Fishing Post

Im going to give you the good news AND the bad news. The good news it that Zac and I had an amazing weekend last weekend up at the Smith River. The bad news is Im not posting about it tonight….and….I lost my wallet.

What I AM going to talk about tonight is a wonderful little fishing day we had a few weekends ago. My best friend Janelle was able to come up and visit me which was SO much fun. Zac had been gone for 16 days so I was trying to keep as busy as possible. Monday (day 17) had come around and Janelle headed back to So Cal and Zac finally came home from So Cal! We decided to spend the day out at sea and tried to do a little sturgeon fishing. As you can see from the picture above, the bay was pretty much a lake. I could not get over how beautiful it was. There is something about being out on the water with it looking like glass. 

I of course assumed it was going to be chilly, because lets face it…it almost always is! Well to both mine and Zacs surprised it really warmed up out there! The sun came out and we had to remove jackets and sweatshirts. I probably could have had a bikini on! The nice thing about sturgeon fishing is you weigh 

 anchor, put the rods out and then just get to sit back an relax until you see that little bump. It a pretty chill type of fishing, especially compared to salmon where you are working down riggers and constantly moving.

I think we were out there for a few hours and didn't have any luck with the sturgeon but we did end up catching a striper bass and what we believe it s haibut…I say believe because we have just never seen one with the strange colors it had. That the thing I like about ocean fishing. I feel like even if you don't catch what you are aiming for, you still catch something!

I am still hoping to catch a sturgeon one of these days. I think it would be a fun fish to reel in. The only thing about catching a sturgeon in the bay is that they don't recommend eating a lot of it because of the mercury content….a little sketchy. I think Zac was telling me they have regulations that men can eat one serving per week and its not recommended for woman in child bearing age. So I don't know if I will be having sturgeon any time soon ( with the whole being in child baring age) BUT I have heard its pretty good eating and I wouldn't mind trying it….maybe just a bite?

 Anyways, my dear sweet husband knows how much I love pictures so he puts up with me through all of this. I always tell him that when we are old we are going to love having these memories to look back on. I feel like only yesterday it was the start to a new year and by the end of this week we will be starting into February. The time goes so quickly and I plan to enjoy every second Im given…(maybe not loosing my wallet).

"Its better to sit in a boat

thinking about God

than to sit

in a church thinking

about fishing"

"Today is the first blank page of a 365 page book, write a good one"

When I first read that quote it just sat well with me. I thought, what a great way to describe the start of a new year. I must say that my 2014 was definitely a good year but I am so excited to start 2015. I already have so many things to look forward to! And Im excited for a fresh start and to make this year an amazing one. 

I have definitely been slacking on the blogging. Life gets busy, what can I say. Sometimes I don't mind the lack of blogging but it sure is nice to be able to look back in time and see what I was up to over the years. An on line scrapbook. Its pretty cool. Who knows maybe 2015 will be a better blogging year for me. Well, lets go ahead and get started.

This year is a big one for my mom. On January 4th she turned the big 60! My sister and I had been planning a surprise party for her probably since August or September. We started early because this was going to be the mother of all surprises! My mom is one of the kindest, selfless, sweetest people. She does things for other people without a hesitation. So my sister and I wanted to plan something extra special for her. We decided that because coming up north is one of her favorite things to do we would fly her up here. Everything else fell into plan throughout the next few months of planning. 

We rented a house in Kenwood, we invited some of my moms closest friends (that to her are family), we planned out how we were going to hide everything from her, we rented a limo, we made reservations for a food and wine pairing at St.Francis, we made reservations for a tour and tasting at Korbel, we made dinner reservations and finally the next day we made lunch reservations. Everything was planned out to the T. We even made an itinerary so that we could keep everything on tract and on schedule.

It was finally here! Friday the 2nd. I had to work half a day and then I headed over to the airport to pick up my mom. Little did she know that my sister along with Tina, Ashley and Tiffany had left for nor cal about 4:00 in the morning and were on their way up to the house that we rented to decorate. I picked up my mom about 12:30 and told her I wanted to have lunch in Healdsburg….I needed to allow time for the girls to get the house decorated for my  mom! We headed over to Healdsburg, ate some lunch at Brava and then walked around a bit. Before I knew it, it was time to head over to the house for the big surprise. I told my mom that I wanted to show her a house that Zac and I had looked at before we purchased ours. I said that our realtor Courtney had just purchased the house and it was empty and we could go walk around. Luckily I know that my mom LOVES looking at houses so the plan worked perfectly. I texted my sister when we were there to let her know and everyone hid so they could jump out and surprise my mom.

When we opened the door my mom was shocked! She could not believe it. The plan had worked perfectly. My sister and I needed a little time to re-coop. After planning and lying and finally having everything work out it overwhelms you! In a good way. We popped a few bottles of champagne and the party started! 

Saturday was our big day out! No one had spilled the beans about our plans, which was nice. Now a days with social media we had to put everyone on a social media shut down so that my mom wouldn't find out a thing! We all got ready that morning and told my mom that she needed to be ready to leave by 10:30. Everyone was ready to go and about 10:30 the limo arrived to pick us all up! Our first ride was not very long, we just headed down the street to St. Francis. Luckily the weather was just beautiful that day! It was cold, but beautiful. Jen and I had planned a food and wine pairing. We thought it would be a fun way to start off our day! I must say that the food and wine pairing at St.Francis was just amazing! Everyone was so impressed with all the food. Large portions and delicious. By the time we finished we were full and it was a like we had eaten lunch, it was perfect!

After finishing our tasting at St.Francis it was off to our next winery, Korbel. I had never been to Korbel before and I actually have a patient who works there. I got to talking with him and told him I would love to take my mom for her birthday and he told me that he would set up something special for us. We arrived at Korbel around 1:30 and started off with a VIP tour of the winery. We were able to see the history and how the champagne is made. When we finished our tour it was time to taste the champs! It was the perfect way to end our day! The tour guide at Korbel pulled me aside and said that my friend hooked us up and that we would all have VIP pricing on anything we wanted to purchase which was 50% off everything. She also said that I could pick out any two bottle on the house! It was awesome. After we tasted I had my mom pick her favorite and I made sure the two free bottles went to her as part of her birthday surprise.

So much fun! What great memories. Once we finished up at Korbel and bought lots and lots of champagne it was back to the limo to head home. When we got home we were able to relax for about an hour and half before we were going to head to dinner. We originally had reservation for Redd Wood in Yountville but I kept checking the map and it showed that there was a road closure and it would take us an hour to get there. I decided that driving over and hour for dinner was just to much and decided to cancel our reservations and eat somewhere a little closer to town. The only thing was on a Saturday night with 8 people you beed a place that can accommodate. We finally decided on La Rosa. And it worked out perfectly. Nothing like some good mexican food to end your day. By dinner we were all pretty whooped from a busy day of wine tasting. We had plans to go into the hot tub when we got home but we were just to tired and it was SO cold outside it felt better to stay inside! 

Needless to say the weekend went perfectly! The newt morning it was already time for the other girls to head back home. We had brunch in Sonoma, stopped at one store and that was the end of the party! 

What a perfect way to start my new book! With an amazing party for my mom. Heres to many more adventure for the year!

Bass Lake Camping

A few weeks ago Zac and I met up with our friends Janelle and Dylan for a nice weekend away. It didn't take us long to find a fun new place to try. We decided on Bass Lake which is about half way between both of us. 

Zac and I couldn't leave till Friday after I got off work but luckily we had a very smooth drive with practically no traffic! I think we ended up getting into camp around 9:45. Janelle and Dylan were already there. So we set up camp and then headed to bed. 

The weather was just beautiful while we were there! Clear and sunny. We decided for our first day that we would spend it at the lake and thats just what we did. We found a spot that was on the opposite side of the lake that was a bit more secluded. Bass lake is a very long lake but it is also very narrow! I was surprised how many pontoons were out cursing! You would think from the name that there would be a lot of bass fishing but I don't think I saw even ONE person fishing on the lake. Everyone was skiing or tubing.

So we spent most of the morning just relaxing out in the water in our tubes. It was the perfect way to spend our day! When we got hungry we headed back to camp to make some lunch. And just rested a bit from the lake bake. Before we knew it it was already into the evening and time to have some moscow mules and get ready for a fire and some dinner!

Our plans for the next day were to go on a hike in the morning and then spend the rest of the afternoon enjoying some more lake time. I had done a little research and found a place for us to hike. There were suppose to be waterfall but with all the lack of water lately there really wasn't much to see. It was still a beautiful hike….well minus the group of hippy naked people basking in the sun, but other then that an all an all good trip!

After finishing up our hike it was starting to get warm and time to get one lake time in. We stopped back by camp to grab some food and then packed up our gear and headed across to the other side of the lake. I really wanted to find a secluded beach so that Hudson could run free and swim. We ended up finding the perfect little spot! We were all to ourselves and had a little mini beach to ourselves. It was heaven. A lot of the time lake water is to cold for me to get in (cause Im a big baby) but this water was perfect! Just enough to cool you down.  On our way back to the campsite we stopped at a little restaurant to grab a drink and some delicious onion rings. We just couldn't wait till dinner! That was pretty much the end of our wonderful camping trip. Monday came so quickly and it was already time for us to head our separate ways. 

Another fun trip in the books for 2014! Until next time!

Weddings

Above is a picture of Brandon and Marcella. They were married yesterday and Zac and I were lucky enough to enjoy their wedding day with them. They are such a cute couple and I am very happy for them.  I have known Brandon for…I believe almost 10 years! Crazy. And I met Marcella a few years back when we went backpacking together. I liked her right away. She is such a sweet person. Anyways, I really enjoy going to weddings. I didn't used to but I have changed my ways. Everyone is so happy and celebrating, how can you not!? I wish that Zac and I could get married again just so we could have another wedding! I know that sounds crazy but…I guess Im crazy. I always wonder how people get so overwhelmed with wedding planning and why they are so happy when its over. I guess I just had so much fun planning my wedding and everything went so smooth that it was just a really good experience!

Although back in my day! (am I allowed to say that?) we didn't HAVE pinterest. Could I have gotten some great ideas off of pinterest. Oh well, I think I did pretty well without the help of the internet.  Zac told me I should just become a wedding planner but the thing is I want to plan for MY own wedding. Don't get me wrong its not that I didn't like my wedding, I loved it. It just loved it so much that I'd want to do it again. Although I would do it completely different! Except for my dress. That dress. Gorgeous. 

The wedding was held at the Wheeler Ranch which is a park setting. It was very simple and very rustic. It looked gorgeous. There were only a few little things that went "wrong" if you will. The wedding didn't start till about 40 minutes after the designated time and the man that was officiating the wedding was Brandons grandpa which Im pretty sure he has dementia. He repeated a few things over and over and did not make sense the whole time but Brandon and Marcella were very patient and in the end they got married, just what they wanted to do! And thats all that matters.

Did I mention that I am officially on vacation!? I have two weeks off. My doc is in Italy so that means I get time off.  Plus I got a summer bonus! So things are going pretty good. The day before we went to the wedding Zac and I decided to take the boat out to try for some Halibut fishing. There were quite a few boats out. The weather was pretty good. It was foggy but it burned off towards the end. We had no luck for halibut but we did catch plenty of rock fish and cabazon.  Of course my darling husband could not resist trolling for some salmon while we were out there, even though we are stuffed full of salmon in our freezer. We ended up catching two. The first one we got to the boat and lost it with the hook bending and the second one snapped off the 20lb leader. Even though it is a lot of fun catching them Im glad that we didn't get to keep them because we don't need anymore.

I think that Zac and I might go out on Wednesday. Although the plan was to go out for halibut but it sounds like the tides are going to be moving a little to fast. So we'll see what happens. Zac and I have the next three days together and then Im off for girls week! I just can't believe that it is already almost August, where did the year go?

Just because

In the picture above you see Ukiah. A few weekends ago Zac and I headed up to Cow Mountain to do a little shooting. You probably didn't know this, because I fell off the blogging cliff but for my birthday my darling husband bought me a gun. I didn't ask for a gun, but he surprised me with one. He does that a lot….surprises that is.  Anyways, he said it was a good deal and I have never owned my own gun so I was excited!

For those bloggers who actually care about what kind of a gun I have its a Browning .22. What I like BEST about it is that Zacs friend who used to own it was a sniper! How bad ass is that?! Although why he owned a .22 I don't know. 

Anyways back to our shooting day. We thought it would be a great idea to head on up to Cow and shoot my new gun and also shoot our bows. Zac didn't end up bringing his bow cause his peep site needs to be fixed. It was already pretty warm when we got up there but it was still a beautiful day. We decided to both bring our .22's because they are fun and cheap to shoot. Cow Mountain is a nice place to go because you don't have anyone really directing you on when to shoot. You can just do your thing and then leave when your done. 

Here is me shooting my new gun. What do you think? Obviously I dressed the part. I got my pink ears, my flag/camo vest and my boots! We had a really fun time. I enjoyed shooting my new gun. Zac also has a scope for it thats pretty sweet but I haven't been able to test it out yet. We will have to go back out so I can site it in.

I got a few good shots in. And of course I used my zombie targets that I got for Christmas. After a few hours of shooting we were ready to head back down the mountain. All in all it was a very fun day!

Me with my bow. Sorry for the photo dump of pictures of just me but Zac is just not as excited about pictures as I am. I like to capture every moment.

Oh yeah, one more little surprise from my darling husband. He came home with this truck. he told me that Im a truck girl and I needed to drive a truck. So I am. And I do.

Surprise

Remember us? Well we are still here. I would try and catch you up on everything thats been going on but that seems to be a bit overwhelming, so we are just going to talk about some salmon fishing if thats okay. So many people say that a boat is a money pit, or that you buy a boat and only use it s few times. Well people that is NOT the case in our family. Im pretty sure our boat has been out every week (sometimes two times) since we brought her home. 

Like I said earlier we are going to be talking about a salmon trip for this post. My dear sweet husband has been on what we like to call "a sick one" which means that he is all about the salmon fishing right now. Well the other weekend he got a text from one of his co-workers that the bite was on up at Fort Bragg. I guess he was fishing Friday morning and got limits (two salmon per person) in two hours. Well this sounded to good to be true! So we decided that Sunday afternoon we would drive up to Fort Bragg, spend the night and having a early day of fishing on Monday.

Zac did a little research and found us a campsite. He also found out that the tide was going to be super low so he thought it would be best to put the boat in a slip the night before and then in the morning we could head out without having to launch the boat.  Sunday was a busy afternoon, it took us almost 3 hours to drive to Fort Bragg. Then we had to get the boat launched and in the slip, set up our campsite and also take Huddy to the beach so he would be nice and tired for our morning of fishing. We finally got most of our to do's done and we were able to stop for a beautiful dinner that looked out onto the sunset. Both of us were very excited and talking about our game plan for the next morning. 

The morning could not come soon enough! Especially because our camp neighbors were up all night! I think I finally heard them shut up at about 4:30am…and our alarm clock went off at 5:30am. Lets just say I did not feel bad about making noise packing up camp! I was surprised that it wasn't foggy, I was planning on not being able to see the blue sky but low and behold there it was! The only thing about that sunny weather…is that is means it will be windy and choppy out on the ocean. Luckily, we didn't have to go out to far AND supposedly we would be done fishing in about two hours. We stopped at Dennys for some breakfast and then it was off to the boat.

We got the boat all ready to go. We were just pushing off when an older gentleman told us that the tide was super low out! Zac and I had already discussed this so I thought, its cool…we know! So we started to head down the river out to the ocean. We were both pretty excited to get our there. Down the river we went…nice and easy…when all the sudden aksjdkahkfjhskjdfh (Thats my noise for our rudder hitting the bottom). I asked Zac "What was that!?" He answered "Thats us hitting the bottom". We moved forward a little but with that same scraping sound. Finally Zac stopped the boat. We were stuck….STUCK! My heart sank. Im pretty sure every emption hit me, well maybe not the good emotions. But I was scared, anxious, nervous and embarrassed! Zac tried to move a few more times but were were stuck. The rudder was in the mud. I was flipped out. After talking things through Zac said that the tide would be back up in about two hours, enough for us to be floating again. TWO HOURS!? We are sitting here for TWO HOURS!? I just wanted to curl up in a ball and wake up when it was over. Talk about anxiety! After giving Zac a few different suggestions for getting us out of the situation he finally took one of mine up. He got out into the water (bless his heart) and wiggled the back of the boat till it actually freed up. He then moved to the front of the boat with some rope and started to pull us. It was actually working! I don't know if the tide had come in a tiny bit more or God had answered my prayer but we were actually moving! We finally made it to a place that was "deep enough" (which was still to shallow) to actually get the motor going. No wonder we saw no other boats going out. Anyways, so that was an exciting way to start our morning! Thankfully Huddy did SO well! This was his very first time in our ocean boat…and in the ocean for that matter. When we were stuck I just pulled out a bully stick for him to chew on and boy am I happy we had that for him.

Well we probably made it our to our fishing grounds and started fishing around 9:00am. Not to long after that I had the first bite! It was pretty exciting but I ended up snapping the line when I got it to the boat. The water was pretty choppy and there were quite a few boats out there. Before we knew it we started catching fish! Zac caught the first two while I was driving the boat. It was quite the ordeal to fish with only two people. Zac would grab the rod then I would run out and reel up the down rigger, then run back and steer the boat, then run back and grab the net and net the fish….then run back to steer the boat! We made it work though. So anyways, Zac caught the first two fish and it was my turn to catch my limits. I must say that those salmons put up one hell of a fight. My last one that caught I would get him up to the boat and then he would take off running…or swimming I should say. I think he did that 3 times before we got him in the boat! So much fun! When we checked the clock again it was 11:00am. Limits in 2 hours. Thats a fish every 30 minutes. Not to bad! Zac was thinking we could go rock fishing but with the water getting even more choppy I was ready to head in. I must say Hudson did great in the boat. He stayed out of our way and only ate one anchovy! 

We were both pretty happy with our fishing trip. Plus the tide was up so no getting stuck on the way back to the boat launch.  Well thats my fishing trip story. We did so well that a week later Zac went back out to Fort Bragg with a buddy and caught limits again! Needless to say we have a lot of salmon right now. I am going to bring in a bunch to my co-workers! 

First day in the bay

Well, there she is. Last weekend we decided to try her first maiden voyage in the ocean. And I can say it was a success. We were still waiting on the new drive shaft so using the old one that is a little bent made for a little more vibration and noise. We were also using a older propeller that Zac has recently changed.

We invited Nick and his girlfriend Jordan to come out with us. We thought we would do some Halibut fishing while we were out there but it really wasn't the best day to catch halibut. It was gorgeous out on the bay though, probably 80 degrees! We started off with some fishing and then ended up just hanging out. The roof makes for a very nice place to lay out. The table was also perfect for when it was time for me to make sandwiches for everyone. I must say this is my favorite boat that we have owned so far. 

On our way back from our little trip out into the bay we found a man who was stranded! We gave hime a tow back to the launch and he was so grateful. You just hope that if you were the one stuck that someone would do the same for you. Anyways I really don't have a lot to talk about for this post but I do have some pictures from our fun day!

 Nick and Jordan enjoying the cruise out

 Captain of the boat

 Headed under the 580 bridge to Paradise Cove

 Doesn't get much better then this!

 The "merman" that we rescued

A great day! The weather could not have been better.

I am a week behind with my blogging, so hopefully this week I can catch up and tell y'all about mine and Zac's trip out on the bay catching bay-rays and sharks! So much fun.