A Journey West from UpCountry Films on Vimeo.

Tags: Fish Stories

The last week has been a strange one and we’re about to claw back from the virtual grave and get back into our usual routine.

A long anticipated return to home country last week was busted all to hell by what has indeed turned out to be a torn medial meniscus. I’ve been somewhat hobbled and to say the least our trip north didn’t turn out quite as we had planned.  Did manage to work in some great exploring and have cached our boat in Bozeman anticipating a return trip to make up for this week.

MRI this morning with surgery to follow. We’ll be back in the posting groove with the rest of Tom Sadler’s interview and more in a bit.

Thanks to Qdog for the great post yesterday…..

Tags: Chi Wulff

• the act of anticipating or the state of being anticipated
• realization in advance; foretaste
• expectation or hope
• previous notion; slight previous impression
• intuition, foreknowledge, or prescience

Heading back to home country.

Finally.

T minus 36 hours (more or less) until launch.

Non-stop (more or less) Austin to Bozeman with cataraft in tow.

Gear to blog from the road in place.

Jerky in the dryer and packing underway.

Anticipation.

Tags: The Pedestrian Life

Steelhead Tour – Fishing Diaries Part 2 – Skeena River from Andrew Hardingham on Vimeo.

Tags: Fish Stories

Right now the plan seems sorta stupid.

Needed to run some things to Castle Rock, CO (from Austin) and get back in just over 48 hours for a meeting at noon today.

Anyone who’s had the pleasure of making that drive understands that it offers about 4 hours of decent scenery (with sparse fishable water immediately accessible) paired with about 10 hours of absolute geographical tedium.  One way.

Just thinking about it makes my eyes glaze over.  Again.

Rolled back up at the hacienda in the wee hours this morning with the mile count just under 2000 with about 44 hours elapsed on the clock since departure.

Damn, I’m getting too old for this if no serious fishing is involved.

On the other hand, the open road holds prodigious appeal.  There’s plenty of time for planning, pondering and shrewd scheming.

It’s always good (make that exceptional) to get away from the manic crowds of town and city to appreciate some wide open spaces and sweeping vistas.  (There might not be much unobstructed open space along the CO front range, but there’s still plenty in northern NM.)

Traditional road trip food in our world has been in the past what certain family members would call pedestrian.  Energy drinks, various pseudo-meat products (long rule the Slim Jim) and the occasional fast food burger.

And no road trip can be executed without at least one bag of Cheetos.

For the past several years we’ve added an almost perfect road trip food to our larder – home-made Teriyaki Beef Jerky.

Being a skinflint at heart the home jerky experiments started when the price of decent commercially made jerky approached that of silver bullion.

Both jerky and silver have continued to climb in price since then, and I’d argue that really good jerky is probably more valuable and would be infinitely more bartarable than silver when / if anarchy rules.

Along the way a jerky master friend in Bozeman convinced us to spring for a genuine food dryer and it’s made all the difference.  (Four years ago the best buy on the market was a dryer from Cabellas – we’ve used the hell out of it and can handle 12 to 15 pounds of meat at a time without a problem.)

Teriyaki Jerky is still our traditional road trip staple, though it’s a piece of cake to add just about any flavoring you can imagine to a jerky marinade.

Here’s our tried and true recipe that will easily cover 5 to 6 pounds of meat; the fresh ingredients add immensely to the final taste – don’t substitute.

6 cloves garlic
3 thumb sized pieces of fresh ginger
6 scallions, white and green parts, trimmed and rough sliced
1 and 1/2 cups tamari or soy sauce
1 and 1/2 cups mirin
3/4 cup sake
3/4 firmly packed brown sugar

Throw the garlic, ginger and scallions into your trusty food processor and chop fine but don’t process to a paste.  Add the soy sauce, mirin, sake and brown sugar and pulse a few times to mix.

That’s it.  Marinate your sliced meat (this does work pretty well with turkey too) per your routine, though in our book we like the deeper flavor for beef jerky if it’s in the marinade for at least 8 hours.

You’ll be the new king of the road when you bring this on your next road trip.

Enjoy.

Tags: Friday Feast

Quick road trip today to meet with John Juracek and a few others in West Yellowstone about a project we’re working on.

Should be a nice drive up the Gallatin (when is it not) and we’ll probably detour for a quick drive down the Madison in the Park – today is a working day and there won’t (damn, damn, double damn, triple damn, hell) be time to stay and fish the evening Caddis rise.

John is headed off tomorrow to fish the chalk streams of England – there are apparently few things that get him out of West Yellowstone this time of year; his trip sounds great.

We’ll look for Yellowstoner’s bears along the upper Gallatin and try and snag a few pics along the way.

Tags: So What?

I’m leaving Bozeman this morning with friends at or before 7 to hit Slough Creek and maybe the Lamar or Pebble - if things work according to schedule we should be able to catch the Gray Drakes….

Mark will have the new camera on the Madison today, but I’ll try and get a bucket full of decent pics to update all of the Northeast Corner fans out there wondering what kind of shape the waters are really in. 

Here’s to working the weekends and having a weekday or two off…..

Tags: So What?

Jake and I ran to Missoula yesterday to accomplish a few different objectives; we were helping Jess move back to Bozeman and looking at venues for a film project we’re working on.

I’ve never really done this before – we kept a running list of the fishable water that we saw during the drive from Bozeman to Missoula and back – and there’s more than you might think. 

Tired of the crowded ‘big fish waters’?  There are hoards of small cricks and creeks to ponder and wander. 

In the interest of full and honest disclosure – we made sort of a big loop across the south central and southwestern parts of the state.  There are more or less two different ways to get to Missoula from Bozeman – on the way to Missoula went cut across from Three Forks to Helena, drove down the big Blackfoot and then on into Missoula.  On the way back we simply followed I90 up the Clark Fork to Butte, hopped over the pass, and ran on back into Bozeman. 

Here’s the list of the fishable waters along the way (and we probably missed some) –

East Gallatin
Hyalite Creek
Gallatin
Three Forks Ponds
Madison
Jefferson
Missouri

Canyon Ferry Res.
Townsend Ponds
Townsend City Ponds
Pole Creek
Prickly Pear Creek
Ten Mile Creek
Ten Mile Pond
Little Blackfoot
Halfway Creek
Nevada Creek
Washington Creek
Clear Creek
Nevada Creek Res.
Blackfoot River (upper, then lower)

Brown’s Lake
North Fork of the Blackfoot
Monture Creek
Clearwater River

Clark Fork
Rock Creek
Anaconda Settling Ponds
Boulder River

Tags: So What?

Jake and I have to run to Missoula today for business; we’re looking for a venue to host an event over there and couldn’t get it done this weekend given the holiday. 

We left about 7 this morning and are going to keep a record of every fishable water we drive over or see between here and Missoula just for the hell of it. 

If you can’t fish you might as well think about fishing. 

We’ll have road trip pics this evening.

Tags: Chi Wulff