Welcome! I realized I have done a terrible job of keeping in touch with family and friends to the extent that I should. Hopefully this will turn into a spot where you can see what we have been up to with a heavy focus on the outdoors and travel. A sad excuse compared to a phone call or coming out to visit you but I'll start with this baby step.
This first post covers about 8 months of fishing and many, many hours of futility. Thanks to Kat for her patience with my most recent addiction and my apologies to Oak for ignoring hunting this year. In the spring I decided it would be a good life goal to have one year where I caught at least one of the five different salmon that return to Washington. Last year was my first year of fishing and I had only caught a couple coho salmon to date. It felt like the definition of a stretch goal. That it came together in my first year was a huge surprise. It only took me 29 years to come up with such an ambitious life goal and now I have to go back to the drawing board...
Sockeye Salmon - Traveled to eastern Washington for a guided trip on the Columbia with my trainees. The major motivation was to get them their first salmon ever because I have failed them so badly as a guide. The trip was a success and we headed home with 10 sockeye between us!
First Kayak Salmon - We went camping with Prof Orange and family to try sockeye fishing on Baker Lake. This was the first salmon I caught in a kayak and the months of back pain from this trip was totally worth it. It also might be the most beautiful place to fish, even if you never catch anything.
Pink Salmon - The smallest of the salmon only come back to Washington in odd number years but they come back in monster numbers. Unfortunately, almost all of them weren't interested in anything I was offering. It was humbling to see thousands of fish jumping in a single morning and walk away with a single fish. We did catch a few more this summer on the Snohomish which is our closest river. Sorry I didn't get a good picture of that first fish, he is covered in sand...
Steelhead - A steelhead wasn't in the original plans because I thought that might make things too challenging. However, I caught this guy while fishing with coworkers for king salmon so it counts now! This was one of the rivers local to our Grays Harbor biodiesel plant.
King Salmon - This big guy was caught on another one of the rivers local to our Grays Harbor biodiesel plant while fishing with coworkers. They are protected on the river so he had to stay in the water but it was awesome to feel the power of a 15ish pound fish.
Coho Salmon - To date I have pulled salmon from four different rivers in the Grays Harbor area this year and it makes the work trips much more exciting. These coho came from my favorite river which seems to always provide an elk herd that watches and evaluates your techniques.
Chum Salmon - The final fish!! Its a sad name for such a beautiful salmon. The first couple of these guys that I hooked into ripped my line up and down the river so fast that I wasn't able to keep up and eventually lost them. I came back the next day and I finally landed this Grays Harbor fish. She swam off with no idea why she had made my year.
If you made it all the way here your perseverance is impressive. The goal is to provide shorter, more frequent updates moving forward. The blog may die because I am kinda lazy but if I hear that folks are enjoying it that will help provide some extra motivation. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and that you have an awesome holiday!!
Dan
This first post covers about 8 months of fishing and many, many hours of futility. Thanks to Kat for her patience with my most recent addiction and my apologies to Oak for ignoring hunting this year. In the spring I decided it would be a good life goal to have one year where I caught at least one of the five different salmon that return to Washington. Last year was my first year of fishing and I had only caught a couple coho salmon to date. It felt like the definition of a stretch goal. That it came together in my first year was a huge surprise. It only took me 29 years to come up with such an ambitious life goal and now I have to go back to the drawing board...
Sockeye Salmon - Traveled to eastern Washington for a guided trip on the Columbia with my trainees. The major motivation was to get them their first salmon ever because I have failed them so badly as a guide. The trip was a success and we headed home with 10 sockeye between us!
First Kayak Salmon - We went camping with Prof Orange and family to try sockeye fishing on Baker Lake. This was the first salmon I caught in a kayak and the months of back pain from this trip was totally worth it. It also might be the most beautiful place to fish, even if you never catch anything.
Pink Salmon - The smallest of the salmon only come back to Washington in odd number years but they come back in monster numbers. Unfortunately, almost all of them weren't interested in anything I was offering. It was humbling to see thousands of fish jumping in a single morning and walk away with a single fish. We did catch a few more this summer on the Snohomish which is our closest river. Sorry I didn't get a good picture of that first fish, he is covered in sand...
Steelhead - A steelhead wasn't in the original plans because I thought that might make things too challenging. However, I caught this guy while fishing with coworkers for king salmon so it counts now! This was one of the rivers local to our Grays Harbor biodiesel plant.
King Salmon - This big guy was caught on another one of the rivers local to our Grays Harbor biodiesel plant while fishing with coworkers. They are protected on the river so he had to stay in the water but it was awesome to feel the power of a 15ish pound fish.
Coho Salmon - To date I have pulled salmon from four different rivers in the Grays Harbor area this year and it makes the work trips much more exciting. These coho came from my favorite river which seems to always provide an elk herd that watches and evaluates your techniques.
Chum Salmon - The final fish!! Its a sad name for such a beautiful salmon. The first couple of these guys that I hooked into ripped my line up and down the river so fast that I wasn't able to keep up and eventually lost them. I came back the next day and I finally landed this Grays Harbor fish. She swam off with no idea why she had made my year.
If you made it all the way here your perseverance is impressive. The goal is to provide shorter, more frequent updates moving forward. The blog may die because I am kinda lazy but if I hear that folks are enjoying it that will help provide some extra motivation. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and that you have an awesome holiday!!
Dan