Fishin' Trip

I don't mean to sound like I am complaining about this, I am merely stating a fact. I haven't been on a fishing-only trip for something like 8 years. Now that I am sitting here racking my brain, I can't remember if my last fishing trip was when we (my cousin Grahm and I) went up to northwestern Wisconsin on a futile attempt to catch muskies, or when we (my cousin Grahm and I) went over to eastern Wisconsin on a near-futile attempt to catch lake run browns, cohos and steelhead in some Lake Michigan tributaries. I am pretty sure those two trips happened in consecutive autumns, but for the life of me I can't recall which one happened first. Or maybe they happened in the same autumn. Or maybe they were several years apart but all my fishing memories are now jumbled up in one big ball of brain matter... I suppose I could go back and look through photos to see if I could pinpoint the dates of those trips, but that seems like a lot of work, so I'm not going to. I do know that my oldest daughter was alive, because I recently found a photo of Grahm holding her in our old house, and the only reason he would have been in that location was because we were going fishing. The oldest daughter is now almost 9, so you can do the math, if you're still reading this...

Grahm and my oldest daughter, when she was a baby. Grahm is on the right. Sorry, ladies, he's spoken for.

I'm not saying I never get to fish. I still fish quite a bit. But now that we have 4 kids, most of our camping trips are family-oriented, so my fishing time usually comes at the end of the day or in the early morning. And sometimes, heaven forbid, we go camping in places that aren't even near water...

No water...

I haven't gone on a trip in which I get up at the crack of dawn(ish), fish all day, stopping only to scarf down a granola bar for lunch and pee, and crawling back to the campsite to eat uncooked Rice-A-Roni straight out of the box before collapsing into my sleeping bag, only to get up and do the same thing the next day, for far too long!

But, it looks like I am going to get to do that in a few months!!! My buddy Bryon and I are planning a 3-day camping and fishing trip to SE Minnesota in May.

We will try to hit the sometimes-glorious Mothers Day caddis hatch on some high-quality trout streams down in the area, and the only thing I will have to think about will be which rod do I use each day.

Which rod...?

Other than that, we will be fishing, fishing, and then we will do some more fishing. I am starting to get a little excited. Can you tell?