Toasty

After talking with Josh a little ago and hearing about his snorkeling adventures on the Umpqua River in Oregon, The Wife and I decided we would pick up a cheap mask a snorkel, pack the fly rods and head up into the mountains for a little river fun.

It's a good thing we brought the mask and snorkel because, much to our surprise, the place we first stopped was full of suckers and didn't appear to have a trout for miles. Coincidentally, it's a good thing we waited to break out the camera because, not at all to my surprise, my farmer's tan is still in record form and has shown negligible improvement. After reassessing the situation and allowing our retinas time to recover from my paleness, we decided to head farther upriver in search of more trout-friendly water temperatures.

We had fished, and caught fish from, this particular stream before. In fact, I posted a few pictures from this small stream before and this was one of the streams I fished with Dad and Josh when the herd was out on their vacation. I'd elaborate on how well Dad and I did on that day, but I would hate to make Josh look bad...

Looking back on our pictures, it appears that I am much better at showing Karta a good day on the river than I am at catching fish.

We found a few small brown trout, but never got into anything with any size--probably should have gone even farther upstream.

The Wife putting on a clinic:

Karta taking it all in:

Driving home after once again reaffirming the fact that trout are smarter than we give them credit for, we got a pretty good view of the wildfire smoke from up near Cody and Yellowstone.