Spring is in the Air

I awoke to some cold weather this morning and a touch of snow covers the yard. We've got a lot of snow yet to start coming out of the mountains and it's almost April! This is going to be one of the bets water years that we've had since the late 90's!

Christine and I are getting ready to head to Costa de Cocos on the Mexican/belize border for about a week of R&R. The plan is for her to do some diving and me to do some flats fishing. They've got some kayaks that we can use on our days off to do some exploring on our own. We're both looking forward to it and teh new snow doesn't diminsh that at all.

Fishing around here has been good for me so far this year. I've hit the Lower Madison a few times and the Upper around Varney once. Did pretty well on nymphs each time. Had my first trip of the season a couple weeks ago and that went really well on the lower. So, things are starting to get going around here and the outlook is fantastic! The first pic is from the White River in Arkansas , teh second is from a guide trip with Ronnie King from TN .

Catching Up

It's been a great start to '08, but things have been busy...this my poor blog activity. I'll be getting back on it now. So, here's a bit of catching up.

January was COLD! I spent most of my free time skiing with my oldest son, Alex. We saw some really cold weather for most of the month and as much snow as I've seen in years. The outlook for snowpack is looking great for the first time in several years.

I went to New Zealand towards the end of January through mid-February. The trip was great but a bit shorter than I would've liked. Everyone on the trip got fish of 6 pounds or better with the biggest being 9 pounds or so by Chris Jones.I got 3 around 7.5 pounds so no complaints here.

I've already got the 2009 trip lined up. I'm planning on shipping my raft over there so that we can do some floa trips down the Waiau. It's a big river with limited access and the Cicada dry fly fishing should be off the hook.

I went to Arkansas to fish the White at the end of Feb and had a good time and caught lots of stockers. The generation was off because someone drowned so we were fishing in low water conditions like always. I hope to hit that shad kill thing right one year.

So, I'm settling back into things now, getting ready for the season. Our snowpack is looking very good and folks seem to be booking things up!