Read the beginning of "One Last Cast" from The Hard Way Home: Alaska Stories of Adventure, Friendship, and the Hunt by Steve Kahn:

"I remember gazing into a mountain stream near Turnagain Pass. Minute air bubbles formed along the backs of polished granite boulders hunched at the bottom, then rose in a swirl of motion to the surface. My little hands held tight their first fishing pole: a willow branch rigged with a piece of string from the glove box, a safety pin, and a half-ripe cranberry. I was four years old, maybe five. My folks tell me I was more interested in fishing than a potty stop.

Alaska proved to be paradise for a boy who loved to fish. My memories of our frequent family road trips along the Alcan Highway are fixed with two passions: counting animals and spotting places to fish. Of course, this meant a request from me to stop at every lake, creek, culvert, or bridge we passed. “Soon, Stevie,” my Dad would say, as the dust billowed behind our Rambler to settle on the quickly passing water that held, I imagined, swarms of ravenous grayling and trout. When I did fish (and it seemed like once out of every hundred opportunities), I got more bites from gnats and mosquitoes than from anything with gills and a dorsal fin.

When, in 1956, my folks purchased a homesite in the hills above Anchorage, with a creek running through the property, those ninety-nine untapped possibilities flowed through my dreams, twisted, cut, sparkled, and finally coalesced into one stream: the south fork of Little Campbell Creek. Except during the spring when the creek would darken and swell, its waters were bubbly and sweet, and seldom deeper than my knees. The creek cut a silvery slice through birch and white spruce. I could step over it in a few spots, jump across it in many places, and wade from bank to bank with impunity.

Little Campbell Creek held small miracles in its folds. Not just fish, these were sleek goldenfin Dolly Varden sporting a splash of amber along their small-scaled sides. They found many places to hide. Sometimes, especially on warm afternoons, they rested under a spruce log bridge where two almost imperceptible channels lay. Or they found shelter under cut banks, an aqueous world of roots and shadows, which I glimpsed from downstream on the opposite side, or by leaning oh-so-slowly over a mossy overhang to peer below.

I baited my single hook with a salmon egg. I learned not to let the point of the hook pierce all the way through the orange-red rubbery globe. There was little need to cast. The line was more an extension of the arm, a gentle swing to will the bait to a spot just beyond reach."