Helllllo September, my favorite month

That's how ya do it around here if you want a barbecued Rib Steak on Labor Day. It's really not been so bad with the rain....it only really has rained when I  either fish, barbecue or want to ride my bike, no big deal.

mmmmmm.....well the fishing is only so so. We're catching them but being the spoiled Alaska fishing guides that we are , we're not catching them fast enough , big enough or just enough period. All week we batted about 750 % except for one.... I had this guy out fishing.

That's Ed Krohn and his buddy Steve. Ed is maybe one of the few sports people around here that's seen as many salmon as I have. He's a guy that helped build Soldotna and had the first real Body shop here, Kenai Auto. His son Mike won Soldotna Drug's Salmon Derby in 1978 with and 88 pounder. When I was a kid here in the 70's Ed and my ex-boss Wayne Passe had all the stuff, fancy jet boats and new trucks to pull them with and I'd have loved to fish the Kenai with them....now it's 40 years later and he's fishing with me, and we're friends...pretty cool. BUT.... I don't mind telling you that I had a little performance anxiety . I told him I hadn't felt this kind of pressure for getting fish since I fished the Governor.  I so wanted to catch a limit of silvers and well, that one there is the only one which is actually twice as many as none eh ?  We had a great day and talked of old times, and times to come. Of course being an old timer we had to tease each other a bit. For float fishing I had him use a new device, a bobber with a stopper and a nice Stradic 4000 spinning real on a Lamiglass G 1000 Kenai Special....but here's how he prefers his float tackle. Yup, that's a wine cork.

I finished up with the Gary Blinn crowd and we had the usual Mexi-feed that our buddy Joe Ray De La Cruz sponsored. Made me pine away for Mazatlan actually. Here's Joe Ray, he's one in a million and I especially liked this pic of Gary with the chilled beverages, he's a detail guy.

That guy in the middle of the next pic is Chuck Sanders, nice fish, he's flanked by Rich and Tom. Being a Tennessee guy Chuck can flat play all stringed instruments so every two years we have musical fellowship. I'm  learning from Chuck and someday I'll be doing those lead ins. Below the fish is a short 30 secnd video of him flat picking a little blue grass....Thanks for coming and being part of my musical life here at Mile 14 Chuck.

Yesterday we anchored up in a line-up with about 12 boats within view. We saw about 12 fish caught (by humans that is, the seals were feasting) and we caught 6 of them, not bad....but it takes a certain discipline that I really don't have to be so patient as to sit in one place for 6 full hours waiting for the bites.  It's my nature to move around and prospect for the mother lode but there's just not enough fish for that...my friend Keith is an artist at it so I guess I gotta learn to slow down a bit this day and age. Here's pic of Jim and his two sons Matt and Tim who persevered, good job guys.

This guy and his apprentice has been hanging out for a week or so here at Mile 14. MP calls him the ' lawn boy' . Last year if you remember I got that cool video of a couple bulls jousting but then we had a little speed bump when they jousted into the rope we have attached to a sawhorse to keep the looky lou's from turning around on our grass. A big one got intangled then wandered up to the highway for help where a do gooder called ADF+G and the rumor goes that they sedated the poor guy and removed the rope...but they didn't return it. So this year we're being way more careful with the pets....come have a look.

When he showed up he still had some velvet antlers but you can see how shiney they are when he just recently rubbed it all off. Pretty darn cool this place.