Do Something Nice for your Wife

My wife and I have been together for almost 20 years. Birthday's around our house rarely consist of more than a B-Day card and dinner (usually at a restaurant we go to all the time anyway). Julie's Birthday is August 14th, right in the middle of guide season for both of us. Not really a lot of time to plan a big celebration. Hell, I can't even find the time to go buy her a gift!

LOG Guide Jason Newmack shows one of the many fine Rainbows
Julie Caught on her Birthday.

This year, for some reason, I felt like doing something special for her. Why? I don't know. Maybe because she's a great Mom. Maybe because she's a great wife. Maybe because Headhunters could have been a disaster instead of a huge success without her. Or, maybe it's just because she deserves it...

Those who know Julie know that she used to fish almost daily. As we grow older and share more responsibilities, we just don't seem to find the time to go as much as we should. With the arrival of our daughter Adair 4 years ago, we almost never find the time to get out on the water by ourselves, and I know that Julies misses it.

For her birthday, I decided to do something special. I hired my friend Jason Newmack to take us up to the "Land of the Giants" (LOG). For those who don't know, the LOG is a short section of the Missouri that holds some enormous fish. Access is by jet boat. Though it's very close to us, we rarely get up there.

Julie immediately nymphed up some monster Whitefish, a beautiful 20" Brown, and a bunch of 20-21" Rainbows. After Jason grilled up some burgers for lunch, and a rowdy T-Storm passed through, we switched to streamers and she caught several more big Rainbows and a Walleye. That's right, the Birthday girl caught the LOG Slam (Rainbow, Brown, Whitey, Walleye).

We then ran into a 25" Brown sipping PMD's. Julie put a lot of good cast over him and finally got him to eat. Unfortunately, he caught us all off guard with a downstream eat and Julie only pricked him. No matter, as we were leaving, yours truly saw him stick his head up 30 feet downstream and stuck him on a streamer.

When the day ended, we all headed back to Rockey Top (our home) where Julie was surprised to find many of our friends from the area waiting for her. Ben cooked the meat (excellent), Kelsey made some fantastic sides, Jesse handled the cake, and Jen handled the kids.

It really felt great to something special for my wife. The fact that I rarely do anything at all for her probably has something to do with it. Besides making my wife happy and me feel good, the river paid me back a little (see right). Maybe you should do something nice for your wife...

Happy Birthday Julie. The next one sucks (40!)...

ps...I'll be handling the Blog while SOL is on vacation for a couple of days.