Monday Morning Coffee- SCOF Edition. Gink Too

Uuuuurrrrppphhhhhtttt!!! Yawn, stretch, scratch, repeat- let's have some coffee!

It's been awhile so I thought I'd, you know, share some coffee with you. Ahem.

It's springtime everywhere now, so if you're not out fishing you're probably in traction.  Here in Georgia the daily temps are in the 80's. In another month I'll just wish that was the case. This week some of my buddies are doing a combined turkey/trout/mushroom camp in Michigan. I was there last spring but need to save my time for a hunting trip in fall, so pour one out for me guys and hopefully I'll join you next spring.

our Abbey Road

There's a lot of great fishing to do here in Georgia as well this time of year. The bass and panfish are looking up, and there are some hatches on the trout streams. I've spent most of my spring redoing the landscaping at home, and now it seems to want to storm on the weekends again. I did get out with my friend Jeremy a couple weeks ago for some farm pond bass and panfish and had a lot of fun. (you can find Jeremy on Instagram as @lostinwydaho). It was great fun and I'm hoping to fish with him again soon.

farm pond shellcracker. hope i got the name right

I've been doing quite a bit of writing lately, but my betrayal of this site continues. I wrote a brief piece for Gink and Gasoline about small stream fishing. It was such a disservice to the subject that we decided to turn it into a series. I've written about 10,000 words so far and have hardly scratched the surface, so those should be up on Gink every week or two.

As the title above indicates, a new issue of Southern Culture on the Fly comes out today (ish) and I have another piece in it. It's more tongue-in-cheek musings, in particular on the miserable weather we had this winter. It rained almost every weekend from November on, and I believe the winter rains set records in the Tennessee River valley which includes some of the waters I fish. Anyhow, it's a fun piece I wrote for SCOF so be sure and check it out. Watch for it in your social media.

some streamer research for the SCOF piece

I've gotten back into oil painting in the last year. I don't know that I'm the next DeYoung or Schlaff, but I really enjoy it. It's a non-verbal way for me to express creativity without the agony of writing. Right now I'm just painting brown trout in profile while I try to learn proportion and how to blend colors. Brown trout are pretty forgiving. Just when you think you've mangled it you'll see a picture of some grotty brown who looks just like your painting. You can do a really bad job on the proportions and anatomy, paint some spots on it and voila!, it looks great. So for now I'm enjoying that as another creative outlet. These two have already found homes with friends of mine.

how do you rotate these things?

That's all I have for now. Keep tuning in to Gink and Gasoline for the small stream series, and Dave Grossman says he wants a piece for every issue of SCOF, so keep an eye out for those. My apologies to Dave for the rough condition I sent the last one in. Editing- it's like plastic surgery for writing.

My coffee is gone and it's time to go to work- Let's get after it.