My Life and Travels
I think the blog is caught up from the time we did not have internet.
Wednesday September 11, 2019 to Wednesday September 25, 2019 our time fishing the San Juan River. The fishing summary is on September 25.
9/27 added driving pictures, 9/28, 9/29, 9/30
Today was “Balloons Aloft” in Albuquerque. Pilots go out to many of area schools and set up balloons to show the kids how a hot air balloon works.
We didn’t get to put up our balloon, balloons do not like thunderstorms.
We drove over to Monument Valley this morning and did a little shopping. Didn’t find very much most of the individual stands at the entrance to Monument Valley were closed/empty. A lady at one of the shops said the vendors and the management who is running the building are not getting along and the management company has locked out most of the venders. We didn’t stay at Monument Valley very long, the wind was coming up and I did not close the slides on the coach before we left.
Here are some Gooseneck State Park pictures:
Fishing:
While we were in Montana this Spring my wading boots were wet the whole month and a half we were there. When we got to the big house I made some 12 volt boot driers.
This is where I put them when I wanted to dry them.
Moved to site 6 across the street, our reservations were for 14 nights and our time in site 5 is up. Somebody else has site 5 starting tonight. New Mexico parks have about 1/3 of their sites on no reservation status. Last week I asked the campground host if it would be alright if we stayed one additional night. She said it would be ok to stay another night.
This last picture is looking back at site 5.
If you have something that is messy or you don’t want water all over your site just go across the street and use the open site after people leave and before the next person gets there.
27 fish today
Got a fish on the first and second cast of the day
Fished from11:30 to 4:30
First half of the day was 10-12 inch trout mostly toward the 12 inch size, than got 4 small fish, than nothing.
I was using Zebra Midge size 18, went to a smaller 20 and 22 and started catching fish again, they are tough to hook with such a small fly and equally difficult to get all the way to the net.
Here is the summary of my epic fishing this year on the San Juan River.
9/12. Thursday: 25
9/13 Friday: morning 17 – afternoon 2
9/14 Saturday: 23
9/15 Sunday: morning 6 – afternoon 5
9/16 Monday: no fishing, new carburetor for the coach
9/17 Tuesday: 10
9/18 Wednesday: morning 13 – afternoon up stream to “Qualify Water” 1 to net and nice fish on
9/19 Thursday: morning 9
9/20 Friday: 19
9/21 Saturday: 33
9/22 Sunday: morning 35 – afternoon 26
9/23 Monday: morning 21 245 to date
9/24Tuesday: morning 13 – afternoon 16 in 10+ to 12 inch arrange, one 16 inch brown, 2 casts after this one a 14 inch brown
9/25 Wednesday: 27 on our last day
Total 301
13 morning fishing, all small.
During the afternoon I got 16 fish to the net, all the fish were in the 10+ to 12 inch arrange except for:
One 16 inch brown
Two casts later a 14 inch brown
Last fish about 3:30 quit at 4:00
21 this morning fished from 10:00 to 1:00, between 10:00 and 12:00 caught all the fish at about 12:00 everything stopped and I didn’t have a strike in the last hour.
Today was the most amazing day of fishing. This is by far the most fish I have ever caught in one day.
Tied flies this evening I have used up all I had in my fly inventory.
Zebra Midge. Size 22, 20, 18 and 16
DRAFT more information needs to be added.
Went fishing after Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, fished 11:30 to 4:30. 33 to net and 200+ strikes.
They are hard to hook, just touch the fly before they spit it out. The strike indicator will just drop below the surface of the water or change directions. If quick enough you get a fish or feel the tug on the line. Then the challenge comes with getting them all the way to the net without them coming off. A lot of times the fish will come towards you so you have to strip line in like crazy or when the line goes slack the hook will come out of the fish’s mouth, it is fun.
Needless to say I had a lot more fish on then made it all the way to the net.
This is the size hooks I am using.
Picture of hooks and dime.
Morning
19 to the net, 6 more on, many strikes
Quit because of the wind, started blowing pretty good and I was starting to get blown over. Standing in cold water for three hours the legs don’t move as fast as they used too. If I have been in the same place for a while or just been inching along I often get my walking stick out before making any big moves. Having that third leg makes a big difference when walking on slippery rocks in moving water. By the way the river flow is twice the normal flow, last year it was at normal.
Did not fish after lunch, it was just too windy.
The weather overall has been really nice.
Slept in this morning and did not get to the river until after 10:00.
Got 9 fish, things have really slowed down.
In the afternoon I did some coach things:
Used the $9.99 Harbor Freight angle grinder plus $1.99 grinding wheel to get a lock off the solar panel. The locks I bought for this panel can get the combination changed really easy when the lock is open. This is the second time this has happened. The first time I figured out the new combination. This time I got new locks and a grinder to get the lock off the panel. We will be using the solar panel while at the Balloon Fiesta and I did not want to leave it out unsecured.
At 3:00 when I start to go fishing a large thunderstorm was building to the south. I decided to set and watch it come to us and it did, we have now had three storms blow though. The second one had at least 40 mph winds with it and was raising the large slide topper up a foot.
Went fishing early this morning, at the river 7:45. Slow fishing got 13 small fish
Afternoon went up the river to the BLM area on the “Quality Water” area. Got one fish and had a nice fish on for a while before it got off. All the drift boats were commenting about how slow it was today.
