Monday :: 05 January 2009 :: 04:43 PM
354 days to Christmas!
There is nothing like the smell of the salt water. I grew up less than a mile from the Edmonds ferry dock on the Puget Sound. Summer mornings after I finished my paper route, I would grab my rod and tackle and head for the fishing dock on the waterfront. Sometimes there were as many as fifty fishermen casting from that perch. I think I went there more for the excitement than I did for the fish. So it did not disappoint me too badly when I went home day after day with no catch.
When I was older, my sister's father-in-law, Bill, taught me how to fly fish. We usually plied our talents on the Skykomish or the Green Rivers. As usually, Bill would toss the end of the rod back and forth a couple times and a fish would attach, just like a magnet. I could wave my rod all day and never catch anything.
There is a joke about a man who had a fishing friend named Bill, just like me. His friend always had fantastic catches and he had none. One day, he fished alone. After he had been casting for half a day, he noticed a fish circling and circling. Then the fish swam up to him, lifted his head out of the water and asked him where Bill was. Well, when I went fishing alone, I always expected that fish to come up to me!
There are a few articles posted to this site that you will find interesting to read - don't miss the story of the fish that got away. It is a true story.
And - you will want to read about the GuideRunner because it could make your next fly fishing expedition much easier.
If you have a story you would like posted to this site, feel free to send me an email. It is listed at the bottom of this page. Happy Reading!
Fourth Of July Fact
Why do we celebrate Independence Day on July 4?
All kinds of history books and reference books will explain that the federal holiday celebrates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring our independence from Great Britain. However, while that day is celebrated as the day of independence, it really is not. Our nation officially became independent on Sept. 3, 1783, when the British King George III and the American leaders signed the Treaty of Paris.
-- from Land Line magazine, published by OOIDA. July 2007 page 106.
This next commentary is from the same magazine and page. It is an excerpt from an article by Pete Rigney, the Silver Fox:
". . . Every time I read the original document [Ed - Declaration of Independence], I get goose bumps. I think about a little remembered delegate named Richard Henry Lee, a farmer from Westmoreland County, VA. Lee took on the whole British Empire when he introduced a motion that declared we were free from all allegiance to the British Crown on June 7, 1776. Talk about guts!
"John Adams seconded the motion. Thomas Jefferson penned the first draft based on Lee's outline. Ben Franklin and Adams made a few more changes and we were on our way with the noble experiment. Eventually we would become the most powerful nation in the world.
"Thank you, Richard Henry Lee. Thank you, signers who put it on the line for all of us. . ."
Random Humor: Where Do Sermons Come From
A boy was watching his father, a pastor, write a sermon.
"How do you know what to say?" he asked.
"Why, God tells me," answered the father.
"Oh. Then why do you keep crossing things out?"