Happy New Year

Happy New Year?!?!?!  OK, the calendar new year is January 1st, Chinese New Year is usually in February, and Fishin" With Dave's New Year is May 1st.  I started writing this blog in May of 2008 as a way to chronicle my fishing adventures and whatever else came along.  In 2009 I was thinking about a special Christmas gift for my Dad and because he didn't have Internet, printing a book of this blog seemed like a great idea.  Well, this thought came to me in November and at that time I had over 18 months of posts.  www.blog2print.com will take your URL and create a nice hard cover book for a base price plus so much per page after a certain amount.  Looking at all of my posts it quickly added up to about $150 so I decided to organize my blog based on fishing seasons (wow, did that make sense!).   Minnesota Fishing Opener begins in May and our fishing licenses expire on April 30th, seemed like a good plan and it would keep my cost for printing reasonable.  So here I am starting my 5th year blogging having never missed a week where I did not post.  Although my father has passed away I will print my 4th book, one for Mom, one for me and maybe a softcover for the office.  Sometimes I worry that Google will decide to exclude us freeloaders from their system and I would have nothing to show for all of my posting efforts.  It's still fun and I do have about 300 people a week coming into this site and sometimes I feel obligated yet when I get done with a post I am glad I continue to write.  I hope you enjoy it as well.
 

I am writing this from the airport soon to be on a plane to Denver.  This is my third straight week of flying out of Minneapolis and I am ready for Opener.  One thing Denver has that my last two destinations included is a Bass Pro Shop.  As stated earlier, I like their lure selection and they have some nice business casual clothes that are very comfortable.  It will probably kill me but I might have to make a stop, the third in 3 weeks.............Lord help me!  The Denver BPS has a fantastic seafood restaurant called Islamorada, named after the famous Florida Key with the same name.  There are 2 things about Islamorada that frustrates me; first is I always have a hard time pronouncing it correctly after I haven't said the word in a while.  It is a Spanish word meaning "purple island" and is pronounced aisle-a-more-AH-dah.  I keep wanting to start it with the word "is" and then get all screwed up.  When I finally get it right the name just flows from one's vocabulary yet maybe it's my Norwegian accent that prohibits me from getting it right every time, oh well.  The second thing that frustrates me is the fact that I would love to get back there and do some fishing as it doesn't get any better than that.  Watching fishing shows on Saturday and Sunday mornings, there is always a couple based in Florida.   Roland Martin often fishes out of Islamorada as well I have seen the guide we hired in Key West, Captain Steve Rodgers,  fishing Yellowtail, Sailfish, Grouper, and Tuna as well.  I love the area and look forward to getting back there some day.  As far as the restaurant itself, they serve great raw oysters on the half shell, something I could eat a couple dozen at a time.

It's been a goofy spring for sure.  April weather in March, March weather in April yet now that it's May we are full speed ahead.  My travel schedule has left little time to actually get out and fish however the reports have been spotty to begin with.  Because I have been gone most of the last 3 weeks, the weekends have been simply filled with trying to catch up.  I picked up my boat last Friday from Frankie's and what a wonderful job they did re-fitting my cover.  Saturday wasn't too nice so it gave me time to replace the line on a number of reels, shine up the boat, and start getting it ready for the big weekend.  I got to tell you the Ranger is looking pretty good right now!  She's vacuumed, waxed, polished, and ready to go.  I'd like to take her out this weekend but alas, another family commitment as my niece's son is getting first communion.   Zak is a pretty good kid and I have no problem sacrificing another weekend for him.  All bets are off starting May 11th however!  I'll tell you about that someday.  Anyway the flight attendant is telling me to shut this thing off so till next week have a great weekend, and if nothing else try to make someone else smile, it's pretty cool!   I'll leave you with a picture from the Opryland Hotel from last week, absolutely beautiful.