A fish story

From reading Mile 14 you get the gist of what has happened with our ' July ' Sockeye run. ADF+G just can't believe that they had to close it to get escapement and of course shouldn't have allowed all the 'emergency' commercial harvest before they knew the run size...It's called having egg on your face in most circles. SO....they start counting and counting and counting and before you know it it's the end of August and the sockeyes are still rolling in. The local paper called the late return  ' 'unprecedented'....Well it's unprecedented because it didn't happen. Our new Commercial fisheries high priest a guy named Brian whose next duty station will most likely be Galena Alaska or maybe even unemployed decided to open the commercial guys for an unprecedented Inlet wide opener. He says the run is 9 days late and he figures that there are 45,000 more reds in the Inlet after the sonar finally counted the needed 900,000 sockeyes, reds, pinks, silvers trout, sticks, whitefish, ghosts and plane old lies. So on the 23rd off  they   go and you know those guys ain't so dumb and if the fish are there they must be close and who would spend fuel hunting them so they must have  fished as close to the Kenai as is legal...the result....200 reds and 1200 silvers. mmmmmmm, that would be 600 sport fish limits worth.  I was going to say it's the worst case of fisheries management abuse I've ever seen but ya know it's been such a long ugly thing here that  I might have overlooked one or a hundred. The Governor is the start of this outright commercial bias, he needs to go...period.....In twomonths PLEASE don't vote for Walker and his ' unity ' ticket. His unity is himself and the gentry of Alaska who are the commercial industry here in Cook Inlet who think they own the fish, all the fish.

whew....I feel better know. So I'm in search of a steady guy to make me feel better about life, retirement and the way of the world. Ya see in  corporate america  I've heard of people close to retirement kinda being put out to pasture and not given responsibility because the view is with little time left they're not engaged and won't work hard. And I've been seeing some of my old best customers / friends helping other guides pay the bills. I have people in town I've known for 25 years who have trusted me in all cases that don't even call...oh well...I'd hoped to feel better than I do about retiring ... But here's one steady guy and his wife Mary. Thanks for being you Nate...Ya know the code of the west is a weird thing, everyone thinks they do it but seldom if ever do. But Nate who is  a tremendously successful man knows the code of the west by heart.

So me and MPeasy have been talking a lot about Montana as we have a house in Hamilton. Low and behold I get a call to fish a wonderful family from Florence just down the street, it has to be kizmet. We speak Montanease all day and have just a wonderful fellowship. The teenagers teased me and we bonded right nicely. Thanks for coming Ben and girls, I'm going to call you someday and hopefully you can come to a house warming party.....And oh baby, is that a nice Silver or what ? 14 1/2 pounds.

I know I'm a little hard on ADF+G. They deserve it. So I'm going to just show the pics of what another agency has done with there new boat launch at Eagle Rock.....' and the sign says....jeez guys, is it just me or is that a little over the top. All of you that can't do whatever it is they don't want you to do are welcome right here at Mile 14...