You might recognize those two happy faces, It's Bob and Dana who we've known for 40 years through Alaska / Oregon/ Arizona . And you might even see that Bob has a fish on, a rare occurrence for us lately.
Now Bob retreated from Alaska about 20 years before I did so he has more real world fishing experience than I do. He looked around my professionally set up fishing sled with all the best high tech tackle you can get and kept saying " everything you have is TO BIG " and of course I'd call B.S. .. So he goes into his own tackle and rigs my Fenwicks with his own wedding rings and cow bell flashers and then elected to run them with weight instead of my recently rebuilt down riggers. The Garmin shows there are fish everywhere and Bob says the schools are as big as any he'd ever seen....It's not long before we have the most success yet, two on at once, fish after fish and ,,,,mmmmm,,,,,,yawn,,,,,I finally see the Kokanee on my home water, as we say in Mexico, pequeno.
It was a wonderful morning. Once again we were the first and only boat until 11:00 a.m. I learned a lot about the troll and the boat performed perfect with 4 people which I wondered about as I'm used to 21' ft. of aluminum as apposed to 17. We caught many Kokanee and about 3 trout , all released. As we put the boat on the trailer Bob looked under the boat and pointed out about a 20 inch Rainbow swimming along, safe from us.
My neighbor Josh told me that if you're missing the wilderness you need to drive up Lost Horse to Twin Lakes which is 25 miles of dirt road right here near Ham Bone. He wasn't kidding, and hour and a half in and an hour and half out. The road was so bumpy we had to stop and pee every 6 miles. But the water and the wilderness is beautiful . We crossed a bridge that was made of laid down cement columns that rolled and had huge gaps, I had to look it at it for awhile before I declared to MP that is seemed to be semi safe. I 'm amazed she still trusts me on those deals.
Did I mention the dust ? And avalanche run off's by the dozen.
We commuted to the Zoo a couple days last week as I left the Minnow 7 at Big Sky Canvass for a custom travel cover. ( and shout out to these guys, it's work of art and perfect ) so two mornings we did our morning walk along the Clark Fork River...beautiful trails for miles winding through town so I came home and ordered a bike rack so we go next week and ride. We parked across from the campus and not knowing where we were going MP said to follow these guys.
They had enough Chardonnay for two walks. The river is running high and being a college town we shouldn't have been surprised to see something like this. There were several guys and gals surfing the break I guess you'd say....if I was a little younger ????
Under the Orange street bridge was the coolest graffiti mid river and the arches framed it in such a way that I noticed.
These Montana guys are funny. In the frozen north you don't have to see guns to know everybody has got them. Here you see people packing pistols all the time, the Saturday market has a guy who sells ( try's to sell that is ) CBD enhanced honey while wearing not one but twin revolvers. Sheesh ! People here talk about ' personal freedom, personal rights, all the time. They say welcome just don't bring any B.S, with you....and....well they have legislation that allows for guns to be taken anywhere , even into schools but I do think they excluded Bars, which I guess was seen as just a little to over the top ridiculous. Then because the covid made the food / liquor industry survive on take out we have a new law that allows people to have cocktails served curbside to their pick up trucks.....what could go wrong eh ? But the kicker for me was this, it made me write this, there's only one word to describe it so you choose.
This part of Montana is where the " Big Blow Up " occurred in 1910 that made Teddy Roosevelt create the National Forrest Service to deal with wildfire. As you get to know this area you see that fire awareness and fire fighting culture/ education are stitched into almost all parts of every day life. Every summer the fires here and all over the west keep people inside from the smoke at sometime and everywhere you go you see the devastation from the last fire or the fire before last or....But I guess people see the value of having their kids throw Black Cat's into pop cans and hold Lady Fingers to prove they won't blow your finger off as more important than fire prevention. Yikes, is all I can say.
Those things you're looking at are the new safety chains, now safety cables. Somewhere, sometime , somebody started a fire by the sparks of his road dragging safety chains and now we have these plastic covered coiled up pieces of #@%*. They stay coiled and won't hang down as to catch the boat tongue if it did happen and I don't think they're even strong enough to hold it anyway....It defies common sense as I'd bet you case of Pacifico to pay you off in Mazatlan air fare included if anybody could show that safety chains have caused more fires than fireworks !
It's just weird....When I noticed that their isn't a single speed limit sign in Hamilton Montana somebody told me it's because everybody just knows that it's 25 mph so why do you need signs.
OK, done with that rant, I feel much better....look at the great job Big Sky Canvass did for me. It's easy on and off and goes down the highway without a flutter and that's where we're headed, Fort Peck here we come, as soon as I get my Bimini top installed .
