Now is the time for hope, its spring, well not officially, but according to my calculations it is spring. There is no snow anywhere, its raining, and today I capture five pink fry while sampling invertebrates for a class. Five humpy fry and only two caddis flies by the way. Things are looking up, I think the run is two weeks early, I guess I could check some numbers or something, take average temperatures, average water temps, and all that jazz, calculate some sort of trend line and project it to calculate when the fishing will be good this year, in fact I’m pretty sure I’m suppose to be writing a paper on the subject for ecology right now. Of course the only thing I know about weather, is that it never does anything like its suppose to. Its even sometimes spiteful, like I’m sure they are gonna close the ski area and we are gonna get like 4 feet of snow, just out of spite. But I’ll maybe be optimistic its gonna be the best spring of fishing EVER, I’m gonna get into some steelhead and some cutts and finish all my classes and graduate, and have a great job, and meet a great woman, and go on a great trip to the lower 48 and catch a lot of great fish, drink some great beer, and on and on.

I don’t know if these things will happen, in fact there’s only one thing I know that will happen for sure, and that is that something will happen, and I’ll just have to hope that its good, and if its not I’ll just have to roll with it or die, and a bad life is better than that alternative, that’s for sure.

Well the super bowl is over, its 45° outside, no snow on the ground and I’m staying up all night in a vain attempt to get my sleep schedule back to something like a normal human being’s. You know go to bed at say midnight and get up, oh I don’t know at like nine or ten. Maybe its my bodies way of saying, “Patrick you should work the night shift.” Anyway its already February 8 and I haven’t had the February twitch yet, where I just want to go fishing and catch something so bad I compulsively check weir counts just too see if the first humpy fry has left the lake yet (now that I’m thinking about it I suppose I’ll do that now… nope the weir wasn’t even in till march last year). I figured it would be really bad this year, what with being alone and all. I think that mild weather over Christmas allowing me to fish four times really helped, plus there’s the whole building rods and tying flies thing. I’m not ready to fish yet, I’ve got so much to do. I’ve got to order some new gear, tie a new batch of steelhead flies, and a bunch of little stuff for the lower 48, like size 20 blue winged olives. I need some tungsten head pheasant tail nymphs in all sizes, like a few dozen of them, then of course some stone fly nymphs, oo and some grayling flies, I’m gonna do more grayling fishing this year, go to Fairbanks again, see my friends. So far I have a box of wooly buggers (I could use 2 dozen more I think) 5 size 18 parachute adams, some huge intruders to swing for kings this July and tonight I tied 3 stimulators for hopper fishing in Montana next september. That reminds me, I need to pick up some number 10 hooks for green drakes, aka the only hatch in Alaska that fish remember. I also have some mice that need to get finished, and more big nymphs to serve as split shot in lower 48 fly only waters. My flesh box is in shambles, I only have one egg sucking leech and I didn’t even tie it, and my zonkers are rusty. Yeah I’ve got a lot of tying to do.

As far as rods go, I need a 9 weight, especially if I’m gonna be working a certain river this year, that a 7 weight just won’t pull fish out of trees from. I also need a 13.5 foot 7/8 weight or something for the clearwater next fall. I’m almost finished with a cheap little two weight that will be a fun rod for grayling, and if I’m ever in Juneau during the summer. Of course I need a bunch of new lines, a 750 grain skagit for my 14 foot 10 weight, a new running line for my setup, my 5wt and 7wt lines are about due for replacement and my 9 wt line is like 4 or 5 seasons old. I need some rod tubes too. Ooo and fly boxes, mine are all rusty and they aren’t waterproof.

This of course brings me to where I’m gonna get the money for all of this? Well I suppose I should make some more mugs and sell them, my grand plan is to spend a weekend and throw 100 pounds of clay, make 75 mugs, and decorate them all with salmon and trout and bass and stuff, then sell them to someone for $25 each and then have like $1500 to buy rods and stuff with, of course each mug takes a half an hour at a minimum so I’m looking a like 40 hours of work just on mugs to pay for all this, which on top of actual work and school is a tall order.

I guess the bottom line is that I’m keeping busy, and that eases the pain, but still I want to be in a t-shirt drinking a cold beverage in an anchored chunk of aluminum, after watching trout fight for a big mouse pattern like right now damnit!

Until then, I guess I’ll just have to roll with it