If you want to destroy my sweater...

It's starting to smell rotten in Denmark. What started out as a simple dry cleaning has turned into potential war. Back in July while working with my comrade Marc Labelle in Pasadena, I had dropped off my sweater (see photo) into the hands of the Ritz Carlton. The next day I received my sweater folded nicely on my bed only to realize they had manhandled it. It had been reshaped to fit an oompa loompa and the tag had been torn. Heartbroken that my prized cashmere dream had been shattered I turned to help of Mr. Labelle. Marc being the diplomat when it comes to negotiations with hotel concierges I figured my loss was safe in his hands. After a meeting with our liaison in the concierge room I felt relieved by their offer of a gift certificate to replace my magical sweater. Situation resolved, so I naively thought. Months fly by and the nights get cooler which brings me to today. As I scroll through my closet looking for a warm sweater to break the chill of what finally feels like fall I stumble upon my old pal. Immediately my heart and soul is filled with anger and sorrow over the inability to wear that comfy staple. To make matters worse (as if they could possibly be) I still have not received my promised gift certificate. This is where it gets weird. As I am pining in my closet the phone rings, it's Marc and he is repeating the word sweater with an ominous tone. We talk briefly about the usual and he says he is still working on my gift certificate. I am starting to think this was all a sinister plan by Labellicus to strip me of my cashmere armor and toy with my spirit. I am going to put some thought into the dialogue of events and if they add up it means one thing. WAR! Hope you are ready you old warrior.

I got that work!

Another weekend, another cannon ball run to the Pere Marquette river. As the season winds down I made hopefully not my last of 12 trips to the PM/LM this year, and it was probably the best of the year. I met my fishing partner Ryan at our usual M59/US23 parking lot at 3am on Saturday morning to make the drive up. After 3 hours of awesome radio and red bull we got into Baldwin around 6am and headed straight for BBT. Picked up a few necessities, arranged a car spot, got out room keys, and went straight to the river. Wanting to avoid the insane number of people up north this weekend we went down to the lower/mid waters. Besides the walk in areas along the drift the Lower to Walhalla stretch was pretty much 6 or 7 drift boats besides us. Met a really solid 2 man crew of older fishermen that we played leap frog with all day. It was nice to see a couple 60 something guys throwing their drift boat over the guard rail at Lower, made me laugh as I thought the young guys were the only ones that did that. We beat the boats down to a couple holes that always seem to have guides on them but the fish just werent in there. For this stretch it seemed the fish were strictly on the redds or deep shoots next to them. I really dont like fishing redds but I dislike not catching fish even more so we gave in. Logmark area and Mapleleaf had tons of fish on the redds and even more people. Luckily we found a nice area just past Mapleleaf between Barothy's that had a great number of fish in it. Mixed up technique and flies with great results/patience. We actually pissed off enough salmon to get them to bite. Hooked into nearly 30 fish between the two of us and actually landed 6 fair hooked ones. Overall a really good day, but really tired as we both havent went to sleep in a day or so.

Sunday we wanted to a shorter drift so we went down to Rainbow to Sulak. Not many people on that stretch except for the usual guides that have to drop in a Macdougals. Fishing was really slow and we nearly got skunked. But thankfully we found a deep hole near the end of the drift with an amazing number (60 to 70) of FRESH salmon in it. One of the best days I have had in years. The hole was covered in shade and leaves so it really helped in hiding our lines. If it wasnt for the giant log running down the backside (salmon magnet) we would of landed more but still ended up with 5 or 6 each. Overall a really sucessful weekend if it ends up being my last for salmon. Met a few groups of really nice people which made fishing even more fun. Hopefully we will get one more run and I will get another weekend away from home.