It's a boy

Yep, he left the world at 31 inches and somewhere around 16 or 18 pounds and for me it was one of the most exciting fish of my life.

If you remember last year on her birthday it took MP exactly 3 minutes into the first troll to catch a jumbo which we released. Well this one was the day after her birthday and bit after  a good 10 minutes into our first troll. We were where we always are, under the Cottonwoods above Eagle Rock with not a boat in sight. The bite was classic, the rod doing it's gentle flatfish thumping and it stops for a second and actually goes a bit slack as ol slimey stops the action and then the hook gets him and down it goes, fast and hard. Unlike some ladies MP muscles it out of the rod holder and with one good jerk the fight is on.

As she tires the fish I try to get one of those cool ' in the water shots ' where the fish is bright and glistening in the emerald glacier water but I guess I'm losing a step or so because this is as good as it got.

MP finally says " put that @#$&* camera away and net this fish " so I do and as soon as it's safely in the net the rod goes slack and the line flies  up loose...and the plug is still in the fish. mmmmmm.....a bit of a debate goes on about how that plug connector came to be open. The pescador says the snap was closed when she put the Flatfish on and it must of come open in the fight. Now I've netted just a few fish and have never seen that but hey, there's a first time for every thing.

It was just the right size. We have a new early run management plan that only counts the ' big fish ' which are the best spawners and allows us to keep Kings under 34 inches. Which we did . It's really ritualistic that first King of the year and of course they are the very best eating if you talk with salmon people. Caught commercially over at the Copper River Delta right now that fish is worth a couple hundred bucks, easy. We like to steak the first one and our meal was the boneless butt pieces simply fried in butter. We shared the rest with salmon loving friends and neighbors, the Alaska way.

 Ain't that a great shot ? I had a guy tell me one time as we were gutting fish " your gutting table has a better view than my hot tub "...

My song of the week is a Guy Clark song that was kinda the signature song of my friend Ben Ellis. When ever we played together he would sing this song and about a year ago the weirdest thing happened. Guy Clark who I think is one of the best song writers ever  died and Steve Earll came out with his tribute album ' Guy' and of course this song was on it and I thought I should work on it...well the weirdest thing happened, I realized I already new it and just didn't know. I started with an A chord because Guy usually used the key of A and then the lyrics just rolled off my tongue just from hearing Ben play it so many times years ago. It's the magic of music, the connectivity with the story.

For this one me and the audio dept. here at Mile 14 went down to the office to record it and I think it turned out just fine, maybe the best one I've done actually...

A buddy of mine texted me last night to remind I was a bit behind schedule on my blog posts and I looked and he was right....yikes, the time goes by and we can do better. I'll try to get one out every week because we're going to have an ultra exciting summer and I want to invite you all to share it with us, please don't give up on Mile 14 if you enjoy it....😎