12-14 Salmon & Eagle

 Good friend and outdoorsman, Lee Roberts, had a salmon stolen from him in Alaska. I was at dinner with my good friend Lee not very long ago and he started rattling off outdoor stories. I didn’t  haul out my tape recorder at the time but promised him I would call him up. It was certainly worth the wait.  “I was born in Juneau,  Alaska and recently made a trip with my parents up there to show me where I was born and part of the time that we were there we chartered a small 28 foot boat to go out and fish for salmon. We were trolling with 4 rigs out on the boat slowly and you could see  eagles flying around frequently and I was just sitting there on the transom watching the lures and all of a sudden a large famine came up almost like a freight train. He was heading for one of the back lures and just before he hit the lure a huge eagle came down and hit the salmon. This was only 20 to 30 feet from me. I grabbed my camera and started taking photos. It took the eagle  6 or 8 beats of his wings to break the surface tension with the salmon which looked like it was probably 10 or 15 pounds. He finally broke the surface, got the fish out, rotated the fish longitudinally so that it was in line with the airflow and slowly flapped up across the boat, maybe 15 feet above us and off with the fish. It was truly awesome.