Perspective

If the ageing process teaches us anything its that, perspective. My friend Gus here is holding a beautiful RainBow trout caught on my last day of employment. Gus is from Napa Ca. and when we met to fish there was no missing that he was slow on his feet and had difficulty getting in the boat. At 4 am two years ago he was hit head on by a drunk driver, it killed the driver and a passenger and nearly killed Gus. Two full years of convalescing and he's hanging out with his buddies and not the least concerned that fishing conditions are less than ideal. Perspective.

That fish is gorgeous and looks suspiciously like a Steelhead that is not supposed to occur here at Mile 14. It just looks different than our football shaped and very spotted Kenai Rainbows. Also notice that big ol plug he jumped on, now that's a case of setting your goals high I'd say. That's one ambitious fish.

At 5 am Saturday morning we were at the Relay For Life fundraiser event for the American Cancer Society. We started being involved when we lost one of our girlfriends to Cancer a few years ago and MP's book club put together a team for the relay. As I'm walking this morning the spiritualism of it all kind of affected me. I got to realizing as I looked at the luminaries that have victims and survivors names on them that I was a pretty lucky guy. Perspective. I know lots of those names, lots. The first pic is of MP of course, she walked her tail off. For my part I find it easier to just spend an obscene amount of money on the booths.

The next few pics are the story. My friend Harry Gaines was a high profile fishing guide that help start this whole thing on the Kenai River. He was a genius promoter that loved to fish within 1/4 mile of his camp. Harry had a red Coca Cola sponsored boat and we'd tease him that everything in the boat was red except the fish box. When Harry came down with Pancreatic Cancer I was at the hospital and asked him if there was anything I could do. He said yes there was....just be his friend. Perspective.


The next pic is a guy I don't know. But he's got a guitar to remember him by and you know how I am about guitars. It was like poetry, his luminary was right between Harry's and my good friend Claude 'BigFoot' Bradford. In fact as you can see Claude was so popular that he's remembered by TWO luminaries. Claude was a telephone man and one of Soldotna's favorite people. He was always everywhere. He was a musher (not a very good one), expert hunter and fisherman and the most generous guy I've ever met. At one time he was raising those huge Japanese goldfish (coi?) in a pond he'd built and I donated some goldfish to him that the kids had left when they grew up. When we parted that day he told me to stop by more often now that we were related. Claude suffered a fall at work and when he starting having chest pain he associated it with his broken ribs. It was cancer and I eulogised him at the funeral. Perspective.

The last pic I had to take. It was Sunday morning and I was riding my bike and thinking about our salmon when I came across this contraption across the mouth of Soldotna Creek. Our early run fishery is made of of many components and the 'discreet' run of Kings into Soldotna Creek is part of that total run. Soldotna Creek is also part of the Mackey Lake drainage which has Pike. ADF+G thinks Pike could get into the Kenai River and be detrimental to salmon so they built this device to keep Pike out. It also looks like it'd do a pretty good job of keeping Kings from getting in . Like I say, I'm no scientist but the left side of my brain tells me that Pike aren't our problem. When I see something like this, its no wonder our salmon are missing.