As some of you know, my wife is from Croatia. Every spring, her and my son go to visit her family. They usually stay for around a month. The times I am fortunate enough and rich enough to accompany them I have a great time. The times when I am stuck here get pretty lonely. I had to stay this year. Tomorrow is my son's 4th birthday and I'll miss it, but will try to make up for it as soon as he gets back. They get back back on the 27th of May so it is coming up soon.

So much has happened with me and my job since they left. I offically found out yesterday that I got a promotion I was trying for. 150 people applied and 8 got it. It is for a relief team manager. Basically if a permanent mgr is out for a while we would cover their teams. That project lasts for 6 months. Usually this is a door into becoming a full time mgr with the bank. The advantages of that among other things would be that I could get 3 weeks of vacation each year instead of the two weeks I get now. That would come in pretty handy.

My brother in law mentioned to my wife in passing the other day, "Oh tell Phillip that when we were in Hercegovina we saw a river full of "mladica" and they were in there spawning. Your cousin went down and caught one of them."

Here is a brain exercise:

Krabby patty recipe is to Plankton as

Motherlode is to a '49er as

Old rich guy on death bed is to Gold-diggers as

Mladica is to Phillip Taylor

Understand???? For someone who has never caught one or even seen one in real life, it is my absolute DREAM fish to catch. What is it?

It is the largest salmonid in Europe. It can grow to over 6 feet long and historically could weigh over 100lbs. It eats grayling and brown trout. This is the fish that Neanderthals swam with, that darted away from cave bears. This is a fish's fish! Pictures below.

http://www.hitech-solutions.com/Trout/Mladica.htm

In Croatia I have not been able to fish for them since we usually go to Croatia in the late spring and the season lasts for the month of February. I guess the season in Bosnia is different, so when I go next, my fly rod will be with me along with a bunch of PMS's. All I have to do is wait for next year and hope that things work out so that I can go. My wife goes to Croatia to see her family, I go to see that beautiful part of Europe.