Claire Rolling Over at 7 Weeks

Here is the video! Enjoy!

Note: There is a full-screen button you can press on the bottom right to make the video larger

Fly Fishing Hilarity

Growing up my dad took me fishing on occasion and we were so cool we had a boat for a while. And sometimes, yes sometimes the fish-finder thing even worked. Well, actually I don’t know that it actually led us to catch any fish as I think it just defaulted to demo mode and played fish swimming across the screen every so often just for the fun of torturing my dad. On second thought, maybe that’s just because after the number of hits the fish-finder sustained from my dad it defaulted to some fail-safe mode. Regardless…apparently there’s no fish-finders in fly fishing.

So fast forward many years to last month. My dad brought back my fishing stuff that I left on a previous vacation and I was going to give this fly fishing thing a try. I thought I was hot stuff. So on an overcast Saturday afternoon I picked out a location on the Blue River just north of Silverthorne (which is supposedly Gold Medal Water) where I could fish and Colleen and our new baby Claire could watch. I authoritatively walked out of the car with my fly rod, some flies, a cool new fishing hat and my dad’s old fly fishing vest that even smelled like trout. How could I not catch fish? I made sure to check the rules on how many I could catch and was disappointed when I could only keep two and they had to be over sixteen inches. That’s not going to take long I thought. And besides, like I would even bother with anything smaller anyway, pffft. I was fishin’ for the big boys. (What did I know?)

I even told Colleen to get out the video camera and the folding chair so she can get comfortable, I just knew my very first cast was going to land the big one so she got all ready and had the video camera rolling. Forget me stopping in the local fly shop to ask what’s hitting, I’m just going to pick out something that looks good to me and fish with that, that outta work I thought. I received my first hint at this fly fishing thing being more involved than, oh say cork and worm fishing, when I saw how utterly, ridiculously small the eye of the hook is on these flies. “Ahhh, forget it” I said, “I’ll just use a bigger fly.” Looking back I think I ended up using like a Size 10 Elk Caddis on a 6x tippet…completely mismatched and way too big for the trout that supposedly existed in the “Gold Medal Water” that was cruising past me at very high speeds. Wait a minute, also looking back it had rained for four straight days and the river was incredibly high and murky and I was fishing in the rapids…”Ohhh,” I told myself, “But only the big fish can swim in these fast rapids and that’s what I’m after so I’m staying right here.”

Well, needless to say as I tried to get the first cast out the line got all tangled beyond recognition. What on earth was going on? So yeah, apparently I was so distracted with the whole process of stringing the line through the guides on my rod that I had actually wrapped the leader around the rod a couple times before I went through the next snake guide. The friction made it near impossible for the line to travel up the rod. Colleen mentioned that she was moving the chair and the baby a few feet further away from me and the river because I was a little wild with my casting according to her. Pffft. She didn’t know how super-skilled I was.

After cutting the fly off and re-stringing the rod, (correctly this time) I was ready to fly fish. Well, at this point you could name of everything your NOT supposed to do in fly fishing and that’s what I did. I didn’t present the fly naturally, (unless you consider me casting the fly high into the air causing the fly to do a 20 foot dive bomb as it gained momentum into the water with a huge splash, natural). Oh yeah, I was supposedly dry fly fishing. Then, after the fly smacked the water, due to the rapid pace of the water, I would instantly yank the whole thing out of the water causing the line to ziiiiiiiing out of the water and then watch my fly whiplash high above me nearly taking my head off.

Colleen and Claire moved back farther.

She also started to question if I knew what I was doing.

I assured her that a helmet was not required when fly fishing.

The two fly fishermen who were upstream of me had taken notice of me and had now completely packed up their stuff and moved waaaaaaay far away from me. At the time I thought nothing of it. Of course. I was in my own little word with trout vision.

About five minutes pass and I’m exhausted from repeatedly casting and then picking the fly out of the water and casting again in the super fast moving water. Meanwhile I see why fishermen wear the hats they do, it’s not for the shade…oh no…it’s to keep that dang fly from taking off an ear. Furthermore the grass and weeds, (and also a tree) were getting most of the damage by my casting as of course I had no idea where my backcast was going. At this point, Colleen and Claire were no where in the vicinity, actually they were in the car in the parking lot waiting for me to give up. Finally, I cited it being too hot out and packed up and we had a nice meal in Dillon. I’ll be back next weekend anyway. The fish were lucky.

Well, the next weekend came and this time I even had waders and boots. Oh yes, I was DETERMINED to become one with the trout and show them I’m somehow superior. Mistake #1: I put my waders on first. Holy hotness. If I thought trying to tie on a fly was hard when I could see straight, I was so delirious with sweat and fogging glasses that I couldn’t see anything. Mistake #2: My tippet was all curled up and buried in the reel from the previous trip ending so quickly and I had to take the whole darn thing apart to get it all straight again. Of course meanwhile I swore I heard trout rising, but maybe that’s just because the mosquitoes were out in HORDES. I had come back to the same spot since this was “Gold Medal Water” and my cheering section didn’t come with this time. Although she confidently told me if I caught anything she’d gladly cook it. (I think she knew something I didn’t at the time)

I eventually figured out I had no idea how to correctly cast and my fly and line was creating all sorts of drag on the water and “mending” was a word that wasn’t in my vocabulary yet. I just liked picking my rod up in the air and flailing about back-and-forth with my line to hear the thing whiz by. I think a couple hours into it I realized that if I used my left hand to pull some line out first the line whizzing above my head would get longer in distance. Amazing. This wasn’t going to require dislocating my shoulder after all. Well, after a while it really was scorching hot and I hadn’t even SEEN a fish, let alone gotten a strike, so I packed it up for another weekend. I might actually try visiting a fly shop and seeing what I’m supposed to fish with. Gold Medal Water. Whatever.

I only know of two other methods of getting somebody’s attention: smoke signals and pigeons; and I had neither.

A couple weeks later I decide to try a different spot. A lake. There’s gotta be trout that will hit my line in a lake.

This time, I setup all my gear in the comfort of my home. Did I mention I was in air conditioning? Much better experience. I head out to the lake and…well, there really wasn’t an area to fish. But that didn’t matter as I was going to try anyway. Again, I cock my arm and start snapping harder than a snapping turtle and sure enough what happens? Oh, the flies on the end of my line go sailing away into the water. *Plunk* grrrrrrrrrr…

So, I decide to suck it up and go to a fly shop in Boulder. Holy cow. The “white board” that lists where the fish are, what they are hitting, the water temp and flow of the river. It looked more like a high-school chemistry project. Needless to say, I got a few pointers, bought a couple flies that work in the state of Colorado (who knew flies were different across the country), and waited for the next outing.

Okay, I was going to get it right this time. I was going with somebody who fishes a lot and we were going up on a Tuesday where we wouldn’t be encroaching on other fishermen. We ended up going to the tail water of Estes Lake near Estes Park and fishing the Big Thompson. (Another great fishing spot says the fishing swami’s) However, it became apparent that the fish absolutely do not like anything I do and the person who catches the fish end up being said fisherman’s wife. Apparently the fish were just all around her feet and liked the smell of her boots. Oh please, yeah, that’s the problem I have all the time. *rolls eyes*

Well, I’m ending this part now, we will continue later, and hopefully by then I’ll have caught something. And it might even be a fish. That’s alive.

9 weeks old

Claire has turned from a cute baby to gooing cooing little child. This girl has personality already! In my opinion she can be demanding, and now that she has found her voice, she likes to talk! But only when SHE wants to. I try all day to get her to coo at me but she will start up as soon as the sermon at church starts! Whatevs. I just keep telling everyone, she is the boss. She is a very happy baby- lots of smiles lately. And she is such a trooper. I take her everywhere with me, to the stores, to football games, hiking, in her stroller, to church. She lets anyone hold her, and will usually put them under her “cute spell”. I can’t believe it’s been 2 months. Time- please slow down! She has learned a lot this week. Now, she not only rolls from tummy to back, but also back to tummy. She’s so strong. Enjoy the pics and there are always more to come.