Clearly the Kenai

I'm not complaining....but....its always something on this gorgeous river. This week delivered some of the most challenging fishing conditions in all the years I've fished here. The graph below tells the story, we're at record low water for late June its as clear as anybody's ever seen. The pyramids above the graph line are the 40 year average flow. As you can see, the river is actually going down a bit and not up like would be the norm.  We're used to clear water in May before the melt, its tributary water and a kind of brown bottom colored clear. And actually to fish with artificial as is the current regulation we need clear water, but not THIS clear. Its a Skilak Lake clear with visibility at 5 to 8 feet I'd guess. So what it all translates to is this, we have opportunity in the morning before a lot of boat movement and then again with the tide if we have that to work with. We're getting one or two, maybe 3 chances a day but I'm looking forward to more fish this next week.

The fish are just plane spooky. The water is so low that the boats are running just a few feet over their heads and they're seeing the lures to far off to create a good strike response. A few days ago I idled over a gravel bar to position myself at the top of a run and was watching the bottom when I saw 4 or 5 King Salmon flash away from my boat, spooked just by it being there. So I know this is probably falling on deaf ears but if any of you or people you know are running boats this week on the Kenai PLEASE keep the boats away from number 003 if you can. Enter the runs from the side or the top, never run over the water you intend to fish or someone else is fishing. When running on step please clear a boat with gear in the water by as far a margin as you safely can. When fishing around other boats try and keep yours quite...no banging, no music, stop any rattles....

On Saturday I fished with old friends. Joe Higgins and his wife Chelsea and brother Ben bought a fishing trip for my old buddy Charlie as a  Fathers Day gift. We released one fish that we maybe should have kept and let a smaller one go but the highlight of the trip was watching the success of this harbor seal. Now I've seen a lot of seals catch a lot of salmon but I've never seen a 50 pound seal with a 50 pound salmon. It was so big he couldn't swim away with it so we idled right over and watched him eat it. This pic you see him with the salmons head strait up and he's holding it like a baby. We watched him for many minutes, he'd drop it and then go find it (the water is so clear eh) but in order to eat it he pretty much had to stay in one place. Even  then its almost impossible to get a good pic, you aim, he goes down etc.....it was pretty darn cool.

I don't know about everybody else but the best gift I got was hearing from the two boys. And , MP bought me a special treat of Australian licorice, I'm a sucker for that stuff. But we saw the following ad in the paper and realized that gift giving possibilities can be endless. I don't know if I've seen many professional people advertise like this but...what the eh....

So by the time you read this Mile 14 will be celebrating 15,000 reads. Its not like making the best sellers list but in my world this is big ju-ju, I'm flattered that so many people think its entertaining and worth their time. So please keep coming back and tell your friends, I've got big plans.