Looks fantastic! I have never caught a grayling, but we are going to head up North this summer, so hopefully I can find some spots.
Where did you get that beauty (without giving away your secret spot)?
I love those things, so eager to hit a bug. There are days of grayling fishing where I end up saying, "Well, maybe they
should call it catching instead of fishing."
That creek is a few miles off the Denali Highway. I'm not sure it still exists in that state. I wasn't able to get to it with my current rig on the last attempt, and in the recovery attempt that ensued before I hiked out, the folks who tried to help told me that the bend where I used to camp has been bought as a mining claim in the years since I'd been there.
Generally, in Southcentral Alaska I find grayling in more prolific numbers the closer I get to the Alaska Range (or north of it) starting in about Willow. On the other highway, north of the Matanuska Glacier the numbers get better. The Denali Highway is pretty well regarded for the number of grayling streams along it.
Then, their life cycle is such that river-run fish enter smaller creeks from lakes or glacial rivers in the spring. When they do this---here's the 'secret'---they repopulate streams hierarchically, so the larger ones range further upstream. In the fall, they drop back out into the bigger water in reverse, larger ones first. I timed it right to witness it once, late October from Windy Creek into the Susitna River, and it was mad: thousands of fish in schools sliding backwards out under the ice that was forming on the main river channel, the 12 and up fish furthest out, the 8-12s next, followed by schools of the smallest still lingering in the mouth of the clearwater trib, all perfectly arranged by size.
