First trip met with giggling

Resslin' Around by Casey Ressler

The phone call I'd been expecting for weeks finally came earlier this week, and like a CIA operative, I had to keep it as confidential as possible, because my wife was listening in the other room.

Speaking in code, the plans were drawn out on the phone. A pick-up time was arranged, and all the needed equipment for the mission was discussed in detail. The time had finally come, and we were ready.

I laid the phone down in the cradle, and with a secretive look walked over to my wife. It was time to let her in on the mission at hand. But wait! She already knew! How could that be?

"You two are like little schoolgirls, talking on the phone every night and giggling over everything," she said. "You are grown men, too. That's the funny thing."

"I don't know what you are talking about," I said trying not to blow my somewhat shaky cover.

"Oh, so you and Aaron aren't planning to go fishing on Sunday? OK, then," she said. "We were planning to do some work around the house anyway."

"Um, yeah, can I go?" I said, dropping my shroud of secrecy, knowing full well I had already committed to a day's worth of yardwork on Sunday.

Thankfully, she relented on the raking and chain saw work I had agreed to do. But she was right - we are like little schoolgirls before that first trip, although the giggling part I'm not too sure of.

It gets that way every April - the longer days, the warmer temperatures, the thought of big rainbow trout waiting to be caught - and a guy can't help but get excited.

Even though the upper Susitna Valley got a foot of snow earlier this week, we are still going. Even though the wind may be howling, we are headed north. We may walk through snow up to our butts and not find a square inch of open water, but it won't matter. The first few trips of the year aren't about catching fish, they're about pulling out of hibernation, brushing off the rust on the casting stroke and getting into that routine that will be second-nature by the middle of June.

OK, maybe the whole idea does make me giggle a little. But instead of a schoolgirl's skirt, I'll be wearing waders and a fly vest.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@

frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor. He is completely joking about the skirt thing.