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Apr 27, 2016 • There has been a healthy dose of hit or miss permeating my daily grind since our last visit. Outside of the angling paradigm, I’ve been stuck in a rut of a different sort lately. 2016 to this point has been little more than a blur of too many 12-20 hour workdays. As if that isn’t bad enough,...
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Mar 25, 2016 • I’m happy to report that I feel compelled for the first time in a while to tell an actual fishing related story. Not just the lazy camera dump and caption level blog entry that has polluted this site for some time. I had an interesting trip recently that seemed worthy of doing an actual write...
Before I can even muster a post on current affairs, it appears as if we’re on cruise control to greener pastures. I’m not going to lie, I stood streamside a few days back and contemplated whether or not I should wet wade this particular stretch of brook trout water. I was simply feeling a little hot...
The world can be a cold and unforgiving place. Peddling your wares on the information superhighway is a tough road to hoe. You tend to tear yourself wide open to scrutiny. Sure, the digital high fives stroke your ego when it’s all going well, but the ebb and flow of zeros and ones eventually lead to...
I’ve had a significant case of writer’s block in the gap since my last post. I’ve had scads of images queued up for months in a handful of entries that just haven’t come to fruition. Fish and fishing has come and gone with little more than a few handheld fish shots to bear witness. The...
My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. After gauging the level of dissatisfaction amongst the passengers in my vehicle, I have unilaterally adopted a strategy to completely eradicate the lingering musk. While it is true we are not completely out of the woods in the waning days of the inland trout season, significant measures have...
The jury is still out on a number of fronts. As I attempted to “take it easy” for the better part of August I made the wise decision to reinvest my dividends. Yup, it’s about that time of year where I put the boy front and center. The old makin’ lemons from lemonade mantra is...
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Aug 18, 2015 • Let me just cut to the chase. I’ve been placed on injured reserve, and have been languishing there for the better part of August. I’ve got a neck and back injury that has prevented me from fully participating in any official angling activities. It all started with the infamous “I can’t turn my head to the...
I offer up this grainy pic as the only testament to one of the high points of my summer. It wasn’t a great morning for any angling specific reasons, this is more of an aesthetic high five. I meandered my way through a series of foreign valleys in preparation for an early morning raid. Thick...
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Jul 24, 2015 • Like any good trout bum worth their salt I’ve found myself glued to weather reports, river gauges and other meteorological what not lately. The roller coaster of fluctuating water levels has been impressive this summer. Without strict adherence to the information provided, one could certainly find themselves up shit creek. Significant rain events seem to have...
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Jun 26, 2015 • Is there anything better than the much anticipated summer vacation? When shopping angling destinations, it’s like a trip to Baskin-Robbins with too many flavors and too little time. Variety is the spice of life, and traveling provides an opportunity to get outside of the familiar. We go to places far and wide that offer up...
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Jun 10, 2015 • It’s time to get while the gettin’s good. And the gettin’ is good in these parts. At this point the transition to summertime troutin’ tendencies is complete. I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who’s full of hot air. Today’s little heat wave is a far cry from the morning chills I...
After furnishing you with a flurry of early spring reporting I went off the grid for a bit. If I’m not careful I can slip into some of my old bad habits. I was recently surfing through the aisles of a local big box sporting goods store when I had an epiphany of sorts. I...
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Apr 14, 2015 • I feel compelled to make up for my last post. I was exhausted following a few days of fishing and was just too lazy to recount the ups and downs of steelheading bliss. I will endeavor to make up for my shortcomings by giving you some tactical tidbits in this post. Tactics and tying don’t...
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Mar 30, 2015 • As much as I’d love to give you one of my long-winded, blow by blow accounts of the last few days. How about we let our eyes do most of the talking, okay? So many miles, such little time, and I’ve got too much to say. Too many photos? Yeah I thought so. There’s...
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Mar 18, 2015 • Some look upward with their palms to the sky to seek answers to some of life’s most basic questions. Others use a completely different methodology to unlock life’s riddles. My daily life is bogged down with just as many what if’s and mental scratch tickets as the next fella, but most of my questions tend...
Adrift Greatest Hits Vol. 1? No not really. I pride myself on offering up fresh content (as opposed to regurgitating yesterday’s news), but I stumbled across the first couple of pics recently when my kids were scouring the depths of my iphone’s photo library. These older images epitomize what I love about early March fishing. Even...
Did you think I’d forgotten you? Without a doubt I suffer from multiple personality disorder. I’m able to switch from one vice to the next like a kid in a candy store. The frigid days of February made for some solid rounds of neighborhood puck and ice fishing, but left the long rod waning. This...
Let’s not get too heavy handed with the Jack Handey banter in this edition, okay? It’s not like my insight on things is any more poignant than the next guy. My brain dump can sometimes lead to a communication conundrum on the information super highway. I usually pride myself in thoroughly planning out my expeditions, but...
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Jan 27, 2015 • Welcome back folks. Feel free to soak in this stunning display of natural beauty kick-off the 2015 season. I put myself on a self-imposed hiatus. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to be knee-deep in fishing related banter, it’s that I’ve been dealing with a cancer diagnosis and a job layoff in the family (and the...
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Dec 14, 2014 • Let the extreme weather games begin. We’ve seen it all lately, from blistering cold to spring-like heat waves. Fortunately I’m dreaming of a brownish green Christmas, just like the ones I used to know. In terms of weather related angling choices, I just seem to find myself on the wrong side of history. Though...
I must admit that a sense of rage had begun to wash over me by mid-November. It had become readily apparent that my annual late fall assault on Milwaukee area tribs would be significantly hampered. Mother nature dealt us a cruel blow last fall by locking up the usual spots at a ghastly early date....
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Nov 13, 2014 • Let’s just pretend we didn’t get polar vortex’d this week, okay? What a difference a day makes. It’s as if someone simply turned out the lights. I look forward to many winter activities, but I must confess that when January weather starts in November, the dark season can be a long haul. This is when...
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Oct 22, 2014 • So much angling fodder is spent discussing the nuances of gear, tackle and tactical approaches. There’s really very little left to the imagination. Many folks will be more than happy to offer up a treatise on the latest flyline or fly and why their flavor of the week is something to behold. The Ferrari drivers...
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Sep 29, 2014 • Jack and I set forth bright and early to unlock the secrets of our cavernous destination. Crystal Cave would serve as the final chapter of this summer’s caving expeditions. We had a good time earlier this summer at Mystery Cave in SE Minnesota, but Jack was eager to jump the border into enemy territory for another...
By the first few weeks of August there are signs everywhere that the end is near. I like to prod Mrs. Adrift with these facts as a reminder that the endless summer myth is not meant for our goodnatured midwestern virtues. She refuses to accept my grave thesis, and regularly gleans all she can out of the...
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Aug 20, 2014 • In one way or another we are all “masters” of our domains. Anyone worth their salt has an innate sense of self confidence. Conviction manifests itself in a broad array of flavors and intensities, but is omnipresent in most blokes. One of my quirky habits is to observe this characteristic in people. It’s not that...
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Jul 13, 2014 • I’ve stated ad nauseam that there is no finer fly fishing month in these parts than June. There truly are many fantastic times throughout the year to be a flinger, I just happen to be fond of June. As I recently searched through the battered remains of my Panasonic’s memory card I was left wanting. The...
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Jun 21, 2014 • From the neighborhood golf course to the Caribou parking lot, our cup runneth over. The amount of water pumping through the greater Twin Cities area and dumping into my hood is immense. At least one guy found the silver lining in our time of need. This season of historic high water has forced some to find...
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Jun 17, 2014 • It’s kind of funny. Some things just need to sit and stew for awhile before I can commit pen to paper. My current rate of blog production is at a slow and steady pace. Gone are the days of racing home to post the latest and greatest conquest. I’ll leave a collection of photos in...
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May 29, 2014 • If dog is actually man’s best friend, why does he incessantly bite my heels? Is this how “friends” treat each other? This flavor of disrespect fills every horrifying episode of Real Housewives of Orange County. But it’s not the behavior I’m looking for in my daily life. I’ll cut to the chase, I’m a card carrying...
Happy Wisconsin opener y’all. Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars. I’d like to celebrate this annual tradition with an in-depth review of my April conquests, but that would simply be a smoke screen for less rewarding scuttlebutt. Typically I’d find myself knee deep in caddis by now, but for...
From the high volume of weather related Facebook posts in the last few weeks, I’m pretty sure that we’re all more than a little tired of being polar vortexed. I get it. It’s cold and snowy outside, no pics needed, I’m scraping my car windows just like the rest of you. From an angling perspective, my...
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Mar 29, 2014 • I’ve got a fever. Both literally and figuratively. February and March has been one of the most illness laden stretches in recent memory. Packing up my goods during pregame warmups recently looked more like a NyQuil commercial than a fishing trip. And the malady doesn’t stop there. I’ve been feverishly laboring on the vise with an acute...
