Nanci Morris Lyon: Angler, Hostess, Educator and All-Around Badass

I was fortunate to be introduced to Nanci Morris Lyon in early 2019 through a friend-of-a-wife-of-a-friend and a few months later I was on a plane to Alaska for one of the best fishing trips of my life. But for that semi-random meeting, I might not have gone to Alaska the past two summers, nor would I have fallen so deeply in love with the fisheries of the Bristol Bay region.

I consider myself fortunate because not only did I get spurred to return to Alaska for the first time since 1995, but also specifically because Nanci was our host at Bear Trail Lodge. I’m sure that there are many competent and hospitable lodge owners in the region, but I’m dubious that there are many (or any) with as many layers. Each time I think I’m getting to the bottom of her story she reveals some other amazing fact – whether it’s guiding hunters in Mexico, catching record saltwater fish on a fly, or working feverishly to co-found and operate the Bristol Bay Fly Fishing and Guide Academy.

The area where she lives is a tough environment. Everything needs to be brought in by barge or plane, so something most of us take for granted like a gallon of milk can cost ten bucks. There are bears running around everywhere. The winters can be long and bleak. In some respects, however, those factors can be features rather than bugs. They ensure that only those who are really committed set up camp there and only the strong survive.

Here she is in her own words:

HPFC: How does a young woman from Odessa, Washington become a fishing guide and then a lodge owner in King Salmon, Alaska?

NANCI: It was funny as hell, actually. So my younger brother calls me up. He went up here on a whim over the summer and fell in love with it. We were really close and he said “You’ve got to come see this place.” I was about a year out of college, managing a veterinary clinic in Washington. I had some vacation coming up so I decided to go up and visit him for my two weeks of vacation. I took off, came up here, and after a week of being up here I called up my bosses and said, “I quit. This place is incredible. I’m moving to Alaska.” They said they’d make it worth my while to stay until January to train someone else to take over my position. OK, fine.

I moved up here in May of 1982. I had a degree in veterinary medicine, but back then there was no call for that because the laws in the state. Everybody could do their own veterinary work and just buy drugs from a pharmacist. The state was just that young and that new. It was only about 20 years old. So I decided to get into contracting and I ended up being really successful at that. I’d buy plots of land and I’d build houses and subdivisions. I met a gal who was a building designer. She’s still a close friend and lives in Anchorage and has done a bunch to help me out. Then I got into strip malls.

As you build that business ladder you end up having to do more because your clients have more money and more needs, and in order to get their business you have to be willing to do more things – so I started taking them down to the Kenai fishing. I’d go out down there and every time out I’d catch big fish. The owner of the business was always like, “Nanci, you ought to come down here and work for me.” We’d go out halibut fishing with him and it was the same deal there. The owner kept telling me I had to come down and fish for him.

This is where it takes a weird left turn. Out of the blue in 1990 I lost my brother. I mean, I literally lost him. He fell off the face of the earth. He went to Hawaii to take over a business enterprise there with one of the people there I’d worked with on one of these commercial strips. He went over there, got the business started, everything was getting underway and – boom – fell off the face of the earth. We don’t know where he is to this day.  

So, on to bigger and better things. It was a pretty big blow in my life. We were really close. We lived together and he was one of my foremen, and we got along very well. I needed to take a break. I was making a ton of money, really successful in what I was doing, and I was being available to people 24 hours a day and I didn’t need that. So I called the people up on the Kenai and in Homer and said, “Put your money where your mouth is. I’m available this summer.” I went over and searched for him for about two and a half months and it was about mid-May when I got back because it happened on Valentine’s Day. The guy in Homer said, “Absolutely. Come on down,” and I got a position on the Sea Witch. I spent my first year of guiding on the Sea Witch and they called me “The Bitch of the Witch” because there were no girls down there. It was either the first or second year of the Homer Halibut Derby and I was on the boat when we won. I was not the skipper that day. I was the deckhand. It was a 351 halibut. On my off days I’d run up to the Kenai and run charters. The boss up there, who didn’t have room for me and just wanted to use me for a fill-in, said “Why don’t you come on over for me and manage my business here on the Kenai next year?” the Kenai was starting to get really busy back then like you hear about now, not my idea of a fun place anymore, so I wasn’t interested. He said, “If you want to be just a guide, I’ve got this operation in King Salmon that I’m starting, which is why I want you to take over the Kenai operation. But if you want to be just a guide, you can fly out there with me and see it, check it out. He and his wife flew me out here Easter morning 1985 and I fell in love with it before we even landed. I looked around and saw no people and no anything – I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Crystal clear water everywhere. I hadn’t even been fishing yet and I took the job.

HPFC: How does a guide in King Salmon transition to become a lodge owner?

NANCI: That was a long path. I started out as a guide, but it wasn’t long before I started managing the business for him and he went back down to Kenai. Then he sold the business to the hotel owners, so the hotel owners wanted to pay me a sum of money to take over both the hotel and the guide management. I told them I wouldn’t do it because I wanted to fish, so they brought out a co-manager to help out. I was there 10 or 12 years before I had to quit because I wasn’t fishing as much as I wanted to. Then I started my own business working out of Fox Bay Lodge. I was on my own and soon my clientele grew beyond Fox Bay, so I had to leave Fox Bay and I went to where Crystal Creek is now. I ran out of there for a few years. By then I was already up to three guides, including him (points to her husband Heath) who I hired as a dockhand and turned him into a guide. He started guiding for me as an independent and slowly but surely Bear Trail was built. They needed someone to run their guide operation so I came down here and did their guiding, as well as guiding for Crystal Creek, as well as some of Fox Bay’s. I was running a guide crew of about eight to 10 people at the time. I’d go home at night and cook for all of them, too. It was crazy. I look back now and wonder how the hell did I do it?

When they came to sell this lodge back in 2008, they offered it to me, but there was no way I could do it. I was worried about getting to fish enough. But the buyer saw that the reason people were coming here is because they were my clients who were coming to fish, so he offered me a position to run the fishing. Then when he saw my bill at the end of the year he asked me to become his partner. I didn’t think I could afford to be his partner, but he literally made me an offer that was way too good to refuse. So I became a partner in the lodge in 2009. Then, out of the blue, in 2016 he decided he wanted out of the lodge. Heath and I were trying to figure out what to do, and the next thing you know he finds me financing for the lodge. In the spring of 2017 the lodge became mine. No investors, no partners. The Good Lord dropped it in my lap.

HPFC: The fishing industry is male-dominated. What are the advantages and disadvantages of being female?

NANCI: I had always said when I was guiding that the advantage and the disadvantage is the same. In order to have respect and a place in the industry as a female you have to be the very best. I feel like I have respect of 90 percent of the operators out there. A lot of times I am asked to represent Bristol Bay on their behalf on different matters. I never have anybody refuse to take my calls. I don’t want to be put on a pedestal, but just because I’m a girl people may give me a little too much credit sometimes.

HPFC: What is your greatest skill or talent as an angler?

NANCI: Definitely teaching people how to catch fish. That’s probably why I’ve had success with the Bristol Bay Guide Academy, too. What’s crazy about it is that I’m not that good of a teacher. When I tried to homeschool my daughter Rylie – not a good idea. But when it comes to teaching people how to catch fish it’s just different. It’s something I love to do. I read people well. Some people do better visually. Some people do better verbally. My verbal skills are very good so I can usually put into words fairly easily what it is they need to do. There are a few people I’ve really wanted to tell, “You really should take up golf,” but not very many.

HPFC: What other types of fishing do you like, besides what goes on in Bristol Bay?

NANCI: I can’t think of any that I don’t like.

HPFC: What other places have you fished, and which ones are still on your must-visit list?

NANCI: I don’t even know that I could list them all if I tried, but I do want to go after tigerfish in Africa. This fall for my 60th we were supposed to go down to South America for either peacocks or golden dorado, but for now we have to postpone that.

One of best ones was Los Roques off of Venezuela before that got shut down. That was an incredible experience for bonefish and tarpon. My world records are obviously pretty memorable. At one time I had four. I’m not sure if any of them are still standing – maybe the dorado on the fly rod, it was tied at 75 pounds. That was off of Los Roques. I had a group to host down there and then I stayed an extra three or four days. I went in early because one of the guides down there had a connection. He found out that I had some world record marlin and I’d done a bunch of marlin fishing. I only have two billfish left to have all of them on a fly rod. I still need the blue marlin and the swordfish. They knew that I had some of my bigger rods with me for tarpon so they said it was perfect timing.

We went back a day early out on this rough-ass ocean. When it was calm it was 10 to 12 foot seas and when it was rough it was 15 or 16. Try casting a fly rod in that. Granted, I was much younger, so I could keep my feet underneath me. I had a shot at a couple marlin but none of them showed any interest in my flies – and I had good flies that had caught marlin and other billfish all over the world. We ended up in this big school of dorado, and the deckhands were going nuts because they like them for the food and they make money selling them back at the dock. They started slinging bait out there like mad trying to catch the big male, and I picked my fly rod up, made the perfect cast, probably about 40 feet in front of him. I started stripping and here he came, over top of the bait. To me that was the ultimate, especially with a dorado, because if they smell bait they’re usually not going to look at the fly. But I got that big old male dorado, and it tied the world record, over 75 pounds. They had to hang on to me several times as the waves were coming over the back deck, almost washing me out of the boat. That’s probably one of my weaknesses – I have no fear of water. I didn’t care if I got washed over. I was still going to get the fish in. I’d get back to the boat somehow. I’ve always been a strong swimmer.

HPFC: If fishing and hunting didn’t exist, what would you be doing with your life?

NANCI: Figuring out how to fish and hunt (laughs). I don’t know. Once I figured out I could play for a living I never really looked back. Having a degree and experience in veterinary medicine, and a career in building, I knew I had something I could fall back on. If it didn’t work out, I had a place to go.

HPFC: Why should someone make their next vacation on the Naknek River?

NANCI: Because it’s one of the most incredible experiences you’ll ever have. I don’t think people understand how remote this place is, and how truly natural and wild it still is. How many people have bears walk through their backyard on a daily basis?

HPFC: What distinguishes Bear Trail Lodge from other lodges of its type?

NANCI: It’s funny that you’d ask that. I think one of the things I point out most now when people ask me a question like that is that we’re a family-owned operation. We care. We’re going to see to it that we give you the very best trip possible. We don’t have any big backers. It’s just us – me, my husband and my daughter – and we’re doing the very best job that we can for you because we have to. This is what we do.

HPFC: Last question. You have one day left in your life to fish. You can pick any place, any season and any species? What do you choose?

NANCI: It’s probably going to be rainbow trout here on the Naknek in October, catching them with a fly rod. Like this one last year (takes out a picture). It was a last cast fish, moon coming up over my shoulder.