I rarely go two weeks without a blog post, let alone almost three, but when I do, I receive messages through my contact button making sure I’m ok. I also get emails encouraging me not to quit writing my blog. I appreciate the concerns. I can assure all of you I’m fine and the blog has no end in sight, however I do plan to shorten them for my local fishing days. I still like taking photos for a purpose and I’ve learned to enjoy writing the old blog. It’s absolutely incredible that I can go back and read about every day of fishing I’ve had (except for two) backtracking all the way to October 20, 2009. Mind boggling that I can see all these days – where I was, what I caught and who I was with. Unreal!
I really haven’t been fishing. I’ve been resting my body. I’m not gonna lie about that. Especially my right shoulder. 14 straight days in the salt put a beating on me. I also had excruciating travel coming home. I won’t get into it but to give you an idea, our 26-hour boat ride from St. Brandon’s Atoll was the fun part. I arrived back to Port Louis, Mauritius to begin my flights home only to learn they had been cancelled. Long story short, I got home two days late and caught the crud which took two weeks to get rid of.
Since home, I’ve only been on the water twice. Once was May 2nd. That was to test out my 3.5 HP Mercury motor. My 1989 model died last fall and a new friend that lives down the street fixed it for me. It works like a charm again! Yea, we made a few casts also, but no fish. I did however catch my first turtle of the year. Summers coming!
Granny and I couldn’t wait to get the motor in action so we went fishing for just a couple hours on May 8. It was one of the few nice days we’ve experienced since I got home but we got completely skunked. We were only about ten days from ice out and the water was cold. Not an excuse.
I have been painting fish more than anything. May is when I work on commissions and a few customers have been patiently waiting. I painted the golden mahseer you see me working on in the first paragraph. This is for my friend Lance Tomar and the fish came out so well I now offer golden mahseer on all of my products. Then there’s this brook trout for Jason Mallory. This is a life size, 23” Labrador brook trout from McKenzie River Lodge. There’s about 40 hours in this one and I am thrilled with how it came out.
Then there’s one other event. Confluence Films, whom I worked with in the past for the movie Connect and Waypoints, sent Chris Patterson to start a film project we are working on for next winters Fly Fishing Film Tours. The film will be about me catching my 500th species on the fly. They asked me to choose one species to target back in January and I’ve picked the Wels Catfish. While we did four days of preliminary filming right here in Hayward last week, the actuall fishing takes place in France. We’ll be south of Lyon on the Doubs and also Saône rivers June 20-27. We don’t have a movie if I don’t catch the fish. And yes, the Wels will be a very difficult one for the fly. The pressure will be on! This photo is my friend Tanner tying me some huge catfish flies for the trip at Three Fly Sisters Bar.
That’s about all for now. Time to go fishing!