Fishing Tex Smith Lake Near Glenallen, Alaska

Here we are in Glenallen, Alaska -- so near to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and yet so far because we can't get into it except by bush plane.  What are we to do?

Yesterday, we found a few hikes in the area.  Today we decided to do some trout fishing.  We had hoped to book a guide for a float salmon fishing trip down the Gulkana River, but, alas, all the local guides were booked.  We waited to long to decide to book a trip.

So we were on our own.  With the scent of fish in our noses, we decided to see where we could fish for trout on nearby lakes.  A great deal of research (plus a well-placed question to our campground hosts) pointed us to Tex Smith Lake, some 22 miles west of Glenallen, where we are camped.

While we weren't very worried about grizzly bears as we prepared to go fishing, there is no telling.  We had seen this lovely fellow on the Tok Cutoff as we drove down to Glenallen from Tok, Alaska, the other day:

Glenallen is a bigger community than we expected.  We actually have great cell and internet service, as Kathy demonstrates with this photo of the cell tower next to our campground:

Our campground, as with everything in Glenallen, is nestled in among the black spruce, perched atop the permafrost in the early morning sunlight:

So our destination is also in the spruce forest, under the shadow of the Wrangell and St. Elias Mountains to the east.  We headed west on the Glenn Highway for about 22 miles to find our fishing spot:

Here it was -- Tex Smith Lake:

The Alaska Department of Fish & Game reports that Tex Smith Lake is routinely stocked with rainbow trout -- most recently in May 2019 -- just about a month ago.  Historically, it had been stocked with grayling and salmon, but that was many years ago.  Local fishermen report that, while the local rivers (the Gulkana, the Stikine, the Klultina, the Copper and others) are still full of salmon during the run, which is happening now, much of the Kenai Peninsula and rivers in other parts of Alaska have been fished out, and even several years of restricting fishermen to catch-and-release have not sufficied to bring the salmon back.  Unfortunately, we need a guide on the local rivers, which are not for the faint of heart.  So we elected to do some lake fishing for rainbow trout, which are liberally stocked in selected lakes throughout Alaska.

We picked Tex Smith Lake because our campground host reported that it is the favorite of local who want to actually catch rainbow trout.  We thought, "That's our style!" and did our research.  It's a small lake, but it has a pretty setting, of which we got a glimpse as we left the kayaks at the bottom of the informal boat ramp:

Today was a warm, sunny day, and the lake presented us with its prettiest face:

Below, Kathy finished her final preparations for launching into the lake to hunt the wild fishies:

The far bank is posted as private property, and we saw private development on one end of the lake.  So this is not exactly Alaska wilderness, but, nevertheless, the fishing is supposed to be good:

We had been on the water a half hour or so, when the local bald eagle circled in to keep an eye on us, hoping that we would catch her next meal for her.  Alas, she was to be disappointed, because we fully intended to protect our catch (if any) from her laser dive:

After 2.5 hours of nothing -- experimenting with lots of different flies, wet and dry -- seeing some rises but not being sure what the trout were rising for, Kathy snagged her first trout, a 14 inch beauty, along the shoreline.  No sooner did she bring it to net, then David also caught a 14-incher, just a smidge shorter than Kathy's.  By this time it was 1:00 pm, and we were hungry for lunch.  We paddled back to the boat ramp, ate our sandwiches, and cleaned our two trout.  Finished with those items, we packed up and headed back to Glenallen and our campground.  As we headed east on the Glenn Highway, we were treated to a dramatic view of the Wrangell-St. Elias:

By 3:00 pm, we were home and had finished preparing our fish for dinner.  Alas, a crockpot was already bubbling for tonight, so our fish will wait to be cooked for dinner tomorrow night.  But they look fat and tasty, so we await them with eager tastebuds:

Stay hungry, my friends!