For You Are Ranch

so. i made it to the ranch. white lightning rode true the whole way and carried my smiling face right to the doorstep of the Bunkhouse, where i now lay my head each night. been here for a little over a week now. as of today, we've had four days of hot sun and the runoff has definitely started. didn't fish the creek today but in the past week and a half, it's been on fire.

there's a funny little game we guides play on this creek when we fish it ourselves. we've got all these money flies that definitely will catch fish, period. but we don't want to break out the real good flies yet because we will have to guide it soon, and get fish to eat. so i personally have been fishing woolly buggers. white and olive, straight from my tying vice. the fish like them. it's an easy tie and a great attractor pattern that not many fish will turn down. the other thing we do when we fish the creek is not beat it up. we get to the runs that we know hold fish, cast our woolly bugger or stonefly, hook a fish, land it, and move on. it's a funny little game we play.
above, fellow guide and roommate Drew, from wisconsin with a great goose creek wild rainbow. ranch life is good. a little different from last year, where everything was new. i've seen this creek a lot already, i know the chores we do often, i know where the tools are, where to drive to do this or that. there are a lot of new people here. it's interesting and fun to see them experience the 4UR for the first time. it's also great to hear Drew's thoughts on guiding for the first time. we've done a little philosophizing, brain saucin' if you will, about guiding vs. fishing. good stuff there. more to come on that.
weather has been pretty wild until a few days ago. in any one day we'd see sun, rain, snow, hail and wind. it's been sunny the past several days but the wind is still kicking. hopefully it dies down a bit before guests arrive, which is a week from today.
above, fellow guide and 4UR vet Les with a great brownie caught way upstream on station 13. not often we see browns that big that far up the creek.

i like fishing. and guiding. it's a great feeling to have someone you're guiding hook, fight and land a fish. seeing someone get so excited about catching a fish is priceless. sometime i forget about that, especially when i'm fishing on the creek or out west. there are so many hungry fish here that it's easy to get into almost a serious mode when fishing: cast, hook, land. cast again, hook again, land again. i should be more appreciative of the fish i catch. i'm really kinda spoiled in that regard. that was one thing i didn't want guiding to do to me - make me not want to fish.
so that's about all for now. stay tuned. i hope everyone's well!