Third Weekend of April

I recently started a new job which is strictly Monday through Friday from 7am-3pm for now which is kind of a weird thing for me after being a self employed locksmith for the last 18 years.  Finally I get to know what is like to have Friday afternoon roll around and have zero obligations for the next two days.

As much as I was pumped for the what the weekend had in store I hadn't bothered making any plans.  I had already ruled out fishing figuring that all the rivers within a two hours drive would be swollen with ice cold muddy water from freshly melted snow.  Not exactly the recipe for the world class fishing I've grown accustomed to.

It's amazing how fast all negative thoughts diminish when you start texting back and forth with one of your best friends and fishing buddies.  When Eddie Rivard and Taylor Spraungel start making a plan all the positive forces in the universe seem to come out and play.

Taylor arrived at my house shortly after 6:30 which worked out great because I was just getting to the point where I was ready to leave.  Once we got on the road I gave him my opinion on where we could start knowing that if option one didn't work out there would be several decent backup plans within a short drive.  It still felt like a major roll of the dice but I felt like we had dumb luck on our side and sometimes that's all you need to have a good time.

Before we made it to the stretch we planned to fish we stopped at a bridge and looked down at the creek.  It had the most perfect stain I had ever seen.  I smiled as we were gearing up and Taylor smiled too.  I don't know if we were happy because in our minds we were licking our proverbial fishing chops or because we were having so much fun trading insults with each other.

 At the beginning of our adventure we decided to split up.  Taylor started fishing closer to the truck and I ran further downstream with the plan of working my way back up to where he was.

In all my years of dominating the sport of fly fishing there has only been a few instances where I managed to catch a fish on my very first cast of the day.  This was one of those days.

 It was nice to see some greenery already fighting it's way out of the frozen tundra.

 Eventually I caught up to Taylor.  He reported catching a trout on his first cast as well.  Talk about awesome.

 I was so happy.

Taylor and I experienced pretty good fishing for about two hours and then our luck started writing checks that our skills couldn't cash.  The stream started getting muddier and we knew it was time to bail.  As we made our way back to the cities we stopped and looked at several other creeks and every one was flowing high and muddy.  In the end you just had to laugh.  I never thought I'd catch a fish all weekend and I ended up catching several of them all while spending the day with one of my best buds.


One day back in 2004 I received a call from my good friend Luke.  He basically came out and asked me, "Hey do you want a dog?".  Growing up with a great dog I always figured that someday when I had a house I would probably end up getting a dog.  I told Luke that I would take the dog on the condition that there would be a one week trial and at the end of the week I could return the dog if I didn't feel it was going to work out.  Within a day or two he drove Foxy down from Duluth to my house in Lauderdale.  I remember seeing this little white bolt of lightening jump out of Luke's car.  Little did I know at the time but I had just met my best little friend.

We had many great years together, had a lot of great memories and went on many adventures together.  Here are a few photos.

Sunday April 22nd, 2018 was Foxy's last day.  She will be greatly missed by all those whose hearts she touched.