Nuyakuk River

The Nuyakuk is a short, powerful lake-fed river in the Wood-Tikchik country of Bristol Bay — it drains Tikchik Lake, drops over the famous Nuyakuk Falls, and runs down to join the Nushagak. Like the rest of the great Bristol Bay rainbow rivers it's flyout water: no road, reached by float plane and lodge, fished out of Royal Coachman on the river and Tikchik Narrows between the lakes. The gauge near the Tikchik outlet reads a lake-buffered flow, which means it's best used as a trend and blow-out signal rather than a precise target — the lakes upstream smooth out the rain, so the river rarely spikes the way a freestone does.

The fishing is the classic Bristol Bay progression: trophy rainbow trout that eat sockeye smolt and leeches early in the summer, take a skated mouse through the pocket water below the falls, and key on beads and flesh once the sockeye spawn from midsummer into fall. Grayling and Dolly Varden fill in around the rainbows, and the falls itself concentrates fish and forces a mandatory portage on any float. The lodge water below the falls is the heart of it — clear, strong pocket water holding very large rainbows. As with the whole region, the read is run timing more than flow: the trout fishing tracks the sockeye, and September is the peak. Check the ADF&G Bristol Bay counts to know where the run is before a trip.