July 25 for my crew.

On-line license is purchased...

One cooler packed with miscellaneous supplies...

Waddington Spey flies are rigged with 4/0 trailers...

A healthy supply of amputee rigs have been formed from heavy-guage spinner wire...

CR shad and leftover W'port herring trimmed into bait wraps are marinating in Fire Cure as I type....

The Kenai "to do" list is slowly getting whittled down.

Got an early morning appointment booked with a biggun' on the first pass thru Fallin In Hole in three weeks. Wonder who's rod is going down first?

Go get em, Doc!

Looks like my group is leaving just in time to make room for the rest of you.
16 of us arrive the week before and leave on the 25th, hope we leave some fish for you.

I'm in sales, so every year we take a group of customers to AK for a week of fishing. We do a combo halibut/coho trip out of Homer and hit the Kenai for a day or so, the rest of time we go where ever the fish are. Did I say this was all expenses paid too, OK, I do need to pay for my license. Actually most of my time is spent helping customers get the most out of AK fishing and I need to bring enough of my own gear to keep 6 or 7 people fishing at all times.


I've only kept one King from the Kenai in all the years of fishing it and thanks to FP's updates on the situation, I don't plan on keeping any in the future.

Appreciate the support guys!

But please don't get me wrong here, folks.... there's a time and a place for harvest, even on the Kenai. There's no sin in bonking a Kenai king... as long as it's NOT the red ones nor the big ones.

LET THERE BE KINGS!

I just don't keep that many fish and you can only eat or give away so many. I also won't pay extra to ship them back home when I can catch fresh fish here most of the year. I bring back one cooler, that until recently was a N/C item, I purchased these tickets last year so supposedly it's covered by the old rules of two checked items at N/C. I bring back mostly halibut and sockeye, fish I can't easily get locally.

What is a fair keep for a chromer? 45 inches? 47 inches?

This is a serious question as we ALWAYS want to do the right thing. We have a fishery to protect also and take this stuff seriously.

Personally, I allow the wood shampoo on anything in the 30's down.

40's or better gets a free pass.

An honest 44" fish will typically weigh 38-40 pounds... that's a LOT of meat!

So from an inches point of view, I feel anything over 44" should hit the gravel. That takes about 60% of the physically largest ER5-o hens out of the harvestable pool of kings.

What's left in the harvestable pool under 44 inches? Let's see what the database shows.

87% of the ER hens.
61% of the ER bucks.

60% of the LR hens.
50% of the LR bucks.

I'd say that still leaves a whole lot of bonkable fish!

Hope that info helps you to arrive at your own personal standard as you seek a happy medium between a C&R conservation ethic and responsible harvest.

It does indeed. Thanks! I think our guys will happily agree to the 43/44 inch standard. Seems like a good guideline. Know fish vary in lbs. per inch but the first thing we do w/a marginal fish is get a quick view of the length via our slot lines on the sides of the boat.

In 2006, we let a lunker go without even a picture except those we got when he was close to the boat prior to release. It was August 2 or 3 so even a possed picture was not kosher. But, we had him at 54 inches! Never seen anything like that before. May not see the likes of him again either. First view of him was his tailfin and we knew immediately we had something very special.

What made it even more special is we had the silver gear on so it took a bit more touch than normal.

This is NOT a fish story per se though the measurement was quick and not to the gnats eye.

If done expeditiously and carefully, it's possible to get a KOSHER pic of a big C&R king... even if it's out of season. Nothing in the law against a pic... it only requires that the fish not leave the water and that it is released unharmed.

We just didn't feel right about it, especially after a long, long fight. The only reason we got him to the side was total exhaustion, maybe dangerously so. That and being out of season made us goosey. Plus, we had not seen the likes of this guy before. One picture does him some justice but hey, he's in our mind's eye anyway!