Author: Steve

We meant to stop the first night at an RV Park just outside Glenwood Canyon
to fish the Eagle River. We drove in and parked, walked down the to river,
and walked right back to the motorhome and left. The Eagle was blow.
Running brown. No fly fishing there. We drove on to Ruedi Reservoir.
Ruedi Reservoir is the reason the fishing is so good on the Frying Pan. It
delivers a constant cold flow between there and Basalt all year long. It’s
a perfect place for trout. We got to Ruedi in time to get set up just as it got dark. Another two
hundred miles. Another five hours. We fished all day Monday. It was good.
The water is cold. Your feet and legs get numb. The water is swift. The
bottom of the stream consists of rocks too big to wade comfortably. It is
not an easy river to fish, but it is so rewarding. The fish are big. The
fish are everywhere. You always know where several fish are working within
your reach, in addition to the fish you are currently working on. It’s so hard to step out of the water and walk away when it’s time. We fished till dark, drove the four miles back to the motorhome to spend the
night, and came right back the next morning. We needed to be off the river
by two o’clock to be able to make the drive home by dark. Really, there is
no way we could have exercised that level of self control, leaving the river
while the fishing was still that good, if something unusual had not
happened. Remember how, years ago I succumbed to the Frying Pan by losing the tip of
my flyrod downstream? It’s not that unusual to cast off the top of the
flyrod while you’re fishing all day. Most rods are two piece, so they have
that joint in the middle. It works loose, you don’t notice, and it flies
off during a cast. It’s not a big deal, because you have several chances to
get it back. Since you’re casting upstream, it’s going to float right past
you. If you don’t manage to grab it going by, it’s still got all the
fishing line threaded through those guides. The drag of the line will
retard the float so you can step downstream after it to get it. All that
failing, just let the hook on the end of the line catch the tiny guide at
the tip as the line pulls though while the rod tip is trying to float away.
What are the chances the hook on the end of the line will slide through
every guide on the top of the flyrod without catching something? That’s what happened those years ago. I missed the grab. I couldn’t catch
up to it as it headed downstream, and that little hook didn’t catch a thing.
That’s what happened years ago. And that’s what happened this trip. Ken
and Brian were fishing downstream from me. I yelled to them and they tried
to head it off, but by the time that dark flyrod end had floated five feet
away from me, I had lost sight of it against the dark stream bottom. They
never saw it. This is my wonderful new four weight, three piece flyrod Judy got me for
Christmas. Two pieces of a three piece flyrod aren’t much use at all.
Years ago, I sent a letter to the manufacturer describing my problem. They
sent me a new flyrod. We’ll go tell our friend Gerry at the fly shop our
problem on Saturday to see if he can help. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try
the sympathy letter to the manufacturer again. One o’clock in the afternoon Tuesday my flyrod left me. That provided the
self control to get out of the river by two. For me anyway. Brian and Ken
still had to manage with a lower level of motivation. But they were good.
We made it home by dark. Brian and I each got to go to work the next day.
Ken got to continue his vacation. So it’s an entire week in Louisville for Judy and me. A week and a half,
really. Then we have a trip to Buena Vista for a new job. That will take
most of a week. Another week in Louisville after that, then we leave for
the bassinette exchange trip to San Jose. That should be good.

One of the pretty rainbows on the Madison.

A brown trout on the Madison.

A fast drive home from Rawlins. Two-hundred fifty miles in four hours.
Fast for a motorhome. We drove straight home with good reason. Had to get
there in time to leave for a fishing trip. We got Rags the cat back before we left West Yellowstone. He was quiet.
Subdued almost. Maybe he wore his voice box out. He didn’t cry in the car
at all. We took him to the motorhome. He got to see his house and his dog.
He stayed happy. And quiet. While we were at Pebble Creek Campground in Yellowstone, we ran into an
interesting lady. A person we didn’t know, ran the battery down in her van
and needed a jump. It didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to
birding. She is a birder. She is a world birder. She expects to be in the
Guinness Book of World Records soon. She intends to see birds representing
every family in the taxonomical classification for all the birds in the
entire world. She has been working on this project for years. She is at
195. She thinks in another year, with a trip to Uganda, a trip to
Madagascar, and another to South America, she’ll have the entire 215
families. Meanwhile, she was stopping at Yellowstone to do some volunteer
work with wolves before moving on. We got back to Louisville at noon. Had a three-hour layover, then Ken,
Brian and I headed out to the Frying Pan, over on the Western Slope, to fish
for a couple days. Another guy trip. No cats invited.

Off we go towards home. Back through the Park. Through the strobe light
torture of a lodgepole pine forest on a clear mountain morning. Quickly
through the Grand Tetons. Out of the parks through Dubois, Burris,
Crowheart and Lander. The weathered white cliffs and towers of west-central
Wyoming give way to red. When we reach Lander, we’re back to home altitude.
All we have to do now is not gain any more altitude than we lose the rest of
the way. Lander is the first Wyoming town lately that has a population
greater than its elevation. We crossed the continental divide in the Park at 8,200 feet. Then we
crossed it again at 8,300 feet. Later we crossed it at 7,900 feet. Again
at 9,600 feet. Again at 6,700 into the Great Divide Basin. From there,
water doesn’t flow to the Atlantic or the Pacific. It doesn’t go anywhere
from there. Just before Rawlins, we cross it for the last time at 7,100
feet, and stop for the night.
We’re covering fifteen hundred miles on this trip to Yellowstone and back.
That last swing we took around the western slope of Colorado involved 475
miles spread out over two weeks. Not much of a travel schedule. I commute
more than that from Louisville to the office for two weeks. We did an interesting job this last trip. A nonprofit organization. They
have been in existence for four years. Their financial statements say they
have lost about a hundred thousand dollars a year. Add up all their assets
and subtract all their liabilities now, and they have four hundred thousand
dollars of negative equity. Not a pretty picture. But talk to them, and that’s not the picture the conversation paints.
They’re running a project that will liquidate soon. They capitalized the
original land purchase and associated costs up front, but since then, they
have been expensing costs they will be reimbursed for at the completion of
the project. When I pulled those costs out of their income statements for
the last four years, and capitalized them too, their financial statements
looked completely different. Now they have a small positive equity, and
look downright respectable. Now their financial statements match their
story. In Durango, I found an organization that told me they had been losing money
the last couple years and they didn’t know why. They were concerned they
might have to close. It turns out they had recognized a bunch of contract
income several years ago they hadn’t actually earned yet. Now to show when
they spend it, they had to show losses. I restated the prior years, and
income pretty much matches with their expenses each year. Now their
financial statements match what really happens. They don’t have to talk
about closing. They are doing just fine. Nonprofit organizations have to watch out for every dollar they spend. They
save a few thousand dollars by not having an audit, or they pay for an audit
from a local company that lacks experience with nonprofit organizations, and
they end up running their organizations based on information that isn’t
true. It’s too bad that has to happen. I like it when we can help.