The draw: wild, native steelhead, fresh from that day’s tide, slicing up rainforest creeks where you won’t see a single other human being.
The reward: Five friends who share 30 years of history, starting 30 more, aboard a boat named The Adventurous, aimed at the mouth of yet another river, and then another.
Each morning, we launched jet boats off the aptly named mothership toward fresh drainages, every run a blank canvas slowly filled by tidelines, translucent fins, and devil’s club. Five rivers in five days, none of them predictable. We got weather. We got water. We got what Alaska gives. We got together.
Destination trips are often social menageries, strangers in small confines sharing a week of forced fishing and small talk. This trip, however, was built by and around a curated crew. While we had no idea what the landscape, rivers, conditions, or fishing would deliver, we knew exactly what the social geography would look and feel like. We also knew we were signing up for a journey with effort, failure, joy, banter, and hopefully, the occasional steelhead.
But it wasn’t just us.
Of course, they put us on fish, and we appreciated that. What humbled us, however, was less tactile. They showed us how to be out there—how to operate, how to read the water and each other, how to move through difficulty without drama. They carry knowledge rarer than conditional familiarity or technical skill.
Gabry, the boat’s chef and keeper of comfort, fueled us with food and laughter, conjuring one hot meal after another in a space barely big enough for three boots and a cutting board. What the rivers drained from us, she restored.
The Guides Who Let You Get There
Travis Peterson helms The Adventurous as captain, guide, fixer—and occasionally, subtle agent of chaos. Travis is the kind of guy who makes the hard stuff feel casual and the casual stuff unforgettable. He orchestrates trips with a quiet mischief. One day he hands you a pack. You carry it upstream for miles. Hours later, you find out it’s filled with rocks. Just because. Everyone laughs.
And then there’s Todd—stoic, experienced, unshaken by storm or silence. Todd’s presence says what he doesn’t have to: We’ve done this before. We’ll do it again. You’re going to be fine. He moves through the landscape with quiet confidence—not because nothing can go wrong, but because he knows what to do when it does.
The Rhythm of the Ridiculous
Every day, we fished hard. Sometimes we caught fish. Sometimes we didn’t. Always, we returned to The Adventurous empty but full of stories. Jet boat runs that felt like they might be our last. Laughs that knocked beers over. Flies that shouldn’t have worked, but did.
The rivers… they were endless and indifferent. We scrambled, shivered, and sweated; worked flies through likely and unlikely lies; tried not to measure success in grabs or pics. Then we’d eat something scrumptious for lunch and warm our hands in our jackets while standing close to someone to whom you feel close.
It was demanding, an effort shared, and so worthwhile.
What We Took With Us
Trips like this test your unmeasurable attributes—patience, presence, choosing to laugh instead of swear. They also reveal the people you want at your hip when the motor won’t start, the tide’s dropped out, or the fish just don’t show.
We’d all fished together before. We’d shared rivers, beers, weddings, and funerals. But something about this trip—the movement, the effort, the river-by-river rhythm—stitched our fabric tighter.
The Adventurous held it all together. She wasn’t just transportation. She was lodge, locker room, campfire, bar. She was home.
From Petersburg and back again, we carved a path across a raw coastline with people we love and guides we trust to make it possible. We caught steelhead. But more than that, we caught something you only get when the days are hard, the boat keeps moving, and the right people are on board.
Summer is coming, soon enough, but spring is quickly skipping out. Do yourself a favor and go fishing, right now. Before you know it, runoff will descend. After that, crowds will arrive. Spend August exploring the high country . The next few weeks likely offer some of the best trout fishing you’ll see all year on the major rivers.
The Gear We Relied On
To book your own crazy adventure aboard The Adventurous, reach out to our good friends over at Yellow Dog Fly Fishing Adventures. They know more about fishing this part of Alaska than anyone out there.