Pops and Bro

My best chance for a decent run at fishing numerous days in a row came this past week. My father and brother came up from Va with the intent to see us and also do some serious fishing. The game plan was to do some puddle jumping on the local small lakes and also hit a couple stretches of the St. Croix. Overall, the puddle jumping was the most successful. Several trips to a local lake produced limits of largemouth bass on hardware. Now, growing up in the south many people consider the LMB a great table fair. In NW, Wisconsin many people have told me that “LMB is like eating a handful of mud”. I honestly can’t tell the difference between a walleye, northern, or a bass.  Maybe it’s due to the fact that the only way I cook fish is to roll them in flour and corn meal then through them into some lava hot oil. Boo yah! that’s the way I like em.

Overall, no giant LMB were caught, but there were plentiful. And, on light tackle and a 6wt they are great fun.

        

The St Croix was not as giving as the local lakes. My hopes were to connect the family with some SMB and Northerns on top water offerings. But, two trips on two different stretches produced few takers. We did however manage to connect with some friendlies.

Northerns were the target for our last day of puddle jumping. Down south the only toothy critter my father and brother have the opportunity to catch  are musky, which are as you know are a less than numerous quarry brought to the boat. So, there is a private lake about two miles from me that has just as much, if not more, northerns than LMB. We were able to connect with numerous hammer-handles and snakes.

Well, all in all a great week of fishing. No ginormous finned quarry was caught, but that is not really the intent when we fish, it is just simply to fish good water well.

Till next time, stay thirsty my friends.

Guiding/playing in Colorado

From June 12th-July 8th I spent some time in Colorado guiding for trout out of white water rafts and drift boats on the Gunnison. We had intended (the girls and I) to only spend a maximum of 10 days in Co, but my outfitter was short a couple of guides and he had a couple busy weeks coming up. So, after the ten days was up for the girls I threw them on a plane and I ended up staying an extra two weeks. Out of that two-week period I ended up guiding a total of 10 days. It’s sometimes disheartening when I can do 10 days guiding work and make more than what I make in a month of teaching, but that’s a whole other can of worms that I don’t need to open up! So, since I have been back a few days (two weeks) and I have forgotten chronologically what happened over the trip here is just a series of pics that maybe in order, or not, I don’t really care. All in all it was a really good time. And, besides spending time with my girls and friends in Co the thing I enjoyed the most was not the trout, it was getting my hands on the oars and rowing some technical water again. I believe for now my old fetish for trout has died out. Sure, it was really nice to catch some nice browns and one really slick-looking rainbow, but while doing some personal fishing, sometimes I caught myself pretending that the fly I just placed on this bank was chalked full of muskies and other sorts of fish-eating monsters! Well here some fish porn if your into that sort of thing, I am!