Monday, June 1, 2009

Teach a man to fish . . .



and you'll feed him for a lifetime! Yes, him, and maybe his neighbors, hometeaching companion, local missionaries, hometeaching families, and any one else he can get to accept a few more fresh trout.

We have had much success in the local lakes on trout, and are now starting to focus on the more elusive steelhead (salmon fishing is restricted in our two local rivers due to low counts). I'm even thinking of trolling for some kokanee salmon in the lakes at the foothills of Mt. St. Helen's soon, but our next adventure will be float tubing with Rick and Jason at Kress Lake in Kalama, trolling flatfish lures and seeing if we can interest any of the HUGE steelhead that keep jumping while we've been catching limits of the smaller rainbow trout with the kids. Since we started fishing at Kress a couple of weeks ago we have caught 65 trout, limiting each time we go. They really have a lot of fish in that lake, but they are all pan size trout. We have smoked quite a few, and shared them till folks say they've had enough.

I also discovered Gorilla Tape (a much improved version of the gray duct tape we knew and loved as kids) on the last trip to BattleGround Lake, and it made a great repair on the broken motor mount pole (broken [I think] when Johnny tried to navigate the Sevylor raft OVER a large log submerged in Battleground lake). That was quite an adventure. Two kids on another raft had to come help us tip the motor up and get off the log that had lodged between the motor shaft and the back of the raft. I found that Sevylor is now owned by Coleman, and they are sending me out a new part to replace the broken one. Until then, Gorilla Tape, like Gorilla Glue, is holding things together. The old (and well ingrained) pioneer motto still applies: "Fix it up and wear it out, do with it or do without" Just like Dad, I have stock piles of "raw materials" to McGyver things with in the garage. To the untrained eye, they may look like piles of junk, but they just keep turning out to be useful here and there.