Gone fishin'

Greetings from Arkansas!  I tried posting last night, but the network was down or something.

I'm here in sunny, humid Arkansas, trout fishing with the management team from work.  Just FYI, the management team consists of all guys...and Amy.  It's been pretty good.  I get my own room (the guys have to bunk up) and everyone has been very considerate.  Too considerate.  I had to let Mark know today, "You can say f*ck around me, you know."  Everyone laughed, so that was fun.

We got here yesterday around noon, had lunch, and then started our meeting.  At one point we were an hour behind schedule but then the marketing team rocked (thankyouverymuch) and we finished a half hour early.  An hour and a half before the end was when we started drinking beer, which was just around the time marketing was starting, so that may have had something to do with it.  We did a little pre-fishing at a pond across the parking lot from our cabins and I caught two small fish and unhooked one myself.  That earned me brownie points from Paul, the Official Fisherman of the group, and I got a fist bump.  Great steak dinner at an off-resort place, then back for resting up for today.

This morning we started early...7:30 on the water.  Well, I was up earlier than the guys because I went for a run at 5:30, which was awesome b/c it was on a trail next to the river and I saw bunnies, blue heron and even a deer.  And not a single other person.  Very different from my normal run at the gym.

Anyway, we hit the water early and sheesh, it was friggin' cold.  I wore shorts and a tank top in preparation for later in the day so I froze my butt off while we motored up to the dam.  We're at Gaston's in Lakeview, Arkansas, by the way, which is right near Bull Shoals Dam.  Fog was thick this morning, and it was so beautiful to ride up the river and see fingers of fog flow over the boat, my fishing companions, and me.  We stopped near the dam and got started, and I caught the first fish!  She was a beauty, too.  A rainbow trout about 17 inches long (yep, we measured it...she was fat and long and I wanted to know what I caught).  Up near the dam is catch and release so off she went and I casted out again.  That was pretty much the order of the day.  We were fishing barbless because it's nicer to the fish, as our guide Chuck told us, so we probably didn't catch as much as others were.  I landed five this morning, and six this afternoon.  I didn't think that was too shabby for a girl who hasn't fished since she pulled blue gill from her granny's catfish lakes when she was a kid.

I also impressed the guys in my boat for not being squeamish about touching worms.  Worms don't bother me.  Snakes and spiders?  Yeah.  I'd have gone overboard.  But worms are fine.  We fished with worms for awhile, and something called "egg pattern" which I'm sure Beanie and Shawn, and the whole Winkler/Kohlmann fishing clan will know.  They were about equally effective for me.

I had initially declined the offer to fish with guides again tomorrow, thinking I'd take the morning off and do my own thing.  But I had so much fun today that I think I'll go back out again with the guys.  I mean, how often do I go trout fishing in Arkansas?

So that's what I'm doing for most of this week.  We head home tomorrow afternoon, probably right after lunch.  Earlier this week I was busy getting ready for the trip and swimming.  The swimming is going well.  I miss it down here.  Gaston's does have a pool, but it's pretty small and not conducive to laps, so I'm sticking with the running.  Anyway, I've decided that I would like to have a wife.  Trying to get laundry finished and the house cleaned and myself packed while making sure M and Zozer would be okay and squeezing in swimming at night was too much.  I need a stay-at-home wife to handle things.  Life would be a lot simpler.

I presented this idea to M and he had other ideas for stay-at-home wife duties, which I promptly declined.

Okay, off to get ready for dinner and chill out for a bit.