The last day of the King Salmon season has arrived. Not something we look forward to, but no time to cut bait–it’s time to fish!! And fish we did. CJ and I headed out for the morning run, with a leisurely start at 0700, on a day that we would end up spending about 15 hours total on the water. A glorious, sunny morning, a true Kenai River Alaska dream. We did a warm up run down Poachers, followed by an old school boat breakfast of moose sausage & egg sandwiches under the Eagle’s Nest on the Harry Gaines 1/4 mile like we used to do on the M/V “FinnCooker”, but no fish interrupted the calm of our morning. Mud Island called. The tide was flooding toward a 10:00 am high and we were both eager to do some back bouncing. When we got there things were already bouncing. “Bumper Boats” we call it. So close to your neighbor you can ask for a cold drink. Too close to some, especially the rental boat with a couple of yahoo’s eating a whole bunch of bananas!  Not to judge, but that’s just bad luck. I wasn’t feeling too confident, being downstream of their banana scent, so I tried to maneuver the boat away from them. Boat were hooking up all around us. I hoped it was just a matter of time. It took quite a while and I was feeling a little discouraged honestly. There boats doing crazy things, boats full of guides on their “off” day, boats that wouldn’t leave the hole with a fish hooked up causing tangles. We even tangled with the “banana boat” — they had a fish on, can you believe that?? They had no clue, but they had a fish on. We got our line clear, motored back up and into position, freshened our bait…I added extra…then a nibble. Just a nibble, like a Dolly mooching my eggs, dang I thought, don’t steal my bait. I waited, moved my line a little after initially freezing when I felt the bite, and the bite intensity increased. I could feel him chewing. Then he started to swim with it, then WHAM, I set the hook hard and it stuck! Later I’d find that hook deep down the throat of a 63# Buck King Salmon fresh from the ocean. But for the moment, the fight was über calm, it didn’t feel as big as it was, and the fish hadn’t show itself. We actually started to try and tow it out of the hole, but it ran across the center toward another boat. We followed it instead of the opposite. Good thing we did. We got it closer to the boat and found a path out of the chaos safely without hooking any other lines or letting it get under someone’s prop. We were safely below the mass of boats now, enjoying the fight. It felt like a 25, maybe 30 pound king. It circle the boat, dove deep for a bit, showed itself briefly, and I was still convincing myself that it was that big. Then rather suddenly it came up and showed itself fully – huge – buck – beautiful. Now it was time to net it. CJ had never netted a King to this point- that was always my job, but he had graciously told me that I needed to take this King when it hit the bait. After years of always putting the kids and my wife and friends on fish first, it was my payback I guess. In one beautiful swoop of the net, CJ put this Kenai River King headfirst into the net expertly as if he was born to do just that. We celebrated. We laughed. We were in awe. That’s what the Kenai River does for you, even after all these years.