Go to: Daily Journal 2005, Daily Journal 2004, Daily Journal 2003
August 25th:
Okay, I've come up with a initial AK2006 photo page this morning. Eventually I'll get another quick link to it, but until then click the highlighted stuff above to access it. I'm starting to realize that this website has gotten way way out of hand. I'm thinking it's getting close to time for a major overhaul of this site. (That means I'll be getting around to it sometime next year...hehe).
August 24th:
Well, I successfully made it back from another Alaska fishing expedition. As always, God was good and provided me with another 'trip of a lifetime'. It was a strange year for sockeye fishing on the Kenai, but despite all of the strangeness, the freezer is brimming full of halibut and salmon. We also got a lot more work done on the cabin. I've added a couple more photos to the property photo page - so y'all can see what the cabin looks like with its completed metal roof and paint job. There's still plenty of work left to do on the cabin, but that's going to have to wait until next year. Overall, though, I'm still amazed at the amount of progress we made on the property this year. Last year at this time all we had was a little gravel driveway. Now we've got a nice gravel pad, electricity, a storage shed, an outhouse, a fire pit, and much much more. It was totally awesome hanging out on our own little piece of Alaska during the summer. Definitely a great feeling to get away from the tourist mobs!
I'll be working on getting some AK2006 photos online in the next few weeks, as well as, getting the 2006 journal posted. It may take awhile, but I'll get it done. Eventually.
June 22nd:
Finally got the 2005 AK journal up and posted. Yay. It took awhile to get keyed in, but it's finally done. Admittedly it's not as detailed as previous years, as I didn't spend a lot of time filling in details about this and that event. I guess the novelty of the journal is wearing a bit thin these days. Hmmm. Still, I intend to document this year's journey as I've done in previous years, so expect an AK Journal 2006 sometime in the Fall or Winter this year.
Other news: I've invited Dr. Luke to join me on this year's Alaska journey - and he's agreed to come up for a week. This will be his first trip up north, and he seems pretty excited to go. I've already got us scheduled for a Homer halibut trip on his 2nd day there. It will be interesting to see how he takes to sockeye/combat fishing. Even if he can't fish, I think he'll be an excellent ally in the battle against Germans and Frenchies.
June 6th:
Just returned from a two-week trip to Alaska to begin groundbreaking on our property and cabin. The trip was amazing. Everything seemed to happen according to schedule and by the time we left on Sunday morning the grounds had changed from a small driveway gravel pad to a large pad with a loop driveway, ac, and a great little cabin designed and built by Wayne! I've updated the Alaska Property photopage to chronicle the changes that we made on the trip. The first week of the trip was pretty easy and relaxing as Dad and I sat back and watched the excavation team do their thing to the landscape. But on Friday morning when Wayne and his tools arrived everything went into high gear. We worked some seriously long 12+ hour construction days over the long weekend. And followed that up with a couple more days the next weekend. The results were great however, and our hard-work was rewarded with a nice little cabin framed up and ready to finish. Special appreciation goes to Wayne who was the designer and master builder of the cabin. Go Wayne!!
April 6th:
Spring has definitely sprung down here in Tejas. We hit 92-degrees over the weekend. It made for quite a scorcher of a bike ride.
I've been taking Glory and Ejay to the bass pond at the park during the evenings this last week. Of course, these rookies are outfishing me everytime. I'm going to track our progress over the summer with my new "Bassmaster Standings" spreadsheet. I've got a hyperlink to it on the homepage also. I'll try and update that every so often with the latest results. Of course, I'm way down in third place right now. But, I think things are going to start turning around for me. Glory's beginners luck is bound to wear off eventually.
I'd actually should have more points than I do now - because Glory cheated me last time out. I've filed a protest with the governing board (Glory), but so far my protest has not been upheld. Here's what happened - Glory cheated me out of a fish the other night, and therefore won the evening 2-1-1. We were wrapping up an evening of fishing and both Ejay and I had a fish apiece, while Glory had none. Glory and I were fishing the little corner lagoon without much luck. Glory started complaining that her worm was bad and old and needed replacing. So, I cast my line out and then told her to come over and I'd replace it. Well, I set my rod down on the ground and start fixing her worm. The next thing I know she's got my fishing rod in her hands and is yelling out "I got one!". To make a long story short - she reels in "my" fish and then claims that it is "her" fish. She quotes some obscure ruling to me that "it's whoever reels it in" that gets to count it. Whatever. Then, to make matters worse - after I fix her rig up with a new worm, she takes my rod and does some funky buzz-bomb cast with it that goes about three-feet out into the lake before churning up the water. She then proceeds to hand me back me rod with a completely back-lashed reel. Talk about playing hardnosed defense. It took me a good fifteen minutes of cutting the line out of my reel with my needle-nose pliers before I could even get back in the game. In the meantime, she lands another fish (while still standing in my spot) to take the lead. And this pathetic specimen of a bass that she lands couldn't have been more than 8-inches in length. It was so small I considered only giving her half a point on that one. Regardless, she went from skunked to champion in a matter of five minutes - while all I could do is watch. And to think that I was feeling bad for her because she was skunked for most of the evening....
March 18th:
Wow, it's already the middle of March and it's taken me this long to get my 2006 journal up and running. Shame on me. Truth be known, I haven't been all that inspired to write much anyways, so I guess it's no big loss.
Well, today I'm a little bit more inspired as I finally got around to booking my Alaska fishing vacation trip today. Looks like I'll be headed north again this year for another sockeye slammin' season. Let's hope that the dismal forecast that F&G has put forth for 2006 sockeye season doesn't come to pass.....
Upper Cook Inlet 2006 Sockeye Forecast
On to other things. Quick update on the website. Currently, on the home page I've got a picture of Ejay and his big bass that he caught the other day. He had never been fishing before, so I took him down to the local pond/lake that I like to fish at. I set him up with my pole and a worm and showed him how to cast. I walked down the bank and flipped away with my spinner bait. After about ten minutes of no action I figured Ejay was probably getting a little bit bored and so I started back up his way. Right at that moment he exclaimed that he had a fish on! Cool. Sure enough he did and he brought it right to the bank, we landed it, snapped a picture or two and tossed it back in. Well, to make a long story short - the kid proceeds to land two more bass in the next ten minutes, while yours truly (that's me) gets nothing. Well, if nothing else, I proved that I'm still a good teacher. And oh yeah, there's no way he's going to be getting to use my favorite pole again! Here's a couple of pictures of Ejay with his bass:
On to other items: Wednesday evening we heard a great message from Danijel and Eva Mrsic - Missionaries and leaders of FOCUS ministry in the city of Split, Croatia. This husband and wife team are doing powerful things in that war-torn fragmented country. The message they delivered was powerful and really cut to my heart. The reason I am sharing this is so that if any of you are looking for a worthy ministry to support financially or in prayer, look no further than these folks at FOCUS ministry. They are located at:
Focus Ministry - Kneza Mislava 2, P.P. 289 - 21000 Split, Croatia - tel: +385-21-482-192: demrsic@st.htnet.hr
US donations can be sent to: Eastern European Outreach, c/o Danijel/Eva Mrsic, PO BOX 7559, Pueblo West CO 81007, USA
Here's a link to a brief article about Danijel.
