Warming Up

Things are warming up nicely here in Provo. In fact, the past three or four days have been quite spectacular. I took the chance on Saturday to spend a few minutes fishing the Provo River with David Smedley, his cousin, and their friend. As usual, the fish were smart as a lick. That is, by the time they have grown to within the slot limit of 15-23", they have already seen every artificial lure known to man and will not bite your fly on for anything. Regardless, I was able to trick one into biting by taking a small black dry fly and clipping the wings off it and sinking it to the bottom. Here is a picture of my fish, which was actually a really nice sized brown trout.
The river is quite low right now as they seem to be filling Deer Creek back up after draining it last Fall for repairs. In most spots, it is probably only knee deep, but this guy was hiding in about four feet of water. There was no brush or cover to hide him as you might expect though. The trickiest think about fishing these wet flies is that you don't see them bite your hook either. You have to watch your strike indicator very carefully and jerk the rod back as soon as it does anything abnormal, like move in the wrong direction.

I have been salivating and daydreaming about kite surfing the past few weeks. Autumn can't understand it in the slightest, but has consented to let me get a small trainer kite after I sell my radio controlled helicopter. That is a good deal for everyone since the kite is only worth a fraction of the helicopter value. However, with the market acting so poorly, I don't know that there are very good places to put the money right now anyway! I think I'm so excited about the kite because, as a member of the male species, I am enthralled by things that move. It is even more amazing to me that some things can even move without an engine, like kites, windsurfers, and sailboats. Thus, I'm excited to see how it all works and hopefully get the chance to play with the kite a bit. The one I want to get is small enough to not really get myself hurt, but large enough that I should be able to skateboard or snowboard on flat ground behind it. I think that sounds like fun.

BYU's Marriott School posted a description of our Race and Case victory, if you want to see a picture and read the official release. I think a majority of the information was contained in my blog posting, but it is cool to see them recognize it officially too.
Race and Case Link
We all got to eat lunch with Dean Ned Hill (a friend of Dad's, ironically) and that was a good experience too. He is a great guy who is doing great things in the world.

T-7 weeks until graduation. Wow. That is kind of scary. I don't know if I'm really ready to go back to the world of grown-up person jobs and decisions again. :-)