The recent run of salmon allowed even little kids with bent pins or lures painted pink to catch a fish.

It is unprecedented in my memory. And all I could do was read about it and accept a share of the bounty from generous friends.

That is okay. I have had my share of catching fish from ocean to ocean and scores of rivers and lakes on grasshoppers, bent pins, buzz bombs and Doc Spratley flies.

I have no complaints but plan to persist in this pleasurable pursuit.

I have had many disappointments, but a few victories cause me to return to the riverbank.

I once hooked a 10-foot shark at Westport, and lots of steelhead from scores of Washington rivers. The shark let me bring him up to the boat, then decided to head for freedom and never stopped.

My first fish was a six-inch chub, which I caught on a worm, then nearly drowned when I fell backward into a water-filled hole in the punky floor of an abandoned boathouse.

I still had my fish on when my big brother pulled me out. It didn't cure me.

I have been hooked on the sport so bad that I stayed on the water until I was nearly frozen by an icy windstorm, and once navigated a quarter mile in my chest waders without touching bottom in the Green River above Flaming Geyser.

Luckily I had a flotation jacket on and got ashore unharmed.

But if you keep trying, sometimes you get lucky. I once caught a salmon when I was golfing. Foster golf course, in Tukwila, so familiar to golfers in Highline and West Seattle, sits alongside the Duwamish River.

It has about eight holes where that sinuous river comes into play for the average golfer, and about probably 12 holes for me.

One September, I was wandering Foster with a buddy and we were crossing the footbridge between nines when we spotted a huge salmon minding its own business, idly finning itself in a quiet eddy next to the shoreline.

There were no other golfers in sight, so we quietly scrambled down the brushy bank and my buddy tiptoed up behind the huge fish.

He scooped it onto the bank where I fell on it like a building. We subdued the beauty and scrambled back to the footpath. We gave up golf for the day.

This was long before the days of punchcards, but I am no scofflaw. I had a fishing license. That salmon weighed 12 pounds when we got it home.

In the years since then, it has gained a few pounds of glory.