Steelhead fishing, again?

Oh, it's so nice not to hear that kind of talk again. John Geirach said best when he wrote "Over the years, ex wives and city folks with no poetry in their souls have largely dropped out of my life so now there is no more eye-rolling to deal with, it's just fishing season, the most natural thing in the world."

So maybe the quote isn't word for word, but it's close enough. Learned so much from Jim Kerr last weekend that I paid him to take me fishing Saturday. Managed to land three nice bucks and spent some more time learning to cast the two-hander. Got to fish with Tomass and Greg, the mustacioed one on Sunday. Not as many steelhead landed, but it sure turned out to be a beautiful day. Less than two weeks to the desert with Carewski and The Rod.

Bonzai!

Watching old video of trip up into the Andes. Who is that guy?
Change is a comin', by gawd.

Snowshoes and Steelhead

What a weekend! Friday I got to take ten kids from school with Kyle from the Y to Mt. Baker for some snowshoeing and playing around in the snow. We had a blast! Sunny and warm, especially for January, what a fun bunch of kids, and Kyle was stellar as usual. How do you follow that up? Steelhead fishing on the OP. I have gone about as far as my limited flyfishing skills and bag of tricks can go, when it comes to catching steelhead on flies. So I took a workshop from Jim Kerr, in Forks. The guy knows his stuff. Learned a ton, and had my first chance at casting a two-handed rod. No fish caught, but I have a lot more ammo for using the fly rod on the steel. Followed that up by Sunday bobberfest with Tomass and buddy Greg Hart. We all managed to catch fish, topped by Greg's double-digit native buck. What a weekend!

The Good kind of Surprise

Well,
The weather people were wrong again. The weather was pretty damn nice the last two days. Bailed on the Peninsula trip because of the rains earlier in the week. Hit the upper Skagit instead. No steelhead but was able to get a couple of dollies to do barrel rolls on the end of the line. Damn camera wouldn't work, though. I think I broke it New Year's fishing.

Too Much of a Good Thing

I do love the rain. It seems like it's the only time the air smells good around here anymore. But Forks just had over 4 inches in 24 hours. So much for 3 days of fishing.

So what to do? House projects? That would be the responsible thing. Fish a lake? That would get the fishing jones. Go cross country skiing? That would be the healthy thing to do, especially since the desert climbing trip is only a month away and I'm about as buff right now as a bowl of jello. Time to dust off the skis. Time to hit the weights. Wait, that sounds familiar... Try to get in some cleaning up around here done, too. The fishing will have to wait. Hopefully next weekend.

Damn it, I knew I should have gone for it last weekend. Something about it being better to regret what you've done than regret what you didn't do. Ya, ya, ya.

Gotta find a new book, too. That Custer and Crazy Horse Book definitely rekindled some old fire.