Friday, April 28, 2017

The Keys


Sunset Over Little Torch Key

A trip to the Florida Keys has been several years in the making. This Spring, Katie and I decided to finally head south for three days of visiting friends, sight seeing, birding, and fishing. Having been away from saltwater flats for so long, my only goal was to get a shot at a bonefish or permit at some point on the trip. A shot. With a shortened window of time, no skiff, and no guide my hopes were a little ambitious but it actually ended up happening. Several other cool moments did too. Our short taste of the Keys left us with a burning desire to head back and explore even more...

Monday, April 24, 2017

Evolution


Homewater

We are all products of our environment. We've spent 20 years walking through the fertile Keystone waterways of our home while only recently picking our feet up and into some fishing-specific kayaks. The accessibility they allowed was intoxicating, but their limitations quickly became apparent. They didn't quite hit the mark.

Monday, April 10, 2017

The Opener


The trout openers of my youth are a lot different than the most recent first days of fishing I've experienced. When I was little, my father, brother, and I would stop by the local bait shop to pick up some mealy worms, night crawlers, and two dozen minnows in eager anticipation of the first or second Saturday in April. We'd often arrive early, but not early enough, to compete with hordes of other anglers intent on taking home their limits of freshly stocked rainbows, browns, and brook trout. I can state for a fact that I had no idea what a "wild" trout was. All I knew was that there was fish in the water and I could take them home with me in a bucket or on a stringer. Most often, I felt guilty about keeping a trout and we kept the fish alive in a bucket until it slowly asphyxiated to death. I look back on those moments of childhood horror as one of the main reasons why I have caught and released almost every fish I've caught since. Anyway, as I transitioned into the sport of fly fishing in my early teenage years, opening day was just another day of trout fishing. I came to seemingly look down upon stocked fish (although I catch them all the time) and now anticipate wild places and the stream born fish that reside in them. Over the past few years, I have looked forward to the NY opener and it has officially replaced those eves of my childhood with something similar yet different at the same time.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Sojourn


Washing away the daily grind...

The middle of March has two faces, Winter and Spring. This manifested itself in the latter half of the month when I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and flip flops. A few days later, I was shoveling 12+ inches of snow and enjoying the benefits of a day off of work. These climatic variations show themselves on fishing trips too. March finds the angler layering and delayering clothes in order to stay warm and cool on the water.  Despite this, March is a great month for fly fishermen and women as its usually when the fishing starts to get good, the bugs start to hatch, and the fish begin to rise. Katie and I planned a short weekend trip to take advantage of the good weather but it ended up being even shorter than planned. It wasn't due to a poor fishing and/or camping experience but due to the constraints of work and school. The day and half on the water proved to be a stress reliever that we both needed in order to head back into the real world and the daily grind of adulting.