Sur­prise, friends!

Hap­py July 1^st — open­ing day of 2012’s first sum­mer king salmon open­ing. If all’s as it should be today, Cap’n J leapt out of the bunk at 2:30 this morn­ing, unable to con­tain him­self a moment longer. Right now the good ship Ner­ka is hope­ful­ly slow­ly drag­ging her hooks through exact­ly the right spot of South­east Alaska’s coastal waters, on a pleas­ant ocean, with lots of beau­ti­ful wild Alaskan king salmon to keep us busy.

Unless some­thing goes ter­ri­bly awry with the boat or us, we won’t be back to shore until after this open­ing clos­es — like­ly 8 to 10 days from now — so I can’t offer any cur­rent updates on how it’s look­ing out there. What I can do, thanks to Word­Press’s handy sched­uled pub­li­ca­tion option, is share a dif­fer­ent first morn­ing with you. The video below is from April 3, when Cap’n J and I head­ed out to Sit­ka Sound for our first day of win­ter king fish­ing. For two weeks, we had an amaz­ing time; weath­er-wise, it was the best April that vet­er­an win­ter king  trollers could remem­ber. We’re ruined for­ev­er, left with a star­ry-eyed fan­ta­sy that it’ll sure­ly be just as pleas­ant next year.

Hope you’re doing well, friends. If you want to fol­low our weath­er con­di­tions, vis­it NOAA’s marine weath­er. It’s an enor­mous coast, but we’ll be some­where in the midst of the Dixon Entrance and Cape Fair­weath­er fore­casts. Best wish­es to you all.