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No complaints from me.  I suffer the same malady.

- Zurf

That salmon was way upriver in full spawning mode.  On it's way from the sea, that salmon went through a substantial physical change.  It started out chrome colored.  There was no humped back.  It's mouth was shaped like that of a trout.  Between sea and spawning river (I caught it just as it was entering the spawning river and returned it unharmed except for having a pierced lip and a bizarre story of abduction by aliens) its head turned green, it's body red, its mouth extended and hooked, and it grew a big hump on its back.  I am SO glad that humans do not go through such a transformation to spawn.  It died a week or two after that picture was taken - exhausted from the spawn and its life's duty done.  When it died, its body fed a bear.  Or the flesh began to peel off in the river and trout, dolly varden, and char gorged themselves full to build up a fat layer to allow it to survive the long cold winter's near hibernation.  Nature is awesome in its simplicity - and to some extent brutality. 

I'm off to check those pictures.

Edit to add: Handsome boy and handsome fish.  I like the smile!

- Zurf

I caught more salmon than I can count on the fly rod last summer.  It is fun.  I think it took a full four months for the smile to fade even a little. 

The trout weren't all that small either - but not five pounds.

Even some "small" pike on the fly.  I didn't run a tape on this one.  I was up above my waist in his environment and between holding my rod and holding the camera and having someone hold the fish, running a tape was more than I could coordinate. I'd guess 26" or so.  We caught some up to a yard long.   

Perhaps a short story will give my opinion.  I was at a local guitar shop testing out some guitars I apsire to purchase.  There was a young man - very young - in there playing on a nice Taylor.  He did an absolutely perfect rendition of some Led Zeppelin song or other (I've never been a big fan of theirs).  He looked up at me with a look on his face as young men will sometimes have when they are appealing to their elders for acceptance.  I said, "That was absolutely fantastic.  You played it perfectly.  Now, give it a try the way YOU think it should sound."  He did - and it was a marked improvement.  Not because the song or the music was better, but because for a moment the music and the musician were one and the same thing.  The musician expressed forth from his own essence something beautiful - and it was music.  His young friend with him said, "That wasn't the right way to play it."  I said, "Perhaps not, but it was beautiful."   

We need to keep alive these songs, but we need to express them as parts of ourselves.  Where musicians blend and the notes express something more than wavelengths of sound.  They express blended spirits, and essence of where the song came from at first and how it has changed through the telling from other hands and voice. 

Sometimes, we are lucky enough to hear a song we do not care for done by someone else and it is magic.  Jose Feliciano's version of The Doors "Light My Fire" is such an experience for me.  Some of All1Song's versions on YouTube are like this.  Mekidsmom shared a song from her bathroom recently via Facebook (I do not hang out in bathrooms hoping for songs) - and it took a song that has always left me flat on the radio, stripped it down, and gave voice to something beautiful and transcendant. 

THAT is how musicians give tribute, meager as it may be in some of our cases.  Precise replication is the realm of technicians.  It is also tributary, no question.  The effort and learning and practice that goes into something like that is significant and deserves our attention and appreciation.  It is more than I can do, and I am jealous of the talent.  But that does not change its technical nature.  Musicians MUST express music from within themselves.  And when it comes from within themself, even if it was first expressed by another it cannot help but change and morph and become something new. 

- Zurf

Sorry Cameronkl7, I'm designing a new compliance department at work and ruffling enough feathers in doing it that I need all the good kharma I can get. 

- Zurf

Welcome to Chordie lametoad. 

My wife purchased a subscription to Acoustic Guitar for me for Christmas and I have found it to be a great resource.  I'm having to save the copies because much of the information is over my head - but I can see the day when it won't be.  There's information in each edition for someone like myself, and there's stuff in there that even Jerome the theory king and Russell the mutant would learn from.  One nice thing with a subscription is that you get access to all of their on-line lessons, which I have not yet taken advantage of, but a quick review demonstrates that they ought to be challanging in a good way. 

Sorry for the terrible grammar in this post.  I'm rushing on a short break. 

- Zurf

Welcome Reefratmary.  I love your name.  Pretty soon we'll have the whole -eye-rat family around, and that'd be just fine by me!

I'm just surprised that you're all up on Cape Breton and so far no mention of a fiddle.

- Zurf

You're welcome here.  Sorry to hear about your boy's troubles, but somehow or other good things have a way of coming out of what appear to be poor circumstance.  It's an ill wind that doesn't blow someone some good. 

- Zurf

bswyers - Do you fish the Clarion River?  When I was a boy, it was too polluted and wouldn't sustain fish in a lot of sections (though it was still pretty).  Is it sustaining fish well now?  It looks like what ought to be a great smallmouth bass river.  Has the trout fishery up that way picked up? 

My folks were from Ridgway, so I spent a lot of my youthful summers and weekends tramping around up there.  I recall some big quarry between Ridgway and St. Marys that had some huge bass, plus lots of fun fishing below the spillway at Kinzua. 

You can't beat the deal you got on the boats.  Just can't.  If you added a zero to the end it would STILL be a great deal.  Shallow water for fiberglass boat, but Kinzua will be fine. 

- Zurf

And next thing on my to-do list is to move closer to bensonp.

Looks like we need Asia and Africa. 

- Zurf

You'll get there Tony.  Keep up the good work. 

- Zurf