Do you have someone(s) you can go to for encouragement?
It’s very difficult to constantly self-motivate, especially when you’re walking through long-term unemployment. It will be two years with no full-time job at the end of January for me! Yikes! I simply cannot keep myself optimistic without help. I have to constantly call friends and keep in touch with career contacts to feel like I’m still a part of the world. Continue reading
As we countdown to end of the holiday season, people seem to get a little nuttier. People hurry as though their lives depended on getting to their next destination. What to do when the world around you is on fast forward? Continue reading
Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence. ~Lin Yutang
I am at the end of my unemployment again – I qualify for another extension, but it’s hard to not lose all hope. I cannot believe that I haven’t been able to get a job in all this time. Continue reading
New Year’s Eve is traditionally the time we form our hopes for the year ahead. Why not try something new? This year, make a list of all you’ve accomplished – be generous and kind to yourself. Pretend you are making the list for someone whose feelings you care about. Continue reading
Being unemployed can put one through a myriad of emotions. Yesterday it was difficult for me to get out of bed. It will be two years without full-time work for me this January 28th.
I realized that I don’t like to be generally angry. I don’t mind specific anger or irritation regarding a person, but I don’t like walking around in a general state of anger. So, for today, I am going to try to be angry at my situation and at God. Continue reading
My friend (very kindly) hosted me on a Palm Springs girls’ weekend. I didn’t realize how much I desperately needed the rest and the change of setting. That short weekend away from my job search and my financial troubles revitalized me. Continue reading
sorry i have slacked off for a bit – but, I’m back on the blog-horse…
So, right now, I’m up for a job in England. Crazy, right? I can be considered for a job in England but not get interviews in California. Which leads me to today’s topic – why not expand your job search area to include other states and/or countries that you like (if you don’t have children/spouse who can’t relocate). Continue reading
Some days it’s harder than others to resist the urge to go back to bed for the rest of the day. One thing that helps me is to make my bed immediately after I get up in the morning – it takes much more consideration to get into a made bed than an unmade one…
I cannot stress enough the value of support during this difficult time. For me, I know it’s harder than ever to call people because when they ask ‘what’s new?’ my answer is ‘still looking for work’. I hate to be a downer. Continue reading
don’t know if you’ve heard the quote ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’
I have found it to be very true. You certainly can’t achieve something if you don’t start it. Is there something you would like to change in your life? For me, along with many other internal things I am working on, I wanted to lose some weight. I have begun being more careful with what I choose to eat and adding in some extra sit-ups. I was surprised to find that I had lost half and inch off my waist! hooray! Continue reading
sorry i have been not posting – I went through another tough patch of feeling really depressed. This extended unemployment has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. I’m now going on two years of being ‘underemployed’. Continue reading
I had a job prospect that I was very excited about fall though – garrg. It’s now well over two years since I’ve been under-employed. I can’t wait for the day when I have a real job again and get to wear fancy clothes to my own office… Continue reading
I am STILL unemployed/under-employed. I really can’t believe it. It’s now been over two years!
I have good days and bad days with it and today, well, it’s a bad day. I am contemplating moving back in with my parents which is definitely not something to be taken lightly… Continue reading
I find it really difficult to relax when I’m in uncertainty. It’s as if, if I just stay on my toes and worry enough, I will force the Universe to change my circumstances. While I know that worry never accomplishes anything other than to stress me out, the real trick is how to put it aside. Continue reading
so…still unemployed… I cannot believe this is going on for so long!
Garrg. I wish I had some words of wisdom, but all I can say is, ‘blerg.’
The good news is I have finished a screenplay and am currently re-writing it which is something I have threatened for years. It doesn’t seem to be too horrifically bad, which is really the most a writer can hope for. Continue reading
On the way up to Milwaukee today I had under an hour to shoot at a stream. I chose Oak Creek. I ran through the woods with my gear to a spot I thought might be holding fish. I hooked up on the first drift with a smaller female. She spit the hook at me after half a minute or so. I hiked east toward the lake for a while and was only able to spook a handfull of fish. I hiked back upstream above where I started and located a quiet male holding in some deeper current. After a few drifts I hooked up with him on a peach yarn fly. Continue reading
I got out to the normal spot on the seawall this morning and set up shop on my favorite point above the perch and began fishing. I got a good strong hit right away and pulled up a fighter of a rockbass. Back he went. I fished the next 40 minutes or so without so much as a tap. I then moved further down the wall and picked up one right away. The guys near me got some in their baskets as well. Continue reading
From TV:6 Fox U.P.
DNR drops trees to attract trout.
By Brad Soroka Wednesday, September 02, 2009 at 3:56 p.m. SCOTT LAKE — The Brule River was once known as a blue ribbon trout stream. Recent logging practices along its banks, however, have taken away the trout’s natural habitats. Continue reading
Great news for some habitat restoration in Milwaukee!
While it is in good intention that this beautiful fly was tied… It just puts a smile on my face for some reason. Oh America.
Here it is, stumbled across it this evening looking at classic Salmon fly patterns, not sure how this worked into the mix.
This may not sound like bad news, but domesticated farm raised salmon escaping and mixing with the gene pool is never a good thing.
In the ocean off of Fort Lauderdale earlier, a 750 pound shark was caught and dragged back to be weighed on a scale at a marina.
Seems a shame to drag something like that across the ocean to kill it.
We finally got what we had been waiting for, a real rainstorm. In the desert that has been south-eastern wisconsin a good downpour is more than welcome.
In chicago here I drove home from my shoot today through swamped streets and flooded intersections, all the while thinking about trout after trout turning nose from the harbor to the mouths of the river, many will make the surge tonight and tomorrow. Look for thanksgiving weekend to be great. Continue reading
More information to come later, but for now, there are browns in the harbor, there are coho in the rivers, and my friends over at the Chicago Trout Bum, seem to have a pretty good bead on where the Steelhead are, even if I can’t find them yet! The guys over at Illinois-Wisconsin Fishing have locked in on the Coho bite so if that’s what you’re after have a read over there. Continue reading
I am lucky enough to find a fishing report in my inbox every now and again submitted from you, the reader.
This one comes from a fellow I met one night after a banner day of Salmon fishing in Milwaukee. He sent the following: Continue reading
I’ve featured many magazines and e-magazines here in the past such as This is Fly, Catch, and Fish Can’t Read. Finally I have one to feature that not only comes from close to home, not only is it published by friend and fishing companion Andrew Ragas, but it contains a couple dozen pages of photos by yours truly and some text from right here at Great Lakes Angler. Continue reading
Open publication – Free publishing – More wisconsin
Take a look a the whole magazine here, but be sure to visit fishing headquarters to see it in it’s full glory!
I remember the jolt of electricity the first musky I hooked put through my body. I can only dream of one smashing a fly. I’ve been following the blog these guys write for a while now, you’ve got to take a look at the trailer for their Musky Country movie. Continue reading
I parked the car, shut the door, and hobbled to the river’s edge where a flood of clear-water memories washed right over me. I have forgotten what it is like to fish clear, clean, cool, spring fed rivers. As I towed my understanding girlfriend upstream (upstream mind you, not downstream, I am a trout fisherman after all), I ambled over gravel and boulders to spy into pools that I thought might just hold trout. They did, it was beautiful. Being in California visiting my girlfriend for Thanksgiving, I had no pole and no time to fish, but just being there filled me with a sense of belonging. I love the Milwaukee River, Oak Creek, the Root River and Pike Creek but friend… If we had rivers that ran deep and clear and cold like these, I might just find myself out of a job and firmly planted to the river bottom (not really, but my spare minutes would all be accounted for, that’s for sure). Continue reading
Enjoy this trailer for a documentary that will come out soon. It sounds like it does the grandeur of the great lakes justice, as well as inform thoroughly of the impending consequences of our actions in the region.
Intuition, time spent, and luck all collide and things are perfect.
In 6 hours we landed 32 salmon and trout from shore, between the 3 of us. Ended up keeping a 3 handed limit toward the end of the night, all of which was given to fishermen near by that were fishing for food. I will have a very detailed report later in the day when I sort through these photographs. Continue reading
Any Salmon fisherman knows that in order to catch a salmon it requires at least some degree of knowledge of the fish, it takes time spent on the water, and it takes luck. Put those three together, and in time you’ll hook one and at least get to battle with it, weather it breaks your line or not, well that’s up to you. Some days it takes more of one than the other. If you really study how the fish work you can make a very educated guess to where and why Salmon are where they are, and because of this you’ll catch a fish that day while others don’t. Some days it takes hours, just casting and casting as the hours pass, and eventually some lone fish decides enough is enough and hits your bait. The final ingredient is luck, and this is a tricky one. Some days you just get lucky and the fish just so happen to be where you are, and you just so happen to want to catch them. Continue reading
The Salmon season is grinding to a close in South-Eastern Wisconsin and though there are still a few Kings left to be caught, many of them are circling the drain and will not be around for long.
While working in Grand Rapids this week I made sure to make it down to the fish ladder and falls on the grand river, get some photographs, and talk with some of the fishermen. It would seem that numbers of King Salmon, Coho, and Steelhead have made it to the base of the dam. They are not, however, there in large numbers. One or two fish jump up a section of the fish ladder every 5 or 10 minutes and some are very small stockers. Spawn sacs fished on river rigs on the bottom took all the fish I saw caught, and most came from the first 50 feet below the falls. Continue reading
The recent rain has not only brought a torrent of water, but a torrent of Coho Salmon into the tributaries as well. I predicted this would happen Sunday or Monday after those rains, and suspicions have been confirmed by this report by friend of the Great Lakes Angler at Illinois Wisconsin Fishing. The link to the blog is on the right bar there, go take a look! Continue reading
Strong west winds and cool September nights have turned the lake over and has set the wisconsin harbors and river mouths in motion for shore fishermen, and small craft fishermen alike. Water surface temperatures from the state line all the way up past Milwaukee range from 48 degrees to 53 degrees. Water inside the Milwaukee harbor runs an average of 55 degrees as of Sunday. Continue reading
It seems that just when you think you’re on some big fish lately an email rolls into your inbox that makes you think…. “man that King Salmon, that huge one that towed your Kayak all over Milwaukee… that thing only weighed half as much as this fish!” Continue reading
After a long week of work and the fact that I would be up bright and early for work again on Sunday I loaded the car and readied the Kayak for another tour in Wisconsin Saturday afternoon.
I launched at a different spot this time, from the beach just north of the north arm of the Racine breakwater. The kayak was easy to drag through the sand and I could load it next to the car and then pull it down to the water’s edge. The waves were 2-3 feet and rolling in the long gradual rise to the beach there in Racine, which made for a perfect spot to launch when waves would prevent launch on other beaches with steeper banks. I paddled out through the break, keeping as dry as one can in a Kayak in 3 foot waves. After the break the swell was very easy to handle and proved no challenge. Water temperature was near 60 degrees at the beach and clicked down degree by degree as I headed east into the lake, finally resting at about 54 degrees. I started marking fish almost immediately in 6 feet of water, and continued to mark fish all the way out to 30 feet of water, where marks started becoming less frequent. Bait was not present in any large numbers but the sheer volume of large marks on the depth finder kept my hopes up. I did about a 2 mile loop and after receiving a phone call I decided to head back to shore and meet friends further north. Continue reading
After a busy week I’ve finally found time to get a bit of writing in for you all here. Internet is finally up and running here at adventure headquarters and I expect I’ll be doing a bit more posting here. Continue reading
An email rolled into my inbox today from someone who I’ve had the pleasure of talking to a couple of times through emails this year, who I hope to fish with this fall. He’s been making some sly moves on the Root River and you can find some gems of information in his blog. Fish, though you may have to hike, climb, and search for them, are to be found in the Root River contrary to popular belief. Continue reading
A buoy in the middle of Lake Michigan hit 80 degrees last week; the first time it’s hit that mark since 2001. The warmest it’s ever been was in 1995, it hit 81 degrees. Warm water means more plankton and faster growth rates for your favorite species of fish. This may mean some big perch coming to the end of your line next year, and even bigger salmon and trout in the years to come as well. Continue reading
As you will often hear from old timers next to you fishing for perch along the miles of shoreline on Lake Michigan, things aren’t what they used to be. The good old days died in the early nineties with mussels, alewifes, overfishing, and dwindling bait fish populations to name a few. Here’s a graph that not only tells you the state of fishing this year, but can be used to help predict years to come. Continue reading
Each year I am lucky enough to spend a week or two at a cabin in Northern Minnesota with some wonderful scenery and world class fishing. The lake the cabin sits on is full of large Walleye, mean Smallmouth, big Musky, and a good smattering of Largemouth Bass and Northern Pike. Continue reading
Dear friends and followers, it has been long since I’ve posted anything. My days are long and my nights short, time for fishing is scarce, and time for blogging is more rare even than fishing time. Tonight, however, I find myself in South-Carolina after 13 hours on shoot, we’re photographing a major bank headquarters in Charlotte NC this week. Continue reading
A fellow emailed me this week and wanted to introduce me to his blog named Illinois Wisconsin Fishing, and now I’d like to extend the same gesture to you, I’ll suggest you click here to visit the site and have a read for yourself. Continue reading
As the days get longer and the water warms we must unfortunately bid farewell to what has been an amazing spring steelhead season, while there is still a couple weeks left of good fishing and possibly a week or so more of leftovers we have to be thankful that we had such a banner spring. I remember last year freezing my knuckles and bearing into the wind while trying to throw casts into stained, turbulent waters from a string of massive March rains. This year I broke sweat in my tee shirt more than once. I casted to clear pools swirling with silver, hard hitting fish while the sun rose and the air temperatures broke sixty before I could see my shadow finding its way along the stones by the river bed. Continue reading
Oak Creek has stabilized and Steelhead are staging nicely. The river has a variety of sized fish in the system right now from 15-20″ juveniles to 30+” four and five year old fish. Chambers Creek and Ganaraska are the strains most prevalent in the river at this time. Continue reading
A fellow named Mike emailed me with some questions about Steelhead fishing a few months ago. I did my best to help him in any way, and so did the Chicago Trout Bum. I had a nice email in my inbox this morning. Continue reading
For those of you not able to get a glimpse of the Chicago River this weekend I bring you some photographs from a unique vantage point. My work brought me up onto the 28th floor of a downtown high-rise on the river where we photographed for the day. I snapped some images of the river and the spot that the river meets the channel, making for an interesting break line where the green water met the discolored North Shore Channel-Chicago River water. Continue reading
The Steelhead fishing has never been better in Southeastern Wisconsin if you are familiar with its water and know how to get away from crowds and fish a variety of water. Continue reading
