WHAT ????

I was wondering why it was taking so long to get a bill for my emergency procedure at the hospital. Well the bill arrived today and now I know why it took them over two weeks to send it...they're embarrassed. And I would be too if I sent out a bill for two hours that amounted to 7 thousand big ones. I figure they've got a strategy for it all like make  sure it arrives on Monday as that's most peoples less favorite day anyway and you let the victim get through the weekend  in blissful ignorance. Oh, the 7 G's doesn't include the surgeon.....ah crud, lets get to the fun stuff.

Like this pic of Tom Riette with the King that his granddaughter Shay Lynn caught on Saturday. We were back bouncing the tide water in front of the park and we had a kwikfish on a short leash with the magnum diver that this fish couldn't resist. In fact theres so many of them not being able to resist that starting tomorrow we're going to fish without bait to cut down on the harvest.  Now that's not all bad, my boat will be clean and instead of outworking the other guides to produce more fish we fall back on plane old outhouse luck, and you know how lucky I am so no worries....What happened is this, not enough kings and way to many reds = lots of commercial fishing = incidental king harvest = us in river trying to save a few hundred kings by fishing with no bait = commercial fishing continues...Its called management. When alls said and done the forecasted red run of 3 million fish will come in at a handy 10 to 12 million. But even though its taken a toll on our kings this kind of sight is everyday at mile 14, a fish box plum full of Kenai River bluebacks.

And oh....you notice the dip nets that harvested them along the tackle tray. The tackle tray that sometimes holds actual sport fishing gear. Everbody's gotta live I guess but I'll tell you this much...we eat as much red salmon as anyone  and ALL of ours are caught with a rod and reel, that's the way we do it...its what we stand for, its what we're all about.

So in the what we're all about department I just had to use this pic of Mack and Carole, it tells the whole story.  I know I used them last year in a pic on fishing the crowd but these guys are just so photogenic and so obviously enjoy each other and the fishing that they're my poster kids...and oh, they catch an awful lot of King salmon and let them swim away no worse for wear. And the net....well...thats a 'landing' net, my favorite kind. Must be something to it because I'll bet you all of these boats here would like to use it just like Mack and Carol did.

Thursday I saw Dr. David King. On august 4th at 9 am he's going to knock me out and stick the scope down my throat. He'll trim the scar tissue and then 'dialate' the esophagus where my stricture was to make it bigger. Its basically a balloon that stretches the area and because mine is so abnormally small he might do the procedure 2 or even 3 times in the next month or two. He'll also send off tissue to be biopsied but he says he certain its not tumorous because of the location and the look of it. So, good news eh?.