The concept for this blog began as a travel journal, for a trip I plan to take in July.  It occurred to me that I might blog the decision process, but it’s late for that now.  I’m passed deciding and well into obsession at this point.  Maybe that’s what the blog really is; an outlet for obsession. 

I want to say I’ll be blogging about fly fishing, but they don’t let the students write the text books.  I’ll be learning, hopefully fast and lots, so I’ll blog about that process.

I’m going to camp, probably for the entire two-plus weeks.  I’ve made some decisions about the specifics, based on the needs of the trip.  I have a reservation at a campground for part of the trip, but I plan to be flexible and go where the fishing is good.

I don’t plan to eat at any restaurants.  I’m not making a grandious commitment to zero restaurant meals, because three straight days of rain or  other unforseens could make me eat crow with my cheeseburger.  But the plan calls for lots of healthy camp cooking, giving it the priority it needs, hopefully with minimal impact to the fishing.

So who is this “I” I keep talking about?  I guess you could call me wavingastick, (wav?  WAS?)  Or you can call me Dale.  I’m a computer geek who lives in St. Louis, Missouri.  My other interests, which will probably get blogged about occasionally, include humor, politics, humor about politics, baseball, computers and operating systems, health and fitness (my own, but then blogging is by definition a self centered endevour) books and movies. 

My blog is so named because of a quote from John Geirach, when he’s telling of a coyote that was watching him fish, wondering why the man was “standing in a river, waving a stick.”  I’ve been watching with him for years.  Now I’m going to get my stick and get in the river.

I have been fishing for trout for years.  I have been asked “do you fly fish?” and I have been known to reply “I enjoy fly fishing.”  But I was usually honest enough to add that my favorite way to enjoy fly fishing was to fish all day with a spinning rig, then sit down tired in a cabin near the water and read a book about fly fishing, usually one written by John Gierach.

A few years ago, I considered learning to fly fish, and stayed interested just long enough to learn that (a) waders are required because most trout stream banks feature trees in your backcast, and (b) waders didn’t come in my size, unless you paid insane money for custom made ones.

So what happened?  Lots.  I read more books.  I got older.  I got diabetes.  That last caused me to change my habits, getting me a little closer to wader size, but it also caused me to consider my priorities. 

One day while reading about several famous trout streams near the joining corners of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, I decided I wanted to see and fish those waters.  As tangled as it sounds,  my determination to take up fly fishing came after that decision.  It is the prescribed, obvious and only way to fish the Henry’s Fork, the Madison, the Yellowstone and others.

 So over the weekend I bought my first fly rod, got a quick free casting lesson outside the store, and drove two hours from St. Louis to a small stream in south central Missouri.  Yesterday was a glorious sunny sixty degrees, very nice for January, but much of last week was the opposite extreme, and all the nearby ponds and lakes were frozen.    I needed to either find water flowing fresh from a spring, or else wait, and where’s the fun in that?  So off I drove, and my day’s fishing taught me that I need lots more practice.  But I had some fun, and I did catch my first trout on a fly rod (bad picture forthcoming). 
]]> http://wavingastick.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/hello-world/feed/ 0 wavingastick