Secret River

This weekend my neighbor and I went steelhead fishing in Eastern Washington. I'm not going to say where, because this is an "undiscovered" river that could be overwhelmed quickly with fishermen. It's no more than 30 feet wide in most places, and even more narrow in many. A small river that's filled with steelhead right now.

In two days I landed 6 fish and lost that many again. I saw that many get caught by others as well. All the ones I caught were wild but one. That was the small one - 22 inches. The wild fish were between that and 30 inches and great fighters.

The top photo is the biggest fish I landed, a 30" buck. I had one on that I got up right next to me that looked a little bigger, but he turned and broke off (15 lb test) at the last minute. The bottom fish is a typical sized hen, about 24 inches. She started to lay her eggs right when I picked her up (you can see it in the photo). I quickly returned her to the water and could not measure her. So, I'm guessing on the size. She's definitely bigger than the 22" hatchery fish I kept. I feel bad about the egg laying, but she was the only one who did it.

I included the shot of the waterfall (in spite of the poor quality) because while we were standing there fishing, the steelhead where jumping it. It was great to watch. One steelhead after another jumping half way up and literally swimming up the falls the rest of the way. Amazing. That's Pat, my neighbor, in the shot.

A fun couple of days.

Bluebird Day

I've taken up a new sport: skate skiing. It's a form of cross country skiing, but you skate, like with ice skates. Karen has been doing it for a year and has convinced me to join her. It's never going to be as fun as Alpine, but it is a good way to mix things up. Especially on days where there's not a lot of new snow for the off-piste stuff we like. Here's a shot of Karen this morning stopped on the track with the mountains in the background. Another so-so cell phone camera shot.