Spring has sprung.

04 April 2007
Well, not quite. I haven't caught a trout yet, so it's not officially spring. Though we have tried. The boyfriend and I took a day trip up to Cachuma this weekend, on a rare day that we both had off of work. I fished his little ultralight Berkeley and he took the long Browning, loaded up all our tackle and set out to catch some nice little rainbows for dinner.
We ended up with a little bass instead, son of a bitch. Hard to handle, hard to gut, prickly and ridiculously hard to knock out. Not to mention bony! When we went to eat the little bugger, instead of just filleting elegantly, skin and meat just falling off the bone, lovely trout, how I adore them - I would have been better off just chopping him up into chunks and picking out the bones. Talk about difficult to eat. Interesting taste, not bad, but certainly not trout. Maybe the larger ones are easier to deal with?
Anyway, I'm thinking of making the boyfriend a custom rod for the May trip. I found rodguild.com by accident, and looking at the photos, I really want to try this. Cabelas has a few kits to start me off, and I've already tried weaving around the "butt end" - using a dowel and some sewing thread. I think I've got the hang of it. It's supposed to be a surprise for him. So I'll probably order two kits and make one for each of us. It'll be nice.
That's the fishing report so far.
In other news, the Star had an article about the Piru trout, who are thriving because of the high flow in the streams below Piru dam. Apparently environmental groups are worried about a threatened species of frog that isn't thriving due to the high flow rates. So the Piru water district wants to cut down on the flow, and fishermen everywhere are mighty upset.
Also, the Castaic water district is looking to charge for the water they're releasing for the steelhead migration, so the fish have enough water to get up the fish ladder during the run. They think it's a significant enough amount that it might really cost them, so they want that money back. Of course, the article points out, in dry years like this, no extra water is released. So how exactly does that ensure there will BE steelhead to run next year, asshole? (As Lewis Black would say.)
Well, hopefully the trout will be nice and fat this year and we'll catch some on the next fishing trip. I'll post if we do.