That's a lotta stuff for just 3 minutes

That's what I said as we headed to the end of our Tuesday trip. I had Dr. Shane from the Blinn group along with his wife Beth and son Austin with wife Ashley.  We're anchored up in the Big Eddy or as Greg Davis would say ' at the Edward' and along comes  Melissa the Park Ranger. Being in the mood that I'm usually in I got out my camera, it went like this....
" Is it OK if I take your picture ? ", ' Why, is it going to end up on a blog or something ?" " now what would make you ask that ?'.....( long silence from the Park Ranger ).... "I promise I'd only say good things about you"..." OK".....so here goes.......well, mmmmm, ahhhhh, she was actually kinda fun that day so keep it up Melissa, we like you best that way.

So I get my Park Ranger pic and as fast as you can say ' let me see your licenses' one of the rods goes off, no wait, two rods go off. I cast off the anchor line and we float free dodging several boats anchored below us and low and behold one of the two is a jumping , going wild Silver Salmon....which we bonk and as you can see old Austin here was mighty pleased with that deal. Catch one, release one, dodge 3 boats and never spill your coffee, I told Melissa " they don't teach that at guides school".

And as I idle back to our bouyed up anchor we get that Marlin Perkins moment with not one but two moose swimming the river within 25 feet of us. With the quiet 4-stroke power you could here them snorting and spitting water, pretty cool and what a way to end a great day.

Shane's wife Beth is kind of a city Slicker and wasn't sure about fishing or even Alaska in general. Well she had a great time and as you can see from this smile liked her first silver salmon. I guess that's the essence of guiding and when Shane thanked me for making her feel wanted there as well as safe and secure it meant a lot to me....that's my job.

It's been wet and overcast here so when the sun comes out everybody notices, one of those ' ya don't know what ya got till it's gone deals' so the other morning we got a glimpse and it caused the most unusual lighting feel. It was this weird band of sun that seemed to start at the river instead of the sky...ya know what I mean ? It was like there was only a little bit of it coming down and somehow the moisture magnified it like my coin collectors glass and....pretty scientific eh ?...that's my theory and I liked it real good.

I think everybody is struggling to catch a lot of silvers, at least I hope so and I'm not the only one. I guess I was trying to be to cute and looking in the sloughs and the high water spots so about mid week I decided to save the gas and throw the pic out and fish one good area hard....and guess what, it works. Here's pic of me and Volker with a nice one. I don't know why they wanted me in the pic but they did.

Shane has nice kids. Here's Brandon with a silver. I left the plug in him so you can see what killed him. And of course Shane was chuckling pretty hard and had to get in on it. I've seen this guy every 2 years for the last 20 years....pretty cool....

The Kenai Peninsula State Fair was a disappointment . All vendors and few exhibits. I guess I'm at a point in life where I'd rather learn something than eat Funnel Cake and buy Bee Wax soap.  And the biggest let down was that with all the B.S. going on in local politics there was only one candidate there ...a democrat if that matters to ya. So I couldn't find an influential person to talk fish politics with and explain how screwed we are being but I did enjoy watching MP watching a goose with is head submerged....kinda the same thing as a politician I guess.

And of course you know I'm on this quest to become a better person and if I could really find the meaning of life it might help....so I'll look anywhere. I just don't understand why the sooth sayer at the fair didn't have a ' includes all boxes box'....ya know a kind of big hit deal, you win it all. I mean....why should a guy have to hit 'past lives' when all ya really need to hit  is ' Love' ?

So I left the fair kinda wondering some of those kind of things....Why are the politicians so lazy ? Why wasn't the Love box on the Wheel bigger ? Why didn't they have Chocolate ice cream to go with the chocolate dip and chocolate sprinkles ?????.....why ?  But I guess it was all worth the drive, I did find a guitar playing pig...and for me, that's enough.