The right stuff

 Nobody will ever tell you recently retired guide #003 on the world famous doesn't know what he's doing. So as I bought my yearly new Plano Box because the rust they collect while you're up north discolors the expensive lures in them I decided on a new strategy . This year to keep the salt water out I'm not returning used lures to the box until after they're bathed in fresh water at the end of the day, just like my rod and reels. We'll see how it works . Just as on the Kenai where I'm convinced the shiniest and prettiest lures work best here on the playa I hate to see the lures with the dulled rust on them...

I also carry a small plano box just for Mirrolures which is my got to lure. The big box has top water poppers , Cabo Killers and Rangers. A collection of metal from 1 to 2 ounces and rubber swimfish in 1/2 to 2 ounces as well as pluma's feather jigs . So if you're coming to surf fish that box right there will about cover it....nice , new and shiney. And seeings as I'm on an education mission here I'll give you my number one piece of advice...if you don't know what to throw or if fishing is brutally slow throw metal, anything that swims will jump on a cast master or equivalent. The reason I have different sizes and shapes is simple the castmasters have great action but don't sink very fast and the action that makes them so good creates a lot of  drag that can make reeling tiresome. And for max distance yu want the lean looking metal like a Hopkins or a big swedish pimple....nothing will out cast a 2 ounce P-Line Lazer Minnow.....here's some consumables me and Jack got north of town a couple days ago.

Jack was looking for the good surf break and as we drove along the beach we stopped at any rocky point we came to and I caught a snapper off of the first two, on metal . We end up stopping while Jack gets out on his high tech sit down board that has a rudder etc...really cool.  As he surfed I cautiously climbed out onto the rocks and hooked the unstoppable. It was shiney and long and lean so I think one of the Mackerels they call a Snake Mackerel. I grabbed the reel and locked up the spool with only about 20 wraps left so that monster was half way to Cabo when the line parted. It was nice to be out in the wilderness again.

So with two nice pargo's it was off to Loco Loco's for entero. This something you just couldn't do at home and it sooooo  good. Crunchy and served with as nice garlic butter, washed down with a couple Pacifico's and a side order of fantastic conversation about books....Thanks Jack and Tammy for a great night and day.

So I'm half way through the process of 4 dental visits and new tooth. Right around the corner from Francisco's office is the coolest and cleanest little Marisco's joint where we had the crab tostados that we're hooked on....but check out this menu, next time we're steeping out and  going to untried palate places.

Here's an early Merry Christmas to all my readers....and thanks for reading...it's kinda like I say about the music, ' it's only music if someone hears it '

Jinksed

 The title of my last post before leaving the USA is what did it.  MP has been saying for a while now that I used up all my fishing moe-joe by making money off the sport and she appears to be right again... We got here 10 days ago and it was hot , humid and just perfect as I raced to get a rod and reel rigged before sunset. I hustled to the beach and my first cast was nadda and my second cast was a nice two or three pound Toro. I quickly released him and decided not to get a pic as the beach just had to be chucked full of them....right ?....well, 10 days later I'm still waiting for the next tug.

Now this fishing deal is something that leads to theory after theory and after going into executive session with the remnants of Team X we've decided that it's mother nature....how's that for an ADF+G endorsed scientifically researched theory ? The hurricane a couple months has had a huge effect, the in shore water is still murky although nice and warm. We're seeing a lot of baitfish and Dan reports that November was the best Rooster fishing he has ever had.  We see Charter Boats trolling close to shore so you know me, I'm here to tell ya that when you give somebody $$$$ to go fishing he knows exactly what he's doing....usually. So that brings me around to the quit sniveling and  keep fishing part of the story. I used to actually like it when a little slow fishing made for an increased challenge...but this is ridiculous. But I'll keep fishing, I've always said that there's two types of fishermen : those that listen to rumors and those who create them. I intend to be that last guy .

So here's the Mexico equivalent of the post a Moose picture because you didn't catch any fish....I've done that many, many a time right here on Mile 14.

But I did find adventure. My friend Jack built himself the cutest little Boston Whaler clone and wanted me to go with him to mark several near by fishing spot way points on his also new Garmin GPS which is the same machine I have on the white boat back in Mooootana. So Jack being the Tarzan that he is brings along his scuba gear because the first waypoint is a wreck in 75' and he wants to make sure it's really there....Yikes I've never seen anything like this in my life, I'm an on top of the water guy.  So we anchor up and Jack ties the tank to the side of the boat and jumps in , puts it on and then rednecks me because when I handed him the spear gun I unhooked the pin wire somehow. So now I know about spear guns and he disappears. About 7 or 8 minutes that felt like hours went by and he comes up saying it's there for sure but the water was to murky for a good shot on the fish he saw....Then I go to pull anchor and of course it's stuck so Jack says no problema and dives down and retrieves the little plow anchor.  By this time I'm about as impressed with Jack as I was seeing Les Anderson with his 100 pound world record salmon.....did I mention that Jack is 75 years old  ? Jack if you read this I'll just say thank you for the inspiration, I was kinda needing a lift and you sir are an amazing man.

If you're wondering why it took me 10 days to write a Mile 14 story after I promised to do better I got a good reason and new acronym to explain it T.I.M. , this is Mexico. Usually when you leave your condo for the season and return only about half the stuff works....when you leave it for two season none of the stuff works. The only weird thing was the Mabe brand refrigerator that has been making terrible sounds for years and is the oldest electronic device we have was still running...but nothing else....Air conditioner, nada. Internet and phone , nadda . Television, nadda....and even the shower head had a severe prostate problem . So I fired TelMex and got my buddy Ceser from Aztech computer services over and now I have the best internet . Thank you Ceser ! And oh' my camera's rebelled. I brought my reliable shock proof Lumix and it's snapper button froze up and my back up Lumix had the telephoto extend and never return. So, if you notice Mile 14 is photo deprived and I resort to cheesey google pics just hold your horses until I get a new camera figured out . 

Bet ya wonder what that is eh ? Well it's MP being sanitized at Franciso our Dentists office, very thorough and all the Beatle's music you can handle. When he fixed my front teeth years ago he got me to be a serious flosser. So serious that I felt like the regular floss wasn't tight enough between a gap I had next to a grown so I went to using dental tape which is really just 1/4 inch light boat anchor line. Well it got stuck and I gave it the old Jeffro treatment and that cap flew 6 feet across the bathroom and chipped a mirror....ahhh not really I'm joking about the mirror.  So that happened in Ham Bone about 6 months ago and now the teeth moved just enough to need the entire thing re done. Oh well....4 visits gives us 4 chances to go to the best Marisco's beach side restaurant where we had Jaiba (crab ) tostado's that were so good that they made my first case of tourista more than worth it. 

O.K. There's the launch of Mile 14 southern Bureau 21 / 22....I gotta stop writing. I have  busy day :

take the bike up to OXXO for a beer run.

finish Tom Clancy.

get ready for Friday night.

repair 4 rod eyes ( did I tell you how they rust out and when you open the rod case they inserts fall out and break on the floor )

do my cardio ( stairs ) 

Practice new songs. 

Hot tub...see ya again soon

 

Dead fish to follow

 I'm goin to  where the sun keeps shining,  through the pouring rain.

Goin where the weather suites my clothes.

Banking off the northeast wind, sail on summer breeze,

skipping over the ocean like a stone...and I won't let you leave my love behind.

Well the world has certainly changed , and with all our restless movement and ongoing search I guess we've helped it along. It'll be strange and a happy change ( damn that's poetic ) to get to Mile 14 southern Bureau in a couple days. Our Surf Fishing Team X is going to need some re organization so it's the right time for us to get there and I'm the right guy to realign the team. Ernie, our second Vice President in charge of details is not coming to Mazatlan this year , maybe never again and I  sure hope not.  Ramon passed away, Slah is always busy with Ara Mex ( a great place to eat so get on down there )  so we don't adventure as much as we used to. Of course my first morning I'll see Alejandroe's smiling face and Stewart will come jogging down the beach with a great fish story about how our friend Gabriel just lost a huge...and a couple mornings later I'll head for the jetty and get Kenny to tell me how shitty the fishing is while Jesse reals a in a Guyo in the background...and then come January Lockwood will stroll up the beach and all the Welle clan will be escaping the North Dakota winter and of course Jason is always doing some wild fishing....it'll  be on. 

I guess one thing that the covid and several recent events in my life have taught me is this....don't ever take anything for granted again. I new it, I just chose to kind of ignore it. This place as seen from Chalio's boat is one of the things I've taken for granted. It's a bit dysfunctional and sometimes weird, like when they've told me 3 different times now that my bikes need to be moved to another place but all in all it's magic...So for all my friends at LaMarina I promise you this : I will not be bitching....unless of course they make me move those $%#* bikes for a 4th time.

So here's list of the the things I have for Mexico in our 20th season. You know how I like a list, a little structure for the truly unstructured.

1. Appreciation.

2. Patience, you won't hear me bitch about my HOA fee's, promise.

3. 7 or 8 new songs....I'd have more if I could just keep from balling every time I work on a Hobo Jim song.

4. String's for Kiki's guitar.

5. A few gifts...although I do have to report that the smoked salmon era is over, maybe next year.

6. 10 extra pounds .

7. I'm bringing along this gorgeous woman / lover / friend / counselor / lender of conscience / common sense advocate and safety officer...

So we'll see you soon Mazatlan. I've made myself a promise to write more so I sure hope you all come back...and Radke, you better be there for Christmas or we're have coal delivered to the Kenai River. 😎💚🎸🎵🐟

Over Escapement Montana Style

Living at Mile 14 for a 1/4 century and in Soldotna for damn near another 1/4 we're used to critters.  We had Caribou entangle their antlers in our fence , we had Moose sleeping under the eve, we had Brown Bears nosing the window wall and of course they got MP's tulips every spring....but the Deer here in Helena are nasty, they're everywhere. And unlike Ham-bone from which we just escaped these deer are big Mule Deer with voracious appetites and a confidence that almost looks like they could charge you.

I tell people that in Alaska they would never have this, there's literally trails in town and not only are they habituated to people they're habituated to my beautifully landscaped yard. Years ago in the Katmai National Park area on an isolated Hagermeister Island the Reindeer heard got out of control and were eating the Island bare and creating huge earthen trails all around the island.  Well in Alaska you can't have that so they hired ( coincidently ) some Montana cowboys who were going to round them up and then sell them....well, that worked so good they were on the plane back in 4 days. So in comes the National guard with helicopters and machine guns and problem solved...and that's what we need here !

But the way it works around here is a committee ( ya know the old adage ' if you want to slow something down form a committee' ) is trying to decide the proper deer density in the urban area. They go out at night with spotlights and count the deer and then hope to come up with a number to manage for....yikes, these guys are right out of the Alaska Dept. of fish and Game ( adf+g) playbook. The number being bandied around is 25 per square mile.  Yawn for emphasis.  Here's a couple pics I took to illustrate why they gotta go. The first one is the trail through our lush side garden and the second one is...well just what everybody needs is piles of doinkers as Geno used to call them.

So when I finally get my wings here and start to try and help I got good ideas...and they're free. The right number for urban deer population should be zero. Period. None. Notta. And then when whatever program that's designed fails like they all do we end up with maybe 1/2 of which we had before and that's moving forward. I'd relate to these Helena people what the Congressman for all Alaska Don Young so accurately said " you can't just let nature run wild " .  And then if I had a minute left in my 3 minute lecture I'd tell them about ADF+G's over escapement theory that was actually created by and sold to them by the commercial fishing industry whose mantra is ' the only good fish is a dead fish '....killed by them  of course. It goes like this : to many salmon spawning in a stream will reduce the run because they use up all the habitat  and spawn on top of themselves. Then the smolt of these over escaped fish go out to sea and there as so many of them that they eat all the plankton and all the bait and , well it's just a big mess.  So there has to be a right number for density and that to many fish is worse than not enough so they should error on the side of $$$ and kill em all. Never mind that common sense will tell you that the fish and the deer have been around a hell of a lot longer than the managers ...ooopp's.....they prefer to be called scientists. 

OK, I'll give it to some people that they are kinda cute when they're fawns.. But just like kittens grow into smelly- stinking - crapping in the house cats they quit being cute at some point. So ...idea # 2 part b on page 37 which is highlighted, and it's an easy one. Obviously we can't be  shooting off guns or arrows in town so we have Mule deer trapping season....

ahhhh, there's a cute one. In the mean time I'm told by locals that they make deer repellent products that work on their sophisticated olfactory sense . Some of it is smells they don't like and some are smells of things they're afraid of, like human beans. mmmmm....well, hello, there's only about 50,000 people in this town ,  maybe that ain't enough smell to work. 

ore-a-gun , ore-a-gone , ore-a-man theres a lot of people here

 

That right there was our first over the ocean / over the beach sunset since we left Alaska 15 months ago.  Having missed the Mexico winter I was struck how the sandy beach reminded me more of that than Alaska...and how much we'd missed it, you can't really be a sunset expert without a west facing beach, although here in Mooontana we get good ones from the mountains but seeing the sun just drop out of sight and the famous ' green flash ' is sooooo cool. Once when new to Mexico I told somebody that the sunset was fantastic, they replied with ' well you must have great sunsets in Alaska. I said we do but all those darn mountains and Glaciers get in the way ! Here's me and MP happy / happy.

We went to the coast to see my sister and my nieces, all Alaskan's . I have a great nephew who I haven't seen since he was just a lttle kid and like me he is driven by the music, it was great to play and talk story with Miles and his brother Connor....I'm not sure if I embraced it long ago but after the kids dad died and I was told that now I'm the Patriarch of the family but on this trip I realized....I can do that job....here's us with Mitch, Molly and the boys.

And Mpeasy on the beach with Molly and Melonie my sisters two daughters...I guess it was just a natural migration for us all and now we're reunited, a northern herd.

For me the trip was one of discovery. I've heard so much from friends and guides about the fishing culture and resources of the Oregon coast. I have to say that there was way more of everything there than I thought. If my old neighbors were disturbed when the number of Kenai Guides hit 400 they'd barf at the thought of sharing the water with guides in Oregon....there are thousand of them, they're everywhere. I had a conversation on the dock in Garabaldi with a nice lady who ran rental boats. I told her I was surprised at the number of guides....she said they're like Carnies, they'll go anywhere and do anything...  I laughed a pretty good gut chuckle deciding not to tell her that she was talking to a guy who's proud  that he raised a family and put two kids through school on guide money, Carney money....And promotion ?, well us Kenai people are pikers it turns out.

And why fish 4 people when you can fish 6 ?  Here's an Alumaweld just like old #003 accept it's 4 ft longer and 6 inches deeper. These boats are beautiful but with the liquid sunshine the coast is known for I'll be hiring the guide with a top..

This guide came into the Harbor  for a shore break. You could hear  him coming with some kind of new age musi...ahh....noise blaring. It was raining and they were keeping warm with beer, we usually used coffee, and of course you notice the life jackets, but.....well just another Carney. Sure wish I'd come up with that  term for Mile 14 years ago and they'd of loved it at the Kenai River Guide Academy. I can't get over the size of those boats.

This how it's done in the protected water of Garibaldi bay.  They were trolling for salmon and usually there were pods of them all fishing together where the hidden structure must be and the right currents for the bite I'd guess. Like all of this fishing it looks kind of random but you can bet these Carney's are just as good at it as any in the nation....you can't make money by not knowing what you're doing.

I could kind of tell by the energy that the salmon fishing wasn't really do soing well and maybe because of the weather that kept the boats in protected water. For me the reall story was the abundance of Dungeness Crabs....they are everywhere, the charter boats service the pots while they salmon fish, the docks all have people throwing pots and rings and even snorkelers along the rocks gigging them with sticks. Here's apick of my new friends Steve and Kyle with their first one of the day off the Garibaldi dock. They told me all about the seasons and the harvest etc....thanks for sharing the experience you guys, I know you're reading this.

Although they had rings on the bottom this first legal Dungy was caught with a fishing rod and a crab snare....I've never seen or heard of such a thing and I was duly impressed. Steve had chicken in it and he cast it out for 10 minutes and then said " here we go " as he gave it a good hard hook set and reeled this guy up , entangled in the snare.

I was going to buy some crab but Steve told me that the commercial season was closed and that accounted for the current price of 16 bucks a pound ( which makes that Dungy worth at least $32.00 ) . What a concept and something unheard of in Alaska...make harvest available to the sport guys when the commercials  aren't fishing, Steve said they catch so few that the management for sport is generous. Here's the dock crew, all working togther, smiling and having fun, the sport fishing culture that I know has the same value as the family owned commercial fishing culture that seems to have all the priority in Alaska. I really liked it and will be out doing that in  Oregon real soon, gotta catch them because there's no way I'm paying 35 bucks for one crab when I can tow my boat out and pay about the same to do it myself...makes sense eh ? The pic below is the couple with ALL the right stuff.

As I left the dock I noticed a boat. The unmistakeable flat bow up typical of an Alumaweld sled of the 1970's era . These boats kind of swam in a bow up / stern down configuration, I think part of it was that because of Jet use they were rated for far more horsepower therefore more weight than they should have been. I caught a ton of salmon, had a lot fun and made some serious $$$$ with one just like this.

As I drove out of town I stopped to take more pics....It was raining so hard that these rocks didn't have 1/2 the normal sea birds on them, musta gone inside. But they were two young Tarzan looking guys that just came out of the water with gigging sticks and their catch was remarkable. Several different types of Rockfish and many legal crabs, including the red ones that all the locals say are taking over the crab grounds and need to be managed better.

Obviously Alaska has  a huge  Marine bio mass and the catches there both sport / commercial and subsistence are known world wide...But this one little bay in a populated area impressed me with the availabilty of experience and harvest by the everyday people. So a thumbs up to you Oregon's fisheries managers. And as you can  see, they ain't without a few rules.

It was a great trip and part of the pay off for our life's changes. It was great to see my sister, a person that did so much to help me find the way in Alaska. So when you read this Karen, thank you ! And I'm embarrased that the pics I have of us are on my phone and I'm having a hell of a time getting them onto my computer for this blog.....yikes....We'll do it again, and again, and....

On Grieving

 

At 68 I've done my share. All of us on this trip around the sun are going to.  I had my intro at a very early age and up close and personal. It's natural , it's hard and I guess it has it's function...you never get used to sorrow.  Being a 100 % guy I've always worn my feelings on my shirt sleeve. I don't keep secrets well so I have to tell you that the passing of my friend Hobo Jim, Alaska's best friend really has me by the heart. For days now his songs have been ping ponging around in my brain and for all the times I told people if  I could wish a million bucks to somebody it would be him , I'm feeling stupid as I now know he never wanted  millions or he'd have it, he just wanted happiness for himself and all of us....and more time with him would have done that. Jim has a  way of making everybody feel special, he had zero enemies... how many of us are like that ?

I don't think you can love Alaska without loving Jim, he  is and always will be the spirit of Alaska. If any of you reading this don't know his music just YouTube his name or google him, better yet purchase some CD's off Amazon or where ever.  There is a Go Fund Me page to help his wife Cyndi , just seeing it and participating made me feel better . gofundme.com

I could tell Hobo stories...stomping a hole in the stage, our Park Ranger event, his fishing secrets...but I'll just leave it with him helping me. Right after we moved to Montana I published a video of myself singing a Hank Williams Jr. song and I said I was getting used to Montana.  Jim told me " Jeff, write that song " ....I'm going to Jim . It seems he and I shared some of life's adventures. We're the same age, went Alaska the same year , he loved fishing , music , people loving and something people don't really think about, he was about the hardest working guy I've ever met....a 100 % guy.  Here's how Jim Varsos  looked when I first met him.

I'm sure Cyndi doesn't read Mile 14 but I wish comfort for her and all of you / us / the world that's changed....And Jim, mucho gracias ,Thunder on Hobo Jim your spirit will last forever . gofundme.com

 

Ain't here for a haircut

 So me and MPeasy have been in executive session lately, we've got big decisions to make which I've never really been very good at . Jimmy Buffet once said " decision making might or might not be one of my problems "....like him I've always been a ' let it happen ' kind of guy.  But in this new world we're all working with here it pays to have a plan, even a plan B or even C. So first thing is Booster shot. Then we're going to the coast to see my sister and my nieces and play music with a great nephew that I've only met a few times and has had his share of life thrown at him pretty good. I'm anxious to see Miles and he's anxious to see me.

Then it's back to the house on the hill for the month of November, MP wants to have Thanksgiving in her new house and that's easy enough done....And then...

We just can't miss another year and Grass Valley Arizona as nice as it is ain't got fish, beach, Pacifico's , Martin's Taco's and my nice Menudo ladies on the corner every Sunday. On both trips we'll just see a few folks and be careful, basicly quarintine at our condo in Maz. Our big picture plan with the move to Montana was to make it easier to drive to Mazatlan but that will have to wait one more year as there's no since having a car there if we aren't going to be out exploring becauseof the covid. I can't wait to fish with Alejandro and Dan, see Slah and Maria's new house and have Christmas with our friends who we've missed....💚😎🐟🎸🎵

I don't mind telling you that the first 6 months or so here in Montana there was many a day I could have headed home to Alaska. I was in a funk. My friend Terry Wetzstone helped pitch me out of the slump and the move here to Helena makes me feel more like I belong here...I guess I've always had trouble fitting in and Ham Bone Montana just wasn't doing it for me...but here, well it feels right. In fact the connectivity is amazing, it seems to follow us.  MP and I were out antiqueing ( against the advice of a friend that told us when we were moving " don't bring old stuff to Montana, they've got plenty of it "....Well we end up at the Canyon Creek country Store 25 miles from here. They are having a ' living estate sale ' and literally a hundred years of stuff is laying around. Very impressive.

MP bought a nice little wood shelf for her tea cups and I got some beer cans for my collection when I told the guy we'd just come from Alaska and you just don't see old stuff like this as much because everything is so new....Well...he looks at me and say's you're that guy who went to Alaska and married one of the Brown girls. Correct-a-mundo. Here's a picture of MP with Ron Crawford who lived across the street from her when the family lived on Peosta Street back is the 1960's.

It get's better. Ron's brother Gary is a friend of ours who worked the oilfield in Alaska and fishes with my friend Keith quite a bit. Gary has been to our boat launch many a time and Ron mentions to MP that he met here there a few years ago at 4 a.m. when she took his money and got him to park in just the right place so she could squeeze in another 10 dollar parking fee.  Gary like us was migrating from Alaska two springs ago and was a month or so ahead of us. With covid restrictions getting out of Alaska took some planning and he decided to drive through Canada on 'essential travel ' and was given 4 days to do it and told not to go into Whitehorse to stay . Keith suggested I call him to see how it all went and after seeking his counsel we decided to take the Love Boat instead. Gary is now in Texas and will retire to Helena soon where we'll have a Mile 14 reunion...Great to meet you Ron and thanks for fellowhip.

We thinned the herd in Alaska but we still have loads of stuff that now we finally have room to put away. We had a few boxes of childhood stuff that had been sitting in the garage In Hamilton since we cleaned out my folks house years ago. Well, I came across my swimming trophies and medals and in with it all was a Speedo I raced in as a high schooler... and you know me, being comfortable in my own sking I had to try it on. The converstaion went like this :

JK--- C'mon MP do me a favor and take a pic of me.

MP--- I am doing you a favor...I"M NOT TAKING THAT PIC

JK----C'mon, don't be tight @#%

MP--- that is absolutely disgusting

JK---C'mon, you've done it before. 

So for the second time in the History of Mile 14 here's the pic. Now I'm not quite as fit as I was years ago for the first pic when I was a cardio King in the gym but how many people could even get there high school suit on ? I'm below my  'waterloo weight ' of 200 pounds and for 68 year old guy that ain't all so bad for a guy who likes himself.😎....and oh, I'll do you a favor and save ya the frontal shot.

So I promised ya a song....well  here it is.  Kinda tells my story. Sorry for the lack of production here at the Mile 14 Montana Bureau. But I do enjoy writing and as we move along the program I'll have fish pics and smiles to publish, we're moving on. My boat is safely tucked away in a garage over in Hamilton and when we get back from Mexico we'll get it over here and fish the big water. I was in the hardware store the other day and a guy named Marty showed me pics of his Lake fish here....oh baby, 10 pound trout and walleys, I'm in.