My Last Fishing Report For Dale

[Ken G]

Hopefully he runs the whole thing. His response when I sent it to him... I don't know what to say.

____

End of an Era

Got out Saturday morning. Checked the radar before I left. Massive storms to the north going all the way up and into Minnesota and starting barely two miles from my house, but radar showed that it should stay to the north. All suited up out on the creek and the radar was wrong. Wound up sitting in the car till 8 AM waiting out the rain and lightning. I wanted to fish a creek.

I shouldn't have bothered. The creeks were up a bit, muddy and I got my first skunking of the year.

Saturday at 10 PM I checked the river gauge. With all the rain they got up north, the Fox had been coming up all day and was running at 1880 cfs. Sunday 5 AM I checked the gauge again, running at 2330 cfs and it was still going up. I hesitated about going out. I've never done well when the river was rising, but there was a nearby creek that might be my savior.

6 AM, no one around, taking my time suiting up. Another angler shows up. He's more hurried. Grabs his fly rod and plants himself where I wanted to start. 2-3 false casts and he finally puts the darn fly in the water. Repeat, repeat, repeat. So much wasted effort and energy for such a simple task.

I drive to another spot. It failed me.

I go back, he's still standing in the same spot false casting his arm off. We're at 1.5 hours now. I head up the creek and go 4/7 on smallies in a short stretch. I go back to the river again. He moved about 20 feet and was now casting in the fastest water possible that I wouldn't even bother with.

Screw this. I wade out to about 100 feet downstream from him and fish the big current seam and slack water I wanted to do 2.5 hours ago. Takes 15 minutes to cover what I want and prove to myself there's no fish in there today. Beating the water won't change the results.

Stopped to talk to an old guy with dogs all sitting on a bench just a few feet from the river. Nice conversation. He tells me in over an hour the guy hasn't moved and he hasn't caught a thing. 

Yeah, I figured that, 2.5 hours and I knew he wouldn't. Some things you just know.

And this, Sir Dale, will be the last fishing report I send you. I know you've heard that a couple of times over the last couple of years. This is the culmination of a year's worth of eliminating fishing related things from my schedule. In the last year I've turned down a dozen guiding jobs, two river fishing classes, two fishing club speaking engagements, three radio show invites, Sam Bennett's thing, the kid fishing volunteer work I do and an invite to be on the Board of Directors of Friends of the Fox River. I'm simply done with it all.

I've joked with you that I've become like a self-hunting dog. Self-fishing in this case.

Friends will attest to the fact that I rarely agree to meet up and fish with anyone. What if I change my mind at the last minute? What if we get to the agreed upon spot and I don't like how it looks? What if, instead of turning right to go meet up, I decide to turn left to go somewhere better? That's how I make my decisions now and agreeing to meet up with someone seems so foreign to me. That's just the way it is.

So, after somewhere around 13 years of giving you these fishing reports, I'm done. Thanks for the opportunity to do them and it was fun to see how far I could push things at times and you'd still publish them. My blog will still be up and running and the forum I've had up for five years now will still be around. What little I plan on doing will all be going on those two venues. And I still plan on leaving my snarky commentary on your blog now and then. It's too much fun to pass up.

And no, not even my dad's guilt-tripping comment of "How come you're not in the paper this week?" will change my mind this time.

Ken G

[Special Ed]

Your insight will be missed.

I think fishing with other people is overrated too. Unless it's on a boat or is really just a gathering with fishing included, most fishing excursions are more enjoyable solo.

Glad you're not deciding to fall off the face of the planet either. I won't hesitate to call you next time I decide to wade a stretch. After all, fishing a section after you've already been through there is pointless.

[heysambennett]

That's a shame. I always liked the point/counter-point nature of our reports side by side.

But I dig it. Keep on writing somewhere. About fishing or not.

-SB

[Ken G]

I have so much in my head I want to write, but then I get side tracked by... not much of anything.

The guys I fish with, well, when I do, are all here on this site. That's enough.

Try doing what I did every week for 13 or 14 years. Plus I had two or three stories a month in Outdoor Notebook for almost 5 years running. And on and on. It wears on you. Sometimes you just want to go fish and not think of it as something that might be interesting to anyone else.

I just hope other guys get stuff to Dale on a regular basis... SAAAMMMM. Disappointing my dad's weekly reading routine and seeing a possible blank Fox report is what kept me going for so long. But it's time to move on to who the hell knows what.

[Special Ed]

You should take up rod building.

[Ken G]

You should take up rod building.

You build the rods, I'll finesse the killer topwater lures I came up with a dozen years ago, tested successfully and never did anything with.

We need a sugar momma to bank roll the start up.

[heysambennett]

Well, I'm out of town for a month to do some editing and to chase big stripers in skinny creeks. Stripers. Not strippers. They prefer the main rivers around here.

So I'll get back to it once I can. The Fox may go blank for a week or two, but I plan to keep on writing once I have something to say.

-SB

[Norm Minas]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smp5gZDpSw0

[Ken G]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smp5gZDpSw0

That and Grateful Dead, eh?

Cool graphics, reminds me of how I used to paint.

[heysambennett]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40TD4v0jCAc