Thank you for listening

This is the first off-topic post, and its about fish.

I’ve been bummed recently as the Sockeye run has been seemingly slim this year. You might be saying “Oh.” or something similar but since I have a creek in my yard, and there are runs of Sockeye, King, and Steelhead that literally are 30 feet from my studio window, it is on my mind a but. Cool, eh? It might be early yet, but there has only been less then 20 seen this year, compared to the 10-15 each time I looked at the peak last year. I hope that we are early in the run and I am just eager, but after I say the first ones a few weeks ago, in my heart I was thinking that “The run started, now its going to grow and grow.”

Today I went out and didn’t see any flashes of red like the Sockeye show, but I caught a flash of something. I stopped walking for a sec and realized I was looking at a monster. At least three feet, longer than my arm. I knew we have runs of King (Chinook) salmon, but was not expecting it at all. The thing was massive and really strong. The Sockeye are pretty tuckered by the time they get to my place, and we are seeing a few just barely alive floating down stream. This King was just cruising around the creek, stopping here and there. Abbers (my poodle) saw it, took a few calculations on velocity and decided to sit this one out. It got spooked by us and tore off downstream so fast it make a wake and an audible spash in a creek that was running very fast and heavy. I got crunched at work so I am waiting a bit till I can get my waders. I can’t really afford to get them, but I will try to work something out. I can’t imagine not fishing this fall and more than I can imagine standing in the river in shorts anymore.

This is the view from the studio. The bend where I saw the King is on the other side of that tree in the yard.