Tag Archives: Grandpa

I don’t think there’s a more highly anticipated day in our fishing season than the bass Opener, though this year it nearly didn’t happen. The plan was to hit the North Shore in hopes of catching the early stages of the steelhead run, but, like any event in nature, it’s a fickle phenomena that depends on a dizzying number of variables that even the best of anglers still don’t quite understand. The fish hadn’t yet entered the rivers, so we ended up calling off the trip with no small amount of anguish. It was a bittersweet decision, but it meant that we got to hit the lake for bass Opener, which isn’t exactly a horrible consequence if you ask me. I learned long ago to not form any serious expectations around fishing trips. Having a well-formed plan and high expectations (not to be confused with optimism, which is an entirely different…

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One spring evening before the weeds were too high or the mosquitos too thick Grandpa, Braden, and I set out to fish a creek that had rumors of holding big brown trout. It was one of those creeks where the fishing was good, but the catching was a bit of a different story. We had fished it in the past a few times, but never very hard, and hadn’t caught much. Actually, we never really caught anything. It was a kind of pseudo spring creek, gushing from some seeps way up in the headwaters, but lacking the typical spring creek character of dense watercress, sputtering rifles, and emerald-blue water. It ran a little on the warm side for trout streams – sometimes warmer than it really should in the summer months. There weren’t many trout prowling its waters, but it was somewhat close and provided a quick evening of scenic…

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