Sunday and Monday I had the great pleasure of fishing with the Shuler family- Father and son on the New River on Sunday and the whole family down at the trout stream on Monday. Among the great fish caught was the monster Rainbow Trout landed by Holiday- a 25″ Citation!

To see more pics, visit the Greasy Creek Photolog

Holiday had never fly-fished before Monday- not a bad ‘first catch on a flyrod’ huh?

I had my first two trips of the season yesterday and today and happily continue the ’skunkless’ streak with two nice smallies yesterday and three nice ones today.

I know that one day I will be skunked, but so far I am continuing last year’s completely skunkless record into 2008!

Finally after searching longer than I want to admit to get someone to come in and fix the driveway properly, it is done!

Previous to our owning the Meadowood, the driveway had at one time been paved in asphalt. When it started to deteriorate, instead of having it ripped up or repaired, gravel had simply been dumped on top of it. Every time it would rain, the gravel would simply wash off of the paved parts and create a huge mess.

From the time we moved here, I contacted numerous people about ripping the asphalt up and properly grading the drive way for gravel, but was either told that they didn’t have the equipment to do it or would be told that they would come out and give me an estimate and then no one would show up! Fortunately I finally came across the right person and they came out with a backhoe and an actual grader to rip up the old asphalt and properly grade the driveway for drainage. The following day, before we could get gravel on it, we had the hardest rain I have ever seen since we’ve been here and the driveway, without gravel, help up great. Once it dried out enough to support the 32,000 lb dump truck on it, we were able to get one load of gravel on the soft spots and then after a few days of driving on that and getting it crushed in we finally got two more loads delivered today to finish it off. It will probably take a couple of weeks to get the gravel firmly bedded in and packed down, but once that is done we will have a nice, solid path up to the house!

Now I just have to keep the state from coming in and putting a highway number on it!

I wrote yesterday that it was supposed to be ‘drier’… then about an hour later it started to hail…then snow…the weather site caught on quickly and updated to say that it was raining.

Must be nice to be able to be wrong not only in your predictions but in your up to the minute reports and still keep your job!

All in all, I’d rather be in the Bahamas!

I’m cheesed out; no cheesy title to this one. The weather today is drier but windy. Tomorrow should be nice here and although I won’t curse the rain- we need it- we also need some nice weather to make it truly March. We’re on that uphill roller coaster now; a couple cold days and one warm, then a cold day for a couple warm as we approach our protracted spring.

Fishing this year looks to be a treat- we did get rained out for the first trip of the year, but I take that as a good sign because we need the rain. The second trip of the year is now the first and that will be a week from tomorrow for me; I’m looking forward to getting on the water!

Hopefully we won’t get any more really nasty storms like that one, just a nice amount like yesterday’s where it rained moderately and soaked us. Those don’t whack the river so bad. The river is running a respectable 3,870 cubic feet per second now and hopefully we’ll keep it above 1500 or so for a while.

As for me personally fishing, I am heading to the Bahamas in May- take a look at the GCO News page for more info if you are interested in going on a Labor Day trip to Grand Bahama Island! We’re also planning on visiting my inlaws later this year and we may do an ocean fly fishing trip to fish for Mako Sharks (catch and release, as always)!

Well, that’s all for now- until next time, tight lines!

Gil