Fish Virus

"Bob Weinberger" wrote in message
news:Pq32i.1685$CQ4.841@trndny06...

"Wolfgang" wrote in message
...
snip
The encouraging news is [insert encouraging news
here......someone.....anyone].

Wolfgang
Insertion [No $700 or even $400 Simms waders were destroyed by the
European buckthorn in making this fishing report.]

True.

In fact, no waders of any kind were injured at all. The buckthorn was
content with tearing small chunks of flesh from my arm. It was a small
price to pay.

Our informants, a recently retired dairy farmer and his nearly deaf (totally
in one ear and 80% in the other.....sudden onset a couple of years
ago.....we talked about cochlear implants) but still employed wife, told us
that their son and a friend of his had each pulled 25 inch browns out of
this exquisitely tiny stream within the last year. Tiny means eight feet or
less across for most of its length......and anyone familiar with trout
streams in the comparatively low gradient waters between the eastern and
western mountains will have a pretty good idea of what this implies in terms
of volume. Many fly fishers will find the idea of fish that size coming out
of a stream that size implausible......to say the least. That's good.
They're right.

Not surprisingly, we didn't see anything near that size. I caught the
biggest fish of the weekend there.....a ten inch brown. At one point,
though, Jay and I were about thirty feet apart on a stretch of the stream in
which he had seen, and failed to hook, several rising fish. When he figured
he had put them all down (an observation with which I agreed long before he
stumbled upon it). I walked up along the bank and sent a hundred or more
fishing, including one of at least 14 inches, scooting back toward him.
They didn't like him any more than they did me, so they turned around and
came back up....and then turned around and went back down....and
then......well, this went on for quite a while.

This was on Sunday, around noon. It was time to saddle up and head back
toward home, a four hour drive. That was o.k. We had fished for the better
part of two days, caught fish, saw more fish, saw an enormous flood control
dam (60 feet high and 700 long) on a stream that could, under ordinary
circumstances, be turned back uphill with a fire hose, saw a bald eagle
presumably feeding on the carcass of a fish that someone had inadvertently
killed, saw more fishermen (and coolers full of dead fish) than I hope to
see the rest of this year, saw plenty of beaver sign, deer tracks, live
deer, turkeys, vultures, skunk cabbage, marsh marigolds, watercress,
warblers of several species, woodpeckers of several species, sandhill
cranes, wood ducks, golden eyes, teal, geese, mallards, trout lilies, blood
root, spring beauties, and more shades of green in spring leaves than an
Irishman would believe possible.

Stupendous scenery in this part of Curdistan. Good company. Good weather.
And the meds were starting to kick in.

Wolfgang
well, o.k., there was....and still IS the remnants of.....a truly impressive
blister on the left heal, but what doesn't kill us makes us
older......ainna?