Journal of a Minnesota Angler

The title of this post might lead you regular readers to think that I made it back to Boulder to fish with my brother. No such luck. As you know, I’ve been a bit preoccupied as of late. So in order to save you from another exciting post about Lego League, my brother was kind enough (without me asking) to write a guest post. I very much appreciate the effort. Who knows, maybe I can convince him to make it a regular feature. Thanx, bro. So if you are anything like me, you’re getting tired... (more...)

As I was tromping through the snow at 10:00pm (I’ll explain why in a minute), I was thinking about all the great adventures I had in 2010. And, naturally, I started to rank them in my head. Some trips well exceeded my expectations, while others could have been much better. But I had fun on all of them. I’ve learned a lot this year and hope to apply those lessons not just in fishing, but in life. So what follows is my top 5 adventures of 2010. Honorable Mention : Winter storm of 2010 I... (more...)

I was scheduled to leave Boulder Monday evening, so my brother and I had the morning and afternoon to hit the big bass lake (that is, lake with big bass, not a large bass lake) my brother mentioned my first day there. I spent part of the morning packing and my brother respooled the rod and reel I used the other day with fluorocarbon since I had so much trouble with the mono that was on it. As I mentioned in my previous post, we had a 1/4 mile walk to the lake. We parked on the side of the road next... (more...)

On day two of my trip to Boulder, my brother wanted to take me trout fishing since I had never been. I’ve never really fly fished, so he brought me to a lake in the mountains where I could use a spinning reel to try my luck. We had ventured up mid-morning, so we couldn’t find a parking spot at the foot of our hiking trail to the lake. We unloaded our gear and my brother parked his car down the road and walked back up to where I was waiting from him. Just as we were getting stuff on... (more...)

My brother moved to Boulder, Colorado about 15 years ago. In all those years, my wife and I have talked about visiting him, but either time or money has gotten in the way. This year, we decided that if I went on my own, both the time and the money would be less of an issue. I was able to make my first trip to Boulder for my first visit to my brother’s place this past weekend. As my regular readers know, my brother is a bigger (and better) fisherman than I. So, of course, we would have to... (more...)

A few weeks ago, I got an email from my brother, who is also an avid angler. It was about the time I wrote the Fitovers sunglass review and he remarked that I was really getting desperate for things to blog about. He said I needed to go fishing more. Of course, he was right. The problem, though, was that October was a really horrible month for weather in Minnesota. It rained something like 23 out of 31 days. And the nice days had to be spent either working my day job or raking wet leaves. Time... (more...)