RiverPro's

I fish with some great fishermen who have their own ways of doing things and I would never say anything to suggest a better way with them. Slah Sahli has his own way, Greg Davis has his own way, Keith Holtan has his own way, even Ernie Mills has his ' own way'.....so..... It's hard to tell the person I love the most when she insists on doing things her ' own way'.... "  YOU DON'T FISH ENOUGH TO HAVE AN OWN WAY".  Which is usually followed by the cutest  " c'mon honey can you help me here a bit".

And that's the way it went when the A-team hit the river on Thursday. Chris and Melinda came down and we had the usual gourmet supper and a bottle...make that two bottles of  Silver Oak. Chris is certainly a guy who has his 'own way' so when we fish I let the events of the day just roll along free and easy, I ain't in charge. And as luck would have it we threw the anchor out on a school of
Silver Salmon that reminded both Chris and I of 1987....we had three on at once, then we had two on then  we released three or four and we tried not to catch another three or four and then we kept four or five, all in an hour or so. Here's a pic of MP netting one 'her way'....it's the butterfly approach to netting, just like guide school.

Of course we had fish laying every where, blood ended up in my coffee cup somehow and well, it was just the best pandemonium we've had in a long time. Giggles like school kids..."Jethro, did you see that ?"...Nope...."good".

Here's a pic of Chris and Boo Boo with a nice one and even I got to catch three silvers. Over supper we had arranged the usual biggest, first and most fish wager...My best buddy forgot the old Las Vegas standard - never bet a man at his own game. Thanks for the cash infusion Chrisco, it'll buy Pacifico's all around as I tell this story in few months to the boys at Team X, Mexico division.



I guess we've finally arrived as true sports. A younger Jeff King would have taken a limit of fish just to take it I  guess. But Chris was right when he said ' lets just take what we need' and so we did. One fresh one for us to barbecue that night and then a smoker load to take to Mexico as we didn't get our usual number of sockeyes this year.  The rest of our Silvers were released in fine shape and I'd bet after dealing with the like of us they'll be a little hook shy and get to their spawning beds safe and sound. Here's a pic of us all together with fish and friendship both delivered by the Kenai River. We ended the trip pretty early in the morning and just as I took this pic it began to rain....timing is everything in this old life.