A Day of Firsts

Welcome to my first blog, ever. That's right, the same guy who took forever to get a cell phone, digital camera, use email regulary and definitely doesn't have a MySpace or Facebook membership is hitting the World Wide Web. Maybe this will be the first of many posts, or maybe you'll be checking this months from now and still see this same lame post. What can you expect from this blog? Hopefully a look into the more adventurous side of my life, and not the same old boring stuff everyone goes through, otherwise known as the work week. I'm going to try and give you a glimpse to what goes on during my off time, which hopefully is getting outside and having fun.

Today, my buddy Matt and I headed out to the Middle Provo for our first fishing jaunt in 2008. With our annual trip to the San Juan River looming in the near future, we decided that maybe a day on the river would be good to knock some of the rust off before meeting up with old friends that have been hearing us gloat about our trips for the past year. I mean, we've got to be on our "A" game in a couple weeks and this was the only shot we had at a warmup. With the news of a Buffalo Midge hatch going on we thought that this would be the perfect confidence booster before we headed down south. Well, at least the weather was nice.
Arriving at the river armed with snowshoes and a arsenal of flies meant to mimic the elusive buffalo midge, nothing could stop us, except the thing that usually does the trick, ourselves. We've been fishing the Provo for almost a year now, and getting shutout is definitely nothing new. The river itself is an amazing piece of water, not too big, not too small and tons of trout. The problem is that within 45 minutes lies a metropolitan area of over 1 million people, and many it seems, like the Provo as much as we do. With the throngs of people comes massive pressure on the fish, which means you've got to be on that aforementioned "A" game most of the time (or so it seems). I can't speak for Matt, but my "A" game is mostly nonexistent.

So went another day on the Provo, and after spending the better part of the afternoon standing in water so cold that Coast Guard Rescue divers would question getting into, and definitely not catching any fish (not to mention, NOT seeing this "buffalo midge") we called it a day. Tuck tail and run, again. Still, it feels good to get out and cast a fly into moving water, getting away from the city and all the greatness that the city brings (you know, traffic, people, smog, people, more smog and idiots (more people)). And hey, at least the weather was nice.