Date Added: Tuesday 07 June, 2016
by Staff
£52.99
Reviewed by Rick Pastor
Partagas Lusitania Becomes Alaskan Ash.....
The real danger in exposing yourself to the pleasures of smoking fine cigars is the potential for disappointment. Let me explain:
Cigars are like wine and other organic products made by hand. When they are wonderful, the memory sticks. But there are occasions when they disappoint. Several times over the years I've saved a special cigar for just the right occasion, only to fire it up and find it plugged or bitter. I imagine wine connoisseurs endure the same risks in order to find their perfect pleasure.
These were the thoughts going through my mind as I was packing my travel humidor for my upcoming trip to Alaska. I was looking at the Partagas Lustitania that had been sitting there waiting for its perfect time. It was a gift from my good friend, Bob, who got it in London from Smokeymo—I had given Bob my best information on where to find cigars on his trip, and he was quite pleased with what he found there. I decided to bring the Lucy along just in case I had something worth celebrating. And since I was going with Bob, we could discuss the finer points of the leaf when the time came.
"That's the Volkswagen hole over there," our guide, Jerry waved his left hand as we hustled up the river, his Custom Weld jet boat fully up "on step" dodging submerged rocks and zigzagging along the skinny water. The level was dropping and the channel was just about gone. "It's called the Volkswagen hole because there's a rock in there as big as a Volkswagen. It's plated with aluminum, so many boats have hit it."
We're on the Deshka river, a freshwater stream that feeds into the Susitna River about 90 miles northwest of Anchorage. It's early June and the king salmon run is off to a slow start but it's supposed to be picking up. All along the way we're seeing swirls which means the fish are in the river and heading upstream. "Love to see those fish rolling," Jerry tells us, "it means they're finally here. We should do well."
It seems that all of southeast Alaska has been looking forward to the first big salmon run of the year. When we left the boat landing at 4:30 in the morning it looked like a fishing tournament was kicking off. About every kind of boat you could imagine was in the water—inflatables, john boats, standard aluminum fishing boats, and bigger boats with enclosed cabins. The one thing they had in common was the jet power—outboards and inboards with jet drives. Maybe one or two boats had a prop drive. There were a few airboats, too—mostly flat-bottomed craft with a Chevy 350 driving an airplane propeller; some with an enclosed cabin, some without. The only thing missing was anything made of fiberglass.
The Susitna is a large glacial runoff river with white, chalky concrete-mix water courtesy of the ground-up rocks the ice had been working on for the last couple of eons. The salmon come up from the ocean and find their way up to the freshwater streams that feed into the Susitna, sometimes resting at the transition point to flush their gills out and get ready for the final upstream spawning run. That explained why the mouth of the Deshka looked like a marina—boat upon boat upon boat—maybe fifty, maybe a hundred of them, all anchored in neat lines to the point you could practically walk from shore to shore.
"Can you imagine how many nice fish are going to be lost in those anchor ropes?" Jerry just shook his head. They were going to catch fish all right, but what a mess. I was considering the idea that here we were in Alaska to get away from it all in the wilderness, and this is the last thing I expected to see.
We were passing a bunch of spots Jerry knew to be productive, but most of them had campers and boats already there. It wasn't even 5:00 in the morning, but spots were being claimed. It was all local terminology loosely attached to places along the river. There was the Passin' Hole, the Twilight Hole, the Glory Hole, the Volkswagen Hole. We found a spot at the Walkin' Hole, got the boat secured, and cracked the Thermos open and poured some coffee. The river opens for fishing at 6:00 and closes at 11:00 at night, so we had a good hour to kill.
"The reason all these people are here," Jerry explained, "is this is the first time ever that the state of Alaska announced in advance that you could use eggs for bait. Normally, they won't let you use eggs until they get a good idea of how the run is going, and they make the announcement on the fly, so people don't get to plan on it. We had such a good run last year that they announced well ahead of time that you could use eggs starting on Saturday. That's brought everybody and his brother out here."
After having beaten the water to death the day before with a tackle box full of artificials and not catching anything, my fishing buddy Bob and I were ready for a little help. It's tough to travel 3,000 miles on a "trip of a lifetime" and spend the first day skunked. But it happened, and we were about to switch over to salmon eggs, and it was a whole new day.
The rules were pretty straight forward: You could take one king salmon a day. Once you had your keeper fish, you couldn't fish any more for kings. Any fish 20" or under was a jack and you could take all of those you wanted. You could catch and release as long as you wanted as long as you didn't take a fish out of the water, and you didn't hurt a fish. If the fish bleeds, which is a real risk when you're fishing with eggs because they could swallow the hook, then it's your fish. As nonresidents, Bob and I had paid $30 for a 7-day fishing license and another $30 for a 7-day king salmon stamp. We were seriously hoping that we didn't catch a 21" fish that bled at 6:05 AM.
Coming up on 6:00 and the temperature was struggling to get to the mid fifties. We put on hip boots and rigged up the rods. We were using medium weight spinning rods rigged with 20 lb. mono tied to a snap swivel. An 8" snelled hook with a loop knot went on the snap along with a 1/16 oz bell sinker. Jerry had tied the snell so that you could push the line back through the eye of the hook to form a loop, and once you hooked the spawn, you simply pulled the loop over and snugged it down.
"Cast upstream, keep your rod tip high and feel the weight bouncing along the rocks. Keep the bait on the bottom as you swing the rod downstream. If you feel the hit, then set the hook hard." Jerry gave the final instructions and we headed up and downstream of the anchored boat.
There wasn't much to it. As directed, we cast upstream, and holding the rod tip at about 11:00 you could feel the weight as it bounced through the swift current over the rocky bottom. One pass, then another. And another. A good fifteen minutes passed. Jerry confessed later that it was the longest fifteen minutes he'd ever spent, after all the egg hype and the dismal day before. It ended with a splash in the middle of the river, and Bob's rod bent back in a U-shape under the weight of a charging king. There was no horsing this fish. Reel down, lift up. He made a little progress, but as the fish came closer to the shallows, it turned and ran back down the river. All Bob could do was listen to the drag and hang on to the rod. Ten minutes and about four strong runs later, Jerry had the twenty pounder in the net. Bob shook his right arm and grinned.
"Nice fish." Hooked neatly in the upper lip, Jerry twisted the hook loose and lowered the net. A brief pause, and the fish took off. Time to rebait and start fishing.
Across the river on the other bank, what appeared to be a father and two grown sons were fishing pretty much as we were. Right after Bob hooked up, the older man hooked into a good one and had to walk up and down the stream and around his anchored boat to finally gain some advantage as the fish ran and jumped and basically did what it wanted to. As he got control, he dragged the fish up on the bank and proceeded to kick it over and over again in the head as it flopped around. Finally it laid still.
I asked Jerry what he thought that was all about. "Some guys are here just for the meat. They get their fish and they're happy. That's what they came for.
It was not, however, what we came for. We came for the fishing, not the fish. As I felt a hesitation in the line as it bounced over the rocks, I set the hook lifting the rod sharply over my head. The line pulled back immediately as if I was snagged on the bottom, but then loosened and a big king jumped in the middle of the river. Frantically reeling the slack out of the line as the fish swam toward me, I felt the weight at the end of the line. It turned back into the current and down the stream. The drag was singing loudly and the rod bent—the high musical pitch of the line tight against the guides joined the sound of the drag as the fish pulled and ran, and occasionally let me gain a little ground. I got him into the shallows, but as Jerry approached with the net, he turned and ran back again. Thirty, fifty, seventy yards out. Slowly got him back toward the bank and steered him to the net.
"Pretty close to twenty pounds on this one, too," Jerry said.
I was breathing hard and my shoulder was a bit stiff. How could I be tired after one fish? I held the net as Jerry checked the fish. It was no worse for wear and shot back into the river as soon as the net was lowered. Jerry hooked me up with fresh eggs, and I was back on the water.
Now that the fish were hitting, it was a similar story over and over. A fairly light strike, strong hookset, and then hang on. Occasionally one would throw the hook, and Bob and I each had at least one break off, but generally we were able to win the battle and bring the fish to the net.
"Well, Bud," Jerry said as he looked reached around the eighth king I'd brought in for the day, "I think you've got your fish." The fish was hooked in the lip cleanly just like the others, but just the tiniest bit of ink was coming out of the gill. It was a bleeder.
"You never can tell. Sometimes they get hurt during the fight. But it's a good fish and you did well." I really didn't need to be consoled. It was a good fish, it fought hard and it was all of twenty pounds. What more could I want? Eight good fish and tomorrow was another day.
Jerry put the fish on a stringer and took a fillet knife to slit the gill. Blood poured into the water. "If you can get all the blood out of them right away in the water, they taste a whole lot better." I climbed into the boat and took my hip boots off. It was 9:30, I was in Alaska on a fishing trip, and life was good. There were some chocolate chip cookies stashed somewhere, and I poured some coffee and settled back to watch Bob as he had just set the hook on another jumper.
By the third day, we had the Alaska thing down to a predictable rhythm. Up at 4:00 just before sunrise. Of course, just before sunrise doesn't mean that it's dark, it just means that the light is sort of dim. At home in the Midwest, it was like 8:30 or 8:45 PM—the kind of light that you might be able to finish the last hole of golf in if you were lucky. By 4:30 we had dressed in layers (it was always forty-something degrees in the morning), brushed our teeth, filled the Thermos with coffee and stuffed cookies and brownies into Ziplock bags. Jerry's wife, Sherry, had packed sandwiches, beer and soda in the cooler, so we were prepared for just about anything. We hit the boat launch and took off on the 25 minute commute to the day's work.
Every day was cloudy, but sometimes there was a bit of a break. As the sun came up over the horizon, Mt. McKinley was visible for the first time in the northwest bathed in orange first light. You had to look fast to see it as we came to an opening in the trees along the banks of the Susitna. With the boat pounding away at over 35 miles an hour, I pulled up my camera with the 200 mm lens and tried to keep the mountain in reasonable view. I was hoping at least one shot wasn't blurred.
The run was getting better every day. Up river from us, the state had a weir where they were counting the fish that went through. The first day it was about 400, but we had a couple of reports of 700 the last two days in a row..
Not only were there more fish in the water, it seemed like the fish were getting stronger, too. Maybe they sent some of the weaker ones ahead to scout the territory. We were hooking into twenty-two pound fish that pulled like they were forty, testing the limits of the rather light tackle we were using.
One of my goals going into the trip was to get a king on a fly rod, and I had brought my nine weight and a selection of flies just for the purpose. The first day out, when you could only fish with artificials, I had pretty well gone through my medley of flies without any luck at all. One fly was broken or bitten off—it was a very clean cut in the leader so I naturally assumed a bite—but other than that, nothing. I threw clousers, deceivers, a couple of purple and pink maribou salmon flies—about everything I could think of. We had seen a couple of other fly fishers on the river waving their buggy whips but never saw one catch a fish.
As we began the third day, I was able to hook two very nice fish early on with the spinning rod, so it seemed logical to try the fly rod. I had already decided that I wasn't going to be a purist. This was about getting the fish on, not about tricking the fish. I told Jerry what I wanted to do and he said, fine give it a shot. He had his doubts, though, about whether I could set the hook.
I cut the leader back to the thick part where it seemed about the diameter of 20 lb. test, tied another three feet of 20 lb. mono on. Then, the snap swivel, bell sinker, etc. just like the spinning set up. The problem was, how do you cast a rig like that?
I pulled line off the reel to where I thought there was enough floating in the water to get out about ¾ of the way across the river, maybe 40 to 50 feet. There was just about an inch of fly line past the end guide on my rod and I held it at about two o'clock pinching the line tightly against the rod. As smoothly as I could, I made one big loopy cast and the bait arched out over the water dragging my line up with it almost perfectly. It was a good idea, but it didn't work that smoothly every time. Sometimes the line would tie itself up and jam in the guides; sometimes I would get out of rhythm and throw it short, sometimes the line would wrap around the reel on the way out. But, for me, that's the way it goes with fly casting anyway. I'm always getting line caught on everything. I probably made a good cast once every three tries.
And it took about twenty minutes before I felt the bite, fortunately on one of the more error-free casts. I jerked the rod up in the air over my head as hard as I could and set the hook. I had him!
This wasn't going to be as easy as the spinning rod method. The fish took off down the river like a madman. A couple of fishermen downstream saw it coming and were kind enough to reel in their lines and crawl up on the bank to watch the show. I was well into the backing as the fish pulled hard with the current, and I realized how little progress one makes with a fly reel—that one-to-one relationship between cranks and revolutions wasn't nearly as friendly as a spinning reel. The fish turned and started toward me, and I was reeling away like a fool trying to keep up and not let the line go slack. Luckily he was still on when I regained contact, but now he was running again. And again.
I don't know if the fish ran out of gas before I did, or whether it was a tie, but when he finally hit the net, I was ready to take five. Jerry estimated him at about 14 pounds, and even though he should have been too tired, he swam happily away when set free. I caught my breath and reloaded.
I hooked and brought in two more on the fly rod—the second one was the biggest at about 18 pounds, the third pretty close behind. By then my shoulder was getting tired and sore, but I gave it another couple of casts. One more hit, but I could tell my snap-hookset wasn't as strong as it had been. The fish jumped and pulled and jumped again and spit the hook. Just as well. I reeled in the fly line, slowly, and decided to go back to the spinning gear. But, damn, wasn't that fun!
"That first one was a novelty and fun to watch," my friend Bob told me. "But you were really getting to be pain after a while." I had been called worse. I wound up with seven fish for the day before getting my bleeder, and Bob was doing about the same. By the time he had finished fishing and crawled into the boat, both of us had big, tired smiles on our faces. "It's a bad day to be a fish," Bob said with a laugh.
As we headed back up the river it was clear to me that this was going to be the day to smoke the Lustitania. At the launch we loaded the boat and went back to the camp, and usually the routine in the afternoon was the same: build a fire, grab a few beers out of the cooler and fire up a cigar.
The weather was getting pretty unstable so we moved the picnic table under a large tarp. Bob built the fire and I retrieved the cigars. The double corona looked perfect. Dark brown with a hint of wrinkling in the wrapper, and the foot had split a bit from all its traveling. I clipped the head and toasted the end, and then the proof of the moment. The draw was perfect as I took in a mouthful of wonderful, strong flavors full of spice. I cracked open a beer and sat on the table. "Bob, this is going to be an event. It's going to take a while."
Under the tarp we watched the clouds roll by, and frequently they let go with a pounding downpour that started and stopped suddenly. The camp fire was hot enough to endure the rain, and we were safely dry under the tarp. Sometimes it seemed as if the Lustitania changed along with the weather. First, spicy, and then smooth and mellow. Subtle changes, but it never backed down.
For more than two hours the Lustitania supported the recanting of the day's experience. I was still giddy from fighting the big fish on the fly rod. This was a day to be frozen in time. I don't have the aficionado's vocabulary tied to my palate, so I can't tell you whether the flavors were leather or coffee; they were simply the awesome earthy spice that is unique to fine Havanas—and this one was making its permanent mark on my brain.
I took it down to the nub, to where there was about 5 mm of wrapper left behind the hot coal, and finally I couldn't hold it any longer. I let it go into the birch wood fire, and the Cuban leaf finished its conversion to Alaskan ash.
For me, special cigars are all about the memories. There's a 20 lb. King salmon fighting against my fly rod swimming upstream attached to every thought of the Partagas Lustitania.
Ultimately, memories like that are the mark of a fine cigar.
I thought this was review for a cigar? However, if this was for a Travel magazine - not bad. Although, it didn't make me want this great cigar...it was just ho hum.
Judge: Bill Durkin
Score 3/10
I truly glad that fishing and smoking Habanos are two of most favorite things. Otherwise I might not have finished reading this review. I am glad I did however, as the author makes a very important point. When the surroundings are right, a good cigar can taste great. When the atmosphere is world class, a cigar like the Lusi makes the experience sublime. Wish I was there
Judge: Elliot Blum
Score 8/10
All I can say is that this guy has been out in the mountains too long or works for the Alaskan tourist office. Great cigar, bollocks awful review. Chop out all but the last few paras and it would have been ok. I know what he's getting at, I'm sure every cigar smoker does, but would have rather he kept most of it to himself.
Judge: Richard Whitwell
Score: 2/10 (got 2 rather than 0, for the last few paras!)
OVERALL SCORE: 13/30
