Wenatchee, Washington. We have been friends ever since, and it’s been fun keeping up with her family from afar.
“Afar” is the perfect definition for the Anvik River Lodge. Located 450 miles west of Anchorage, and then another 70 miles upriver, the lodge is perhaps the most remote in all of Alaska. The Hicksons, who have owned the place since 1996, estimated that in that time only a thousand people have visited. I love places like that – they’re unique in today’s overpackaged travel market.
Looking back on those days, my first Anvik trip felt like a different life entirely. I am still a bachelor today, but a lot has changed since then. I’ve become a proud uncle to two nieces and three nephews. I’ve moved from Seattle to New York City and back to Seattle again. I’ve spent more than a decade working in an office in the Empire State Building. I’ve lost my mom to cancer.
I had hoped Jens could join me on this return trip to the lodge, as I had become more in tune with his philosophy of “being the fly,” but he was grieving from a death in the family. “It pains me not to go with you,” said Jens, who moved to Alaska in the early ‘90s to be closer to its mighty rivers, but now wasn’t the right time. Thankfully, I knew just the person to call to fill his spot on the boat.
Worth Coleman and I have been close friends since our freshman year in college, which was nearly 40 years ago. If Jens was my fishing mentor, then Worth earned the distinction of introducing me to fly-fishing and taking me on my maiden voyage. An avid outdoorsman, Worth has been a fun, adventurous role model ever since we first met -- if he thought fly-fishing was cool, then so did I.
It was the fall of 1989 when we road-tripped from Boulder to Buena Vista to fish the Arkansas River in Colorado. A lefty caster, Worth hopped onto a VW-sized rock at the river’s edge and coolly dropped his fly into the churning whitewater abyss. After a few minutes, he turned to me and offered a caveat.
“To tell you the truth,” he admitted, “I never really catch a fish.” This was a news flash to me. I always thought – mistakenly – that fishing meant catching fish. The Collegiate Peaks rose before us, pink in the setting sun. Looking down the valley to the south, we saw countless ranges, shimmering from 100 miles away.
“The real reason I fish,” Worth said, “is to be in places like this. It’s just nice to get out there.”
That mantra has stuck with me across the decades. As Jens likes to say, fishing is all about the adventure, and the journey is more important than the destination. But seriously, it is nice to catch fish, too. Strangely enough, over the years, my jinx started to wear off.
Since my first trip to Anvik, I have traveled all over the world, my fly rod by my side. I’ve caught golden dorado in the jungles of Bolivia; bonefish galore on the flats of Mexico and Belize; an Atlantic salmon with sea salt on its back in Newfoundland, Canada; and a toothy, trophy tigerfish on the Ruhudji River in Tanzania. What’s the fish I’m most proud of? It would probably be a native steelhead, caught and released on the Hoh River, Washington, during the pandemic year of 2020. This was truly a fish of 10,000 casts.
Jens recently paid me the ultimate compliment, “Your fishing has come a long way.”
I had arrived.
At the same time, I didn’t feel the need to catch fish like I did years ago. Thanks to my friends, I discovered there were other benefits to fishing. The joy of camping on the banks of Alaska’s Talachulitna River with Jens and crew. Or spotting a bear, or a wolf, or even a hippo if you’re casting in Africa. As much as I still love fishing, I am equally happy just taking photographs of my companions and letting them catch all the fish.
“If you want to see the fish I caught, you have to be on my boat,” said Worth, whose authenticity is something I’ve always admired. Indeed, he is the last person you’ll ever see posting a fish pic on social media. He simply gets “out there” just to get out there.
In the days leading up to our Anvik trip, Worth and I exchanged countless emails and phone calls, as we continued the time-honored ritual related to any fishing trip with friends – gearing up with assorted flies, rods, and, in my case, books and maps.
After landing on the dirt runway at Anvik (population 60), we piled onto a power boat and rode upstream for another two hours, past the confluence of the Yukon River, and vast stretches of black spruce muskeg and wet meadows. The air was cool, the sky damp with rain, and thousands of mosquitos joined us on our journey. Still, I was excited to show Worth this place that had left an indelible mark on my memory, at the edge of the American frontier.
The Hicksons, along with their team of badass guides, were waiting when our boat pulled up to the dock by the lodge. It had been a quarter of a century, but Cheryl greeted me with a warm smile and bear hug. Between her, Jens and Worth, there was nearly 100 years of collective friendship.
“You haven’t changed at all,” she said. Was she right? I am, after all, the same person, albeit a bit greyer around the temples. I am still using the same trusty Sage rod as the last time I visited Anvik. I love joking with the guides that my fishing rod is older than them. Perhaps the main difference, I am no longer known as The Fishing Jinx.
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