El Paso

Some images from the past couple days

all sorts of stuff

The other day I heard something funny, a wife laughing back at her husband for his claim of "fishing hard" on WI trout opener, the thought! I fish hard, get dog tired then do it again. fish hard....

Here's what's happening in my neck of the woods.

heard some reliable reports about the croix, high water or not they have to be eating somewhere. what I heard was kinni decent as well as a couple other spots. However bro fritzy did get a monster sheepie, 18lbs! looked like a damn ocean fish! I'll try it sunday night if time allows.

Hamroom! the ham is just around the corner, did I mention Ingy and I are going to win it this year?

Trout stuff: had 2 terrific fella's from Louisiana today, we fished hard. BUT, the caddis and trout become cooperative and turned into an outstanding day of fishing. Joey and David fished hard too, Joey even treated himself to a five minute snooze after lunch, nice work.. Caddis coparadun's, bigger than usual did the trick, but at one point you could do no wrong, I'm sure they are still coming off.

Tomorrow I'm on the Rush with Brent Paulson, local angler out to pick up a few new tricks. weather looks like some rain perhaps but conditions are ripe for a nice hatch of bugs.

fish hard!

I missed the opener....

ya well, I worked and as it turned out, I didn't miss much. The Croix is amazingly high with a current moving over 3mph in the channel and sparse reports from the bro's on success. I'm guessing the walleyes are up shallow somewhere and out of the heavy current, we tried that a little last night (Ingy and I) and got 1 17"er dragging crawlers in between the islands in the channel area. the good thing was, my impeller repair worked flawlessly! Thanks be to Fred for helping make that happen. I'm amazed at the equipment I own, yamaha makes some fine machines, start first time every time, despite the use and abuse....I'm going to miss the MN opener as well, but no surprise there I usually don't go anyway. As of now, doing a bit of prep work for the next couple days of guiding, ie rounding up gear, making delicious lunches and thinking of stories in case the fishing is lousy...

Speaking of lousy. Until the past few days the weather kept the fishing spotty on the local rivers. Monday I was down in El Paso about 3 or so, got a nice 16" brown on my third drift, skating a caddis about, there were a few bugs here and there but too early for much activity. However, the woods were a carpet of trillium's and other woodland flowers so I kinda got caught up in that instead. made a poor decision and ran for the willow @ last call only to be foiled by high water and nearly impossible fishing. Elsie's getting over her bout with Lymes, so she finally made it out with me and will be along the next couple of days as well.

have not been to the Brule yet, although a report from B-rad says the fishing is terrific. Not sure when I'll be off there, maybe end of next week. Ben and I are also getting an early start on T'river's salmon fishing this year, with early reports of numbers and size, in early may! we're meeting the weekend after memorial, damn that's a fun trip and we have all new gear! Tekota's and new rods thanks to Ben as well as his ever changing scheme of gear and technique, we kick some serious behind at the cleaning station...

tomorrow on the Kinni and saturday it'll be the Rush, oh ya, sunday back on the kinni for a group casti9ng session... more to come...