Shortly before he died my dad was ravaged by Altzimers. My last visit with him was the day after I finished my guiding season in Bristol Bay 5 years ago. As many of you have experienced, folks afflicted with this disease sometimes have moments of clarity. He laughed that someone was paying me to take them fishing, recalling how I would guide his army buddies into fish on the Kenai in 1960. I was six! He wanted to know if I had fished Lake Michigan yet. “We need to go do that” he said. “Pulling all those people together, getting the science done, that was my greatest work I think.” I told him I would take him when he felt better. He died the next day.
He would be absolutely thrilled to how well that fishery developed and has managed to hang on.
Every time I read one of these reports on kids catching kings, silvers or steelhead, I recall being about that age and helping to collect eggs for the first brood stock for Lake Michigan.
