Heck with it ! I'm going fishin !

'Stuff 'can drive you nuts. I have to tell you, I've had about the worst run of luck with 'stuff' that I can ever recall. My always trusty Honda 4-wheeler broke down...twice... and the other day on the way to the dump my truck died. I now have a spanking new fuel pump that was so expensive that it increased the value of that Silverado by 25%...and oh, its the second fuel pump in the last 12,000 miles. But the worst one was the ker- smashing sound I heard the other day when I closed the door to the garage... it was just the right vibration to scooch the shelf off the brackets in the laundry room breaking the foodsaver machine as well as MP's grandmothers canner.  But what can you do??? Get the boat ready and go fish, that's what ya do. So with my truck on the disabled list I call my friend Keith to haul the boat up the hill so I can get it ready, done it a 100 times. But this time I have electrical gremlins, hit the bilge switch and the nav lights come on. Mmmmmmm, it takes me an entire day to track down my problem which I expected to be and was a ground problem....those things are always corrosion so here's your first tip of the season- use grease to cover all your grounding connections.

But with my truck back and Minnow 4 ready to go my friend Keith and I take off on the last day before catch and release takes effect, Here's a pic of Keith and huge 2x12 we picked out of the river for MP to make raised garden beds out of, the river does deliver.

As you can see, its just us and the river and ......ice. Keith and his dad were some of my best customers back in the 80's and 90's. After years of working in the publishing business Keith followed his passion for fishing and went to work for me guiding. I used to call him grasshopper as just like in the show Kung Fu I was showing him the way. But now it's 2013 and his been guiding on his own for many many years and is a grizzled Kenai veteran,  a steady guy for sure.

You know how I always say that the river is a living thing, well this day it was as apparent as ever. The water had this funky tea-ish color that I can't remember seeing before. I suppose it had something to do with last falls flood much like this tree (that there are many of) that floated down the river root wad and all then settled in standing up tall in the river column.

I've always heard that there is always just one Loon per lake or river area. Well this day they were everywhere. I suppose with our late spring and frozen lakes they all decided to share a bit more the open water from Mile 14 down....

We actually fished fairly hard as we talked of the old days and of course the current state of the Kenai. Like a couple kids we got a little bored so we went and slogged around in the mud looking for things and had to muscle the boat off after the tide dropped out from under it....in other words, it was a great day, thanks Keith.

On our way home we couldn't help but be impressed by the new ADF+G sonar project on the once pristine island at mile 13.7. If money out lay is any indication of a projects success this baby is gonna run like a Rolex watch. They've got their walkways in, their signs up, their coffee pot warming, chain saw a screaming...they got it going on.

But you know me, I gotta have a closer look so later on MP and I went down so I could introduce ourselves to our new neighbors. They weren't around. Mmmmmmm to the right of this platform I notice there's a wood crate with a Honda generator in it to send power to the sonar transducer. Its not running.

The next pick is the business end of the sonar. It certainly looks high tech enough and I'm pretty darn certain that its going to work....but, doesn't it need to be under water?

So, on May 16th, 2013 at 10 am we could have had no salmon or two hundred salmon swim by and I don't think we know. Come on guys, we need this info, we're rooting for you, fire up that impressive machinery and lets get  to enumerating these King Salmon , our future depends on it. And maybe while they're tromping around the island counting salmon they could find time to take a sign down besides just putting them up. It just doesn't look good...but who asked me. Read the fine print.