Well, I finally got out fishing again. The summer was brutally hot here in Superior and my wife and I "got out of dodge" as much as we could. Northern California was our first stop, and while there, we met Marc Merrill and his wife Paula in St. Helena for a very pleasant evening of conversation and dining. Oh, I think there might have been a glass of wine or two involved. I met Marc a couple of years ago while fishing in the middle of Nevada. Marc has fished just about everywhere and knows the ins and outs of them all. As we parted, Paula gave us her latest CD (she's in a jazz singing trio), and Marc gave me a hat from New Zealand and a bottle of his homemade lemoncello. Good friends!
We also spent a week with my aunt Edna Olmstead on the shores of Lake Tahoe, where I tried stand up paddle boarding for the first time. I have some distant cousins that live on the Nevada side of Stateline up the Kingsbury Grade, and their son Jay Shelley was visiting, so it was great to catch up with him, and meet his significant other, Peggy. I must digress here to tell you a bit of their story.
Jay is a helicopter pilot, and his work has taken him all over the world. He worked in Alaska for a while, where he met Peggy, but now he is working in Africa on a 6 weeks on/6weeks off rotation. He travels a lot! Peggy is a teacher in Anchorage, so their time together is very precious. When he is off, he comes back to the US to his motorhome or Anchorage and visits family or just goes out to play. Being from Lake Tahoe, he has skied quite a bit and still does. Mountain bikes and paddle boards choke his motorhome. I'm hoping to get Jay and Peggy on a river trip with me sometime.
I did a river trip on the Yampa/Green River (Colorado/Utah) in July and was gone for about 10 or 11 days. Spectacular trip! Then Loril (that's my wife) and I went to Hawaii for about a week in early September. We went for a family wedding so it was not the big adventure it might have been. But we did swim in the ocean, helped throw a party, and witnessed the union of two great people.
Okay, on to the San Juan. Jeff Martin and I arrived the evening of September 25 and set up camp. We fished all day the 26th and were met be Kimball Pomeroy late in the day. I had to leave to pick up Bill Elk at about 8:00pm at the Durango-La Plata County Airport, about an hour away. Yes, they have commercial air service and car rentals on site. Late in the week, Rick Allen joined us. After the San Juan, Rick went on to the Gunnison River. I have not heard how he did.
It rained quite a bit while we were there, so Bill and Kim stayed at Abe's, while Jeff and I, and later Rick, roughed it at Cottonwood Campground. I cooked breakfast and dinner for us all at camp.
The fishing is never as good as you would like, but we all caught fish on rods that I built. I'm proud of that, to say the least. Most of the fishing success was using subsurface flies with indicators (the standard San Juan rig), but we did manage to hunt down some good risers and pick them off using tiny adult midge patterns. What we all noticed this trip was the large number of small fish in the river. It seemed like for every 5 fish we caught, 3 or 4 of them were small. I asked the guy behind the counter at Abe's about it and he told me that the river had recently been stocked. I hope they grow!
Next trip should be soon, up to the rim country lakes or even Silver Creek, or possibly a White Mountain lake. Stay tuned, or better yet, come along!