The Basement Office
After a failed trip to catch a trout ( it happens) I found myself in my home office appreciating the comfortable setting. I’m surrounded by some of collecting I have done at estate sales so that adds to it. You can see the King Kong etching by Michigan artist Bruce McCombs, and the painting, by Feral, of me on the Sturgeon River drinking a beer in the rain. The brown trout mount is a 25 incher caught on the Sturgeon. The guitar is a 70’s Ventura which is a solid maple copy of a D-size Martin. A great guitar.. really sweet tone that just keeps getting better. I have been learning a new song, Times have Changed by Bob Dylan, another masterpiece of metaphors and abstract thinking. It’s actually an old song but new to me. The song won an academy award for best song for the movie Wonder Boys.
The second photo shows the messy side of the office. The easel has some artwork I started for the Calder Arts Festival last June but didn’t finish in time. It’s inked line art of a raft I was on in the WLAV raft race back in the early 70’s. Basically done from a photo. I was going to watercolor it but then froze… not really sure if it would be as nice as I imagined. On the wall behind the table is an acrylic painting I did for a trout camp challenge a few years back based on a white chair spotted on a bluff overlooking the Pine River. Long story but if you go back in the archive of fichigan you’ll find the story. The artwork of a sparely dressed woman painting a nude girl in a white chair was actually pretty tame compared to my fishing buddy’s entries, well, Natch in particular. He really shook up trout camp. The photo on the wall is the notorious Phillips Gang, another post in fichigan. I’m about twenty in the photo.
With my patent drafting work on a slow burner I did some writing last week, a short story for the annual “Write Michigan” contest which I have entered a few years running with no success. But heh, I’m trying. This time I’m entering a horror story born of a nightmare. Woke up thinking there were elements of the dream that could make a very original story. I’m hopeful. We’ll see.
I need to get out for more trout. Will keep you posted.
Fichigan 
I really enjoy the blog posts. As an avid MI trout fisherman it’s nice to see some posts about our other rivers that are equally if not better than the more popular ones like the PM and Au Sable. I’m guessing nothing will change the minds of people that have been doing things a certain way for a long time but maybe you could consider letting some of those big trout go. By big I mean anything over 20”. Those are very old fish, there are not that many of them and frankly they’re not that good to eat. Anyway just my two cents from reading through all your blogs and from someone that has kids that would like them to have the opportunity at big trout.
I appreciate your comments. I stopped keeping large trout a long time ago for the reasons your listed. (I might keep a 16 to 18 inch fish if I have traveled eighty miles to a trout stream hoping for a trout dinner.) If this helps.. I still see a lot of large trout and release them quickly if I am lucky enough to catch them. The same holds true for my fishing buddies. On a long weekend (trout camp) we may keep a few 12 to 14 inch browns for one trout dinner, but that’s it. We always return brook trout, but may keep a rainbow if needed for the dinner.