We laughed until we cried – and that wasn’t because the fishing was so absolutely slow, or because there were too few fish compared to the sheer number of fisherman, but because we were having a great time.  You put three guys in one vehicle, or in one cabin, and that’s what you get – fun.  Especially when those three guys are related and get along way too well sometimes; I literally laughed until it hurt.

I packed up Friday night with visions of steelhead trips past in my head.  I think we all tend to rely on positive fishing and hunting memories when we’re trying to envision how our future trip is going to go, and as I organized all my gear I thought about the steelhead trip when Jeff and I landed 15 fish in around 7 hours, after hooking into 35 of them; it was a day of steelhead fishing that I’ll never forget.

But, as with all good things, sometimes they come to an end.

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Very soon we’ll be heading up to the Pere Marquette river, and trying to land – I’d settle for merely hooking into – a few steelhead.  Jeff, Ron (our cousin) and myself will be making a two-day trip, and to say I’m looking forward to it would be an understatement.

Based on past trips, I’d like to outline a few scenarios/situations/events/mishaps/moments of laughter, etc., which might transpire during the trip.

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Here we are again – right smack in the middle of a Winter Storm Warning.  It’s so typical here in Michigan – we get a week of pleasant weather, our thoughts turn to bonfires, turkey hunting, and a warmer-than-normal steelhead fishing trip – and, like that, Mother Nature smacks us in the face and brings us back to reality.

The recipe for tonight is quite a mixed bag: some of us may get snow, but, for the Lansing area, we may get blessed with ice accumulations of up to half an inch.  It really should make for a great commute into work tomorrow morning.

With this mild weather, I was really starting to focus on the outdoors.  I pulled the shotgun out of the closet and cleaned it again in preparation for firing a few turkey loads through it; I pulled out the pistol, checked her over, and made a mental note that I needed to pick up some more ammunition; I reminded myself that my trailcam was still at Jeff’s house, and that it needed new batteries – and that I wanted to get it put up in the next few weeks; and I picked up my wading boots, which I’ll need on our fishing trip here in a few weeks.

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It’s raining as I write this – a mid-February-right-after-a-good-snow-melt-spring kind of rain.  Honestly, it’s a little dreary, but it’s pretty typical for this time of year.  It’s also a good sign that spring is finally on its way, and that temps are on the rise.

Unfortunately, though, I really haven’t done much of anything outside.  Well, I spent all last weekend outdoors, but I was helping a family member clean up a property, not shed hunting or trying to locate steelhead in a deep pool.  Those two activities will be just around the corner, though, and I can’t wait for them to get here.

In the meantime, I thought we could rewind back to last September.  If you remember, Jeff was lucky enough to be invited on a chartered fishing trip, and he made the most of it by catching two fish on one rod, and landing the biggest fish of the day, a 14lb lake trout.  Well….today he went and picked up his mounted trout, and you can see that it looks pretty nice on the wall.

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My work has been slightly crazy lately, and, at times, it’s felt like I was drowning in it.  And, considering the time of the year that it is, and considering how work has been, I haven’t had much time to think about anything outdoor-related.  In fact, when I close my eyes all I can see is a computer screen; I stare at one all day at work, and lately it has been ingrained into my retinas.

But as I headed home from work the other night, I drove over a bridge that I cross every night – a bridge that crosses the Grand River.  And as I crossed the bridge, the setting sun was casting its modest glow across the slow, flowing water; every ripple was visible within the sun’s ray, and it seemed as though a huge spotlight was being held over the river itself.  It was at that very moment when I forgot about work, and started thinking about steelhead.

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