the season in the rearview

With just one trip left to do in a couple days I thought it might be good to review this last season while it's all fresh in my melon.  And I'm happy to say that with a turn around of our King fishery and a steady Silver / Pink run we might just have operated in the black here at Mile 14...my friend Chick Kishbaugh told me years ago " the idea behind business is to make more money than you spend".

All of us in the community ask an awful lot of this old river. Even last year we could see the King Salmon shortage improving so I expect it will be pretty darn good again come 2017. Here's the figures.....our escapement (fish to spawn) came in at 18,790 which is at the low end of the ADF+G goal of between 15,000 and 30,000. We really should shoot for higher number if any of you math guys over there are reading this. The sport Harvest was 8,558 and the commercial harvest was 6,958 with the personal use (dip netter mania) at 1,289.....That's a lot of King salmon so with just a little massaging and some actual salmon management we could have comfortably  hit the middle of the escapement goal and all still would have had a great season. Here's pic of ADF+G staff working on that 'computer error ' they confessed to on the sonar counts this year. No biggy whats a few hundred fish amongst friends eh ?

So for us, the Pro's from Dover it went like this....we fished a total of 95 people for King salmon and caught 57 Kings. I'd say that's pretty darn good. We only had one ' schamoozle' all year and that was when poor Jaqi lost her first King salmon to an idiot on my birthday. You'd be proud of me, in my youth I would have showed this guy my Montana side but at the age of 63 I just let him know how disappointed we were that he didn't move his boat. It happened first thing in the morning so I told Jaq she'd hook another one....she didn't.

You saw this picture about half way through the season....well this is the finished sculpture. Not that bad, if I had a beer with every fish cleaning it means I cleaned a LOT of fish. You'll also notice the Bee suit Ty gave me to navigate through the dangers of my allergies...it worked. I never got stung once but MPeasy got it 4 times.

Here's pic of my kids Max and Sam , pre- horsepower limit.  MP was going through the pics for her trip to Montana,,,,,did I tell you that I'm  bacheloring   right now ? Well, that's always a good story so I hope you come back to get it. Tonight's the big presidential debate...it's tough one, who'd watch that when the Mariners are playing for a chance at the Wildcard ????? In any case the person I love the most went to paint her house in Montana and meet for the first time a first cousin she didn't know she had...pretty cool

Well I wish I had some deep wisdom and observations to pass on  in the edition of Mile 14, I just don't.... I'm kinda just winding down and training like I do every fall. I really hope to achieve my goal of 185 pounds this year and if I don't....well....I just keep trying. Our rain has let up and the river is getting fishy again so I'd bet you chartreuse an flame spin and glo that I'll have some fish pics for next week.

And for all of you that were with me in 2016....MUCHO GRACIAS AMIGO'S....I've got the best fishing customers in the world.

Please keep coming back....we'll have surf fish pics from Mexico in no time at all....