I managed to work myself into a short stint of depression last week. Fortunately I managed to catch it before falling into the abyss. When I was at University in Aberdeen I had two major depression incidents. The first time I didn’t know what it was. The second time I understood, but it was actually worse! I look back on this time as being really very fortunate. If it wasn’t for this, then I wouldn’t have spent a life of fly fishing and travelling. Well *maybe* not — you never know! I could very well have ended up an engineer or architect, living with four walls and a roof, maybe with grown-up children and divorced by now!

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Labour Weekend is this weekend. Three days. The first long weekend of the trout season for most of the country, and the roads out of Auckland will be straining with a volume of cars. I'm heading to the Hawke's Bay.

Last year I did the same and fished a Hawke's Bay river. Lowland water, down where the tide makes a difference. The river was low and clear, mid twenties in cumecs on the Saturday morning. Low and clear usually means hard fishing. Not this time.

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These boots, the Bestard Canyon Guide boots, are simply the best wading boots I’ve owned. Seven years!! Not seven years on the river every day, but a lot of river fishing, a lot of jungle bashing, and I left the boots outside in my boat when not wearing them. Extraordinary!

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To follow on from the Nasty Charlie last week I'm going to look at the Gotcha, because if the Nasty is the OG bonefish fly, maybe the Gotcha is the G.O.A.T.

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New week, same bubble, same work, different shit. Normally we say same shit in different package. That means that you are not totally happy with your life, same work, same routines, just different day and week. I would say new package in different shit. That describes last few weeks well.

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I don’t remember if it was a study or just an article that suggested that biceps curls was a very important exercise. Not for any physical reason but a psychological reason. The reasoning was something a long the lines of, if you add something rewarding or fun in an exercise program the client was more likely to actually follow the program. But it had to be in the end of the schedule and the “boring” things had to be done first. 

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