"Why don't you come back this evening around 7 and we can go out and see if we can fool a few fish. Tell your folks that I will bring you home after we get done fishing but it may be after dark."

I was at Joe's place at least a half hour early just to make certain that he didn't leave without me. Joe was waiting on the porch when I walked up.

Charles Kuralt's "On the Road", a major feature of the CBS Evening News in the 1960's, in his book by the same title said…

"In the USA, the further west I travel, the weaker the coffee becomes!"

Charles Kuralt, really appreciated a properly brewed cup of coffee, and so do I. 

I don't know the actual numbers, but I'll bet the number of pick-up trucks in Livingston Montana has to be higher than nearly anywhere else, or at least it seems so. And, in the back usually is at least one dog. Sometimes more, but a person's worth in the west is figured on things which may not be the same where you live.

Find a Louisiana oyster reef and you will find redfish, flounder and speckled trout prowling the shell beds for crabs and shrimp. Flies must be fished on the beds slowly. Oyster beds are remarkably destructive and dragging a conventional fly over the razor sharp edges will result in a hang up or the fly will be quickly shredded. Flies must be durable and must ride hook-up on retrieve.

In French we have a saying, "Cordonnier mal chaussé". Or A Shoemaker with worn out shoes!

When I'm out with friends and visitors, I make it a point of looking after the gear. I usually tie up new leaders, clean the lines and check all the knots beforehand. During the day I'll constantly check and re-check lines, flies and knots.

It was a day to get out. I had spent the morning trying to get the tiller to run again, and I definitely will have to get a new coil. It took time to find that out.

One of the bamboo rods I have had one of the ferrules come loose. I took time to glue that back together. That meant it could travel to the pond with me. I had two rods, the vest and the fish basket to take in, and I also had a pair of forceps in my pocket. I really like them for removing hooks from fish.

It was one of those days. Every time I turned around there was something that needed to be done. Could not get my tiller started so hand dug the raised bed and got some greens planted. Had a friend come over and spend a few hours trying to help me get the tiller going. We finally figured out that the coil must be bad.

Orthodoxy - the practice of observing established social customs and definitions of appropriateness.

Recently the Ladyfisher was fussing and fuming about something that she saw on the Internet. It was a fishing website [which shall remain unnamed] where someone was demonstrating how to fly cast.

Some time back, Tom Travis did a great article about PMD's, including a plethora of great patterns. One of those patterns was a well-dressed example of an early flymph pattern that I really liked. His version was dressed on a turned down eye hook with a couple turns of hackle wound behind the eye.

I'm all alone out on the lake at 5am in the morning. There's barely enough light for me to see the ends of my oars. I have forgotten to lubricate the oar locks again so there is a barely audible squeak from the left oar as I slowly head out for the south shore. I stop to fish around in the bottom of the tackle box for the sewing machine oil. I know that if I ignore that oar it's going to bug the hell out of me till I fix it.

Now going fishing is nothing new to me. In one form or another I have been trying to catch fish since I was barely out of short pants, which now nearly equals 3 score and 10. However, as I approach the first trip of the season there is always more than a little anticipation. Even though I have lived in Montana for almost 40 years and all the major streams are open to year around fishing there are a few months each year when I do not fish. Now that I spend the winter months in Arizona those few months have increased to at least 6 months each year.

It's mid-July and it finally appears that the streams in Montana and the surround states have finally begun to drop. While there is still lots of snow in most of the mountainous areas most of it has turned to ice which melts slower than fluffy snow. Although the streams are now mostly back within their banks and the worst of the high water is behind us everything remains high and in most cases off color, if not downright dirty.

The little rod danced in his hands as he yelled over his shoulder to me that he had one on! With his right hip turned in to support the rod he hunched over the reel with the intensity of a pro as the fish fought for the depths of the pool. An epic battle ensued, and then suddenly it was there - the flash of yellow-gold and the markings of a brown trout of 10 inches displayed itself for us to see.