It has been a pretty busy week for me. I gave some lessons, did some guiding, got to do some “scouting,” fishing, and even caught a pretty nice rainbow trout with the ole two handed rod. There’s an entire debate about whether the rainbow trout that live in the Great Lakes are to be considered steelhead or not. The West Coasters maintain no salt no steel. I suppose they are correct, but that means we have to name our rainbows something other than steelhead. Here I am officially promoting the name, “Greater Steelhead.” Since they are not steelhead, but have the same genes, and they are in the Great Lakes, then it only seems right to call them what they are… Greater Steelhead. But I digress. I was also given the opportunity to do a demonstration at “The Early Show” put on by DRiFT in Chicago, IL.

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Many of you have asked how the Ironman went last weekend. So yes I finished it and that’s all good. And everyone says how wonderful. But actually I’m rather frustrated! I would like to have been a minimum of two hours quicker and preferably three. The cutoff in Malaysia is 17.5hrs and I went around in 15.55, same time now, two years in a row.

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On this journey to take my CI exam, I will skip past the trip to the island of Jersey with the BFCC to help on the casting club and gain valuable experience at teaching. My first lessons to the punters in a howling gale, lovely feedback and the small triumphs of getting people through they’re mental blockages, and that look of dawning realisation on faces saying “Wow, at last I can actually do this!”.  I’ll skip past the group dinner that evening and the grateful words from the punters and people addressing me as one of the instructors and strangely not feeling totally an intruder in this circle, I had in some small way earned it that day and loved the experience.

And I will hurriedly bypass the next day that dawned darker, more broody and ominous. When my twin kindly mentors, let’s call them Bill and Ben, were to take me through a mock CI exam, entered the room before the first coffee was tasted and that much desired hot buttered toast, was a cold abstract concept, sat on the counter top un-eaten, for the next few hours of relentless questioning.

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Last Friday I almost missed my fishing window. Some issues as always came up and clock was running. Eventually around 2 pm I made it to our lake. Daylight was allready turning.
 
As I arrived lake it was still dead flat and no rises. I was not really expecting huge amount as it is late autumn. Cloudy, grey, misty.... you name it AND water temperature was 3 celsius, air 5 celsius. I turned boat and got gears ready.

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This is my one year anniversary FP. This is number 52 and I sent the first one to Paul at November 1 last year. For some reason I still manage to come up with something to write about every week. Didn’t think I would manage that long and not sure how I have done it either. Coming up with a topic each week can be a bit hard but I try to write down all the ideas I get for topics. Sadly some of my best FPs are gone forever. The ones I write in my head while out fishing and that is forgotten when I return back home.

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Jackie and I are back in Pacific Grove, CA to go to my dear friend Anne’s second wedding party. We attended the first on the East Coast in August. She is now hosting another on the West Coast for friends and family that couldn’t make the trip. We’re all off to Big Sur this afternoon for cocktails and dancing into the evening at a barn venue by the river. It should be lovely. The shuttle bus leaves in a couple of hours. 

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