Arriving at my travel destination without delay or incident is a rarity here at the Underground, but I’m broadcasting to the Undergrounders from the Trout Underground/Man Cave’s Temporary World Headquarters – the 18th floor of the Crowne Plaza (nice place, but they lose points for the gratuitous “e”).

I thought I’d create a photographic travelogue highlighting none other than… me:

Notice the rich, luxurious carpet. This ain’t Motel 6

On the shuttle in from the airport I passed the Wright-McGill/Eagle Claw building, and realized I still harbor a soft spot for Wright-McGill given their connection to Granger bamboo fly rod company.

Today, most all their gear is manufactured offshore, but the company’s still here – housed in a long, low brick building (that looks old enough to have once housed the Granger rod mill).

Sadly, my camera was buried in my luggage, else you lucky bastards you’d be looking at pictures of the Wright-McGill building and my feet in the shuttle bus.

Normally, outdoor “journalists” arrive at these things expecting to be fed, paid off and bribed in return for fawning, non-critical coverage, but I’m saddened to say I’ve been in town for more than an hour, and I have yet to experience a fawned-over moment.

This won’t do.

In fact, things have become so desperate, I’m being forced to go buy my own lunch before heading to the show (oh, the humanity).

See you at FFR, Tom Chandler.

fly fishing, fishing, ffr, fly fishing retailer, denver, wright-mcgill, fly rods

Technorati Tags: denver, ffr, fishing, Fly Fishing, fly fishing retailer, fly rods, wright-mcgill

There truly is no place like home – even for a fly fisherman lucky enough to fish a long list of amazing waters over the last month.

Montana was a little slice of heaven (as if the pictures hadn’t told you that already), and Maine was what Maine always is: rustic, ageless and fun (plus pie and lobster).

The L&T headed to town in a Grand Laker Canoe

Still, I feel like I haven’t been home in months.

I mean, what’s happening on my favorite alpine stream? My alpine brookie lakes? The Upper McCloud? My favorite Upper Sac spots? I’m drawing blanks on all of them.

Time to get to work.

I’m wrapping up my Maine trip with this post, and providing valuable information about how you too can become the Wiffleball Death Match MVP (hint: make a headfirst belly flop onto home plate, craft a triple play, a double play, and an Ozzie-Smith-like nab of a line drive, then whine a lot about damaging yourself for the team, and you’re in).

Plus a few leftover pictures, starting with…

The Canoe You Should Own, But Can’t

First, there’s the cedar lapstrake canoe that one of you is not going to win in a drawing by the Downeast Lakes Land Trust, which is a damned shame.

Want to win this? You can’t (and I didn’t).

If I’d twigged to the drawing sooner, I think a great big bait ball sized school of Undergrounders would have thrown down $10 for a chance to win this gorgeous floating canoe (it’s like a supermodel with thwarts), but alas, there was no warning.

The drawing’s over (and I didn’t win either).

Sorry, wood-loving Undergrounders.

Grand Laker Canoe Redux

My posts about Grand Laker Canoes from two years ago still score a lot of traffic. Clearly, there’s a lot of interest in these great craft, yet when people had questions, I had nowhere to send them.

Until now.

Bill Shamel’s still building Grand Lakers (he’s Pop Moore’s son-in-law).

Bill Shamel’s shop in Grand Lake Stream continues to pump out 5-10 Grand Laker canoes annually, and he takes on interesting restoration projects.

Want to know more? You’ll find contact information for Shamel and a couple other Grand Laker builders here.

The Dark and Moody Underground

What’s left are a few kinda moody photographs that simply don’t fit anywhere else on the Underground’s inevitably sunny pages.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: fishing, Fly Fishing, grand lake stream, grand laker canoe, maine, west grand lake

The L&T and I knew we were facing a long travel day home, but we didn’t figure it would end halfway.

Rather than snuggled warm in our own bed, the L&T and I are sitting in a hot, stuffy hotel room in Salt Lake City, sans luggage, food, and any sense of time or place.

The Underground Travel Curse strikes again.

Veteran Undergrounders will remember last year’s Maine return trip; we found ourselves stuck in Boston, holed up in a hotel room (a $400+ hotel room) for more than a day.

Given the current airline climate, I guess stranding us in Salt Lake City – which is, after all, farther west than Boston – constitutes real progress on the part of Delta Airlines. Yay, Delta!

My lower back is painfully aware of the fact that our 4.75 hour flight west found us rooted in our seats for better than eight hours, and I’m also pretty clear on the fact there are damned few trout at the Salt Lake City Airport Inn.

Thus, a New Underground Constitutional Amendment is born:

If I Can’t Drive To It, It Doesn’t Exist

More when my butt hurts less, and my eyes are open more.

See you where vertebrae go to die at the airport, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: delta airlines, flying, t, underground travel curse

Early tomorrow morning, the L&T and I pack up, leave Grand Lake Stream, Maine, and head back to the Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters in Mount Shasta.

Our stay in Grand Lake Stream, Maine has been big fun (and big calories), but the dialup access is so slow and spotty I’m not even trying to post anything until I get home.

The food has been awesome, the fishing sublime, and yes, the Wiffleball game went the way of the just and righteous Underground’s team, with yours truly representing big for the Underground Way of Life to the tune of a headfirst slide into home and a triple play.

More on my athletic (and eating) prowess after Sunday’s travel day, which likely won’t end until midnight, and that’s assuming our close, personal friends at the major airlines don’t strand us halfway.

See you traveling, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: fishing, Fly Fishing, grand lake stream, maine, Travel

It’s been a quiet day. The L&T and I gathered up Todd – family member and fly fisher – and ran uplake for a couple hours of smallmouth fishing.

We were interested in little more than knocking some of the dust off the gear, and – just like the guides suggested – we caught little smallmouth bass pretty much everywhere we went.

It wasn’t high drama, but it was damned fun.

Later, I snorkled around the dock and boathouse, shadowed by an 11″ smallmouth who clearly didn’t want any pasty white mammal competing for his territory (smallies are agressive).

Luckily, I survived my Brush with Jaws, only to face a larger jeopardy.

Tomorrow is a ostensibly a “big” fishing day – guides have been engaged and gear is being readied – but in truth, much of the drama there revolves around the traditional shore lunch.

Some think of the traditional shore lunch as a social event; something echoing back to a simpler time when even people who were fishing for real had time to relax and socialize a little in the middle of the day.

I know better.

The simple truth is this: the guides know that stuffing clients full of steak, potatoes and piece results in people too sleepy to fish.

Thus, the day ends early, and the tip is preserved.

Of course, having uncovered the Secret of the Guide Lunch, my life is jeopardy.

The Traditional Maine Guide Mafia – desperate to preserve their ugly little secret – would do almost anything to prevent the sprea

Technorati Tags: fishing, Fly Fishing, grand lake stream, maine, west grand lake

I’m writing this from Maine instead of New York, a fact which comforts me greatly.

My latest Brush With the Travel World came courtesy of Delta Airlines in New York, where four undertrained ticket agents tried to make my reservation behave by repeatedly poking and prodding it with the electronic equivalent of a sharp stick.

For a little while, it looked as if New York was going to be my new home, an ironic thought; my friends know I think big cities are a lot like hell, only hell smells better.

And yes, I appreciate the group effort on the part of the ticket people (one repeatedly demanded my “ticket number” when all I knew was staring up at her from the crumpled printout of my online reservation).

And yes, the last year has not been a good one for the airline world.

The faces worn by the airline workers seemed a bit more strained, and they’re a couple seconds less tolerant of stressed, tired travelers.

Profits aren’t exactly rampant in the industry, and the airlines seem bent on maintaining a level of service one notch above the point at which passengers might strip naked in the middle of the terminal in a bid to get some attention.

Making matters worse is the post 9/11 mentality, where disagreeing with airline personnel takes on the flavor of a federal crime, even if you’re only disagreeing with them over the concept of paying extra for a ticket you already bought.

Still, we arrived Grand Lake Stream in Maine at precisely the same time we’d left Mount Shasta, our 24 hour travel circus sending me to bed for 12 more hours when it become clear I couldn’t follow a simple conversation.

I got up this morning and went for a fast hike in the woods, determined to work up a sweat and make sure everything still functioned after 24 hours among the airport herds, where sweating isn’t a sign of hard work as much as it is an example of weakness and perhaps bad breeding.

Part of that hike was a trip into town for my out-of-state fishing license, so now I can cast a line off the dock in front of the boat house with the quiet confidence of someone who is doing so legally, and tonight, I may just do that.

Then again, I may just sit on that dock and relax, soaking up the air of something that feels permanent, but which may in fact largely disappear in a couple years. More on that in an upcoming post.

See you waving from the dock, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: fishing, Fly Fishing, grand lake, grand lake stream, maine, Travel

Due to the largesse of a wealthy, anonymous benefactor, the Trout Underground’s Crack Writing Staff (me) and the Stunning L&T Nancy will be looming up the truck and heading to San Francisco for this Friday’s CalTrout Fundraiser:

You could say that San Francisco in general — and high-end Galas in particular — aren’t exactly my natural habitat.

In fact, if natural selection were truly in operation, I’d quickly come to a horrible end in the jaws of a predator better evolved to survive fundraisers, small talk and silent auctions.

Perhaps something like a Cocktail Crocodile.

Fortunately, where I clean up poorly and lack social graces, the L&T shines brightly. Very brightly.

It says a lot about my powers of persuasion that I ended up with dignified, attractive, intelligent woman who moves through these situations like a trout moves through water, and if I stick close enough, I might just survive the evening, eventually returning to the safety of my own natural habitat.

Darwin’s Cocktail Party

Curtis Knight of CalTrout thought I’d do just fine, and allowed as to how I’d do great as long as I kept bidding on auction items, which prompted me to laugh in a bitter, cynical way, wondering how many $10 auction items CalTrout was planning to move.

He made a classic error; just because I married a hot babe and own some nice bamboo fly rods, it doesn’t mean I’ve got any money.

Should any Undergrounders plan to attend, be sure to look me up. (And yes, it’s for a good cause, so drag your butts out there — at the very least, we’ll provide multiple targets for predators, achieving some kind of safety in numbers.)

Simply search for a species who clearly didn’t evolve in the Four Seasons Hotel ecosystem — an environment where people wear neckties every day without knowing it’s wrong.

That’ll be me, likely wearing a sport coat without zingers and shoes without felt soles, scanning the room for predators.

See you at the Galapagos Island Cocktail Party CalTrout Fundraiser, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: caltrout,social darwinism,fish out of water

Technorati Tags: caltrout, fish out of water, social darwinism

No sooner had we finished running Jim Troyer’s four-part report on his trip to Baja than up pops a short article about a Baja fly fishing pioneer — Dan Blanton. Blanton’s message board remains a model for how a message board should be run, and this excerpt from Dallas Morning News Outdoors Writer Ray Sasser’s story suggests today’s Baja is a piece of cake compared to the “good old days.”

Blanton used to load a 14-foot aluminum boat on top of his truck and lead a caravan south along Baja. In 1970, his California buddy Ron Dong, famous for inventing Ron’s Crease Fly, burned out a clutch traveling the dusty road.

“We left Ron’s rig with a mechanic, who had no clutch and no way to get one,” recalled Blanton. “A couple of days later, we were at our fishing camp when we saw a cloud of dust headed our way. A guy roared up in a souped-up off-road vehicle and said he was on a racing crew with the Baja 500 and heard we were having mechanical problems.

“He wrote down the parts number for Ron’s clutch and had the parts flown in on the racing team’s next plane from California. The truck was repaired when we headed for home. It was a true adventure in those days before commercial air service.”

Baja remains a fast-growing destination for fly fishers, who love its cheap, readily available tequila large numbers of gamefish. See you at the duty-free liquor store, Tom Chandler.

[tags]fly fishing, baja, dan blanton, tequila[/tags]

Seasoned Underground readers know that I travel about as well as your average fresh-caught trout. I’m lively for a little while, then I become glassy-eyed, my color fades, and finally, brain function ceases entirely.

As far as this trip goes, I’m well past the glassy-eyed stage (and starting to smell a little), and while Boston isn’t a bad place, it’s not exactly rich in trout streams, and I sure as hell didn’t want to spend the night in a hotel room that cost more than your average guide trip.

Yet that’s the reality imposed on us (yet again) by my close personal friends at Delta Circus and Airlines, who got us from Bangor to Boston exactly 25 minutes too late to make our connecting flight.

Of course, that’s when you run headlong into the truly Twilight-Zonish reality of modern air travel, where every flight is filled, yet all the airlines are somehow losing money.

It’s an impressive business model, though Delta has gone out of its way to provide a quality travel experience (by not paying a cent of the hotel but thoughtfully providing us with coupons good for a free movie headset — woo-hoo!).

I could whine endlessly about the days lost to travel screwups on this trip, but instead, I’ve got to maintain focus.

Like the trout I mentioned in the first paragraph, today’s air traveler has to stay alert; you’ve gotta zig when the predators airlines zag, and stand up for yourself to get the best in-flight snacks feeding lies.

Sadly, sometimes you’re the wild trout and sometimes you’re the stockie (like now), and the best you can hope for is that you don’t hit your head on a rock when they shoot you out of the tightly packed hatchery truck and into the water with a few thousand others.

Other Vacationers

Let’s hope it goes better for Ian and Charity Rutter, who are taking a few days off the Smokies guiding treadmill to fish for Tarpon in Florida (bastards).

Those bound for the Yellowstone area will want to take note of the river closures there (and find out where they should fish) at the Fly Fishing in Yellowstone site.

See you around the airport, Tom Chandler.

[tags]fly fishing, fishing, air travel, delays, delta airlines[/tags]

Vacationing fly fishermen often agonize over concepts like the balance of big fish to numbers of fish, or time spent on the water versus time spent with the family.

Frankly, I’ve moved far beyond those pedestrian concerns, and over the last two days, I’ve wholly abandoned any pretense about fishing, focusing instead on what has clearly become this trip’s goal: Weight Gain.

Will Raspberry Pie doom fly fishing as we know it?

On past trips, my most common refrain was “just one more cast.” Now it’s more likely to be “just one more piece,” and I’m not letting anyone badger me into leaving the table early, if you get my drift.

Yesterday, the L&T Nancy, myself, and local hotshot guide Chris Wheaton found ourselves out on Big Lake, a parade of 11″-17″ smallmouth doing their best to jerk the fishing rods out of our already snack-slickened hands.

The L&T Nancy with a big smallmouth bass. (Officially, I’m not jealous)

As one battling bronzeback after another fell to our flashing rods, I felt the first pangs of hunger, and found myself suggesting we “give the fish a break” and putter over to a nearby shore to being the day’s shore lunch.

“For chrissakes, it’s only 8:30″ the L&T Nancy snapped. (Empathy might not be her strong suit.)

In my defense, I’d like to point out that I’m largely powerless over food, and that this vacation has found me subjected to an endless stream of temptation, the goodies arriving as if on a conveyor from the Tempting Foods LLC factory, which terminates somewhere on the top shelf of the camp refrigerator.

My first few days weren’t too bad, but the slide began in earnest at last Friday’s Lobster Feed, where several crustaceans fell to my fast-moving lobster fork.

It acquired more momentum at the next day’s guide shore lunch, where the guides unmercifully plied me with boiled onions (drizzled in butter), fire-roasted potatoes (soaked in butter), steak (butter was pretty much everywhere at this point), bread, beer, and yes — homemade pie (two of ‘em).

The next few days were a blur of rich food, home-baked molasses bread and frequent snacks from what might be a 55-gallon drum of salted peanuts.

Yesterday’s Big Lake shore lunch was particularly brutal; appetizers were minutes-from-the-water smallmouth fillets (masa flour & salt, fried quickly, and lightly drizzled with lemon juice), followed by all the usual suspects (yes, steak), and topped with… more pie. Lots of pie.

The beginnings of a Maine Shore Lunch. Fishing no longer matters…

The punishment continues today with birthday cake (not mine), the Friday evening Grand Lake Guide’s Association barbecue (chicken), the Saturday lobster feed (by the same group), and the constant stream of temptation in between.

I’m starting to have some serious doubts about Sunday’s departure, fearing that I’ll no longer fit through the door of the small jet that flies us from Bangor to Boston.

Still, even as my weight ballons and my subcutaneous fat layer takes on Wally the Wonderdog-esque proportions, I hold out hope for my eventual deliverance.

Right now, I’m safe; the wind is blowing hard and the lake is whitecapping, which reminds me — didn’t we have some butter-cream frosted cupcakes in the kitchen?

Nancy saw an eagle in flight. I saw fried drumsticks. (L&T Nancy photo)

[tags]fly fishing, fishing, food, shore lunch, maine[/tags]

If I’m not keeping up with the fishing reports, it’s because I’m fishing. (No, I don’t feel bad about it.) And while the fishing is slowing a bit, the stream of experiences hasn’t.

A fleet of Grand Lakers wait while eat our shore lunch.

Saturday was a Big Day Out for the family members that were piling up at the camp like cordwood. Traditionally, the L&T Nancy’s mother (Judy) hires a couple of guides, we pile everyone into the guides’ Grand Lake Canoes, and off we go.

Ostensibly it’s a fishing trip, though most of the participants fish only once or twice a year. Quickly it becomes clear; we’re out for a day on the water, and the Main Event is the big shore lunch — a tradition among guides in these parts.

At 12:30, the small flotilla of Grand Lake canoes buzzes into the lunch spot, and the guides start a big fire, piling on the wood. From worn canvas duffle bags they pull blackened pots, filling them with lake water and stuffing them with potatoes or onions.

Coffee is made (strong!) in a soot-streaked pot, and steaks are squeezed into wire racks and stacked alongside the fire. I keep eyeing the round wicker basket that contains the fresh blackberry pie, but the L&T Nancy’s clearly onto me, and I never get a chance to swoop in and sneak a piece.

The Grand Lake shore lunch: steaks, potatoes, onions & corn.

The guides are so practiced at this — unlike most fly fishing trips out west, the shore lunch is part and parcel of the local fishing trip — that you don’t even try to help. You’d just get in the way.

Later — after I’ve stuffed myself with steak, buttered onions, potatoes, corn and bread (freshly baked at a house just down the road from the camp) — the pie makes an Officially Approved appearance, and I finally get my slice, which is heavenly.

The pots go back into the duffle bags, and suddenly, we’re pushing off the beach and fishing again.

While the day started cloudy, the clouds break during lunch and the wind starts blowing. It’s a high pressure front, which slows the fishing and makes the trip downlake a long one.

The Grand Lake Canoes handle the swells without a problem, our guide gently nosing us up one side of the swell and surfing down the other.

It’s possible I’m in the grips of a full blown love affair with these wooden, 20-foot canoes. Two anglers can fish standing up yet the things maneuver nimbly and without hesitation.

The guides are proud of their boats, and when you ask them about their boats, they reveal the maker’s name and the year it was built with a certain reverence. They don’t strut their boats like collectors at a weekend hot-rod gathering, though they can tell you at a glance who built the Grand Lake Canoe speeding by.

This from a heavily used, 26 year-old Grand Laker by Kenneth Wheaton.

Unlike car collectors, their boats aren’t garage queens, but hard-working tools bearing the marks of a blue collar existence. Scarred wood and scuffed varnish speak not to a pampered life in a garage, but daily exposure to sun, water, fish and fishermen.

Dave Irving — my guide for the day — tells me his boat was built in 1981 by Kenny Wheaton, and it’s clearly been fished hard in the last 26 years, yet will likely fish another 26 more.

Dave Irving, Registered Maine Guide

Another guide tells me his Grand Lake Canoe was built by Sonny Sprague in 1991, and that he received it was a graduation present. I suppose a trip to Europe would have gotten him more girls, but a Grand Lake Canoe is going to get him more fish.

See you on the lake, Tom Chandler.

[tags]fly fishing, fishing, grand lake stream, grand lake canoe, maine[/tags]

You wake up the first day of your vacation and viola — you’re two people.

One wants to hit the water (hard), while the other wants to relax, soak up the beauty, revel in the utter lack of ringing phones or pinging e-mail software, and get reacquainted with the L&T Nancy while you’re both temporarily shorn of your career responsibilities.

Everyone who wants to be here, raise your hand.

OK, I didn’t have an out-of-state license yet, so I couldn’t hit the water right away. Instead, the L&T Nancy and I lounged all morning, hiked the hour into the tiny town of Grand Lake Stream, bought non-resident fishing licenses, ate popsicles, got the lowdown on the fishing (river slow, lakes OK), and hiked home.

In other words, a perfect day, topped by an almost interesting sunset picture:

Damn bird and boat didn’t cooperate. Life is imperfect.

I knew it was too much to ask that the bird and boat would align in the sun trail, but you hope anyway, and when it’s clear it’s not going to happen, you click the shutter when they do line up, marking the result down to the imperfection of nature.

I would have clicked the shutter on a few smallmouth bass pictures — I just now got off the lake, having kayaked and fished around the local submerged rockpiles for a few hours — but I forgot to take my camera along.

No matter. Plenty of smallie pics to come, though most will likely show fish with subsurface flies in their jaws as they don’t seem too interested in the topwaters.

A few minutes ago, it was perfect kayak fishing weather, but the wind picked up pretty quickly and I paddled back to the dock. In just the time it took to write this post, the wind has picked up considerably and moved, now blowing in from the south, putting a good chop on the normally placid waters around the dock.

It’s a good time to be on dry, unchoppy land, writing, drinking beer, and wondering what I’m going to do this afternoon. The river? Perhaps. More family are due in, and putting off the evening hatch for one more day isn’t the worst thing you can do at the start of a two week long vacation.

In the meantime, we’ve got plenty of fishing action coming in Jim Troyer’s report on his fly fishing trip to Baja, (expect Part II later today or early tomorow).

See you on vacation, Tom Chandler.

[tags]fly fishing, kayak, maine, grand lake stream, smallmouth[/tags]

I’m pretty sure my wife cheats at cards.

Sure, I was going to start this report with a line like “Travel sucks” — and after a 32 hour travel “odyssey” I might be entitled — but once I started that rant, I’d end up punching out a quick 18,000 words on the subject, and the next thing I know my name’s on an FAA “no fly” list.

Not me. Outside of thanking our kind hosts at Delta Airlines — who couldn’t get an airplane started and seemed content to let their back-of-the-plane passengers bake in 100 degree temperatures for nearly an hour while they (in the pilot’s words) “dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s on the paperwork” — there isn’t much to say. (The above is an unpaid testimonial for Delta Airlines.)

Well, OK — maybe that zany bunch at Enterprise Rent-A-Car probably shouldn’t have abandoned their late-arriving guests to the vagaries of post-midnight, hotels-all-filled-up Bangor, and having done that, you probably shouldn’t keep them waiting curbside another 1.5 hours for your “we’ll come get you right now” shuttle the next morning. (The above is not a paid commercial endorsement of Enterprise.)

2:15 am, Bangor Airport. Is travel great, or what?

Not that I’m bitter or anything. Chewing up one day on travel was expected, so I guess chewing up most of a second is just a bonus. Can’t wait to see what’s in store for us on the way home.

Anyway, Back to the Cheating

I don’t think the L&T Nancy was actually cheating, but I needed a dramatic lead to this report. In truth, I won one card game and she won another, so random chance and honor have been satisfied.

Since most of today (Sunday) was chewed by travel, I have no fishing to report, dramatic landscapes to post, or animals to marvel at. At least part of tomorrow (Monday) involves setting up an Internet link, getting camp fired up, and hiking quickly into town, so any fishing will have wait until the evening. (It’s Monday and I’m doing the setup thing right now.)

Grand Lake itself is very high, which means the smallmouth might be found a little shallower than normal. As for Grand Lake Stream, I hear that some of the landlocked Atlantic Salmon remain in the river, and that an evening’s fishing might be in order.

Of course, when you’re already on vacation, looking ahead too much erodes your place in the present. Right now, it’s dark, the air is cooling, and a light drizzle is patterning the dirt.

The day is gone, but hope — the stuff that fuels every fishermen’s vacation — remains in abundance. See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

[tags]fly fishing, fly fishing travel, travel, grand lake stream, maine, delta airlines, enterprise rent-a-car[/tags]

The gear is packed, the house sitter is coming, and in a few hours, the 22 hour door-to-door trip to Grand Lake Stream begins.

Am I looking forward to it? Here’s your answer:

Life is hard on the mean streets of Grand Lake Stream.

Expect a few reports about the fishing, though the weather back there has been strange. Also expect some fun photography, and maybe a few more pictures of the town (90 year-round residents) and whatever else I can get into focus.

Last year’s post about the Grand Lake Canoe remains well-trafficked, so maybe this year we can get a peek into the builder’s shop.

See you among the Mainers, Tom Chandler.

[tags]grand lake stream, maine, grand lake canoe[/tags]

I’m about to leave for the Knoxville airport, starting what is sure to be another Quality Travel Experience.

I owe my loyal Undergrounders reports on two more days of fishing (including a last-day surprise location and a never-before-seen fish on the Underground), plus a trip wrap up.

Don’t miss a word. In the meantime, thanks for all the comments; I’ll respond to them when I get home.

Until then, see you in the stratosphere, Tom Chandler.

[tags]travel, fly fishing[/tags]