Nearly midnight on the Kanektok River in western Alaska, just when the sky gets serious about letting us know the night won't last forever, Mike Sanders pitches a ringer. I only know because of the clank of the shoe as it settles around the stake. I didn't really see it, and thus, these many months later, I feel the final score remains open for debate.

Mike is the General Manager for Deneki Outdoors' Alaska West tent camp on the Kanektok, where he's worked since starting on the river as a guide in 1994. At Alaska West, and for Mike in particular, two things garner a little more importance than others: fly-fishing and horseshoes. The fishing takes place in the sparkling, sapphire blue Kanektok River, which issues from an outlet at Kagati Lake in the Ahklun Mountains and flows west to its terminus in Kuskokwim Bay. Shoes are thrown just about every evening on a long gravel bar that sits across a small river channel from camp. In two trips, I've yet to win a game.

Mike, like our great state, turns 50 this month, and in commemoration of both events, the following represents the first of several interviews Fish Alaska will conduct over the coming year, as we hear from Alaska's angling community about their experiences in the Last Frontier.

FA: What brought you to the Kanektok in the first place?

MS: I used to manage the fishing department at Gary King's, and lodges would ask my staff and I to help them out. I fell in love with the job (guiding) and thought I wanted to own my own gig. Well, after that a friend who already had a guide job on the Kanektok got me in. I promised never to go back. Too hard, too long, too lonely, way too little pay. The next year I was asked to manage the gig. Sick, isn't it?

FA: Are there any ways in which the river differed from your initial expectations or did you know exactly what you were getting into?

MS: Ha! I thought I had been shanghaied. When I got there in May the river was running high and muddy. We had no secured camp location and we camped in Quinhagak right near the airstrip for two weeks, doing nothing on the water at all. Lots of horseshoes. I thought the river was a ditch and the place was a mosquito infested hellhole. That all changed the first hour I got to fish in that ditch.

FA: Do you have any major fishing influences?

MS: My dad used to fish corn and worms on a fly rod (with an automatic reel) in the White River area of Arizona. I thought it was cool that he got to wade in the water. I did not see him after I was 10 so he was a kid's idol, and he fished on family vacations, which meant that fishing was something I have always looked upon too fondly.

In Alaska, Alan Reiter, who used to work with me at Gary King's,Êhelped me meet the big rainbows ofÊthe Kenai. George Cook and Raz Reid taught me to cast worth a shit. While at Alaska West I have also been lucky enough to spend timeÊwith some of the best anglers in the world, and I have even befriended gurus like Dec Hogan, Michael White, and Charles St. Pierre. I have satÊon the riverbank and shared quality time with Flip Pallot, and of course, Alaska West guide Ed Ward is someone I'm proud to include in my list of super-good friends.

FA: What keeps you out there year after year?

MS: A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do . . .

Anyone who's been to the Kanektok knows that river and those fish getÊinto your blood. And it's fun to spend time with other addicts. My wife calls it Boy Scout camp.

Of course, I know I'm lucky, and I plan to realize it firsthand until I am forced to do something else.

FA: How has Alaska, and the Kanektok area in particular, changed since you've been there, for better or worse?

MS: I am about one month younger than dirt, so things have changed mega in Alaska since I've been here. I think most things on the Kanektok have changed for the better, though. In the mid-1990s I was part of a multi-partisan effort (lodge owners andÊlocal Native community) thatÊgot ADF&G to adopt single-hook, artificial-onlyÊand catch-and-release regulations for 'bows, even though empirical data (ADF&G's Golden Rule) did not support such measures. Also, in the late 90s Alaska West struck a pretty unique business partnership with the local village corporation, which proves the trust between locals and outsiders that had been nonexistent in the 80s has improved to unimagined heights. Bitter enemies thenÊare now business partners and friends.

The fishery is better than it was in the 80s, less pressure and less harvesting, especially for native species. The Kanektok is still crowded by, say, Arolik standards, but where else is there wheeled plane access to one of the most prolific fisheries in the world that is not crowded? Now we also have satellite TV, phones, internet and wheeled vehicles to haul freight in camp. In 1994 we had only battery power, no phone, a wheelbarrow for freightÊand had to hand pump all of our water.

More caribou are now calving on the north side of the Ahklun Mountains, which may be why we are seeing a lot more bears and wolves than we used to.

Lastly, and much more sadly, my great friend Ham Cleveland has passed on, and I miss him.

FA: Where do you see the fishery in the next fifty years? How about fly-fishing in the state in general?

MS: Alaska is changing a lot, maybe not for the better, but it is changing. For one thing, people do not have to work so hard toÊeek out a livingÊin the harshness that used to be Alaska, or anywhere else in the world for that matter,Êso I think man has more time to branch out and care about things that he just didn't have so much time to consider in the past. Man has a lot of time to stick his nose into a lot more places than he used to. He is finding ore and trying to mine it for selfish gainÊwhile others are trying to shut all the mines down for personal gain.ÊHe is enjoying a rich wild resource of fish and game and looking for ways to protect critters from the cruelty inflicted on them by fisherman, hunters and plunderers in general. Right or wrong man has time to involve himself in things that he feelsÊare important to himself, and in my humble opinion, as more of Alaska comes under man's influence, the more it changes. Where those changes will take us is left for an imagination that is bigger and broader than mine. I see my kids change by the second and I do not like it very much most times. Knowing I can not stop "progress,"ÊI try to suck in as much of today as I can . . . before it changes again.

FA: Happy Birthday, Mike.