Living here sucks!

March has been a very busy month and it feels good. My inner groove has enjoyed every single one of this stupid weather patterns gifts, the weather has been honest to goodness tremendous. The other end of this weather teeter totter is the suffering we may go through this summer, but like I said, the skinny monk that I am is gonna enjoy stuff in the moment, day to day style.

The float season is on the porch and ready! The Fork has been mighty nice to me this month, midgezilla, BWO's, rizzers (as Imbach would say), and visibility...no bitchin, no lie. Hell I've even avoided the crowds somehow. It helps to take Saturdays off to spend around the dojo with Kitty and "chain saw" (sam), but it seems I've picked the least busiest stretch for 3 weeks now. I know its early and I'm sure everyone is saving up the grenades but I'm actually getting smiles and real data from locals. Minding my own business tryin to rip lips with Trip last Sunday I started playing hop scotch with a 2 man local jam, magnum March beards, camo and all. Truth be told they were havin a better day to my good one. I'll be clear as I can and promise you, I never asked. About the time I made it to Killers Island ( whitey hole ) they had to tell me anyways. With the oddly perplexed look of 2 dudes just givin a late St Paddys day blessing they shrugged and said.......streamers. It was cloudy, precipitating  and shitty but the water temp never got over 40. I admit,  I agreed with their looks, it shouldn't have worked and the manuals say so. Damned to the last half of a good trip rowing around with my head in the sand, we chucked single black buggers on a 5wt with a sinking leader and got it done with the our new best buddies. I felt like I owed them a tug off the bottle of Makers or worse, my tip. Beatis is about all the rest, of this delicious mess I care to fess up on.

Trip from the hip on the Fork. That one made a bobber move.

The Eagle has been OK. Not much to talk about if you know what I mean, I'd wash the car or pound that shipment of girl scout cookies instead. It still has nothing to do with purple, matter of fact gray, brown, yellow and olive anything, definitely will just get snagged on the bottom only to be lost forever. Don't get smaller, lighter or longer and avoid shallow fast water at all cost. Green is good, brown is bad and Pats dead till that water boils up for real, right around the time I expect the egg shipment. On a happier note the ghost ship is ready and I'm just 50 cfs away from a 2 man bump and run. Sometimes it really sucks living here, especially when the weathers like June.

For the 3 clients I have, 1 of which I hope reads this, please consider making your trip to my neck of the woods a touch early this year. If you love the boat ride down that pin ball game hucking drys' I'd have a BBQ at home for July 4th  and come in June this year, maybe early June. The snow gods have not been kind but Mothers day caddis from the Bus sounds like fun to me.

A special shout out to the readers of Chi Wulff for their kind words and for nominating my net as one of the "greatest innovations in fly fishing". Humbled and broke, thank you.

Way to hack up a good memory

Got to chatting with Jmac the other day about teaching people how to hold fish for a picture. I dug around and found a few examples of how not to.

Classic pose by most dudes from south of the Mason Dixon line. Least his stubby fingers were not in the gills.

The full hand cover.

 The Hug.

The Stiff Arm. Damn you have giant hands and short arms, BTW you need a manicure.

The squat.

The Drops.








Ultimately it's on me to show peeps how to hold a fish. I show em once and if they botch it the rest of the day they can be bummed when I send them the pics. Handling fish is the main reason we hurt fish and when there are other dudes on the river I'm just not going to leave fish in the net for an hour.

Be very careful wearing stupid glasses while there is a camera around