Trick or trout

I'm really getting a lot of use out of that title I ripped off from a friend of mine (Hi Jason! I love this!), but it's such a fitting way to wrap up our second Arkansas fishing trip of the year since it happened over Halloween and I caught a bunch of trout.

No trout in this photo, but I like it anyway.

The added trickery?:

• We avoided having to hand out candy at our front door. Trick's on you, kiddos! No showing up at Finny's house on Halloween without a costume but WITH a 19 year old face and a Safeway bag. Suckahs.
• I didn't have to endure the raised eyebrows from parents when I propped up my jack-o-lantern with "Get Off My Porch" carved into the front. Trick's on you, Judging Parents of Freeloading Kids!
• We didn't have to come up with any reasons for not dressing up on Halloween at work because WHOOPSY not going to be in the office. Trick's on you, Work!
• We didn't eat a boatload of candy because OH DARN all the Halloween candy was sold out by the time we got back into town and, since we weren't doing trick-or-treaters, I didn't buy any to begin with. Trick's on you, Safeway!
• The dog didn't have to endure the costumed abuse of previous years. Trick's on ME! Whoops.

Yeah, it was delightful. We stranded ourselves just far enough into the backwaters of Arkansas to avoid Halloween and all of its various and sundry annoyances BUT stayed close enough to civilization to still get the World Series (WHICH, BOO YA! THE GIANTS TOTALLY WON! I'M STILL GLOWING ORANGE FROM IT ALL!)  at the cabin.

Score one for the Finny/Bubba household.

So, what great and embarrassing stories do I have to tell you? How nice of you to wait around for me to amuse you with my personal trauma.

To begin with, I am a tard. Which you probably know all too well by now. But, what you may not know is that my tard level rises significantly when I get overly excited about things and, let's put it mildly by saying that I get VERY excited for flyfishing.

This was approx. 5 minutes after arriving at the cabin and, yes, I'm still wearing my clothes from the plane. LET'S GO!

So, what does one massive tard do when all hopped up on the Let's Go Fishing idea? One gets out of the truck, watches intently as her fishing buddies get all wadered up, even going as far as helping one of them untangle their wader suspenders, and then one strides right out into waist deep river water to discover that HOLY SHIT THAT'S COLD AND Oh goodie, my shirt is wet because TEE DAH I forgot to put my wader suspenders up.

See those suspenders around my hips, there? Yeah. They were still there when we waded out the first time.

Oh hooray. Now I will stand here in the very cold water, finagle my suspenders up and over my shoulders, put my vest back on and pretend like I'm not wet around the middle all day. Yay. Also, my elbows were wet because I forgot I had long sleeves on and when they get wet, they stay wet.

Beyond that, though? I'm sorry to disappoint you by saying that nothing else really incredibly stupid was done by me. I didn't manage to snag myself, Bubba or any of our friends with my line. I didn't fall in, wade out too far and end up with a wader load of river water (except for that one time), trip and tear the ass of my waders as I'm prone to do with most of my hiking and climbing pants or even drink too much and give myself a crippling hangover.

Though, of course, there were drinks. I mean, obviously.

Yeah! I know! That sounds like a pretty successful fishing trip! Add the Giants winning the World Series on top of all that (which I realize didn't happen until we were back in town and I could cheer and cry from my home town, but still) and, I'll say it, the friggen trip was a home run.

You can tell that this was Day 2, because my waders are UP.

One must always pretend to make out with the first fish of the day.

This place sucks.

Back into the river with you, sir.

This is all I saw this man do all weekend. Catch fish. Terrific.

I like to think that I spent a good amount of time catching fish, too, but I also did a lot of standing around.

This was one of my bigger fish which I landed on a fly of my choosing. Sometimes I'm not a tard.

We have already started planning our return trip and have made official our plan for this to be a yearly event. My only hope is that one year I'll actually catch one of the famed HUGE brown trout in the White River, but I will continue to be overly excited and pleased to reel in a beautiful rainbow.

Just a baby, this one.

So, yeah - light on embarrassing stories, but heavy on fish photos. I feel good about it.