On the Alagnak, the first good push of chums occurs in early July, when the fish leave Bristol Bay by the thousands on a flood tide so large that it reverses the lower 15 miles of river. The chums mill about on the high slack tide, but quickly get their bearings when the falling tide returns current and character to the river.

The chums proceed upriver, some following the channels between sandbars, others rafting up for hours on flats with decidedly soft currents. They frequently tail and porpoise in the shallows, their large black-edged dorsal fins cutting the surface. When they jump during their swim upriver, they twist over and come down on their sides, a behavior so diagnostic that anglers can spot them from a block away.

In Alaska's waters, the salmon take flies fashioned in almost any manner, as long as the color is cerise or hot pink. I've caught chums on flies of other colors and styles, including the black Marabou Muddlers I used on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, but nothing approaches cerise in overall effectiveness when chums are fresh from the ocean. My favorite pattern, a speed tie, begins with a bunch of pearl Flashabou tied in halfway up the hook. I then wind cerise marabou nearly to the eye, and sometimes face the tie with a turn of purple marabou.

Chums don't usually take a fly when they are pushing hard upriver. At such times, they keep their bearings by sticking close to the shore. They frequently mix with sockeye in a streaming, head-to-tail migration, stopping at the entrances to side channels and sloughs to "slough-up." It's there that they again aggressively take flies. Rarely do they occupy the backwater sloughs--the frog water--that silver salmon occupy later in the summer, and pike live in year-round.

I've caught chums in Washington while fly fishing Puget Sound beaches for sea-run cutthroat and Chinook salmon. Though I found them in salt water still some distance from their spawning rivers, the fish were already staging sexually. The males displayed a dramatic calico barring on their flanks and had kyped jaws, and they fought long and hard in deep water. I didn't see a chum salmon really jump until I took them as a high-seas ocean fish off British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands.

My first Alagnak chum was a revelation. The 12-pound buck chased after the swinging fly, turned perfectly on the take to place the fly in the corner of its jaw, and jumped to eye level before burning off the flat. The fly line and 150 feet of backing was off the reel in one straightaway run. A shorter second run followed. Before the fish turned and raced back upriver, I madly reeled to gain a tight line, but the chum was gone again, running so hard that a rooster tail of spray blew off the fish.

When I was finally able to palm hard on the reel, the fish jumped three more times. With most salmon the fight would have been nearly over, but with half the fly line on the reel, ten more minutes passed before I could tail the chum, a "chromer" with transparent fins, a blue-green back, silver sides, and a white belly. A dozen sea lice had gone along for the ride. Seconds after I removed the barbless hook, the fish dashed away.