Fine Dining on the Arkansas

I'm normally a catch and release fisherman, but we decided to hang on to a few keepers during one day of our Arkansas River outing. A simple fillet, a little batter, an 18" cast iron skillet, an open fire, and you just don't get any better Colorado eatin'. Add a little Jack D. and we were in high plains heaven.

Name That Bird

Audience participation time. I found this distinctive feather just outside the front door this morning. It's about 6 inches long. Can you identify the bird that it came from?

The New Bluebirds

Day 1 - June 10th
This little guy couldn't have been more than a couple hours old and was awaiting the arrival of his four siblings. Mom had already cleared out the broken egg shell pieces and the proud parents have been all over the bluebird box today.

Fox Den - Part 2

We set up the creekside blind with the best of intentions. We figured we’d drop it in, leave it empty over the long Memorial Day weekend so mom and the kits could get used to it, and by Tuesday we could settle in and get some great pictures of the red fox litter as they came and went. So we dropped the blind on Thursday and Juan and I headed out of town.

I went south to play in a soccer tournament in Charleston and Juan went west to photograph waterfalls near Brevard. I returned home with my leg in a cast and Juan returned to a s**t storm at work. The sad facts are that the blind went empty for a couple of weeks, the kits grew up, moved on, and we got no pictures.

Pink Woollies

A pink woolly bugger. I can’t believe I’m throwing a pink woolly bugger. And it’s not just pink. It’s HOT pink…with red sparkle ribbing…and crystal flashing in the tail. Someone shrank a child’s fairy princess costume down to fit a size 8 hook and I’m trying to fool a fish with it. Pink. Perhaps I should go add some nice accent lace to my waders and trade in my floppy fishing hat for a glittery tiara. Heaven help me, I’m throwing a pink woolly bugger.

Stir Crazy

I tell ya, I'm going freakin' stir crazy. Looking out the door at the beautiful weather, nice local water conditions, just me and the dog and my John Deere green cast. I'm simply going bonkers.

Since I can't fish, I can play with my gear. My fly boxes are rearranged, my leaders are in order, my wading gear is neatly folded, my rods, reels, and lines are cleaned. I even blew up my float tube to see if it survived the winter. And I definitely need to get away from the TV and the computer. The Tyra Banks Show? Shoot me now!!! And you should see the Cabela's online whishlist I've accumulated. It's probably on a par with what this little ankle owwie will cost me in medical bills.

Night Bassin'

I can hear, and feel, the fish take to the air less than twenty yards in front of me, but I can’t see him. It’s simply too dark. I want to reach up and flip on my headlamp but the largemouth just won’t stop jumping and I need a hand on both rod and spinning reel to try to keep him on the line. And it’s a legitimate concern too, as with each aerial and shake I can distinctly hear the jointed jitterbug rattle in his mouth, a warning signal that my hookset is tenuous.

Sure enough, on the third or fourth furious launch, my line goes slack, the rod recoils, the 'bug lands somewhere near my feet, and the bass is gone, sight unseen, despite all his flamboyant acrobatics. All goes silent and, when my heart stops hammering, I realize that the frogs have started their moonlight songs once again.

No Fishing

Who knew I even had something called a distal fibula? It turns out that I actually have two and today I've learned a lot about them. The most important thing I've learned about distal fibulae is that they hurt like a sonofabitch when you fracture them.

The odds finally caught up with me. After 25 years of playing competitive soccer without significant injury, I fractured my left ankle at a tournament in Charleston, SC. As I lay on the lowcountry pitch, my first thought was "I’m done for the season". My second, "This really screws up fishing."

Fox Den - Part 1

Red fox kit, or bigfoot... You decide.

It all started about a week ago while my neighbor Abby was in the shower. Through a face full of shampoo, she glanced out the window of her upstairs bathroom and noticed the shape of a dog moving along the woods line. A quick rinse later, she saw more clearly what appeared to be a female fox, a red, sulking along the wooded boarder with a guinea hen in her mouth. Abby jumped from the shower and moved, dripping wet, from window to window along the upstairs, following the fox as it moved down the ridge and into the woods towards our home. The puddles could wait.

In her excitement, Abby called to her husband Juan downstairs. “There’s a fox out there, with a guinea in his mouth.” Juan, a nature photographer who would jump at such news, did what all husbands do and misunderstood what she was saying. “There’s a hawk with a guinea out there” he wondered. I don’t think so. With a dutiful “That’s cool, dear”, he returned to what he was doing.

A couple of days later, Abby mentioned the sighting again and Juan uttered the following fateful words. “Fox? What fox? Why didn’t you tell me there was a fox?” During the course of our married lives, I'm sure we've all had the resulting conversation.

New Fishing Buddy

Today I had the pleasure of fishing with a new buddy, Ken, with whom I connected via the Southeast Fly Fishing Forum (despite the fact that he lives but a few short miles from me). Ken is a veteran western trout fisherman who’s casting is graceful and wonderfully accurate, all the more impressive considering he was using an unfamiliar rod and throwing brick-like 1/0 bass flies instead of his usual diminutive #20 olive duns. I envy that proficiency and I suspect that 95% of the time, he’ll be schooling me, big time. But today we were on my turf, chasing largemouths in the Haw, so I was the guide. Scary.