Redemption
Ah, another year in the books. This one will be notable for many things, but I’m hear to talk about the fishing, the blog and blog/fishing related happenings.
I started off the year early on with a trip to Abaco with my we-don’t-talk-politics friend Aaron. We stayed at Abaco Lodge for a couple days and then went in search of our own luck. The fishing was of the highly enjoyable kind, even if it got noticeably harder once we left the lodge behind.
The second part of the trip, the DIY part, is something that would be illegal in 2017 with the new regulations. We rented a skiff and used it to get to and from the flats. There are no guides where we were fishing who have their own skiffs, so those waters just won’t get touched going forward.
My most memorable fish of 2016 came from this DIY portion of the trip.
From there I got a trip with the family to Maui where I failed to connect to a Hawaiian O’io, yet again.
The summer was full or promise, as summers tend to be, but the fishing didn’t really happen too much. I did get one trip up with friends to my home waters, but didn’t make it back. Probably the least freshwater fishing I’ve done in a year since I started fly fishing in 1996.
That was looking like all I’d get in 2016, beside a few locally caught stripers in the Bay.
At the very tail end of the year I got a surprise work trip to New Orleans (my fifth of the year) and decided this was the trip I was going to stick a Louisiana Redfish. It happened, with guide Capt. Ron Ratliff. Fun times.
And that pretty much is a wrap for 2016. What an odd year it has been.
The year was also just funky with all the Bahamas stuff going on. To fight hard against a slew of bad ideas only to see it slide by on an inside political fix, and knowing it will do so much damage to the Bahamas… well… it has kind of sucked. The Bahamas has been a really special place for me and now, I’m not sure where I am with it.
Next up… a preview of 2017.
