The last day of King season is family day…and so we fished, the 4 of us + brother Eric, together away from the bustle of shore, out on the water for the last day of Kings. Sunken Island called to me, so we headed upriver and fished the left side down the island. The hole was very quiet, the sun was out, all the boats looked asleep as I back-trolled our lines down to the sweet spot of the hole, and sure enough that strategy worked. Almost silently and in slow motion, Cindy set the hook on a nice 30 lb King Salmon and the ensuing commotion woke up the rest of the Sunken Island fishermen–my girl knows how to do it!  We fought the fish toward the corner and celebrated as we drifted down the Kenai.

That was just one….but the “two” for the show came very quickly after we made a run down river to catch the flooding evening tide at one of our favorite tidewater spots — Mud Island. We came in from the bottom of the hole, I said “Let’s try some of that new bait,” and we opened a fresh vacuum bag of our cured King roe from a fish caught earlier in the season. CJ had wanted to back bounce his “Black Magic” cheater with those eggs and no sooner had he dropped his line to the bottom and barely closed the bale when a Kenai King took the bait and ran!  The fight was on across the sun streaked water as we maneuvered around boats and Cooper danced around the deck as the fish ran toward the stern, toward the bow and back around the motor. He didn’t miss a beat, he’s a pro, and that fish didn’t have a chance to escape as CJ anticipated every move he made. Another nice 30 lb’er for the boat and we were two more fish toward our limit of 5 for the boat. What a great last day it was shaping up to be….but more to come yet, we have about 5 hours of season to go!