Or: why boats are like pets and children My youngest kid is thinking about buying a boat. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Now, I’ve been around small motorized boats all my life. We fished out of them, waterskied, and found Puget Sound beaches to picnic on. And I guess the thing I love most about boats is they allow us access to worlds of fresh water and salt that most will never experience. I’ve been close enough to surfacing grey whales to know the breath that comes ou

An interesting thing is happening on Folsom lake this year- or should I say in Folsom lake. Along with a good number of feisty trout, we’ve been catching lots of small chinook salmon. Right now they’re between 10” and 14”, which would make them about a year old. Now, king salmon in Folsom lake are not unusual. Over the years, during spring, the California Dept of Fish and Wildlife has planted them there, as they do in several California reservoirs. Most recently in Folsom t

Class dismissed! You may or may not remember the fishing class I wrote about teaching a couple months back. It was going to be at Sierra College, 4 consecutive Sundays, for an hour and a half at a time. The subject: Basic Trolling Skills for Boat Angling For California Trout and Salmon . In the days and weeks before, I was a bit terrified. I’d never taught a class, of any kind. Heck, I barely paid attention in most of the classes I did have. I still don’t really know how I

I was not a stellar student in school. I was a good kid; I just had the attention span of a squirrel. Comments from teachers on my report cards often included both “a pleasure to have in class” and “could apply himself more”. Hey, I was a charming slacker. There are worse things. So imagine my surprise when I woke up recently and realized I was going to be a teacher. Last fall, my wife had seen something about Sierra College looking for people to host “lifestyle” classes. S

I’ve had some compelling clients since starting my fishing guide business five years ago. One, Jerry, was Willie Nelson’s bus driver for 20 years. Another, a Harvard grad who works with AI security to, in her words, “make sure it’s used for good”. I’ve had cops, firefighters, ER doctors and a Bay Area rap music producer. But one of my favorites has been Jim Zobel, an 88 year old retired California Fish and Wildlife Captain. Jim first came aboard in June for a trip with his s

reprinted from Gold Country Media https://goldcountrymedia.com/news/349098/chinook-salmon-make-another-comeback/ 1/9/26 A funny thing about Chinook salmon: Give them half a chance and they can come roaring back. Yes, they’re a fragile species, highly susceptible to poor water management and/or crummy habitat and environmental conditions (which is especially true in Northern California, the southern end of their range). But despite that glaring irony, salmon are also one of th

(first published by Gold Country Media, Dec, 2025) One of the peculiarities of fishing is the trendiness of lures and baits. And I’m not talking among anglers. I’m talking among fish. When I first started really focusing on Folsom lake’s trout and landlocked salmon back in the early 2000s, my can’t-miss presentation was a “rolled shad”, which entails an actual small shad baitfish rigged in such a way that it spins as you troll it through the water. It was money, partly becaus