This came home to me a moment ago when I was reading back to blogs from a few years ago, when I camped on a delta levee and had a ball in general -- but only picked up a few two-pounders for my troubles. What? Well, generally, that's the delta: if you're not in the right place (in a massive quasi-wilderness of waterways) at the right time (in a swell of tidal currents that changes speed and even directions, daily) then you're out of luck. Sometimes you hit it, often you don't. Sure, I smacked the hell out of small stripers on the San Luis forebay with topwater all through September -- you expect that.
But check it out, on the big old delta, even with my lil kayak program, which limits me to a 10-15 mile range instead of the zipping and zooming 50 miles or more claimed by motorboats, I have been catching good fish every damn trip since they started in October.
October:
November:
December (OK, I took a break in December, but this still looks like good luck, right?):
January, in cold-ass, turbid water:
And last week, one of a dozen-fish FEBRUARY day!!!
Yes, I have been taking this for granted, along with radically wonderful Baja fishing over Christmas break, and Thanksgiving ceviche in Costa Rica . . . what an ungrateful pig I am! I should have been thanking my lucky stars while scarfing down a "Four Fish Feast" on New Year's Eve (sierra-grouper-snook-bonito), and the same for the day I fried up most of that big vermillion rockfish . . . but in flashes, I guess I actually was :)
Reminded of the reminding power of this blog a moment ago, though, I wanted very much to make sure to remind myself: though I'm aging and achey and overworked and disgruntled, I have been having it pretty damn good. So I should shut up --
