Tennessee Valley Angler

“The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” – Mark Twain

Wow! It’s been months since I’ve posted anything! The famous quote from Mark Twain seems appropriate. In fact, several friends have asked, “Are you dead or something?” No, nothing that exciting. Fact is, I just got really burned out on, well, a lot of things. I simply didn’t feel like writing a thing for months. That’s a first for me. I’ve always enjoyed writing ever since I was a toddler, but for whatever reason, I just felt like vegging out for a while.

But there will be some changes. The site needs a lot of maintenance, and I plan something of a change of structure. I haven’t figured it all out yet, but if anyone’s still reading this, you can certainly expect to see an evolution in the coming weeks/months. One change is I’ll be adding advertising links in various places. We’ve used ads in the past, but I don’t really like ads. However, I would like to make enough to pay for the hosting costs if possible. Hopefully, I’ll come up with an ad structure that’s useful to you as well. For now I’ve just tossed up a few haphazardly, but I’ll come up with something better soon.

So anyway, what did I do the last half of 2010? Mostly working for a paycheck and being generally depressed about the situation. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to have a job, but in the ideal world I’d get paid to travel, backpack and fly fish. Despite being mired in the dregs of the modern workplace, I did manage to get away for a bit of fishing and backpacking, and I went on a few other trips totally non-related to fishing which proved interesting. Here’s a quick recap:

In July I tagged along with my brother and several of his friends on what turned out to be a true test of will. We backpacked roughly 37 miles through the Smokies over four days. We visited three separate watersheds, and the trails involved massive (for me) elevations changes each day. I found the time and energy to go fishing the morning after our first day, but I was too tired every other morning. I caught a half dozen or so browns and rainbows, but nothing to write home about. My feet took a couple weeks to recover, but I’m glad I did it. We suffered through a severe thunderstorm on the last night, and everything we had got soaked. It was okay, though, because everything we had was already soaked with sweat. A couple photos:

This is the group of guys I backpacked with. They were all in better shape than me and just about did me in.

Our campsite along Forney Creek.

In August, Dewayne and I experienced a monumental smallmouth float trip. Well, at least it was monumental for us. We took my old canoe and used spinning gear on a stretch of a local stream that we’d never fished. It was like finding a secret treasure. We caught between 20 and 30 smallmouth with the best going a bit over 2 lbs. I plan to hit this stretch again in the spring and take fly gear this time. A few of the fish: Continue reading Back from My Retreat: 2010 Recap