Fishing - Alaskan style

John Warburton-Lee: Journalist, photographer and extensive travel writer for the world's leading travel publications.

Fishing has been part of the Alaskan way of life since the first humans made their way across the Bering land bridge 15,000 years ago. Alaska's native people harvest fish using techniques handed down through the generations. I have driven out onto the frozen surface of Kotzebue Sound on a snowmobile in the dead of winter and watched Inupiaq Eskimos removing frozen she-fish from nets they had set below the ice. In south-east Alaska I have seen Tlingit Indians dip-netting - literally standing in the water scooping out fish with a long-handled net similar to the net you might use to get leaves out of a swimming pool. And on the mighty Yukon River, I have watched subsistence fishermen set fish-wheels, huge wooden structures resembling windmills, driven by the current, that catch salmon by the hundreds.

Sport fishermen are spoilt for choice. With a state license you can drop your line in any of the thousands of lakes and rivers throughout the vast Alaskan wilderness. To access the best salmon fishing and experience the true splendour of the Alaskan wilderness nothing can beat a fly-out lodge or tented fishing camp. Professional guides use a combination of floatplanes and jetboats to access the best fishing grounds.

After a couple of days, getting in a plane to go fishing feels as normal as getting in your car to go to the supermarket at home. A short flit in a de Havilland Beaver and you are spirited to piscatorial heaven, dry-fly fishing for grayling on deserted tundra lakes, nymphing for rainbow trout that will run you all over enchanting Alaskan streams, or casting across one of the myriad braided rivers for whichever species of salmon are running at the time. Keep an eye out for bears - they have been known to gallop into the water and grab the fish off an unsuspecting fisherman's line.

Wildlife abounds. Moose and caribou roam the tundra and you may be lucky and see a beaver swimming near its dam. Bald eagles perch in the spruce trees whilst ptarmigan scuttle about in the low scrub. Depending on time of year, the tundra can be ablaze with wild flowers or a garden of tasty berries - low-bush cranberries, blueberries, cloudberries, even salmonberries. If the fishing is slow, you can always take a little time out to picnic beside a glacier or hike up a mountain.

And to the fisherman, his reward. From Anchorage's fine-dining restaurants to a barbecue by the riverbank, no Alaskan meal would be complete without a salmon bake. Wilderness fishing doesn't get better.

John Warburton-Lee