Paternity Leave

It's been a hectic few weeks around here, which really should come as no surprise given recent developments.  My fishing still outpaces my blogging--but not by much.  And both have taken a back seat to home and work obligations.  I've logged a handful of days on the water over the past couple weeks, but I'm significantly behind last year's pace.

With my family in town over the past couple weeks to visit the little munchkin we all managed a quick roadtrip and scored a few days on the river.  Although I generally hate "look at all the big fish I caught" posts, the fishing was on and the pictures are piling up.

Sometimes the side channels are more productive.

One of many cookie cutter Dollies.

Sockeye!

It doesn't get much better than watching Dad tied into a good one.

Here's your ad placement.

Rainbows are starting to move up.

One of the better Dolly Varden.

Underrated.

As a new grandmother, it took quite a bit of convincing to get my mom to leave Mason and go fishing, even for just a few hours.  But for the brief time she held a fly rod, she put on one hell of a clinic.

Sockeye!

About the time she realized it was a really big fish.

Toad!

How you doing?

The release.

Karta is not a small dog.

At a safe distance.

High sticking the switch rod.

A new Fishing Partner

I've never been much of a planner.  Back when The Wife and I were just married, my inability to consider "the future" was a regular annoyance--and the source of nearly any squabble we ever had.  It was, and sometimes still is, inconceivable to her that I could be so utterly unconcerned with the details to come.  One illustration of this is in our approach to kids:

The Wife: "When do you want to start trying to have kids?"

Me: "I don't know.  Someday."

The Wife: "I think in a few years, once we finish school and have decent jobs, it'd be nice to start trying.  Don't you?"

My: "I don't know.  I always figured I'd just wake up someday ready to be a father."

Needless to say, my nonchalant attitude toward such life-altering events didn't always go over so well.  However, in my defense, it's not that I don't care about what might be, it's that I'd rather focus on the big picture and take the details as they come.  Kids?  Yes.  When?  Details, shmetails.

So, true to form, about nine months ago I woke up ready to be a dad and, because I have an incredibly understanding and patient wife, a week ago today The Wife gave birth to our loving son.

Mason, our new fishing partner.

While I could wax poetic about the miracle of birth and how amazing it is to be a father, which it most certainly is, I'm most excited about all the fun adventures and life experiences we have yet to see.

So, without a moment to spare, The Wife and I took advantage of yesterday's nice weather and took our little munchkin out for his first fishing trip.

The Wife and Mason.

Grandma Jan, aunt Ash and cousin Grace also came along for the ride.  With Mason only six days old and Grace celebrating her six-month birthday, we were quite the sight on the river.

Drift boat or nursery?

Karta usually sticks by whoever is catching the most . . .

My first rainbow on the new Winston BIIIx and Bauer MacKenzie CFX.

Bringing in a nice Dolly.

Grace, showing her excitement for the fish.

Black bears always seem small compared to their brown kin.

One thing about taking kiddos out in the boat is that you can't just pack up and head home if things aren't going too well.  Sure, you can push on down the river, but once you launch you're committed through to the pull-out.  However, the calm, rocking motion of the boat and lapping sounds of the river helped Mason snooze through most of the trip and Grace seemed happy to spend her day laughing at the funny looking guy on the oars.

This day wasn't as much about fishing as it was about being on the river with family.  Of course, that doesn't mean we didn't catch a few nice fish.

Grandma Jan, roped into a lunker on her first day fly fishing.

Mr. Mason too busy snoozing to be disturbed.

A nice Dolly and Karta with the assist.

A successful catch and release.

And here's to many more adventures with Mason!

Fishing with Emerson

If you haven't noticed from a prior post or from the Cast of Characters, things are about to get real interesting around here.  So, with just under 3 weeks left before our due date and me still the most likely candidate in the family to poop their pants, The Wife and I headed down to visit our good friends, Adam and Amanda, and their three boys, the youngest of which is not yet three months old.

After a night spent catching up and grilling moose steaks, Adam and his middle son, Emerson, joined us for a day on the water.

Adam and Emerson admiring the day's first fish.

The Wife, perfecting her Alaska guide pose.

It got hard to tell who was more excited over each fish, Karta or Emerson.

Ready with the net.

Another nice dolly

Since unpredictable weather, long days on the water and three-year-olds can be a tricky combination, none of us really knew what to expect.  After all, once you launch the boat you're committed--you can't just pack up and head home because you slipped on the wet rocks and got your Batman underoos wet.

But, as was characteristic of the entire trip, Emerson was a trooper.  At one point, his awesome Spider-man hat fell off into the river and started drifting away.  After a frantic few minutes on the oars and some quick work with the net, Adam hauled the soaking-wet hat back on board.  Of course, since Emerson can fish with the best of them he had Adam put the still-dripping hat straight back on his head without letting it dry.  After all, real fishermen wear a hat.

Slinging beads

Evan, Sam and I got out on Sunday--and the fishing was incredible.  We had a ton of doubles and a few instances where all three of us were hooked up.  I'll take fishing like that any day.

Kelly and Russ come to visit, Part 3

One of the great things about fishing is getting to explore new places.  There's something quite exciting about setting out for a spot on a map unsure of what might lie ahead.  Even if the trip's a bust, it's still pretty cool.  And, when your planning and execution combine with a little luck, it's possible to end up with a truly exceptional trip, which is exactly what happened here.

Still relatively new to the area and unfamiliar with many of the local floats, I had been eying a route that required putting in on a lake, traveling roughly 1.5 miles across the lake to the outlet, then floating an additional 11 miles downstream to the next easily-accessible take out.  It's a fairly popular route, but since the lake is rather large and frequently has unpredictable weather that can wreck havoc on small boats, most people run this stretch with a motor and either a skiff or drift boat.

Of course, we had a small raft.  And no motor.

We set out for the lake on Wednesday morning of last week with the wind howling in the wrong direction and visible whitecaps.  Our plan in the event of foul weather like this was to walk the raft along the lake shore to the outlet.  It seemed very doable even though I'd never heard of anyone else doing anything like this.  With such an awesome stretch of river right nearby and only a mile and a half of lake between road and river, there only seemed two possible reasons why the legions of motorless floaters don't bother doing this stretch: (1) we were severely underestimating things, or (2) the world is full of morons.  I was banking on option two.

After an uneventful 45 minute slog along the lake shore, which certainly wasn't difficult, we found ourselves at the outlet.  After a little experimentation with the beads we were fishing, it was on:

Russ landed multiple nice dollies and several big rainbow early on.  He also managed hooking the first of many pink on the trip:

After landing a long spawned-out Chinook that fought more like an anchor than a salmon, Russ followed it up with something even better and a bit fresher.

We were floating down a long nondescript run--the sort that most of the motored boats were simply powering through on their way to the next obvious hole--when Russ hooked into something huge that instantly corked his rod and ripped into his backing.  For the next half hour or so, I gave the oars a workout trying to slow our progress downriver as the fish alternately ran upstream and held in place.  Rowing back and forth between the river banks, I attempted to keep the passing powerboats away from Russ' line, which at this point still extended far into his backing.  I won't venture a guess as to how much backing was in the river, but it was well past the point where reasonable people expect to land the fish.

Eventually, Russ got the upper hand and got the fish within view, exposing a huge Chinook.  After beaching the raft at the head of an island, Russ kept up the fight and worked the fish toward shore:

Moving a fish into shallow water is always exciting and presents many opportunities for failure.  You generally only get one try with a fish like this:

After reveling in the moment for a while and listening to Russ whine about how sore his arm was, it was back to the raft and on downstream.  Sensing her title was at stake, The Wife almost immediately stepped up her game and got into what probably was our best rainbow of the trip, a certifiable toad:

Over the course of the day, we all caught fish.  Rainbows, dollies and pink out the wazoo, two Chinook and even a whitefish.  Everyone hooked lip and, as the day progressed, the weather only got better.

After taking a day off from fishing, we (sans The Wife because, for once, my job was better than hers) were back on it Friday.  This time, the weather was beautiful and I was able to get in on the action a bit more:

Russ, back where he landed the large Chinook the day before:

However, Kelly probably had the best day on the water, grabbing onto one of the largest coho I've ever seen in person:

As the final day for Russ and Kelly fishing up here wound down, Kelly had yet to hook into a truly large rainbow.  She had hooked into a few and had mentioned wanting a large rainbow a couple times, but things just hadn't worked out.  Then, within sight of the take out:

When it was all said and done, we managed to get some damn good fishing in and had a great time with Russ and Kelly.  There's something magical about a large fish pulling on your line, and its all the better when you have good friends cheering you on.  Oh, and only a moron would let 1.5 miles of lake get between them and great fishing.