Fishin is the Mission

As we were getting everything ready for Tuesday's opener I was again reminded of how unusual our place here is. I've seen fish skeletons painted on the dumpster with ' no fish' reminders. I've seen 'do not block' painted on them as reminders....but this takes the cake. I told all my facebook friends, "well there goes my retirement plan".

Below is the graph from Friday for our early run, with four more days to count I suppose it will easily make the 5300 minimum, but I expected more. So I know I've been kind of hard on the Dept. of Fish and Game and I'm going to do something here that they never do, kind of set an example you know...I'm going to admit I was wrong. When it all started I predicted that we'd fall smack dab in the middle of the 5300-9000 range and it looks like we'll achieve the low end instead. But, my prediction was certainly closer than ADF+G's estimate of 1800. So this is good news for us, the salmon, the town and Fish and Game. If this parent year follows the usual model of a 3 to 1 recruitment ( the adults that will return from this escapement) we'll have us a nice run of 15,000 early Kings with enough for escapement and harvest....maybe we've turned the corner on this deal. OH, this year is red, last year black and 2011 and 2012 purple and green.

So sharpen your hooks friends, this time on Tuesday morning we'll be afloat and I'd bet you dollars to donuts we'll have a King salmon in guide boat #003 by then. ADF+G has started the late run with a no bait rule as that run is expected to be weak as well. The no bait takes a bit of the guiding out of it as it turns the luck factor up a bit but we certainly do well with or without the bait. And, with the lack of snowfall last winter it looks like for the first time in years we are either going to have low or average stream flow which makes for a smaller arena and I'm betting on clear, turqouise, gorgeous fishy water. Kings seem to be doing better in many places and with our early run coming in it makes me optomistic for this July.

Last night the McKay's came over for a barbecue down at the river. MP has a niece that is married to the brother or Robert so naturally we kind of adopted them when they moved to Soldotna last summer. They have three girls so they were the perfect folks to surprise with a gift of the Bicycle built for two that we won in a raffle. It was pretty darn cool seeing little Emma's eye light up over that deal.

Cory there was wondering why we'd give away such a cool bike...are you kiddin ? Anybody that knows us will tell you that we're not wired for a bike like that...MP would be wanting to turn right while I'm headed left, she'd ride the brake while I was trying to attain mach speed, you get the picture. So you guys, Cory, Robert, Emma, Morgan and Lila have fun...and work together eh?.

I hope you all come back to Mile 14. I usually post just once a week but I have the feeling that this week I'll be so excited that I'll have some fish pics and action photos to publish real soon.