Finally

today is the last day of the commercial fishing season. I listened to our local call in radio show today and the host who is of course a commercial fisherman was lamenting the closure of their fishery while there were still fish out there...mmmm....did it even occur to her that it's finally somebody else's turn ? After roughly 1000 people have caught 1.67 million, yes , million sockeyes and 165,000 silvers. The Eastside set netters who impact our fishery the most caught 4,800 silvers on their last opener on August 10th, from what I see of it that 4800 fish would fuel a successful sport fishery for a week.....man oh man, this is screwed up. BUT, the fisheries in general seem to be healthy ( accept for those poor folks in the Mat-Su that see the Silver fisheries closed for sport fishing ) and I have to say that I'm soooo happy to see our King salmon back. If I thought we'd have screwed this thing up I'd be sick over it but here's the graph and you can clearly see that every year since the crash has gotten better and all systems are go for Jeff King's ' Adios Amigo's tour in 2018.

Ya know King season is just so dynamic that I seldom have time to notice the things that I'm driven by. It's only a month but I guess I missed this stuff. As we sat on anchor the other morning I shot this sunrise and said good morning to the Kenai River.

One of my maxim's with fishing is this.....never expect to out fish a 12 year old. Well meet a 13 year old named Henry Boles. This last week Silvers were tough to find, there were some a round and we caught them  but not without working hard and having some moe joe. This morning I was headed downriver to get a place at the bluffs when I went by a line up across from fall-in-hole and noticed that the place old Wes Yamoaka used to fish was open. It's fast water and the pick kinda drug me down a little close to the down river boat but I figured we'd start fishing and then I'd adjust the anchor later. Well, 5 minutes in Henry has his first silver in the boat, the first one in all 10 boats we can see. Then 15 minutes in he has his second on and as we're rules people and don't cheat so Henry lets this one go so he can keep fishing. Then 1/2 hour in Henry has his 3rd on and keeps it with a promise from the adults that he can play their fish if he wants which is perfectly legal. So, in the first light of the morning Henry has caught the only fish in a line up of 10 guide boats....man oh man that's gettin er done Henry.

Sharon Smith brought her son Tony and we struggled. Rain storm after rain storm went through the lower river and it looked like we were going to be as fish less as we were wet. But perseverance is the key to success and she caught her limit in the last hour of the day.....thanks for coming.

This week is going to be good. My old friends Dick and Loretta are here and we're going to trip down memory lane. I met them in the early 80's and boy howdy we have done some fishing.....so stand by, as my favorite Dayrl Dodd;s song goes.... 'thing's are fixin to get real good'.