Investing in the Future

The older my daughter gets the more I realize my investments now are even more important then ever before. Now we aint talking bout dolla dolla bills here, that money went down the drain with the Bush administration, rather I'm talkin bout my daughter. Though she has been around every piece of gear I have owned for the last four years, and even caught her first trout at age two, she is now ready to spend some quality time with pops and her first fly rod.











Holding it like a spey rod. I now know what to get her for Christmas!






Now sure you are all thinking we are talking about another rod that daddy gets to use, well this is not the case. A couple months ago a couple good friends got together and gave her the ultimate gift, her first fly rod and reel. Now this little Echo Gecko isn't too boyish for her either. It's yellow, light, and as a 4/5 weight 7 feet nine inches, just right for a four year old. I was damn proud of her when I got to see her cast it today.










We didn't really fish, heck we were more playing tourist today while visiting Bonneville Dam on the might Lower Columbia River. We spend the afternoon checking out the fish ladders and identifying the many anadramous fish that are migrating through the ladders of this massive roadblock. By the days end she was screaming "chinook" and "chad". Surprising enough she saw a lot of them. The Shad are finally here and the spring and summer chinook were flowing though the viewing window the entire time we were there. She even got to see some dime bright steelhead, a few sockeye, lots of lamprey eels and a keeper sturgeon they named Mia in the ladders. Apparently Mia has been hanging around for a few weeks in the window.















But as soon as we left the dam, she asked if she could go casting. Not fishing, but casting. Yeah boy, she already knows what steelheading is about. Well at least for daddy these days. We spend about an hour trying to catch a shad and just casting and checking out the river. It was a great day despite the lack of fish and a great time seeing my daughter Lillian learn more and more about the outdoors and why her daddy goes fishing. Man I love her! I can't wait until she catches her first steelhead.