Finally!

Fire season is finally over and I've accrued over 1300 hrs of overtime. Overtime alone. We basically work 80hr weeks for months on end, so you can probably guess why I'm so excited that it's over. We had our crew party the night before last night and then the temps and apprentices on the crew packed up and left yesterday.

I'm still here. Along with a few others. Since we're starting a different work schedule I've only got one day off this week, which would be today. (Right now our air raid siren just started going off... not really, it's our volunteer fire department call that alerts the entire town that there's a call....why don't they just switch to pagers and cell phones? It's 5:30am. Anyway...) We got off early yesterday so I hit the river again. Not only did I not catch anything, but I lost 3 rigs in the rocks. And to top it all off, several boaters drifted by and it turns out, everyone (but me) is basically catching their limit. After shouting back and forth at one boat, one of the guys said "Don't give up!" and then almost as an afterthought "They're everywhere!" and I wonder if it was in response to his buddy saying something like "How can you not be catching something today?"

So today is a new day and I've decided to write off salmon for today. I'm heading to the Iron Gate Reservoir that feeds into the Klamath River. I apparently do much better at still water than swift moving water. We've got a cold front moving in which usually sends fish on a feeding frenzy (apparently). It's currently 34 degrees which is a little less than exciting. I checked out the weather report and clicked on the hourly weather. I forgot that it's coldest just as the sun comes up. So 34 degrees is warm. Ugh! It's supposed to get to 27 before 8am. I'm dressing warm for sure. Tonight it's supposed to start a long week of rain and snow. Summer is gone.