With so much going on family wise (good stuff), and some lighthouse
keeping, taking up too much of the Spring, Last week I finally got to
fish my new place in SE Washington. Camping with the Mrses and dog,
learning more about alfalfa, pumps, bales, reacquainting with the
smell of pigs, and observing the place made for a busy week. Happiness
in the Pa loose is $8 + a bushel soft wheat, wind turbines, and $200 a
ton first cut alfalfa (we called it luccerne in Utah).

I fished every day, finding the basic holes, riffles and runs for its
half mile, getting realistic about where more shade planting should
go, sampling the bugs, and just feeling the place, the people, the
stock and the area. Lots of wildlife; deer, turkey, quail, hawks,
heron, beaver, coyote, duck.

I closed out each day at the biggest hole where the river bangs into a
rock face sideways and on into a pool about the size of a small city
lot. My best fish was an 18 inch bright "Rainbow,'' caught on a Coal
Train, steelhead fly. Most others were smallish Cutthroat, caught thru
out the day, mostly from shaded side, pocket holes and grassy bank
runs. Half on nymphs. The wife caught our first trout on the place, a
12 inch "Rainbow." (I'm thinking that these fish have got to have some
steelie genetics in them because they fight and take like steelhead.)

Dave