Fishing Trip to Minto Flats

2 July 2012
9:28 PM

Sunset at 12:35 AM in direction 342° North-northwest
Sunrise at 3:15 AM in direction 18° North-northeast

Civil Twilight all day

Hunting Cabin on Minto Flat (courtesy of Duck Shack Productions)

From Murphy Dome, you look North and slightly west across the Minto Flats.  My daughter and son-in-law tried to reach the flats from the back road down Murphy Dome one year.  Once they reached the end of the road, they loaded their flat-bottomed boat out onto one of the rivers draining from the lakes in the flats.  They were not able to motor far into the flats.  This year, they and my son, Lorien, took passage in a plane to a cabin near fishing spots where they will stay for two days.  The following link has more photos than what I could scroll through in under a minute, yet the combined images give a clear picture of the flats that surround Fairbanks to the south, west, and north west.

Images of Minto Flats

Everything about Alaska, once you leave the few cities, is remote and hard to reach.  The pilot has some very specific restrictions for his trip.  Among the restrictions are weight limit, no dogs, no fish in the plane on the way back (they must be packed in a specific manner for carrying in the float pontoons), no more than 5 gallons of water, and so on.  Once there, I have no clear memory of them saying how they will get out on the water in boats, but I am assuming they will find a small flat-bottomed boat, such as the one shown above near their cabin.

They are after pike.  There is no limit to the number of pike you can take in Minto Flats, but there is a weight limit to the number you can package up for the floats coming back, which is probably why the pilot laid out his weight restrictions and expectations clearly.

We are keeping Lindy Hop, Teresa and Jamie's big, big, husky because she likes coming to our house and therefore behaves herself.  Although keeping Lindy is a pleasure, perhaps we will be offered a meal of pike as our reward.  A fresh Alaskan fish dinner would be just fine with me.