Camping Trip to Tangle Lakes

My friend Lindsay invited me to go on a camping/fishing trip to Tangle Lakes with her and her family.

Where are Tangle Lakes you wonder?  Good question!  Here is a map.  (blue dot is my house, red pin is Tangle Lakes...The green area to the left of the red pin is Denali National Park...6 million acres!)

It looks a lot closer than it really is.  It's 263 miles (5 1/2 hours) each way. (Actually getting there took a lot longer due to a few extra stops along the way...)

We left late on Thursday night, so we didn't get to the Tangle Lakes campground until about 1 a.m. on Friday morning.  But the cool thing was, even though we got there in the middle of the night, we didn't need a flashlight to set up the tents.  Crazy!

Around 1:30 a.m.

Since we were traveling so late we actually got to see the sunset!  That happened around midnight.

One thing that surprised me about this trip was how warm/hot it was!  And camping in the tundra provides no shade!

Friday morning (after we woke up and ate breakfast) we went fishing. (and canoeing and fishing)

After canoeing, I went with Lindsay and her kids back to camp and we ate lunch and took naps (luckily it started to rain a little and cooled off enough to go to sleep!)

When we went back later that night, I caught a ton of fish (arctic grayling)!  I did fly fish for awhile (I caught 1 or 2).  But after I started fishing with my lucky spinner, I caught a ton of fish!  I would get them on, and then let Lindsay's kids reel them in.

The biggest one I caught...most of them were pretty little

Here are pictures of the others fishing too.

Dwayne, Aubrey, and Lindsay

Dwayne and Dallin

Stephen

Peter, Dwayne, and Aubrey, and another guy...

We kept 2 fish to eat that night.  I showed Dallin how to gut a fish.

The next day I did more fly fishing.  I'm not very good, but I figured the best way to get better is to practice!  And there were a ton of fly fishers up there.  (The Alaska Fly Fishers club goes to Tangle Lakes every year around the summer solstice to fish...in fact that's the reason they even went--Dwayne, Peter, and Stephen are all A.F.F. members.)

There was one guy up there fishing that helped me out a ton.  His name was John.  He moved to Alaska from Montana.  He gave me some flies to try, and he even rigged my line with a dry fly and a wet fly.  It was really cool!  While he was working on my line he let me fish with his pole and I caught about 5 fish in such a short time.

We needed to leave around noon, and I caught my last fish at 11:58 a.m.

Overall I lost count of all the fish I caught on the trip.  All I know is that it was a lot of fun!

On the way home I got to see the T.A.P.S. (trans-Alaska pipeline system)!  I texted Luke and told him I saw it and he said about 20% of the oil in the pipe comes from where he works at GC2 on the North Slope.

Also on the way home we stopped to try some Copper River Red Salmon fishing in the Klutina River.  But one look at that water and I decided there is no way!  There were whole trees going down the river!  The water looked very scary.  Peter and Dwayne fished, and the rest of us drove home in my car.  But before we left we did watch some people cleaning and filleting their fish....while the seagulls hovered...