Friday Nights

My camera requires a special cable to charge and I lost the thing. Again.

At left, Henry Ford, Edison, Pres. Harding, Firestone, and I believe Sec of Treasure Mellon (not identified in photo but looks like him) from a public domain photo hosted on wikicommons.

The gentlemen are camping and the young men behind appear to be attendants. They're too well dressed to be guides.

I like to camp but I seldom wear a tie or take corrupt politicians with me. Seldom, anyway.

I've one I'm trying to corrupt but the bastard has the nerve to resist my best efforts. Maybe I put a higher value on the a can of PBR in my side-bag.

I hit Mill Creek tonight. The water is up - chest deep - as we've had plenty of rain. This weekend, snow.

Driving home tonight I had a revelation: Friday nights have lost their luster.

Sometime between the cancellation of The Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family on television and now, Friday nights have lost any special appeal.

I say we change this.

We should all just be ordinary trout bums on Friday nights. Some jerky. Crackers on the bank while scoping out the river. A pipe. A fly rod. Good humor.

Especially good humor.

It should be a national celebration where we all go to our local waters, fish for a couple hours, then get a burger from a drive-in (wrapped in wax paper) or a half-slab of ribs from a local shack where they look the other way if you bring a beer from the joint across the street.

Guides should eat free and no one should ask them for advice. We should all just be "guys on the river."

I spent two hours tonight with water too damn cold (39 degrees) for much feeding and left the creek with a smile a mile wide on my face.

I caught two little browns the size of which did not match the size of shiners Toonces bought (20 dozen) for a walleye trip in 2003. [ Toonces, cat who can drive a car from SNL. Yep, now you know how you get the name Toonces on a fourteen hour drive to your fly-out outfitter's base].

The size didn't matter, The fish didn't matter.

It was just fun technical fishing in tight quarters. Fun because I kept out of trees and brush. It's early and I didn't expect too much from my lightly weighted hare's ear flymph. I wasn't in the current casting upstream: a technique which certainly would have changed to fishing outcome.

It was good to get out. I'm in better spirits for it despite frau bear being down with a cold and snow in the forecast for three days this week.

Friday night fishing. I'll do some camping with that a little later on ... but definitely the fishing.

I'm leaving the tie at home.

See you on the water.

Prost.