Brooks River is famous the world over for the wrong reason, as far as an angler's concerned — it's the river where the brown bears line up at the falls to catch leaping sockeye, and that spectacle defines everything about fishing it. It's a tiny river, barely a mile and a half between two big Katmai lakes, lake-buffered and gin-stable, holding strong wild rainbows and Dolly Varden that feed on the immense sockeye run and its eggs. But this is a National Park first and a fishery second: the Park Service closes water and reroutes people around the bears, the place is busy in the salmon weeks, and the etiquette and rules are strict and strictly enforced. Fish it for the experience and the rainbows in the shoulders of the season, give the bears a very wide berth, and treat the NPS regulations as the hard gate they are. Not a place for trophy ambition — a place for humility.

• Mixed