Day 8....

Fresh meat run for the Doc. I don't start keeping my personal eater fish til the day or two before departure, so with this being the last day, I was on a mission to put 12 sockeye in the box to fly home fresh UNFROZEN. Noel and Wayne were out for the morning shift, so I recruited my oldest brother Alex and Tanner to help me get the job done.

My brother Alex almost despises king fishing because he's a sockeye-flossin'-crack-addict. Just can't stand the wait between bonafide bites. I told him we'd go flossin', but he'd have to indulge baby brother with a couple of passes for kings in the upper holes before I parked the Predator on a red bar. He obliged, but after two empty passes apiece thru Stewarts, Fall In, and Honeymoon, it was my turn to fulfill my end of the bargain.

Pulled ashore on the Honeymoon Bar for an hour and a half and couldn't floss up a single sockeye. In the meantime I saw 6 kings plucked from Honeymoon and it was absolutely killing me! I stuck a plug rod out the back of the boat out of desperation. A half hour later, no bite and still no sockeye. This BLOWS! OK guys, let's go. As Tanner picks up my plug rod to reel in the K16X Purple Peril, a suicidal sockeye grabbed it on the retrieve. ONE DOWN... eleven to go!

I motored down to the Eagle Rock Bar where things looked deceivingly quiet. We were the only ones there, and not a single roller/jumper was to be seen.... that is, until one was jumping on the end of Tanner's line on his first cast!

Then another.... and another.... and another!

We all played down and dirty.... rod tips low and methodically walking these trainable torpedoes up the shallow beach to efficiently rack up the creel count. Eleven more unfortunate sockeye lay comatose and bloody on the gravel within a few minutes.

Meat mode instincts fully satisfied, now it was time for some fun and action shots. Raise them rod tips boys and let's see some topwater action! Doubles and triples were the order of the day as each of us hooked a tide-fresh sockeye about every third cast. Obviously no pics of the triples, but Alex and I managed to snap a few doubles.

Day 8...

Another sockeye sequence.

Note Team KeenEye's latest weapon of choice.... 2/0 circle hooks for flossin' reds. Rigged ala Moffitt, you can say goodbye to body-snaggin' these rockets FOREVER!

Doc, in addition to eyeballs, it is obvious you are also a skilled dentist.......nice job on the circle hook teeth cleaning with the bug sticks , looks like a great time on some hot sox!.

Day 8....

When 2/3 of a record run shows up at the doorstep in the eight days we fished, no dental degree required.... a proctologist could have done as well. Like I said in another post the total passage of sockeye during my stay was 0.95 million.... that's 119K per day. The river was ALIVE with sockeye. With that many fish swimmin' by, good things are bound to happen.

The only bad part about keepin' so many fish is that "someone" has to clean all the damned things! Takin' the punishment for the Home Team ala fNp.

My hands are frickin' fried. Been sloughin' layers for the past three days. Hope those succulent fillets were worth it for the lucky few who got to partake of truly fresh-caught Alaskan sockeye!

Day 8....

The King and I....

We're in the middle of a wide open bite at the Mud on our last evening of fishing when a father and young son team nearby gets bit. Yee Haw! KING ON! And when it starts running upriver, we KNOW it's a biggun!. Boats scatter to give the young feller his due, but as Dad starts chasing the monster king upriver, the line angle starts looking a little funny.

DANG!

Figures that fish would find the ONLY mid-river snag in that stretch of the river! Dad takes over for Jr and things quickly take a turn for the worse. Elation turns to despair which eventually turns to disgust as the rod explodes midshaft!

DANG!

Feel bad for the young man but KUDOS to Dad for gettin' him out on a fantastic evening of king fishing. Oh yeah KUDOS for having REALLY nice rodholders on board, too!

Day 8....

Final pic post....

WIDE OPEN BITE...

At the Mud...

for four hours plus....

EPIC!

As I posted previously on the other thread....

Motored up to get on top of them and finished the trip at Mud with the craziest wide open bite I've witnessed on the Kenai since 2005...... non-stop for 4 hours! I'll say there was easily 80-100 bites before we got flooded out.

Finished strong at the Wall that night with a 40# platinum tide-fresh powerhouse of a hen. The Measles Kwik was the first lure that egg wagon had ever seen.... talk about HOT HOT HOT! Parting the water like Moses did the Red Sea with each subsurface sprint, superline hissing in hot pursuit! Charged the boat three times, nearly ramming it once!

WHEW!

Sorry no pics of that one.

But here's a nice sequence of my last fish being beached from the bank. And a kill shot of Noel's final tag out fish that he would donate to Wayne for being such a stellar host. Good fishin' and good times, fo'sho!

Just a quick update on my motor problem.

Boat is back in business. Water pump/impeller on the lower unit (just serviced January) is doing just fine. The culprit was the extension tube that connects it to the waterpipe in the motor. The extension is basically attached at both ends by rubber grommets/seals, but the lower one was not very tight, and the brisk flow from the water pump was literally blowing it off its attachment, forcing the extension to slide up the waterpipe about 3".... at which point it's no longer attached to the pump and thus rendered useless. No water getting to the motor, no piss, no cooling.... tripping the overheat alarm at less than 2000 RPM. Problem clearly identified.

The fix? Extension was permanently glued to the water pump to keep it from getting blown off by the brisk flow. SHEESH!

Sure hope that "permanently" really means permanently.

Buoy 10 is depending on it!

So many good photos, but this one is my favorite of the lot...so far!



Thanks Doc.

Got a few more beach-N-release shots from a buddy... nice showery release at the very end!