President's Journal January 2006
Sunday, 01 January 2006, 11:18 p.m. CST
Winter is upon us, but we don't have to yield to its icy grasp. We'll think our way through it. Close your eyes, relax, and think warm, tropical thoughts. Feel the sun beat down on your face and shoulders. Wiggle your toes in the white sand. Breathe in and smell the clean salty ocean air. Relaaaax...
OK, now imagine holding a 10-wt flyrod with a SCREAMING reel attached, tethering you to a powerful beast of a fish who has just sucked down your sand-eel imitation, and is going to spend the next 3-and-a-half seconds stripping 200 yards of line and backing off your reel, after which he's going to try to pull the rod out of your hands! Got your blood flowing yet?
Dave Matsumora visited Christmas Island last year, and for our January meeting, he is going to transport us, via photos and stories, to that island wonderland. Don't miss it.
I've never ice fished, and I am pretty sure that one day in the future, ice fishing will be medically categorized as a form of seasonal dementia, treatable with narcotics (or at least beer), and/or intense sunlight therapy, otherwise known as the "snowbird remedy."
I have, however, fished in the snow, and it's not necessarily too bad. With neoprene, gore-tex and fleece, everything but the extremities can stay pretty cozy. Once, driving my '65 Barracuda from California to Lincoln, I went over Medicine Bow Pass in the Snowy Range, on Memorial Day, May 31. The road had been open about a week, and there were still 12-foot banks of snow enclosing the road. Lake Marie, right at the pass, had just iced out on one side -- there was an open patch of water maybe 60 feet across. A person could slog through the snow to the bank, wade into the lake, cast your midge emerger onto the ice, then slowly drag it off the ice into the water, and cruising trout would sip it down. They didn't fight very hard, and bringing them to hand, they were pathetic creatures, with shriveled bellies that made their heads look 3 sizes too big -- concentration camp fish. I quit fishing pretty quickly, for fear of killing these weakened fish. After all, if they made it through that nasty 8-month winter at 11,000 feet, they deserved better than to be killed just as the bug pantry was about to be re-stocked for another season.
There was one other car in the parking lot, a guy from Laramie who strapped on a pair of skis then side-stepped up the slope for 45 minutes, took a breather, and skied down for about 45 seconds, only to turn around and start side-stepping back up to do it again. Later on we met at the cars, and I remarked that it looked like fun, but I wondered if it was worth the effort climbing up that slope -- he smiled and asked me if the lake was cold (it sure was, right through my waders and fleece!) and then asked, was catching a few fish worth it for me? I had to laugh and tell him Yes, it was.
To each of us our own form of personal dementia. Welcome to 2006!
Lee