ness

Sweet! I love it up there. That's a nice fish in the picture. I'm always impressed with the vast amounts of corn they grow up there. How did it look? Edit: Just read the blog post -- very nice. Do you mind sharing where you camped?

Save your sheckles and buy a waterproof some day.

Sweet! Looks like a nice setup you've got there. The pine beetle damage catches my eye. Dang.

Sweet! Now go do it again

Congratulations! You should celebrate by having a cig -- just one wouldn't hurt right?? DON'T FREAKIN' DO IT MAN! Seriously -- one day at a time, man. Not today. Worry about tomorrow tomorrow.

Geez, you've been busy as your beez! You're starting to make this cool-sounding hobby sound like a lotta work!

Chesters is really good stuff, but they closed the one near us after about a year operating in a gas station/convenience store. My cussed Garmin told me there was one in a truck stop in Colby, KS a couple weeks ago. I dragged my whole family in there knowing they'd all love it. It was gone and we had to settle for some other junk.

Old guns, Justin...old guns. Same problems as the new, but they don't look so freakin' gay. Go get a nice, old Browning A5 with a little character, and cuss it when the shell doesn't eject. You'll have the satisfaction of knowing you're one in a long line of people that have cussed that classic duck gun. You'll be holding a masterpiece in your hands, designed by a true genius -- that's reason enough to have it. Later, you can call them grandbabies over close to the wood stove and show them an old Field and Stream with YOUR gun in the illustration on the cover in the hands of a true sport . You can tell them of the old days with handmade cork decoys, and flocks of mallards so thick you could take your pick of the plump drakes when they set their wings. You gotta be thinking long-term here, man!

I like them pickled -- that's about it.

I tried a new hybrid banana pepper -- Sweet Spot 3XR -- against my old standby Sweet Banana. It has produced very nice, thick-walled, straight peppers to about 10 inches since mid-July. Sweet Bananas, Anaheims and Poblanos have been a bust. I reassessed the cukes today, and they just need to come out. Added all the 2-year old compost to the beds today. Gonna start some carrots, bush beans and beets outside tomorrow night.

YEah -- this season started out soooo good, but the heat and drought were too much for my beans and some of my maters. We were out of town for a week, and the hired help didn't keep things watered enough so I pulled a bunch out yesterday. I'm getting things ready for fall now -- starting some lettuce indoors, cleaning up the beds, amending the soil. Hoping the recent cool nights will turn things back on. Haven't had a mater in two weeks.

There you go, moguy1973. Good old PB&J is hard to beat. Throw in a couple apples, or whatever fruit is looking good. Sometimes I'll put together a good sandwich with all the fixins if it's a full day. If it's gonna be overnight and/or a few people along, I'll get some of my baby brother's BBQ to reheat over the fire.

With Lily Lake right on the highway, a large parking lot, a handicap-accessible loop trail, and every piece of park literature touting it as full of greenbacks -- guess what? But, one of the most exciting fishing experiences I've ever had was in a canoe on Lily Lake one evening with a massive spinner fall going on -- surrounded by cruising, slurping cutthroats. You'd try to figure out the fish's trajectory, and lay a fly in it's path. I'm sure I didn't have the place to myself, but I don't recall anybody else being out there. And it certainly wasn't fishing in a parking lot. To each his own, I guess. I've found that being willing to get up a little earlier, stay out a little later or walk a little farther will help you avoid folks.

You know River Angler Man, owning that pond or lake sounds great at first, but whenever I think about buying a place of my own, I think I'd get bored with it pretty quickly. Or wish I didn't have to worry about the things that go along with owning something. A lot of what I like to do is find a new place, or explore a little deeper in places I've been before. So I rent. I joined a group and we've got access to 15+/- strip pits south of KC. I figure that'll keep me interested for a while, and they're much more doable than trips to the Ozarks are for me. My scouting down that way shows a few people, and a ton of great water. No jet skis, bass boats, or the other annoyances I encounter at the local reservoirs. Tons of tree-lined shores to keep out of the direct sun. When I get tired of all that, I suppose I'll go find something else. My fee, which includes a bozillion other places to fish and hunt, is less than a year's taxes would be on a small place of my own.

The Frying Pan is a big-name river. It's gonna be crowded between the public accesses and the sports have bought up the rest. 'Here and there' doesn't really describe the overall availability in CO, it describes what you encounter when you focus on places like that. For me, fishing the 'destinations' ranks pretty low on the scale, and big fish or big numbers don't matter much to me either. So I leave that for the rest.

I was just pokin' all the folks that say there's no access in CO, and when there is it's too crowded anyway. Anyhoo -- that's a nice spot. I've fished several locales around RMNP, and people have never been an issue.

How'd you get in there, and where's all the people? I always heard in CO was impossible to get access and had massive crowds.

That smile tells it all!

Sweet, Steve. I've got those on the bucket list. Very cool fish and a great part of the country.

Nicely done, Max. That's a heck of an accomplishment for those boys, and the leaders too. Sounds like you've got your sights set pretty high. BWCA or Philmont are sorta the classics.

I'll fish them when the situation dictates, but I don't enjoy them as much as I do a dry. They usually are a backup for me.

Hey Jonathon, Congratulations! Where on the Big Thompson were you? We were out there last week too, but I avoided BT in the park due to the road construction over there.

Agree -- it will explain a lot of what Wayne talked about -- how we've muddied up and eliminated native populations through stocking, and ongoing habitat destruction. Good book.

Yes they're native. Same genus as rainbows and cutthroats.

Good point!