The Tail Wag!!!!

  Hello all, I can’t say many things give me those warm fuzzies quite like a big, earthshaking, rythmatic, tail wag. Now before you clean minded people get offended and you dirty minded people get to excited, I am talking about my dogs. When I get home from work everyday, Winston and Mushka always seem to meet me at the door with Mushka spinning in circles and Winston with his football in his mouth and both have their tails wagging about twenty miles per hour. They seem so happy that I am home. When we happen to leave for any extended period of time is when things can get interesting. When we return home, Winston will get so excited that he can’t help but to try and jump up at us, now he knows that is not okay, but he just can’t help himself. Halfway up in the air you can see he remembers he’s not supposed to jump up and you can see his hind legs partially buckle from his inner battle between glee and minding and for the next few hours he will follow me around the house and by the next day everything is back to normal. Mushka, on the other hand does anything but normal. After an extended away time, she greets us at the door with an absolute tail wagging frenzy and then quickly heads to our room and hides under the bed to let us know how angry she is with us being gone, we have tried at times to talk her out from underneath but she snorts a quick growl and we leave her alone. The next morning, our normal routines return. Those earthshaking tail wags make me feel so warm and fuzzy inside that I think I will start giving my fishing reports in a one to five wag scale.

  Wednesday evening Cat and I returned to our river in hopes of finding our river wagging its tail at us(5 wag). Friday evening I made another trip and found the river to be at times like both our dogs. The flows had been steadily dropping over the last few weeks and the 600cfs levels told us it was time to give her a whirl. The first thing we noticed was that clarity was basically zip. I was hoping for the tea green but it was definitely brown. We headed down to one of our favorite spots and hooked a few fish, then I headed to a place that I knew would be hot and didn’t bump a fish. We hooked several but the biggest fish must have been eating from his tail, or maybe the water was even to dirty for him to see. Fishing is not easy or very pretty right now(one or one and a half wag) but if you live here, might as well spend an evening or two on the Ark, See how she treats you.

 As you can see by my report, the river is much like our dogs. At times it nearly jumps in our lap being so glad we are back fishing and other times it’s hiding under the bed just giving us a growl. We are never really sure what the water will do but my hope is that it drops to about 300 and stays there through the end of August. I can only guess from last year’s clarity issues but I think it is something we will be dealing with well into the fall. Fish were on Depth Chargers, True Bloods, Hare’s Ears, and Winston caddis. Looking forward to getting back on the river and seeing the hot sexy tail wag but for now I guess I’ll just have to enjoy being on the water. As always, Connell, Cat, Winston, Mushka and The Drift fly Shop want to thank you for reading and have a 5wag day….