Here are a few pic's from some of my favorite long distance trips: Alaska, Australia and...well, Canada.
The 2004 Alaska trip was taken with graduate school friends: 4 outdoor educators in the ultimate outdoors. We paddled the entire length of the Noatak River; 400 miles from its headwaters at the heels of the awesome Brooks Range, to its delta at Kotzebue, a native Inupiat whaling village on the edge of the Bering Sea. Along the way we were eaten alive by mosquitos, stalked by a grizzly bear, and the tops of my ears burned from the incessant sun such that they "crackled" when I squeezed them. I was the only fisherman on the trip and caught one large salmon (which I didn't land on 8lb test) and numerous arctic grayling. We dined on grayling frequently. I lost the treasured lure, a swedish pimple, on the last day of the trip.
In 2000, I traveled to Australia on numerous occasions to consult with the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. Located in the famous Blue Mountains of New South Wales, the interior streams and incredible rocky coast harbored speckled trout and almost anything, respectively. I'm not a trout fisherman (unless they're willing to take canned corn niblets) so I never pursued the elusive, non-native, hatchery-raised trout. The most common ocean catch was something called a "flathead." Named appropriately, they look like a cross between a sauger and a very clean catfish. And they are delicious when grilled alongside giant prawns and snappers. I once tried grilling an octopus.... that makes for a good story.
During our college years, and shortly thereafter, my little (though much taller) brother and I used to take an annual all-bro' excursion. We paddled the Rio Grande, swam with manatees in the Crystal River of Florida and voyaguered across many lakes of the Boundary Waters Wilderness of Canada. He snapped the last picture of me while I was pan-frying smallmouth fillets over an open fire. Does it get much better than this?
Alas, I haven't done anything like this since Alaska!! It's time to start planning.
Yesterday morning the Original Nimrod and I got back out on the Sudbury River after a disappointing trip a few weeks earlier. We hoped the water would have gone down and we hoped the shiners we picked up would change our luck. The water didn't really go down and our shiners didn't produce but I did manage to trick one confused bass into attacking my plug. The first fish of the year turned out to be one of if not the biggest largemouth of my life. 4 lbs. 9 oz.
