Horse sense

 That's what they need on the World Famous Kenai River.  It hurts me to report that the missing King Salmon mystery ( or not ) is not only continuing but as we're now in the 9th year or emergency closures it seems to be routine. These two graphs you've seen before tell the tale, 2021 is heading for the 3rd year in a row that minimum sonar counts were not achieved, it will be the worse run ever. It really bothers me, I'd hoped that I would be on the ground floor of a cool economy that gave opportunity to young people like I was when it all started... a word you here in Alaska a lot but seldom see put into practice....sustainable.

The black line is now, the red and purple is the escapement range....so you might notice that the yellow that is 2017 isn't so bad, well that's the sonar count with out subtracting the in river harvest which puts all those lines signaling disaster.

Ya know some people were happy to see me check out of the politics on the world famous and I know for certain that staff at ADF+G used to read this blog so I got some horse sense advice for them, it's really just another beg, please, please do your job better .  

1. I think maybe we've tugged on the July Kenai King fishery so much that it will never find it's lost glory....so maybe it's time to put some hatchery Kings in there so the sport people have something.

2. Number one is reactive of course but what we need from the ADF+G is pro active and I'm talking about the starting to wobble Silver Salmon sport fishery in August and September. If this is all the sport guys are going to have in the future act now to get the science in order and a plan to actually implement the Coho management plan that says " cohoes will be managed primarily for sport use ". and this is how....

3. Come up with strategies to stop the commercial season and deliver silvers to the stream as early as possible with still allowing for commercial sockeye harvest.

4. Count the damn things  just like they do all of the commercially managed fish. Set and achieve escapement goals.

5. create in river seasonal limits on Silvers. I've preached that for years after seeing the local harvest patterns.

6. Get enforcement on the river and have it open to boating / fishing only during daylight hours.

7. In other words ADF+G, lets try and avoid losing the wonderful Kenai Silver fishery like we have the Kenai Kings, Clam Gulch Razor Clams , Cook Inlet Dungeness , Kachemak Bay shrimp .... need more examples... ?

So me and MPeasy gave it a good college try of one full year in  Hamilton Montana...So we're dragging up and have purchased a house in Helena, we've gone full circle.  There's a lot of reasons but the biggest is that this house in HamBone is just to small, we want our kids and our friends to visit and the house is awkwardly small. The house on the upper west side of Helena has a guest room and a wing with a private bathroom for them, you . Then there's the fishing. Although I'm getting used to towing I want to be closer to the big lakes in Central Montana that interest me more than the smaller alpine lakes here. I guess I new it wasn't working so good when a waitress told my friend Roberto that nobody fishes ' that lake ' because theres no fish in it .  The 3rd part is that we could have built an addition or turned one of our out building into a guest house but it made mores sense to just get a different house and then return this house to a rental so we have some income to go with our outcome....so that's the story. We'll start moving 1st of September and hopefully be in by the 15th or so.....wish us luck....

This is one thing we'll miss.....fresh local cherries for 2 bucks a pound, oh baby they're good.  Then we have the famous Dixon Melons that we'll have to find a source for and then the Hutterite Melons and Chickens and then the local Huckleberries and .....did I mention those lakes have great, and I mean great Walleye Fishing ? Gonna get me a guide, ask all the important questions as I pay attention and this time next year we'll be showing blood sport pictures on Mile 14 just like the old days.

 

Pea Brains

 One time when I was bragging about my fishiness Chick told me not to hang your hat on out smarting a fish... their brains are the size of a BB. So having yet to catch a trout on the world famous Bitteroot River I decided to work on stupider fish, like Bass. So I research the area and find that we have these filled gravel pit ponds all over the valley that are full of Bass and even 5 pounders. The problem is I don't nothin about fishing Bass and I ain't got anybody to teach me except the fishiest guy I know ( Dan Stewart ) who volunteered to do a zoom consultation with me on the challenges I'm facing.  The ponds are full of vegetation from the top to bottom, so thick you absolutely have to be weed less. So finally I've got it, kinda got it. You know that it's a fish that wants to be caught when you have them eating plastic worms and ignoring real worms....and the Frog bait ? I laughed at myself in the store and was even a little embarrassed at check out...but, pictures don't lie.

Now I can understand that on the river the bugs don't fly until it warms up so the fly guys get to sleep in but these bass are a different animal. Once the sun is on the water it's over...So ol Bass guide #003 is going to crush these Montana guys who can't get out of bed. I have yet to not be alone in the morning fishing and it's the best part....how about this sunrise pic that MP took one morning when she came along.

Every morning I've been going and have to say Dan was right about the frog when they hit it " makes you giggle like a girl ". Here's an action pic...ain't no salmon but ya know the newness and the puzzle of it all for me is nice, I like it.

We left a lot of things in Alaska, stuff as well as emotion and comfort / community.  But man am I glad I brought my old White truck. The guys at Kenai Auto have it going down the road like a new truck so I decided not to put bike rack on MP's Rav 4 and instead use the receiver hitch on the old truck. The Bike trails here are incredible, we did 15 mile in Missoula the other day and our goal is to beat Bob and Dana's 27 miles....mmmmm....without electric bikes Dana. I guess it's everywhere these days. Here's this beautiful bridge built for Bikes and we keep riding because there's 10 people living on the bridge and drinking...at 8:00 a.m. It bothers me. When I was in Seattle with Sam for a Mariner game he told me to just ignore the street people.....well, I don't ignore so well, it bothers me.

We had another pay off for this lifestyle alteration we made. Max flew over for a long weekend visit and we laughed pretty good for days. We were killing time before his flight after we ate at the famous Oxford in Missoula. I pulled into second hand store for MP and Max tried on a few new duds...that'll impress them on your new job ol buddy !

I actually came out of the covid isolation in pretty good shape. It's true that I'm at 198 but  it could be worse and I never got over my Waterloo  weight of 200 ....but I did squander a chance to stay at 185. I got to thinking my cardio might not be as good as it used to be but after the three of us did the Blodget overlook hike where we gain a altitude in the 90 degree heat I think I still got it.

Like everybody, we're ecstatic that things are normalizing . We walked by the historic Wilma theatre in Missoula the other day and they had the schedule of summer events and walla....JackPot ! On July 24th we're going to see one of my musical idols and a guy that I cover many songs of, Robert Earl Keen . And then in October right before we leave for Mazatlan it's Todd Snider who I think is maybe the greatest song writer in  Texas. We looked for Gary Allan as I got tell you, I'm a groupie with that guy but even though he's setting a personal record for tour dates to make up for canceled 2020 shows he's just not going to be anywhere close enough for us. 

This was in front of the liquor store in downtown Missoula....don't ever say that I don't try to pass on good advice.

Got me another new song and I'll record it tonight and have it on the next edition of Mile 14, Ham Bone Montana Bureau.