TRAVELING AND FISHING

I'll be doing some traveling this year, some for work and some for pleasure. For sure, I'll be heading to LA soon, and at least once more later this fall. We're heading to the East Coast for a family vacation this summer, and we will pass through many states with good fishing.

I've get to go lecture at seminars in Fort Lauderdale and Seattle this year, and those are always very enjoyable conferences as I have many friends from all over the nation that meet at these events.

I plan to set aside a few extra days, to do some Washington State fishing for sure, as I have several good friends who live up there. One of them is a big fisherman, with both salt water and river fishing boats, who lives not far from Seattle on the water in an idyllic picture postcard of a town. If I get lucky I might get one day of fishing each in salt water and on an inland river.

I've got a retired Texas judge friend who is raising various crops and doing quite well selling to the organic folks at the grassroots farmers markets. I think he's got a creek running through his place with trout in it.

And another dear friend who lives in Tacoma who I'd like to spend a day with. He's a real hoot, and we haven't gotten together in 9 years, since the last time we hooked up in NOLA for a week.

I have not forgotten about fishing in Florida. The seminar hotel is across the street, a short stroll, from the beach. I've fished this area of beach several times. I can get in a couple of hours of fishing that day, so I won't have to bring too much stuff. Perhaps some spoons and a few plugs and jigs with and without soft plastics. I'll probably bring whatever GULP! baits imitate the local baitfish and food chain members, as I've had very good luck with their different baits.

Finally, I day dream a lot about a short foray into the Golden Trout Wilderness in California. I'm hoping that one day soon I can bootstrap a fishing trip there after one of my journeys to LA. In fact, I'm pretty sure I can do everything I need to do in LA in two days, finishing at about 11 A.M on the second day, meaning on the road to the Sierras by 11:01 A.M.

It's not too far a drive from LA to the eastern side the the Sierras, and after taking a few days of hiking and fishing some remote lakes and streams, we could hotfoot it over to Nevada for the flight home. I keep trying to talk Billy Ray into it and maybe I will one day. I don't care to do any serious back country hiking by myself, although I have contemplated it. You've got to do at least one night camping each way to get to the spots I'd like to fish.

I've been wanting to hit those mountains again. I made a brief diversion into some of the wilderness areas surrounding the Kern River and various other fishing locales to the east of there some years ago hooked me on the area. It's very fishy.

It's one of those places I'd like to live if I won the lotto one day. There are some great towns in the area, small towns full of real people.