Fishing 101

By DAN JOLING

updated 8:48 p.m. ET Aug. 15, 2005

COOPER LANDING, Alaska - Curt Muse stood on the cobbled shore of Quartz Creek, casting a 3-weight fly rod upstream as a dozen middle-age-or-beyond students watched.

The longtime guide spotted a sockeye salmon, red as a fire hydrant, but easy to miss swimming above colored rocks and below a surface rippled like glass on a shower stall.

"You can barely see that fish and he's red," Muse said. "There could be trout nearby him."

He counseled students to cast first in shallow water rather than splashing to midstream. His made his point the fifth time his nymph drifted down by hooking an 8-inch Dolly Varden, a char found in the same cold streams as trout.

Muse was the day's guest lecturer for the Kenai Fishing Academy, a weeklong class offered four times per summer by Kenai Peninsula College, a branch of the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Now in its third year, the school is aimed at fishing novices or anglers new to Alaska who want to avoid learning the traditional way - reading how-to books, trolling for tips from salesmen at sporting goods stores, pestering friends to accompany them on outings.

Fishing school was the brainchild of Gary Turner, director of the college and an avid fishermen who helps teach classes. Too many people told him, "I've been up here X number of years and I've never caught a king salmon," Turner said.

"I thought, we need to educate people and teach them how to fish," Turner said. "It just seemed natural."

The college in Kenai, a town of nearly 7,000 about 155 road miles southwest of Anchorage, takes up 900 feet of riverbank on the Kenai River and its world-class rainbow trout and king, sockeye and silver salmon.

The class is noncredit and fees pay its costs.

"We're trying to push our education mission to meet the avocations of people, or their external interests," Turner said.

Turner turned the idea over to Dave Atcheson, the college's night class coordinator. He is the author of a book on Kenai Peninsula fishing and a former Department of Fish and Game technician who had walked the watershed tagging fish. Atcheson assembled friends, guides and local experts to put on a week's worth of classes and outings.

For about $1,100 - $300 more with food and housing - the college offers 20 hours of classroom time with field trips that include flying to a remote lake, an excursion to the ocean or a float trip down the Kenai River. The tuition is in the price range of what booking individual day trips would cost, Atcheson said.

"I think for what they get, it's quite a lot," Atcheson said.

Some students sign up to fill their coolers with fish but the class is more about learning than catching, he said.

"The idea is to teach people how to fish, but also to teach them all that goes along with being a good steward of the land and resource," Atcheson said.

In the general fishing class, students backtroll for king salmon, bounce herring off the ocean floor for halibut and fling spinners for trout.

In the fly fishing class, students learn the basics of casting and fly selection, then try to catch sockeye salmon, rainbow trout or Dolly Varden in streams, rivers and lakes.

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