It's difficult to say whether one can be less motivated to write than I have been in the last couple of weeks. I can't blame it on being busy; frankly, you'd be hard-pressed to have less structure or obligations in your life than I have these days. Winter break at UM is long almost to a fault, and in the absence of a job, ducks, decent snow, or a plane ticket to the tropics, I'm finding myself pretty f**king bored. I've managed a handful of solid pow days riding the lifts, read a couple of good books, and shared plenty of stories over beers with buddies, but winter is the season of the shack nasties, and they're creepin' on me.
It's times like these that I should be most entertained tapping away at the keyboard. Idle hands are the devil's workshop, and besides, what else am I doing? Well, 400 San Juan worms sit pre-rigged in cups to my left, ready for the final few stages of thread wraps and Zap-A-Gap that will turn them in to the bill-paying weapons they'll become in a few short months, but that will be an extended, gradual process. I've started my winter fly production this year earlier than most, and so long as all my clients need next season are #14 Princes, #16 tan elk hair caddis, 30-dozen incomplete worms, and the odd articulated bunny critter, we're good to go. I can just quit now, right?
I guess the upside to the mild, dry weather we're having is things are thawing out a little over in Idaho...maybe just enough to go harass some of the fish that passed us by last fall. There're some big boys to be caught this time of year, and with the playoffs going most of the locals are still bedded down in front of their TVs or sitting in ice shacks somewhere. In another couple of months, the smaller tribs that the big B-runs are stacked up in will become redneck battlefields, and the fishing will bring with it some inherent hazards, like being hit in the forehead with an ounce of pencil lead and a foot-long bobber...or being shot at. Classic steelheading at it's finest, and I can hardly wait.
