My biggest fish.....ever...honest

If you don't think Mile 14 is a magical place, wait till you hear this one. This morning I caught the biggest fish I've ever caught without the aid of a boat...on shore, terra firma. Being slightly obsessed with the whole deal you can only imagine how many fish I've caught, big, small, boats, in the surf, on the creek, in the ocean, from a dock, bait, no bait, left hand right hand....you get the idea. But this morning I caught the biggest and most exciting fish from shore of my whole 58, soon to be 59 years on this planet. My first Roosterfish in the surf was ultra-magnum exciting and my biggest surf fish would be a Rooster at 35 pounds, so I have to say Alaska and the Kenai River trumped that pretty darn good. Here's what happened.

MP and I had dirt work to do on the launch and as I would routinely do this time of year I ran my planer board out with a K-16 gold Kwikfish behind it. The planer board was developed for boat fishing the Great Lakes, it grabs the current and ' swims' out at about a 45 degree angle from where its line is anchored. In this case on a fence post downriver a bit from where guideboat 003 lives. The first pic is the hardware and the second pic I took last year that shows it at work. If you look careful to the left of the reel you'll see the 'V' in the water from the planer board.

I had no sooner got the planer set and was watching the dumpster guy emptying our bear bait when I saw a big splash and walla....the board disappears. Yikes, its fiiiiiiish on. I grab the rod and he's smoking line, one of the cool things is that I'm using my Mazatlan surf casting set-up and we're geared special for this fight, lots of line and a steady reel, the Daiwa Saltiga. The fish is easily 100 yards out and down and I know I have to go with him do take advantage of the current. I don't have boots or anything so I just yell to MP to get the camera, a measuring stick and follow me....its big...I see his tail....whoosh. In the water I go and wade around trees and rocks as I work my way down to the gravel bar above Stewarts Island, maybe a 1/4 mile downriver...This is the Alamo, this is where its all got to stop. Even though the fish is way downstream I stand in one place and tighten down on him and retrieve line a little by little. Theres a group of people watching from across the river.

We're under the slot limit right now and I have the funny feeling that this fish is going to be to big to keep, which in my world is both good and bad. MP finally catches up with me and she's seen enough to know it also, this fish is going to crush the 46 inch rule. It takes me 15 minutes to work him back up current to the slow deep water at the tip of the island that I figure is the place to land him. Theres a shallow bar to pull him over and we get a real good look, its gorgeous. I drop the rod and grab the fish, theres a lot of wrestling going on that MP didn't really get a pic of because I needed help to measure him.  But I get the stick to him and without stressing over it but for a second or two its real apparent that this male King salmon is at least 48 inches and I'd guess around 55 pounds, a shiny bright , thick bodied male.

I wish I had a better picture of him for you but at this point we really need to get him to swim away, go spawn baby.  When we release fish we do not take them out of the water and try to do it as quickly and painlessly as possible. So I have to get him back over the gravel bar to the river so I cradle him with one hand around his tail I get him to deep water. At one point I just about fell in as I stumbled on the slippery  gravel bottom. The next pic is the money shot, he's just about to swim free, no worse for the wear and has provided me with another personal best. What an exciting salmon. wow. And as you can see, the Jet-Dog doesn't miss much...

We would have loved to eat that salmon, it so good. But rules are rules and you know what, even if he was a marker and we'd decided he was 45 7/8 inches long and legal I might still have let him go. When I was putting the planer out we were hoping for a nice 25 pounder to eat and then share some of, what would we do right now with 50 pounds of salmon.

The last pic MP took of me flush with adrenaline. How often does a guy catch a trophy salmon that makes him run, sweat and I have to admit....my hands were shaking pretty darn good. So if I ever get to where I don't get as excited as I did this morning over my fishing passion, it'll be time to retire....but for now, I still got it....BIG TIME.