May 17th

For the first time since my friend Les caught the world record King Salmon on May 17th 1985 I wasn't out fishing on that day. I believe in connections so every year on the anniversary I would troll Honeymoon Cove when he hooked it around 9:00 am, on that lure right there, the trusty old Flame/Chartreuse Spin Glo, with a glob of cured eggs that were most likely Boraxed. I'll bet he didn't have very good eggs but they sure were good enough to trick a new world record.

In 1985 I was in about my 3rd year of guiding and had just invested in a 'real' guide boat. Les Anderson and his wife Clare lived upstairs from our best friends Neil and Connie Arthur. For the first 20 year I new les he called me 'Jess' as he was a little deaf, but the last ten years or so he figured it out. When you hear so and so never said a bad word about anybody well that person was really Les Anderson. He was a true gentleman and his love of our river immense. He was fishing with his brother-in-law Bud Loftsted who was legendary pioneer aviator here in Alaska. Back in that day we usually didn't get serious on fishing until memorial day weekend so it was not only unusual for him to be out fishing but to catch the biggy, well....wow. This is the REAL story....

Bud and Les started out early that morning in 'Old Blue', a 16 ft lund that had loose rivets and leaked badly. On the way they reached into Neils boat and borrowed a net....that is a big part of the story. Les was never one to back troll so they were drifting through Fall-in-Hole that tails out at Honeymoon Cove. Les's rod just dives to the water, at first these big fish with this technique will make you think you're snagged on the bottom....well he was....the BOTTOM LIP.  The fish stayed around that area and made many runs up and down but pretty soon they had drifted on past where the Pillars are now and were attempting to net. Neils net is the size we use for reds and silvers...the fish won't go in all the way and it's a miracle that they didn't loose it then when they had it half in several times. But pretty soon Bud problem solves and he beaches the boat on the gravel of an island above Eagle Rock that I named the ' Toilet Hole' years ago for obvious reasons. Well, Les bull dogs the fish up the gravel a ways with Bud pushing and grabbing and pretty soon they have it high and dry, killed with a rock. The two of them are pumped, they know it's huge as they admire it having no clue it could be a world record....and then as the pandemonium settles down they look to see ' Old Blue' floating down the river without them....yikes. There was a guy fishing around the corner at Eagle Rock and he came screaming upriver as of course the sight of an empty boat made him think the worse. But Les and Bud were just fine and after retrieving 'Old Blue' they went back to fishing. The best part was yet to come. Here's one of my favorite pics of Les that shows a bit of his Character.


I was hanging around the  Tackle Box, a new story that my friend Jerry Johnson had opened outside of town. I was chatting with Craig Lott and Jerry, mostly hoping some tourist would walk through the door wanting to go fishing when a truck came flying in with Les who owned the Ford Dealership and one of his salesmen, one of the first of the new world record hangers on, groupies. They wanted to know if Jerry's scale was current with Alaska Dept of weights and scales to verify a new world record. The scale wasn't and the fish was weighed anyway, we were all amazed....but the strangest thing was that about 15 minutes after Les hurried off to find a registered scale Johnson Brothers Guide Service showed up in a van with some people and an 85 pounder...yikes the Kenai was having a good day. Here's a pic I took myself f Les, you can just see that he's one nice guy. Then one of him years later with the mount at the Chamber of Commerce. That day as he went from place to place, from friend to friend he held 100 pounds of salmon up so many times I was afraid he might have the big one, he did have a weak heart that finally got him about 7 or 8 years ago.

The next series of pics I decided to include because they will give you feel for the era. The energy on the Kenai was electric, the fishery was just clicking off, it was before the horse power limit and we were all just learning the ways...Everyone new we had big fish in the Kenai but Les's fish made it official. Up until May 17th 1985 nobody had heard of any 90 pound plus salmon caught. But since then there have been at least 5 and maybe 10 over 90 caught, that's a knarly salmon. Below is a pic of Jerry Johnson and his crew sitting up a drift in Fall-in-Hole. That Alumaweld Sled has a 150 Horse power ' Black Max' that I think was the biggest outboard sold at the time, we once took that boat from Mile 14 to Skilak Lake and back in an easy 6 or 7 hour day.

And a pic of yours truly wearing the 'Team Tackle Box Hat' . You can see in the background that I'm building signs and everything that went with building a life around this wonderful River. 1985.

I don't care where in the world you go if you have fish like these you'll have people like this. Here's a pic from that era of the drift at Beaver Creek. One time I had the legendary R.L. Parker tell me...." hey, if you want your own water, bring a bucket ! "

I guess it was only natural....the next pic really tells a story. It was taken well after Les and Bud caught the fish, you can tell by how dry it looks. People started to think of the promotion, the money, the value of this world record. The guy on the right is a friend of mine and the guy in the middle is a fairly well known guide from Oregon who was new up here and just couldn't stand to not be included. Actually I think what he couldn't believe was the fact that HE didn't catch it. The next year his promotional literature said he "assisted" with the world record.......mmmm.....One time this guy had the first Magnum Wiggle Warts I'd ever seen dangling from the lines hanging out of his boat tied up here at Mile 14. I asked him to "salt a few around" so we could try them out....Well, he went into a lengthy lecture about how he was a tackle tester and Storm Lure Company didn't want them out in the public hands just yet and I'd have to wait until they came out on the market....Well, as soon as he drove off for lunch I hacked two of them off the lines and went fishing, they worked really good. That's the way we roll around here Mr. Oregon .

So hey...this is a great story but I got lots more. So swing by Mile 14 sometime and we'll walk a few holes, share a tall orange and recapture some of those fishing moments, like the time I caught a 170 pound halibut in a 16 foot boat....or the time the commissioner of the Dept. of Natural Resources caught a seagull in mid air...or the time Tim White caught the only 30 foot long stick I've ever seen that was alive.....or.....