I STAYED FOR the air conditioning. My first day of work here at the Peninsula Daily News on July 13, 2007 came in the middle of what amounts to a heat wave on the North Olympic Peninsula as temperatures rose above 90 degrees.

After a successful tryout and a walk through of the publishing system powered by ancient computers running Windows 98, I was told I could come back the next night to begin in earnest.

Knowing what awaited at home — a long night fruitlessly attempting to relax in an uncomfortable, stuffy apartment, I asked if I could stick around the office and chill out, so to speak.

Ten years later, I’m still here, in my third position with the Peninsula Daily News, after stints as first a sports and then a news assistant.

Writing for the same paper my grandmother would set aside for me each week to read at Sunday dinner while growing up has been and continues to be my pleasure.

I’ve had the privilege of covering league, district and state championship teams and athletes at the youth and high school levels, plus the continually successful Peninsula College sports programs, sprint boat races, martial arts, golf, sea otters, salmon, steelhead and more.

Throw in the opportunity to attend the occasional major golf tournament and read, edit and place stories about my hometown Seattle sports teams and I would say I’m pretty lucky.

A friend reminded me of this recently when I was mid-complaint about some work assignment.

“Think about what you get paid to do. You have it pretty damn good, Mike,” he said.

His remark quieted me down and left me contemplating how right he is.

Thanks for reading. I’ll continue to be mindful of how fun this job can be going forward.

Catches stay solid

Take a week off and the bait and salmon show up in good numbers off Port Angeles.

Last week, the first full week of salmon fishing in Marine Area 6 saw red-hot fishing at spots like the Winter Hole off Ediz Hook.

Catch totals were nearly one fish per angler and those numbers didn’t dip much last weekend. Creel reports show 98 chinook landed by 130 anglers in 64 boats at Ediz Hook, while fish checkers counted 74 kings caught by 98 anglers in 44 boats.

Olympic Peninsula Salmon and Halibut Coalition member Dave Croonquist checked in with a recent fishing report.

Croonquist and Bob Keck fished along Ediz Hook on Monday morning.

“Pretty strong ebb tide, up to 2.5 knots, against a west wind created some pretty lumpy sea conditions,” Croonquist said in an email.

“We started out with a Kingfisher Irish cream spoon and a silver coho killer behind flashers.

[We] picked up a couple of nice-sized shaker chinook on the first pass to the west. Ended up by the mill. Pulled and ran back up to the U.S. Coast Guard base. [We] switched over to white UV hootchies on the recommendation of Herb Prins and moved out to the 150-foot line running our gear between 70 feet and 110 feet on the wire. Picked up two 24-inch clipped chinook. Made some more runs from east to west. Picked up an 8-pound clipped chinook off the mill.”

Croonquist said the pair’s last keeper was a 26-inch hatchery king.

He and Keck caught and released five sub-legal size shaker chinook and kept legal limits of hatchery kings. All the fish they encountered were adipose-fin clipped hatchery stock.

Crabbing a mixed bag

Limits of both Dungeness and rock crab are there to be had around the North Olympic Peninsula, but are far from as automatic as the past couple of seasons.

Croonquist said he and Keck dumped a pair of pots before their salmon outing Monday and came back to find three keepers in one and zero in another.

“A couple of the crabs were soft, but should be good to go in a week or two after we tossed them back,” he said.

“I am hearing that inner Puget Sound has been slow. Don Velasquez was the speaker at our Puget Sound Anglers’ meeting in June. He had just finished up his survey work on crabs around Puget Sound. He said the population, overall, was down about 30 percent.”

Quilcene’s Ward Norden, a former fisheries biologist and owner of Snapper Tackle Company, said Dungeness crabs are molting in most areas right now.

“I have heard a few good reports, but a lot of slow crabbing reports probably due to the ‘Dungies’ being buried while their shells harden,” he said.