sock eyed

Last Monday I did something I seldom do, I took some folks red fishing and had an absolutely wonderful time. How could you beat this introduction to the morning ? Anybody who thinks fishing is only about catching would have to change their minds if they had been along on the morning I had with Kevin Krause and his friends.

We watched this guy for 15 minutes or so while we shared some nice hot coffee. He didn't like those seagulls taking his hard earned salmon, maybe he was even thinking it could be the bear version of surf and turf.

Then we went and found a nice quiet place to fish, all by ourselves. These guys picked up the flossing technique perfectly, we caught 15 reds in about 3 hours. I even caught 3 for our freezer. and as you can see when I told Kristen that the fish were on the bottom she took me literally. I had a great time with these guys and as I put my red gear away for the day I had this thought....welcome to the future Jeff.

The Kenai is winding down from yet another record run of reds. It hit a crescendo about 2 days ago and as I sit here typing the ol Kenai is gasping a sigh of relief. One thing I've noticed here with this deal, there seems to be harvesters... and then fishermen. The energy is incredible, you can feel it it town, you can feel it along the river and you can certainly see it as well. All along the river at any good gravel bar we have scenes like this.

Yesterday I made a run to Wal Mart in Kenai....the bite was on. I'm always looking for things that jump out at me, the unusual in Jeff's world. Well here's a guy after my own heart, shopping done with only two things, fish boxes and Rainer beer.

And of course the harvesters use the dip net technique. I don't know how this all got started but it's huge...and I mean huge. We see it all for a 4 or 5 day stretch, boats of all shapes and sizes, even a Noah's ark looking deal that I snapped a pic of as quick as I could. This years winner in the unusual boat category. Kinda reminded me of a redwood hot tub with a 50 horse yamy. I'll  bet ya all those dippers on the shore would love to own a fine watercraft like that eh?

So with all the hustle and bustle of this red run, our boat launch packed and our town on 24 hour alert  I went for my bike ride at 5 am this morning and found what I was looking for...fishermen. These guys were waded across from the mouth of Soldotna Creek. You could hear the cascade of the creek falling into the Kenai and just behind them the mountains sparkled with the sunrise. I asked if I could take this picture and he said " good morning, it's just beautiful here isn't it ? "

With our red run ebbing I see more Kings in our future, we should have a good last week of the season. This week we caught just enough to keep the wolves away, some of it was magic and some of it was tragic. But we did catch  a few nice ones like this 36 pounder of Nikki's. And thanks for the b-day moe-joe everybody, it was a great week at Mile 14.