Brrrrrrrrrrr....

A while back I had one of my new fishing friends tell me that he noticed three unusual things about me, he said " you're always in a good mood,  you have an unusually strong bladder....and...you never seem to get cold". Well , comfort controll is a big part, a huge part of my job and I should have written this entry a long time ago. Theres so many things on the river that I deal with daily that we can't control that the ones we can...we'd better, and whats more important than being warm and comfortable while fishing  ?

Right now the river temp is a frigid 45 degrees, the warmest it ever gets is 54 or 55 so its simple, any air moving picks up the temp of the water and although its 62 degrees on shore where we're sitting its considerably colder. One thing I know for sure, before you leave the dock no matter what the weather is doing it always worse once you're on the water. And I also know for sure that once you get cold, you tend to stay cold. So here's my approach.

My base layer is Merino smart wool, top and bottom. Then I'm a huge believer in polar fleece, especially when its layered, so I have fleece pants and and at least 2 layers on top. Then, and this I think is a huge one, I'm a big believer in vests, keeping your 'core' warm seems to be essential. I have a 20 year old comfy brand down vest that I live in as well as my insulated Extra Tuff boots, an Alaskan standard.. Then I have gore tex wind pants and a gortex jacket. For rain I size the day up into either a gore-tex or a vinyl day, but no matter how hard its raining even if I deem it a gore tex day ( 20 minute rain gear ) I still keep the Helly Hanson vinyl in the boat.  And for me I always have a back up plan, at least one more layer to get into in case the weather turns hurricane-ish like it did to me and Nate a few years back.  Here's a couple pics that I didn't stage in my garage, a pile of fleece and then all my outer wear, ready to go.

For my fishing friends I'm always just as prepared, at least I try to be. I have extra down and polar fleece vests and several large insulated coats. I keep Grundens and Helly's in the shed for everybody and I try to get folks to at least put bibs on in the morning as the boat is usually kind of wet....but this brings us to 'guy syndrome'. For some reasons a lot of guys won't admit they don't have the proper clothing on. I always ask " you cold " ?..... " nope, I was colder than this the time I was stranded on Mt. McKinley ".... In any case guideboat 003 is huge, bring as much stuff as you want, we'll find room for it. And oh....food is essential to battling the elements, ya gotta fill up the furnace.

Now I don't want to give everybody the impression that its always cold and wet when you fish with me, its not. But, this is Alaska after all so with the fishing, with the clothing, with the mindset of it all I strictly adhere to the 5 'P' principle...Proper- Preparation- Prevents- Poor - Performance. But ultimately everybody is really in charge of their own comfort and all I can really do is suggest and run the boat to the launch when need be.  I bring this up to all my readers because I had a trip this weekend that was great, wonderful friends, beautiful river , wildlife everywhere and we quit a little earlier than I would have liked for comforts sake....and you know me, if we had just hung in there a bit longer we'd have hit the pay-off , fishin is the mission.