While my earliest outdoor memories date back to somewhere around the early 70’s, my interest magnified considerably with the independence offered a teenage boy and his younger brother during the bulk of the 80’s.  Further independence as a young adult resulted in a few lost years in the 90’s before getting back on the outdoor track.  Becoming a responsible adult in the new century/millennium along with a new found passion for writing and bunch of kids further rekindled the urge to escape to the outdoors when able.

“When” is also reflected in a practice I began back in 1985, keeping a fishing log.  It was an idea that was just sort of fun to start with, still is, and has become habit all of these years later.  Kind of wild to look back at the early data, seeing a combination of definite room for improvement and ample free time to practice, sometimes getting on the water four or five days in a week.  Fast forward to 2017 when it may take me a couple months to work in that many fishing trips amidst just a few more responsibilities.

1960’s – Dad before first kid (this blogger) showed up                                      1970’s – my younger siblings and some rats

1980’s – campout, bankpoles, independence…and skinny                 1990’s – no responsibilities & no gray hair

2000’s – 2 dads rocking Emiquon               2010’s – panfish w/ Batman,Superman,Hannah Montana,Lady Shakespeare

Photos are also an important aspect of today’s topic.  Starting with old family photo albums of my dad and uncle doing their outdoor thing and continuing with gigabytes of jpegs on hard drives and memory cards it’s always a treat to look back and reminisce.  Put those pics and logs together with these modern things called social media and blogs and I’m having a field day rambling away.

And that’s the final piece of this “when” posting that I wrestle with, blogging frequency.  I’ve been advised that frequency (as well as content) can be an integral part of maintaining some semblance of reader interest.  I could definitely run around outdoors and write some sort of longwinded blog entry about every day if I could manage to turn it into some sort of occupation.  Not the case at present, but I will commit to coming out with guns blazing for this new blogging adventure and see where it goes from there.  It will also be fun to get more in tune with some of the peripheral social media outlets that aren’t quite so labor intensive and lend themselves to short bursts of inspiration as opposed to something that takes a little more time and occasionally some planning.

My initial goal is a blog post a day for May.  Beyond that, I’ll remain a bit elusive with any predictions or revelations.  How about we just leave it with a parallel to my standard response to the question, “When is the best time to go fishing?”  Having spent thirty plus years on the water, for me the answer is simple: “Anytime you can.”  Talk to you later.  Troy