Biking and fishing

Buddy Mike came up to the river this weekend and did a bunch of tree work for us.

He also gave me super pro advice for dry fly fishing a favorite stretch of the river. I've caught a lot of great fish this year, but they've all been hooked with live bait and a variety of simple spinning doodads The 12" rainbow I caught yesterday was the first time I'd caught a fish with a fly. And it's a great thing. There's a place for all of these methods of fishing. And they're all rewarding in different ways. It's like mountain biking vs road biking vs fat biking or whatever.

Anyway, I'm super excited to apply a few of the dry fly tactics that I learned this weekend next summer. There are a couple things that I like about fly fishing: 1) using dry flies makes different parts of the river accessible in a way that I've had a hard time working with live bait. 2) Even though there's a bit more fuss around rigging up the fly rod, line, and overall setup, once you're out there, it's really straight-forward. Mike is convincing me not to even bother with a net... having less fishing crap hanging off you on the river makes getting around easier and it leaves more pockets for beer... if necessary.

And by tree work, I mean the real deal. The tree on the left had a bunch of scary looking straggly huge branches sort of precariously dangling over the command center. He was about twice as high on the left tree as this photo shows him on the right tree... if you follow.

And in other news. Rocinante, aka Liza's Truck, is mostly dead at the moment. As I pulled up to the river place, it exhibited the signs of coolant in the engine: plumes of steamy funk pouring out the exhaust pipe. After restarting, poking, smelling, listening, and pondering, we're thinking it's a header/gasket issue and not a full on warped and twisted cylinder engine replacement scenario. And by we, I mean Glen and me. He's not committing to anything here, but he and Mike did help talk me down from the ledge of giving up on the poor truck. And really: I just can't. It's too rad. It's not a looker, but Rocinante, which is the name that Liza's dad gave it, is the perfect name for that truck.

Rocinante