Minto Flats

About 35 miles west of Fairbanks lies a half million or so acres of lakes, plains, marshes, and sloughs known as Minto Flats.
It can be tough place to get to. By road, the least circuitous route will run you about 2 hours. By boat, you've gotta run down the swollen Tanana River before navigating a maze of back channels that could lead everywhere or nowhere.
Last week a buddy and I took the easy way out - we hopped a float plane with Fairbanks legend Rick Gold. Joining us on this little puddle jumper were an old and quite fat local man along with his clearly inexpensive mail order bride. The five of us enjoyed a smooth landing just downstream of camp about a half hour after our departure from Chena Marina. Old guy and generically foreign companion immediately stumbled off to their cabin soon afterwards to consumate their lenghty illegal sex trafficking. Jordan and I, meanwhile, threw up in our mouths a little bit, then rigged up for the monster pike that lurk throughout Minto's narrow channels and ubiquitous weeds.
One broken $775 fly rod later, we had our first encounter. Jordan's fishing techniques, which were the antithesis of delicate and rivaled only dynamite and Clorox-dumping in sportsmanship, elicited a break in a prolonged silence in the form of a large eruption at the side of the boat. A monster pike had followed Jordan's spoon (I use that term loosely, as his lure more closely resembled a large metallic soup ladle) within plain sight of us only to leap clear out of the water alongside our johnboat. This toothy beast missed the treble hooks but produced no small of poop in our novice pants and generally set the tone for the day.
It's difficult but rather fun to describe how these pike strike one's lure or fly. Case study: As darkness settled we decided to head back to our own cabin to finish off the 5 pounds or so of pike meat (from a 34.5 incher Jordan land earlier in the day) we had leftover at our own cabin. I asked to stop at a little piece of slack water from which I had earlier solicited a strike on a mouse pattern. I heaved out a 30 foot cast which carried the same pattern to far bank and waited for the ripples to dissipate. A small strip produced a tiny gurgle and I paused expectantly. Another strip and WHOOOSH a medium sized pike lept from it ambush point, taking my fly on the way up before propelling itself parallel to the glassy water's surface. My slack fly line reproduced the fish's leap, jumping from the aluminum floor of the boat, through my 7 weight's guides and towards the streaking fish. Pike give up the fight rather easily; once hooked and briefly played, they accept their fate stoically. The sport is in the initial take; in this instance, my leisurely-gurgling mouse fly most closely resembled, carnage-wise, a baby stroller getting side-swiped by a city bus.
After a long day of beers and pike, Jordan and I stoked the wood stove and settled in to our stream-side cabin. This will be an annual trip.