Rebirth Of A Blog

I said good-by on June 15th, but found I couldn’t stay away. I just missed you guys.

When I did that post I was just finishing the bathroom remodel, summer was settling in, and I guess I was just overwhelmed with the prospect of all the work I had to do around the house. Posting, reading everybody’s blogs, trying to get the work around the house done drove me to a point of breaking. I had to minimize my time and the one thing taking up a big chunk was posting and reading, so I bailed. I’m so ashamed. Kind of like fishing with a fly rod and a night crawler.

In the last three weeks, I’ve managed to get a lot of the work done, granted there is a lot more to do, but I’ve also managed to get in a little fishing too.

Last Tuesday I met my friend Glenn (retired Alameda County Sheriff) at Bear River Reservoir for a day of fishing and catching up. I waited for the hoard from the 4th weekend to go home with the hopes that it wouldn’t be quite so crowded. Turned out it wasn’t too bad. More on that story later.

To bring you up to date on what’s been happening, I should start with Jasper. Since we lost Smudge, Jasper has been sad, lonesome, unhappy, distraught, and a downright grump, so we went to our local animal shelter and got him a sister. Our vet said that if we could get past the initial hissing and spitting and they could bond, everything would be OK. When we got to A-Pals (the shelter), we got Jasper a sister, in fact we got him TWO sisters. Both are Calico with Jasmine being the orange, white, gray that Calico’s usually are. Sophie, on the other hand, is gray with brown markings on her. Why two, you ask? When we picked Jasmine, the other two were gray and I didn’t want another gray cat (Smudge), but (and there always is a but) one of the grays was running around the cage, making a lot of noise, being aggressive and all that, and Sophie was just lying in the back of the cage being quiet. Didn’t feel we should leave her there, so we took her home too. Man, she saw us coming. Got her home and she moved in like she owned the place, but I have to say, except for her little squeak voice, she’s quiet as is Jasmine. Jasper is getting used to them and once they get bigger, we can stop being so vigilant about keeping Jasper from beating the hell out of them. He does weigh around 17 pounds and the girls weigh in at around 3 pounds.

On the fishing front, I have to say I’ve met my first asshole fly fisherman. I ran into this guy up at Red Lake on my first trip up after ice out. He was float tubing and when he got back to shore, I asked him how he did. He had caught a few, so I thought I’d ask if he’d seen the Thinmint. He said he hadn’t so I started to explain what it was. I guess he wasn’t interested because he threw up his hands and walked away as I was explaining what it looked like. Too bad for him. That day I fished Red Lake and caught two Cutthroats, both on Kastmasters. I fished Caples and got nothing.
The next trip up which was the weekend after Memorial Day, I fished Bear River Reservoir because the gate was open and I didn’t have to walk to the dam. I managed 4 Rainbows fishing with a half of a night crawler under a bobber. Then a week later my neighbor Roy and I hit Red Lake for one Cutt (gold Kastmaster) and Caples for one Brown (silver Kastmaster). Power Bait is just not producing anything at any of the three lakes.

Back to fishing with Glenn. While we were talking, he mentioned that he only followed two blogs. One from the guys he’s been fishing with forever and mine. He said he finally figured out how to comment on a blog and now I had quit. Bounced me out of my stupor and got me thinking about doing Northern California Trout again. Of course, all of you had some influence on my decision too.

So, here’s my deal, I will post as I fish or if there is something important I think you might want to hear about. I will keep up with as much of what you write as I can and the rest of the time, I’ll probably be splitting wood, cutting down trees, raking pine needles, or whatever else needs to be done around here and God knows there’s a lot.

I’ve also removed the shopping places since you already know about them and I removed the follower’s gadget because it doesn’t work anyhow.

I hope you’ll come back and read what I write and if you feel so inclined, put a comment on the post, if for no other reason, than to let me know you’ve stopped by.

Thanks in advance.

Mark aka Shoreman