Yesterday I promised myself and the girls would be my last guide trip of the season...one promise I plan to keep by the way. The season to say the least was a bit on the strange side. Only a handful of trips through April, May and June led to a busy...often too busy...July and August. Other years I sort of put an end to the madness come September but, hell, the outfitters kept calling and I somehow, for reasons still not entirely clear to me, kept saying "yes." Oh well, we need the moolah so...
As usual the season had its share of high and low lights...good news is the good mostly outweighed the bad...and except for the day the raft sunk and finding that at some point I'd punched a hole in the floor of the hard boat nothing really ugly for a change. Oh I guess you could say my recent shunning by an outfitter I thought we had a good working relationship at long last after several rocky seasons wasn't all that great...For whatever reason when we ended up at the same launch point (I was working for Al not him) the other day he chose not to talk actually would not even look my way...who the hell knows?...Although I'm sure at some point over the next few months he'll clue me in so we both know...Anyway I don't plan to lose sleep over it so...
I never did get a chance to look for the steel whatever poked a hole in the raft but I did learn patching one up is not all that big a deal...I think it took all of 20 minutes or so...As for the hole in the hard boat apparently it had been there for awhile, at least long enough to weaken the plywood beneath the several layers of fiberglass for rot to set in...my guess is with the wood weakened by the rot I hit a rock just so and ended up with a couple inches water in the bottom by the time we reached the take-out that day. Anyway I had just enough epoxy and a piece of heavy fiberglass to patch it (temporarily at least). Yesterday not a drop seeped in...
As usual the fishing and the fishermen yo-yoed between awful and pretty damn good. While I can't prove it my guess is I had more really good fishermen in the boat this time around than normal...my friends Doug and Steve, the guy from Texas (sorry) and Joe from Spokane and Steve who grew up in central PA where I spent most of my adult life stand out but...appologies to you other guys who could really pitch 'em as well...you know senior moment, loss of memory, ad nauseum.
So we come to yesterday's swan song...good outfitter, great lunch (never saw such a spread actually not ever close), good guys, decent weather, no wrecks, hardly any competition, decent fishing...all good. FYI the lunch spread included bar-b-que pork and cabbage, chunky potato salad, homemade chocolate chip cookies, homemade rolls/real butter even, homemade desert rolls/apricot/date filling and watermelon... OK a veritable FEAST! What can I say...
Till next time...
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