Ya think it'll rain ?

You don't need a Farmers Almanac to know when its going to rain around here, it ALWAYS rains on two days....the day you go to the Kenai Peninsula Fair and the first day of Little League baseball.  On Friday I fished with my old friends Scott and Sue Steffy and it rained buckets with a 25 or 30 mph wind, what I call a 'character builder'. We caught our fish but boy oh boy they were hard earned.  The next day found me and my dinner date at the Fair, here's a pic to let you know what we were up against. And oh, that would be a vanilla with white chocolate dip with almond sprinkles bar she's eating.

I'm not usually to much into the veggies and flowers at the fair as we have a wriggly botanical garden right here at Mile 14 but we spent a little time looking. I mean....it was raining. So MP got this pic of me with an English Cuke kind of like the ones we grow. She was a little embarrassed to take the pic but you know me, 'never say wooo in a horse race'. She did however mention that ...and this is a quote " you couldn't look any more ridiculous". Oh well.

This Fair calls itself the 'biggest little Fair in Alaska' and its really come along in the last 30 years or so. I remember when me and Walt Larson used to be kind of rodeo people the bull riders sometimes rode cows. mmmm....well as you can see they have full blown bucking bulls now with horns and all. With the mud this year the rodeo was superb.

We got home and drove down the hill to check on the boat launch and walla, another first, or so we thought. These two eagles were bravely eating the silver carcasses that the gulls leave laying around and they were so dark and huge we thought they were Golden Eagles. So like Marlin Perkins I gave them a stalk and they let me get with 20 feet or so. After looking at the pics we're thinking now that they're Baldies that have molted off their mottled looking feathers of youth. We've been finding alot of feathers around so that's most likely the deal. If any of you know anymore about it than me just chine in here, we need to know.

On Wednesday I fished with Doug Bryant and his dad Matt, who incidentally has the same throat problem as me. We had our limit of silvers real early and easy so I figured I'd just ride the tide down to the ocean and see how the commercial season is wrapping up. It was a cloudy morning but the horizon was clear so we could see all the volcanoes and I kind of like this pic of the bridge with everyone headed to work with the mountains just peeking over it. Gorgeous.

Two more miles downriver and we come across the old McNeil Libby cannery which dates back to the 1800's. Really cool old buildings that have a soft spot in my heart, I worked the retorts here in the summer of 72. (the retort is the huge walk in pressure cooker for salmon cans)  This place has been shut down for about 10 years now and a guy is trying to turn it into a tourist facility, I really hope it works for him.

So I'm cleaning the boat that afternoon and right there in front of me is a sight never before seen by me...Alaska Dept of Fish and Game employees floating a NET right through our backyard. Yikes. I guess these guys just don't get it. They obviously are researching something...but with a &$%@# net?  I guess one way to know whats down there is to kill it....c'mon guys we gotta do better than that. It reminds me of  trout population study done back in the 80's with electro shock. Our people would throw direct current into the river and up would float hundreds of trout to count.  My friend and fellow fishing guide Bill Gavin saw that the bigger fish were all dieing of a broken back. It turns out that the the bigger the fish the more current they get and the end result is the scientific death of the broad stock, our best spawners. Right now the few King salmon that are around are trying to spawn, I'm thinking we need every single one of them to be successful...so you ADF&G guys STOP it with the NET. Period.

The other day a guy at launch asked me where he could see a bear. I told him just spend the night at my house. Its now routine that Jet-Dog wakes us up and the brownies have come up from the river to look for food, they're obviously habituated to our place. When the launch is quiet they eat the same carcasses as those two Eagles were, in the woods below the house there are piles of fish bones and trails that look like highways, this morning we had fresh bear steamer all over the road. The first pic below is where the brownies come up and down from the river. Then as if they weren't enough to deal with , when me and MP rode our bike this morning we find these black bear tracks right down the middle of the road in the subdivision. Yikes, I'm feeling like Dr. Dolittle. So I'm keeping both the gun and the camera close, hopefully I'll get a pic for you soon.

One thing you get used to in Alaska is having your friends move away. Dick and Loretta Hahn first met us in the mid 80's and then retired to Slowdotna. But things change which is good I guess and they moved to Squim Washington.  So they came up for a week and we went fishing for the 131st time. Fishing was a bit off for us that day but we caught some and just as important, caught up. Thanks for coming Hahny's we love ya.....