You may have noticed over the winter that my website has gone through some changes. That’s because my site is so big, it literally outgrew the original format. I was warned back in November that functions were beginning to fail. This is my livelihood, so in a panic, my webmaster, Mark Kuhn and I went to work. We’ve been grinding on this unexpected tedious task all winter, late nights and early mornings, and we still aren’t done.
Toss in the normal work routine of answering emails, maintaining an insane schedule, shopping plane tickets, keeping presentations fresh for shows, the bottom line is this winter I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time staring into the computer screen. Today, despite being way too cold to fly cast, my friend Howie and I navigated ice chunks on Chequamegon Bay on Lake Superior.
Chequamegon Bay, northern WI in general, should at this time be ice fishing and snowmobiling mecca. Open water fishing dreams should be impossible. Instead this is the strangest winter in documented history. There’s been literally no snow and at least three times a week, 50° temperatures or more. What little ice there was has nearly disappeared from the small lakes and the most hardcore of the hardcore, are already trolling Lake Superior for brown trout and splake.
Of course today wasn’t one of the “50° or more” days. Today was a “33° day or less”. After about ten casts not only were your fingers aching, the guides of my new Air 2 Max 7-weight were clogged with ice. But the sun shined high. The north wind fed our lungs a high air quality rating of 11 (nearly unheard of these days) and we muscled through three hours of fishing starting on the Washburn Coal dock and the Bayfield Public docks.
This was only my 4th fishing day of the year and now I already have my first blank. But who cares. It’s not always about the catching. I had a beautiful and scenic drive through the Northwoods from Hayward to Lake Superior and I spent a fun day with one of my best friends. I should mention, Howie brought a 12-pack of Leiny’s and it was too cold for even one – not one!
That’s all for now. Time to get back to work. The last leg of my show speaking tour begins at the Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo in St. Paul, MN Friday. Then it’s a one night gig presenting “Fly Fishing the Lakes of Yellowstone” for the Missouri River Flyfishers in MT, I’ll be the headline speaker in Lethbridge, Alberta for the Chinook Waters Fly Fishing Club Show and finally, for my grand finale, I’ll deliver “The Worlds Best Trout Destinations” in Calgary sponsored by my friends at Fish Tales Fly Shop. In April one heck of a fishing schedule begins!
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