Unlimited Almost a TR thread

[yard4sale]

That might be the coolest DSFK yet.

Half the reports here are better than any of my TRs, especially this one.

[upshitscreek]

Edit: not my hood. might want to take that map shot out. I found it in about 2 seconds.

I should have said it's not a hotspot.

More misleading, really. There's no relation to this trip other than the state. I just saw it while looking over maps, laughed at it, swatted down a skeeter and took a blurry pic of it.

But you are right. Never fished it but maybe it's a good creek and someone else's wilderness honey hole.

[upshitscreek]

That might be the coolest DSFK yet.
.

It definitely had me wondering what the story behind it was.

[FormerlyChaseChrome]

[report]

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Unpacking the salt...I don't like Monday sunburned Shmitch

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[/report]

[austrotard]

https://www.fix.com/blog/clear-snow-saf ... your-home/

[Bruiser]

[report]
News Flash: it snowed a lot in the West this year. The USGS Streamflow map is all Black and Blue. I've been working and my real estate to cash ratio has stayed high enough to keep me close to home, hacking out as much weird local fishing as possible. Still skiing a lot behind other folks. We love to pose for photos also.

Saturday I had to haul a trailer north so tacked on a day of fishing Sunday. I've got to take my chances when I can, even though it looked like a marginal chance with cold pre runoff water. Texts were exchanged with a dormant Drakian (remember the guy that lived in Costa Rica? He is a very cool dude) and we decided to meet at a remote access in another state to see if we could find another spot for Pike in the river. I know that these fish are all over the place in Canada and stuff, but down here in the desert they are exotic. I've mentioned it before here but it took me ten years to start to get a hint with these fish in this river. Yesterday we figured we'd drive a long way to blind cast into cold brown water without much of a chance of seeing any fish. The drive was long, I turned right at the weed store and drove forever down a dirt road.

My plan was to wet wade (April through October for the desert rivers) but thankfully scrounged up some waders and some ski socks. It was cold. The You Know What was going upstream like the proverbial bargain hooker. The banks were acres of deep mud. J got there about thirty minutes after his buddy and I had met and started fishing - and finding pike. It's always worth the exploration, but it's nice to catch a few. J and I were maybe starting to worry a little that his buddy wouldn't stick one and he'd driven 3X as far that morning. And just like that...

I left a little early to drive to our home state and over the third bridge of the day to check one more spot. First time I've ever caught Pike in two states in one day.

Banner Day



Texted my wife between spots - asked her about an ETA that was maybe 3 hours late - she sent me the OK

I drove home in my waders with a smile. It was a good day. This made it even better:

[/report]

[kish]

I'd say that's way more than almost. To just see a bobcat, let alone have it pose for you? Damn!

[Stovetop]

That's pretty fuckin' cool Bruiser!

Bird season is starting around here.

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[fatman]

That's pretty fuckin' cool Bruiser!

Bird season is starting around here.20170416_121214_HDR~2.jpg20170416_141648~2.jpg

[Bobwhite]

ASB

[Obie]

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I realized in Rolla I'd made nearly the same trip almost fifteen years ago with my father and brother. My dad's cousin, the one who taught him to hunt and fish, invited us for a long weekend chasing smallmouth and squirrels. Beer. Fireworks. We never made it because my father chose to ford the main river instead of the smaller tributary, burying in midstream what may have been the world's only five-speed 1994 Plymouth Voyager minivan. At fifteen I was handed a clunky cellphone and dispatched in the bed of a stranger's red Ranger to find Shannon County's One-Armed Tow Truck Driver while dad and my eleven year old brother fished and swam with our obese chocolate lab. A year before my father's surgery, two years before his death from complications. He wasn't an asshole, just more easily understood in hindsight.

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I wanted to visit a month ago but it was closed, and in the meantime twelve inches of rain and twenty feet of water have reshaped the entire system. It was hot and I loafed and snorkeled until the evening, catching a couple sunfish and one smallmouth well after dark.

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I took night classes at the SOBF school of photography.

At 10:30 the stars were out and fireflies were flashing in the trees along the bluffs. At 2:30 it was muggy and mosquitoes were eating my face, gnats in my ears. Somewhere around 4:30 it had clouded over, with lightning flickering in the distance, so I hauled everything up the gravel bar behind a willow that'd been arced in the flood to create something like a roof. I stayed up.

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The fishing sucked even after it got nice out, I caught a couple over-eager longear and some dink smallmouth in the rain. At the access there were nineteen cars in a space built for ten- not so much parked, as stopped when and where the owner had lost interest in driving. “Loved to death” is an appellation commonly applied to this place, one of the most protected streams in the country making it one of the most protected streams on the planet. Sometimes the problem isn't a dam or a mine or a shopping mall, it's us. I cracked a beer and asked around for the owner of the White Ford that boxed me in, and scouted for another more desolate access without luck.

Another day, hopefully.

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[B.M. Barrelcooker]

Man. That was good.