Since the year is fast winding down, I thought it might be fun to hear some of the fishing-related "firsts" that BB members experienced during the year. Going over my journal, these are what I come up with:

Smallmouth Bass on a fly - Spent a week at a lodge in West Grand Lake, Maine, which has loads of natural lakes besides many streams, which are full of smallmouths. We used dearhair poppers and the smallmouths are great fun to catch this way.

Landlocked salmon on dry flies - Same spot in West Grand Lake. There is a well known hole right beneath the dam on Grand Lake, at the head of Grand Lake Stream that is kind of a Mecca for this fishing, when it is in season. We were lucky enough to hit it right and we caught these, mostly on small hoppers. We were lucky enough to see some really good anglers in action. The ones we caught were small, but we saw some of the better anglers catch some really nice ones.

Striped Bass - Again in Maine, but this time on the coast. We used small live tinker mackerel that we caught spin-casting. Then we would just set the live bait out and wait. You could see the the rod tips really start to vibrate when with the mackerel getting nervous when the stripers swam in and the rods would dip, dip, dip, and then double and the drags sing when they took. This was a real kick and they were delicious.

First Spring Salmon - On the Kalama, after two years of trying. This one took a sand shrimp under a float in a deep, oily drift, right at first light. It was about 10 pounds and was absolutely delicious.

Yellowfin Tuna - On two trips down to Mexico, we caught many of these colorful bullets. Nothing big, these were only small ones. They were delicious fresh, both raw and seared. The meals were enhanced with buckets of ice cold beer and warm, evening breezes.