Northern exposure - fishing in Alaska - includes related article - CEO at Leisure

Chief Executive, The, Dec, 1995 by Joseph L. McCarthy

Toss the hook and retrieve the fish. How much easier could salmon fishing be? Oh, but in the wild, as in the boardroom, it takes patience, cleverness, and fortitude to land the big one.

"I'll make you the same bet I make everyone else who comes here for the first time," says Bob Gillam, CEO of Anchorage, AK-based McKinley Capital Management, arguably the hottest in investment firm on the planet. At 10:30 p.m., Gillam is standing on an outdoor deck of the Regal Alaskan Hotel, sipping a draft beer and soaking up the midnight sun. "How much do you weigh, about 185 pounds? I bet you that you'll take your weight in fish every day you're here. In fact, I guarantee it." Reading the bland skepticism on my face, Ed Smith, a Merrill Lynch vice president in charge of the firm's Private Client Group in Beverly Hills, leans in close. Smith, who funnels some of his clients' investment capital to McKinley, and who has accompanied Gillam to the glacier-fed waters of Lake Clark three years running, whispers: "He's not kidding. It's not so much fishing as catching."

For Gillam and a cadre of executives here by invitation, the prey are spawning Alaskan red salmon. Each year, 45 million strong, these powerful, tenacious creatures begin a grueling upstream journey from the Baring Sea, through Bristol Bay and dozens of frigid rivers and streams, seeking the precise pools where they were born. Like anything associated with fishing, there's an element of exaggeration to Gillam's claims: This year's run is late, and the only can't-miss fishermen are the grizzly bears perched atop "fish ladders," five- to six-foot mini-waterfalls where they snare in their jaws salmon leaping against the current. Nonetheless, there are plenty of fish left over, and if there's a human who knows how to land them, it's Gillam, 49, an Alaskan native who cashed out of a pair of brokerage firms sold in the 1980s to Shearson/American Express and Kemper Insurance. He used the nest egg in 1990 to establish McKinley, recently cited by The Wall Street Journal for a nine-month stock-market performance of 60 percent - third-highest in the U.S. (see sidebar). Wharton-educated Gillam, who handles investments for a spate of celebrity clients, including an NFL quarterback, has been running these expeditions for five years, entertaining the likes of Sandy Weill and financial journalist Louis Rukeyser.

This time, the CEO contingent includes Gillam and Tom Willison, chairman of Dakin & Willison, a San Rafael, CA, marketing firm. Along for the ride are Merrill Lynch's Smith; Bob's son, Robert Gillam, a McKinley marketing representative in the firm's Dallas office; some McKinley portfolio managers and technology specialists; and the sous chef of Alaska's five-star Alyeska Hotel. Home base is Gillam's five-room hunting and fishing lodge, one hour from Anchorage as the float plane flies.

"You're gonna do some serious fishing and some serious drinking," Gillam promises of the week-long excursion, a boys-only affair where executives masquerade as fraternity brothers and the only currency that counts is bottles of 18-year-old Macallen scotch, Macanudo cigars, and the 600 pounds of Alaskan king crab, prime rib, fresh-baked pies, vintage wines, and other necessities he taxies to the party in his single-engine, four-passenger Cessna 206. "You're gonna see caribou, Dall sheep, American Bald Eagles, and bears. You're gonna haul home a box of salmon heavy enough to break your arms.

"Only two things matter in life," Gillam says as we prepare to fly through Lake Clark pass, a purple- and gold-peaked gap in the Alaska mountain range, 70 miles southwest of Anchorage. "Getting rich and catching fish."

There are five species of salmon in the Western Hemisphere. Ranked by color and taste, Alaskan reds, or sockeyes, top the list, followed by silver salmon (cohos), kings, pinks, and chum salmon. The last two, Gillam says, are most frequent in the 48 contiguous states, with pink salmon cured to become the lox of big-city delicatessens. In a sweep over the lake as we come in for a landing, the fish are evident down below as murky, black pools, a striking contrast to the brilliant, aquamarine water and the spongy, khaki-colored tundra, populated by scrub pines, stunted birch and black spruce trees, and moldy sedges and grasses.

Soon after touchdown, we climb into clunky, rubber hip waders; state-of-the-art, synthetic thermal underwear; and Goretex, waterproof windbreakers. Though it's a temperate summer day, with temperatures in the low-70s, it's prudent to "dress for disaster," as Gillam puts it, guarding against a sudden drop in the mercury and the torrential, wind-whipped downpours Alaskans describe as "raining sideways."

A half-hour ride in a pair of 20-foot boats, and our squad disembarks on a sandy beach near the mouth of the Newhalen River - one of the dozens of streams that drains Lake Clark. Gillam, an able tour guide, is regaling our group with a running commentary on the area's Indian folklore, fish and game, and frequent volcanic eruptions. A typical, stock-broking jock inside the office, out here, he takes on a larger-than-life quality. A beefy man prone to dark aviator sunglasses, he packs a .44 magnum Smith and Wesson revolver in a holster and carries a 300 magnum Winchester rifle in his boat to ward off Gentle Ben's not-so-gentle cousins.