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The Outskirts


During the coarse of a cold winter day while working my mind wanders towards more important things, like finding another stream in the spring with some wild Browns or Brookies. I scurry off into another room while mid-sentence with a strip of cane and snatch a book off my shelf. I turn to a page with a map of North Eastern Maine and start following my previous chicken scratches then veer off of a more recent Sharpie dot from two years before. Hmm... I wonder if there is a gas main road there that will take me upstream. A plan is hatching before my eyes. Before I persuade myself that the price of gas is too high, and doubt the weather conditions, I quickly close the book. I wander off to squint for another few hours at tiny strips of cane and consider going fishing in the middle of February. My insatiable thirst for wild trout is hitting me during the coldest season.

I've been told I could shoot wabbits and goats and pigeons and mongooses and dirty skunks and ducks. Could you tell me what season it weawwy is?
        ~Elmer Fudd

It is hard for me to stop thinking about my quarry even while working. It's the old “what if” that rattles around in my head when it comes to my fascination for wild trout. Like Elmer Fudd and that pesky wabbit I try to carefully plan my attack often failing in the end when the fish are following an altogether different stream of consciousness. Which usually means while driving my truck along a road less traveled I took a wrong turn in  Albuquerque. Ultimately the wild fish follow old Mother Natures skirt wake, the outskirts if you will. Those places are hard to get to without a stubborn will, determination, and a little dumb luck. If I fall into a couple wabbit holes that's the breaks.

I'm a wed-hot sportsman after 
wild game. Heh-heh-heh-heh.
~Elmer Fudd

~Clint Bova

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