New Year Fishes

It's horribly cliche' to use my blog to look back and/or to peek ahead on Dec. 31, but I'm going to do it anyway. I find it fun to think a little about the cool places I've gotten to explore and about where I might get to venture next.

Best I can figure from a quick sweep of the map, I got to fish about 14 states, plus one foreign country last year. South end of the spectrum easily was Costa Rica. Northern end was a close call between Devils Lake North Dakota and a couple of trips in Northern Minnesota. If the the species list I kept is complete, I caught 30 different species of fish.

My children often ask my favorite part of a movie, meal or family outing, so I've been trying to pick out a favorite fishing trip or day from last year. I don't think I can do it, though. I sure enjoyed discovering the Black Hills for the first time and pulling a host of fish species through the ice on rugged and beautiful mountain lakes, but how do I compare that with exploring the spectacular Vermilion River by canoe with Billy Rosner and catching big, mean smallmouth bass on topwater lures? And then there were the monkeys and toucans in Costa Rica, the day of pounding big bream and bass catching with Nathaniel on Jimmy Houston's lake, days of doubling and tripling on redfish in South Louisiana and then feasting on Cajun cooking...

Looking ahead, the planned trip I'm most looking forward to at this moment is to Gaston's Resort on the White River in Arkansas. It's an annual writers' gathering that Nathaniel and I  have participated in a few times but have had to miss for the past couple of years. Great fishing and food, time with friends and the destinations itself all combine to make it a great trip. Of course, I'm also really looking for a multi-species trip to Pennsylvania's Pymatuning Lake for many of the same reasons.

But then again, when I look at some of last year's favorite trips, I didn't know most would even happen a year ago. I really don't know what states I'll be fishing in, who I'll be with, what species I'll be targeting or what types of techniques I'll be using in the year ahead. That's a big part of the fun, though. I enjoy fishing for bluegills one trip and for something big from the ocean the next trip, and I love the variety of landscapes, cultures and fishing techniques I get to discover and people I get to meet in different places.

Pack Bags, Shop Trucks, Write Fish Stories

Chunky smallmouth bass are the main attraction in the Vermilion River in Northern Minnesota. Photo courtesy of Bill Rosner, Wild Country Guide Service.

Today's to-do list seems pretty packed, with trip preparation and an appointment to go look at a truck in South Carolina both complicating the need to make headway on some writing projects.

The day before a trip is usually somewhat broken. Beyond the obvious need to pack, I typically must take care of a host of things like banking, paying bills, making sure stuff is in order at home and making reservations or gathering phone numbers for the trip. Today's list includes a bit of all of the above, plus plans to go look at a Ford Expedition that I had transferred from one Carmax store to another and that arrived yesterday.

The trip that begins tomorrow, which will be my last work trip until late summer, promises to be fun and productive. In fact, I've been anticipating a float down Minnesota's Vermilion River ever since Billy Rosner of Wild Country Guide Service began telling me about his favorite stretch of river a couple of years ago. It's a super scenic stretch of river through the Minnesota Northwoods that is loaded with fat and angry smallmouth bass and northern pike and includes a couple of portages around river-wide waterfalls. We'll also spend on a day fishing Lake Vermilion, which the river feeds and which is also highly scenic, and then I'll travel to Mille Lacs lake for a day of walleye fishing.

Before I can go anywhere, though, I really need to make headway on some fish stories, so I supposed I'd better focus on writing for a while.