April 15th...I Protest

Have you ever had one of those days where you were just conflicted on what to do? Lacked direction like their was some outside force encouraging you to screw off the entire day? Well that was today for me. I know I could have worked on Mark Hamiltons construction job or cut up some of the zillion beetle killed deadfall trees around here. Or I could have changed oil on the white truck getting ready for fishing or I could have.....I didn't. Instead it was my own protest of tax day so guess what I did. Yup, it was that same calling I get so often, I had to go down the river.

So me and the crew get down to Fall-in-Hole and its amazing what a few short days have done to the ice. The first thing I came across was this driftboat oar. Now thats an odd find I get to thinking. I mean if you've got a driftboat and your oar slips from the lock wouldn't you want that baby to float in hopes you can retrieve it ? In fact I was a bit amazed as I examined our salvaged item and thats when my business sense kicked in. If you're building and selling oars build ones that sink, if you're buying oars buy ones that float. Its simple but obviously the poor guy who lost this one forgot what side of the system he was on. You'll also notice we found a nice pair of fishing pliers. I've dropped my share of pliers in the river but with having found this pair here my salvage to loss ratio has to be at least 20 to 1. I know you're probobaly looking at this pic and wondering 'how in the world does he spot that ?' Well theres alot of tricks to the trade and with some sunken items angles are the key. Things in nature tend to be round and softly shaped, I think its called erosion, never hard angles. So you just look for the unusual, and thats what I'm getting good at. Expert salvagers also wear polarized glasses.

At the tip of Fall-in-Hole is a gravel bar that kind of seperates the river in half, the deep side next to shore is a perfect place to catch that early king salmon. We wade out to it and I get to studying. I don't think I've ever seen or been on the river when its this low. In fact when I hit the down stream end of the gravel bar I start thinking I might be able to wade all the way to Eagle Rock. So off we go, I turned around and took this picture about 1/2 way down to HoneyMoon Cove. I actually think I could have waded a long ways farther but my crew began to balk. I can't believe it, Jet-Dogs feet are cold. Theres a perfectly good shore line only 50 feet away, all she's got to do is swim over, shake off and problem solved...but oh no, she wades up to me whining with that look I've seen 100 times that says 'are you nuts'? Well, I might be nuts... and I didn't help the tax man this day, April 15 2010.