The Best Laid Plans

Just a quick update. I've been running behind reading all your posts, but be assured, I have caught up.

Yesterday my plan was to run down to Sacramento, renew my river parking pass, and attack the elusive Steelhead with fly rod and nymphs. I've been reading up on Steelhead fishing and found out that there are other ways to fish them other than to swing wet flies, which was how I was taught. They are, after all, a Rainbow Trout. That's what I get for listening to certain "guides".

Here is how it went. Left home at 0730 with an hour of driving time to get to the Parks & Recreation to get the new river parking pass. Stopped by LaBou for a coffee and raisin custard croissant (I had to go out to their website to find out how to spell that) and then to the P&R office. Got there at 0830 and found the door locked. The don't open until 1000. CRAP. With an hour and a half to kill, I drove to the Gristmill access and paid $5.00 (wouldn't have had to if they had been open and I'd gotten my pass [$50.00] renewed). Since I was short on time, all I did was grab my spinning rod and a box of lures and walked up and down the gravel bar. Not how I had it planned and on top of that, they won't let up park on the bar any longer. I guess to many people got stuck.

At 1000 I went back to the P&R office, renewed my pass and since I had chores to do at home, headed that way. My original plan was to get the pass, fish for a couple of hours with fly rod, and nymphs, then head home to do chores. The best laid plans, you know the story.

One of the chores was to clean the wood stove flue. It'd been 3 weeks and since I burn a lot of soft wood, I have to faithfully clean it every 3 weeks (don't need a flue fire), yesterday was the day. For the last two weeks (you've read the posts) I've had 6 inches of snow on the roof. Can't clean the flue with snow on the roof. It's a might slippery. With the warm storm over the weekend, the snow was finally gone, it didn't rain yesterday, and we were expecting rain today, I had a one day window, so it was imperative I get'r'done.

Flue cleaned for another 3 weeks, now I'm free to hit the river again. I've got my parking pass, the latest storm will be gone by this weekend, but since it's my wifes birthday on Sunday, I guess early next week, I'll be back on the river waving a stick.

Thanks everybody for all the great posts. I don't always comment, but I always read them. Thanks for stopping by to read mine, too.

Mark