Occasionally, I’ve been know to get a bit deep into this little hobby called fishing.

It ties well into the touch of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The shorter and darker days signal that it’s time to do one of the things you can do when you can’t really go fly fishing: plan. Then let the anticipation set in.

No sooner had I cleaned the gear and started to tie flies for future offerings to fishing gods via streamside branches and brambles, I began planning. To be sure, there will be plenty of weekend fishing trips to the cabin, but since I’m a late bloomer in so far as fly fishing goes, my plan is to orchestrate opportunities for at least one remarkable-than-most outing every year. This year just might have more than most, and at least one is in the books.

Research was conducted. Emails sent back and forth. Phone calls made. The first trip to be set in wet cement won’t be the first of the year, but it will be the first to take me to foreign fly fishing waters.

Mid summer we’ll be on Washingotn’s Puget Sound, not fly fishing, but fishing just the same for salmon with Dad, The Funny Looking Brother, and a group of guys who think they’re brave enough to put up with us.

Then, and this is not to say the salmon charter is an excuse, I was able to fit a guided fly fishing drift trip on the Yakima River into my visit. One if not the only blue ribbon trout waters in the Evergreen State. And maybe, thanks to a fellow fly fisherman’s generosity (a trait not uncommon to the fellowship of fly fishing), I’ll get time in on some water not so far away from the parents’ little bread and breakfast.

The anticipation is almost as exciting as that brought on by expectations surrounding the trip to Alaska almost two years ago.

Time to go. The wife would like a word…something about a credit card statement or something.