Out of warranty

I'd heard those stories. You turn 65 and things just start going wrong. I always thought that those stories were all part of the gag that is the ageing process....well, here I am at Central Peninsula Hospital on the day of my birthday, July 16th, having tests for just another speed bump along the way to eternity.

Yep, I'm in the test booth of the pulmonary dept feeling a little like Herb Stempel in the movie Quiz Show. I burnt my lungs with Chlorine at our building in Mexico and they haven't been the same since. As is standard human 'guy stuff ' I muscled through it all spring until I had to use a rescue inhaler on July 1st....yikes, the day my medicare kicked in. So I've also heard about the guy who leaves the planet right when he finally gets his first Social Security check....I'm going to try hard to not be that guy as well.

Ya know this day and age everyone is concerned about Internet security and identity theft. Well I kinda see it now, Google as nice as they were to greet me with birthday wishes it's kinda weird that they know and can do this so easily. Thanks Google but hey, no offense but we really don't need to get personal.

I had a great week of fishing. As the days went on the murky water changed into about as good as conditions you could ask for fishing artificial only. We really only had one bum trip. I had two runnung buddies in the boat that I really bonded with. Amy and Leslie are married to a couple guys who don't fish so they came to Alaska a week before them to get it done. I laughed a lot.

We had one fish jump higher than the one Amy caught but unlike this time that ones jump made the difference and he earned his freedom. At one time Amy kinda slumped ( I don't want to say fell ) onto the floor and held the rod up with one hand as Les helped her up....of course that was after it had to be free'd from a prop....but you can't argue with success. Thanks for coming you guys and especially this...how cool, she and I had had friendly banter before I ever actually met her. At 5:30 a.m. I got a caring hug from a complete stranger.

As for this next week...well.....here's what I think. Our red run looks like this could be the year when the worm turns. Sonar numbers for sockeye are horrible as is fishing success. So we need numbers soon but the temporary halt to the commercial fishery should help us get our King counts going in the right direction again. This week I expect pretty good fishing , then we'll see what happens. I sure hope ADF+G doesn't get in a situation where they have to explain why they let so much commercial harvest happen in the early season and why nearly 2000 King got killed when they would have put us into the middle of our escapement range instead of the lower end that we're headed to now.

Norwegian boot dryer....Keith'l like this one. The best boot dryer I've ever owned and I've used a few because in my business dry feet is a must was made in Norway. They slip into your boots and are called The Konning made in Oslo Norway. So when I came across this guy (thanks for the assist MPeasy ) it was obvious he had a bit of the Nord in him....brilliant use the heat from you tail pipes.....

Starting now and for the rest of the King season with the exception of two singles all my trips are with friends....So we'll see you all soon. 😎🐟🎤🎸🎸🎵🎵

UPDATE...and a meer two hours after I published this edition of Mile 14.

So what do I know ? ADF+G just announced that we will have catch and release fishing only for King salmon either until we get fish or the season closes July 31st....It's true of course that we all want to protect the fish for the future...BUT...this is an absolute outrage. ADF+G before even assessing the strength of the Sockeye run allowed for ' emergency' orders letting the commercial guys fish extra time to the tune of 1800 and some REPORTED ( we all know there's more ) dead King salmon. Even half of these fish might have avoided our closure to keeping fish.....AND now we cannot retain Kings but the commercial guys still will be able to kill them....HOW is this conservation as they so stupidly throw that word around in the ADF+G emergency notice ???

With salmon runs failing all over the state we really need some help, some leadership, some fairness and some problem solving. We ain't getting none of that...if this continues, can you imagine Alaska without salmon ?