Happy New Year!

I remember the days when New Years Day reflected how wild New Years Eve was when your head hurt, your body felt numb and a greasy breakfast seemed like just the cure for what at the time felt like a top ten hang-over. Well, this year wasn't much different as I started my New Years resolution a day early and went to the gym. No hang-over but my body feels like it's been through the ringer. Only 89 days to go but this year I've only got about 15 lbs. to shed instead of a few years ago where I lost 25. Yep, it's P-90 Treks time again. Don't worry though, no half naked pics this year.

Shedding pounds isn't the only thing I'm looking forward to for the new year. I've been working hard on developing marketing tools and social media links to web-sites and face book pages and making connections with online fly shops and I'm really looking forward to what could be a really cool season and start to a new chapter in this fly fishing adventure for me. (We should be launching in a couple weeks.)

I got into fly fishing because it was an adventure. It was mysterious in the sense that although you thought you had some control, you never really knew what to expect from one day to the next. In 2007, I thought I had learned enough to step up my game and introduce others to this passion/obsession/addiction. It's kind of like gambling in a weird way. You learn certain things and rules to the games in order to bring the odds in your favor but in the end, luck always has its way of creeping in--some days it's good and some days...

What I really learned in 2007 was that I didn't know squat about fly fishing. And every year since I've learned that I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did the year before. In my seventh season, I learned a huge lesson from a couple of 12 year olds and have a lot of clients that should be thanking them for absolutely crushing it in August but again, that's what's so cool about fly fishing; you think you're to the pinnacle of learning just about everything you need to know about it and then something happens to make you realize you've barely stepped into the foothills.

Taking that next step, becoming an outfitter and being more in control of my own destiny, so-to-speak, is exciting and I'm really looking forward to it but it also means added risk and less of a safety net if things don't go so well. It kind of brings be back to those days of just jumping in the truck and driving for a couple hours to fish water I had never seen before. It is exciting. It is a gamble but that's what makes it fun. I hope you all can enjoy a piece of that with me in this new year.

Keep 'em where they live...