The Photo Bin - October 2013

I've been up to my ears in pictures, these past couple of days, putting together a slideshow to present to my buddies at this month's gathering of our local Trout Unlimited chapter. I've enjoyed a particulary fun and varied fishing year, so far, and hoped to rub their noses in it entertain the membership with some colorful images and a few mostly-true stories.

The pitch was organized chronologically and needed some transition images to move things along from month to month. Being the digital graphics wizard that I am, I used what I know best.

Yellow stickies.

The results were fun, I think. Dark Sharpie® scribbles on faded Post-its®, slapped randomly on various items lying here about the office. Start to finish, an hour well spent.

So since the fall colors have been a real bust, here 'bouts, I forfeit this month's bin and fill it instead with these colorful little vignettes, these dated keyhole peeks into my surroundings.

I hope you don't mind.

Ambition

If redbreasts grew to be five pounds, I wouldn't go near the water.

When bass fishin' around here I throw big flies, big poppers, #2 at a minimum, so the bluegills and sunnies can't get ahold of them. But it doesn't stop them from trying. Blip. Blip. Blip. It's maddening.

And with all due respect to my buddy Cameron, The Year of the Bluegill? Really? More like Year of the Creek Cockroach. Pond pestilence. River vermin. Stealers of flies from the mouths of real fish.

That having been said, you do have to admire their ambition.

Spring Tide

The sun and the moon aligned, but, sadly, the stars did not.

This week’s spring tide - the exaggerated tidal ebbs and flows caused when sun and moon fall in line and compound gravitational forces - pushed waters higher into some of our favorite grass flats than they'd been all year. We waded those tufted edges, along seldom-submerged wildlife trails, chased clattering crabs in all directions, and hoped for some solid chances at tailing reds.

It wasn’t to be.

The one good fish we saw slipped away as Troy and I stubbornly politely insisted that the other take the first shot. We were idiots, though well intentioned, and a subsequent opportunity never materialized.

But a weekday spent walkin’ shin-deep salt waters, even with a pre-dawn start, beats the bejeezus out of one spent doing most anything else, fish or no, so there’s no complaining here.

We just need to work on them stars.

And our manners.