"Kalamity K8" and the "Crumpster"

A couple of years ago I got a call from Kate Taylor (aka K-8).  She explained that we had mutual friends in common with Harry Lemire and Stacy Lamaroux and that they (Harry and Stacy) had given her my number and recommended she get a hold of me to talk about swingin' flies for Umpqua winter steelhead.  

Awhile later, in fact it may have even been the following winter, I was working with clients on the mainstem Umpqua when we recovered a 500 grain, compact skagit.  Long story short, ends up this very fly line belonged to Kate's boyfriend, Justin Crump (aka the Crumpster)  Through K8's web blog (Rogue Angles) you can follow their fishing and hunting adventures from Alaska to the East Cape of Baja and east to K8's family farm in the southeastern US where they go to hunt whitetails every fall.  These two know how to live! 

It was at K8 and Crumpsters urging that my girl and I head for the East Cape this past February and chased Roosters on the beach.  Good call you two!

So anyway, through the web blog, I know that these two are impressive photographers and capture great images while their out on the water fishing for themselves or while guiding in Alaska.

Last week I got a call from Bill Black at Spirit River asking me if I could help supply and locate some great images for the new Spirit River Catalog.  So I shoot an e-mail to K8 and Crumpster who are currently guiding in Alaska and ask them if they would like to send some pics along that I can send to Bill for the new calender. 

The pic's in this post is what they sent along.  Pretty cool huh! I told Kate that I was going to claim them as my own and that all these MONSTER rainbows came from trips we'd done on the McKenzie.  Evil ain't I? Well before I could even do that I had to figure out how to explain the Alaska-like background...nope, not gonna work, no matter how much "guide" spin I put on it.  So, Kate and Justin get the well deserved credit.  Great Fish!, Great Folks and Great Pics!!!
 

A new toy

For Fathers day my girl bought me a cool new toy.  Its something I've wanted for quite awhile and now I finally have one.  Its a tiny little magic box commonly known as a digital video recorder.  It shoots cool digital images in high resolution and stores the images on one of those little postage stamp sized thingy's...I think you call 'em memory cards or somethin' like that.  Anyway, this little magic box is even waterproof so I can shoot underwater!  It takes high resolution digital pics as well.  No fancy lens like my trusty 'ol Nikon digital SLR.  But carryin' this little thing will definitely minimize the number of trips to my local chiropractor for adjustments to the vertebrae in my neck.   Every couple of months it seems I bulge the discs in my neck carrying the Nikon around my neck as I jump from rock, to ledge, to rock on the North Umpqua everyday!

I know, I know, welcome to the 21st century! DORK!  I'm pretty sure most avid outdoors folks have a couple of these little toys around, but I'm not to techno-savvy, savvy. 

So anywho I've taken to cartin' this thing around everywhere I go.  I'm S-L-O-W-L-Y learning how to shoot, capture and edit my little picture shows and today....TADA!  I actually figured out how to upload a little clip to you-tube!  Now I've embedded it (cool computer geek lingo too!) to my blog and now, dear readers, your treated to the world premier of my new production company's first little video clip.

Once the statue of limitations are up (I think in about three years) I'll show you a hilarious "redneck style" video of what my two oldest boys do to each other with some alleged illegal fireworks while up in the woods on the 4th of July!  AWESOME what technology can do fer ya!

The video shows the viewers what a smallmouth bass nest full of smallmouth bass fry looks like.  The gravel bar where this video was shot had approximately 65 nests on it.  Most of the nests still had adults on the nests.  I'm still a little "fuzzy" about how I feel about fishing for bass on their nests.  Their not steelhead afterall and most everyone I talk to about it all say the same thing.  NO BIG DEAL!  It doesn't hurt the bass as long as they're released, but I still feel a little guilty about doing it.  Maybe I'll get over it, maybe I'll just not do it anymore.  Who knows.  For now the bass spawning season is all but over so I won't have to dwell on it much until next spring.