Friend and fly-fishing guru Dave Gellatly took me out for an afternoon of fishing on the upper section of the Brule River yesterday. Let me be clear here: I am not what you would call a fly-fisherman. But Dave is. As I fed several flies to the bushes, he kept patiently setting me up with new ones and pointing me towards where there might actually be a fish if I could manage to get the line out of the trees and onto the water. By the end of the day I think was executing something close to fly-fishing and managed to bring in a nice sized rainbow (not picture here). Kudos to Dave on being an excellent teacher. It was an absolutely amazing float, the last section to the landing completed by moonlight as bats swooped around the canoe feeding on the hatch. It was a good day to be in the North Woods. Hurray Summer.

Well, good news, someone must be reading this blog: I got a handful of calls this week about the Underwater Senior Portrait Challenge and it sounds like I've got two brave souls in the Ashland area who are ready to give it a shot. Awesome. I'm not going to say who they are until after the shoot (which should be in the middle of August), but I'm super excited. I went out again this weekend to practice in the water a little more before the big shoot. Underwater photos are way harder than normal photography. There's a lot more to think about all at once, including how long can you actually hold your breath while you get things set up. Anyway, none of my friends wanted to pose for a practice shot, so I found this little fella. What he lacked in beauty he made up for in patience.

Turn a little, smile with your eyes, perfect...click...hold that...click...okay, now pout for the camera...perfect, click...okay, take a break, there's some water over there if you want some...

We swam around in circles for a good ten minutes before he got bored with the whole scene and moved on. Kind of cool. Watch for some real underwater portraits in the next few weeks.