ANGLERS WIFF ON 3-SPECIES SLAM.

Byline: Bennett J. Mintz Special to the Daily News

Red Devil, Alaska, wasn't always dotted with abandoned trucks and wrecked boats.

It was once the home to one of the world's largest mercury mines. Men pulled countless tons of the cinnabar from the earth. But the need for mercury in explosives diminished by the 1970s and both the mine and the town went bust.

Today, Red Devil is a study in obscurity with a population of 35. More or less. If not for the fishing, it would probably be less.

The nearby Holitna River, the primary tributary of the mammoth Kuskokwim River, some 200 desolate miles northwest of Anchorage, is a fly caster's paradise. Our goal was to catch a trio of Alaskan sport fish - king (chinook) salmon, Northern pike and the elusive sheefish, or inconnu.

We came armed with stout rods, floating and sinking fly lines and enough patterns to start a good-sized tackle store. We were ready; the fish were not.

Unseasonably warm weather and low water from a three-year drought precluded the salmon from finning upstream and ended our dreams of the three-specie grand slam. The sheefish proved as elusive as its reputation.

Studio City's Mel Leven was the only fly-angler in our party to nail a sheefish. These fish rolled and teased but just wouldn't grab a fly.

``If we only had some cold, wet, windy sheefish weather,'' wailed the guides. Instead, we were blessed with temperatures in the mid-80s.

If it weren't for Esox lucius, it would have been a dreadful week. With those Northern pike so prolific, it ranked a remarkable angling excursion.

Pike are generally fished with bait-casting or spinning lures the size of a shoe. Fishermen toss plugs near shore, then crank furiously to tease the bruisers into hitting.

The long, sleek predatory fish - densely distributed throughout the Land of the Midnight Sun - often inhabits sloughs and backwaters. In the Holitna, however, they lurk in thick vegetation, waiting to pounce on a wayward young salmon, lemming, mouse, baby duck or robin, leech, smaller pike or just about anything else that lives, breathes and moves. They are, in a word, great, big eating machines. We would soon take advantage of their perpetual hunger.

Instead of the traditional casting plugs, most of us chose mouselike popper flies the size of a thumb and a variety of other flashy patterns that looked like nothing in particular. Deer-hair mouse patterns imitated the voles and lemmings so prevalent in the Alaska bush country. Black leeches and dark Dalhlberg divers were cast, and so were Abel anchovies and various minnow imitations. They all worked.

During six days of pike fishing, we each caught and released nearly 300 fish, or about 50 a day, measuring to 48 inches and weighing more than 30 pounds.

The largest fell to a red-and-white spoon cast on a spinning rod. The spin fishers loaded medium-weight reels with 20-pound line.

Alaska northern pike don't bite. They engulf. It was a joy to watch a pike trail a gurgling topwater lure for 15 feet and then intercept it.

We mostly fished from skiffs and river-runner boats with 6- to 8-weight fly rods. The guides would find a likely holding area and we'd slide into position - 40 feet from the bank right off a weed bed. Pike country.

It seldom took long to hook up after a fly was cast. A popper would glug, glug, glug as it pushed water out of its path on the retrieve and then erupt in a splash of teeth and gill rakers flaring like a bad monster movie.

At first, big pike shake their heads in total disbelief that someone would interrupt their day. But then they come to the realization that things are amiss and they quickly head for the main current. After a few more tugs, they'd go belly-up and the fight was finished.

The end comes fast, but there are few thrills that compare to the initial, frenetic thrashing of a Northern pike on a fly outfit in an Alaskan outpost most tourists from the Lower 48 never cast eyes upon.

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Photo

Photo: (color) Gary Edwards hold a 15-pound Northern pike he caught in Red Devil, Alaska.

Bennett J. Mintz / Special to the Daily News