Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  As you can see from the pictures, this blog post isn't about chess pieces, it's about a fish. A king salmon. A white king salmon to be more specific. Last Saturday I spent the day fishing and in an uncommon bit of good fortune, I managed to land five kings. I actually had eight on. Two of them took spoons, and for whatever reason, managed to get off. I always play the scenario over and over in my head trying to figure out what went wrong when I lose one. The first one I lost I figured maybe he was still too fiesty to bring in. The second one I let soak a little longer, but I still lost him. Go figure. The third one that got off I never even saw. He hit pretty hard, and I let him soak for what I thought was a proper amount of time- let him tow the fifty pound cannonball around for awhile to let off some steam. As it was though, he swam into the leader above him and managed to tangle the two lures and got off. I can't say I was very happy, but I wa...

 I got a call last week from my friend Jim Dybdahl. He said he needed a favor. Jim is one of those guys who is pretty self sufficient. He's got a good mind and can figure things out and if he can't he's got the kind of personality that attracts people to him, so he will know someone who can help. In the almost forty years I've known him, he's never asked for a favor from me, so I assumed it was pretty important. As it turns out, he was asked if he would relinquish a few days of his fishing time to tow a couple of rafts from Angoon to Hoonah. One of the young fellows who grew up here is going to try his hand at oyster farming. I'm hopeful that he can make a go of it. From what I can gather, the rafts we were going to tow were used in three previous attempts at farming. I'm not sure why its so difficult to be successful at it, except that you're combing two very tough professions- fishing and farming. Both are labor intensive,...

 Jan and I were over in Juneau a few weeks ago. I had to go in to the doctor for a physical. There really wasn't much physical stuff involved, aside from taking my blood pressure a few times, having me stick out my tongue,and pressing on my overblown gut. Fortunately I didn't have gas or it would have been a more interesting experience. There are times when it really doesn't make sense to jostle, prod, poke or otherwise disturb the patient. Although I'm sure that most general practitioners have seen it all, for the sake of the patient, it's good to be sensitive to what they have to say. I well remember a friend who was in the naval hospital for some kind of operation or test, I can't recall which. In any event, it seems that he was given a drug that made it difficult for him to communicate with the doctors and nurses. As I recall, he was given a barium enema by a burly nurse whose bedside manner was a bit brusque. He was supposed to be getting some x-rays ...