Now, the big thing that’s happening is the whole “getting married” bit. I’m pretty excited about that. How’s the whole daughter-fiance thing going, you ask? Well…
Last night my 5 year old told me to go down stairs and tie flies so that she could do bath alone with my fiance.
Yeah. It is going well.
So, I went down and tied a #8 with a weed guard. For me, that means one thing… Belize. More specifically, El Pescador, where we’ll be spending our honeymoon.
Soon.
Scott Heywood recently took a family trip to Crooked Island and it looks like a very good time was had. Scott put all this down in his blog Fly Paper.
Yeah, that looks nice.
Even looks like they got good weather.
As these things tend to go, there were more non-fishing pictures than there were fishing pictures in his post of the trip, which is really to be expected. It is good to see we anglers are learning the art of compromise.
I’m in a weird position in having to plan for Spring Break 2013 now, 9 months before we actually get to go anywhere.
This is going to be the trip I take my girl to see the Caribbean. She’ll be 6 then and I can’t wait.
There is some compromise going into this. The grandparents are coming and I think my mom was less than thrilled with the idea of being on a small Caribbean island with absolutely nothing to do. Of course, there are few places I’d rather be than small Caribbean islands with absolutely nothing to do. So, I had to get to something like middle ground. It has people and it has nothing, just on different ends of the island. Grand Bahama is where we’ll be headed.
In action in Grand Bahama
What this means is I have TWO trips on the books… the first a honeymoon (one day of fishing) and a family trip for Spring Break (I’m hoping there is a day of fishing in there).
Always good to have something to look forward to.
While coming up with interesting new potential office locations for the little startup I work at, I came across a listing for Savannah Caye.
OK, I was kind of goofing off for a minute or two and I came across a listing for Savannah Caye… as in, Savannah Caye, Belize.
I know this place. I fished there with my friend Shane when we were down at El Pescador in 2010. It has a 16 mile long tarpon flat full of big fish when the migratory tarpon are in. It’s expansive and fairly productive. I botched my first tarpon there and landed my biggest Jack.
I can’t believe someone can buy it. It makes me wonder if someone really should be able to.
The price is $3.5M and it makes me sad that someone could easily scoop the thing up and build something stupid there. They could dredge a channel, put in a fake beach and generally screw it up.
Damn.
Anyone want to go in with me to buy this thing? I could easily gather up $200-$300. We could set is aside from development. The world has enough fancy resorts, but it has all too few places like Savannah Caye.
Anyone?
Savannah Caye Jack
Here in the States Larry Ellison just bought most of Lani… $500-$600M. Dear god.
Matt, aka the Fly Fishing Poet, got down to Florida to go throw in the salt for the first time. I haven’t made it down to the Keys since I was 10 (I loved in then… wanted to be a treasure hunter as a kid, which I know makes no sense as a mountain bound Californian).
A damn fine read. Here’s a taste…
Islamorada, I’m here and everything about you is foreign to me. Timeless retro hotel and diner and marina signs. Languid, saronged women in their generous brown skin and strong, salty women in their salty brown skin. Bar-top sweat-rings telling stories between drinks. Backcountry islands hovering on the teal horizon.
Check out the full story here (and it is worth it).
Go time.
PS – Matt has a story in Pulp Fly, which you should totally buy (for Kindle and anything that can handle Kindle books, like iPads).
I totally ripped this off his facebook page. What a fine, fine picture this is. Eduardo prowls the waters of South Florida with Biscayne Bay being in his back yard.
I really need to get out there.
Great Picture.
Photo by Alex.
I actually saw this via The Trout Underground. Tosh Brown is a pretty stellar guy by all accounts. He was recently down at Andros South, a place close to my heart. The weather didn’t play nicely with the crew down there, but the photos are simply wonderful and they do, in fact, feature bonefish, so, it wasn’t a total failure.
Well, from the perspective of six blokes fishing Andros Island between May 20-25, 2012, that’s a big honkin’ load of crap. We saw the sunset on three different evenings and woke each of the following mornings to rain coming down in sheets. Thankfully, bonefish still show up quite nicely over white sand on cloudy days, and Andros has neither a shortage of white sand or bonefish.
A grey day in Andros
One of the fun things about my last couple trips has been fishing with people really at the start of bonefishing. Back in Andros, it was with Rebecca Garlock and in Cuba it was with Charlie Levine. Now, they were both coming from different places. Rebecca has been fishing the long rod for a while now, but hadn’t really done anything in the salt. Charlie has spent a good number of days in the salt, but mostly in the deep, dark blue stuff with conventional tackle. There were some parallels with the two experiences though. Basically, both were kind of hard on themselves. They felt the pressure to make it all come together. Of course, it all works better when you slow down and, of course, they both got it to happen.
Here’s Charlie’s story over at BDOutdoors.
Stoked in Cuba
After fishing the McCloud for a full day we stopped by the Upper Sac in Dunsmuir to assess the river. It was high, but not tooooo high and, in the fading light of dusk, the sky was full of stone flies. These weren’t the little dark stones of winter or the bright little Yellow Sallies, these were the big boys, the Pteronarcys Californica, the Giant Stonefly. I quickly put on a big, massive foam stonefly and had a few grabs before the light faded. I knew we had to get to dinner anyway.
My folks bought dinner for Matt Hansen and I and then Matt bought a few more beers afterwards (on the drive back I got word that my divorce was finalized, so, we were celebrating), all at the Dunsmuir Brewery Works, which I like because it is open late and, well, its a frigging brewery. What’s not to like? Matt liked the Pale Ale, I dug on the Porter and we both had enough that we had some sore noggins in the morning.
After I made some Mother’s Day breakfast we set off for the river. The river was indeed high, but Matt started off the party with a little bow followed by a nicer one. The Upper Sac in high water is not unfishable unless the water is off-color. High water just means the fish are out of the riffles and sitting on the seams in the more protected and slightly deeper water. You find those places, you find fish and we found fish, although the number of places we had to fish was greatly reduced.
Matt at Prospect
The Upper Sac is a wonderful river. It has about 40 miles to fish and has access to just about every single bit of it. Railroad tracks and the highway see to that. Because of the access and the tracks and the highway, it doesn’t maybe get the respect that more remote locations get. It’s too easy to get there.
If you are fishing the Big Hole, odds are you either drove there or flew there and it took a long time. It took the opening of wallets and dedication of time. To get to the Upper Sac you just drive up the highway… 4 hours from San Francisco.
Kinda purdy out here.
Still… it is beautiful, even in high water when the fishing is compressed and you can’t get in and wade around the place like you can in mid July.
We hiked up to Mossbrea Falls and then decided to head back South. It was a good day on beautiful water. The fish were there, but largely stayed hidden in the bigger water, despite those massive, impossibly large awkward flying stones that passed by like slow moving hummingbirds. Had a couple grabs on the big bug, but the fish were largely elusive. We had a few fish to hand, but nothing big and not too many. Such is the fickle river. Maybe she was a little upset that I waited until May to visit her. She’s open all year now and must have noted that I fished Cuba before I fished the Upper Sac in 2012. Sorry honey.
Mossbrea Falls… part of it, anyway.
A great trip. The McCloud, the Upper Sac… my rivers. I miss them and I look forward to seeing them again.
Yeah, well, I was out with an old college buddy last night, so instead of something thoughtful, you get a YouTube vid. Good news is that no fish appear to be wildly mishandled in this one. Some dramatic music for some pretty relaxing times.
