How I Cope With The Off Season

It comes every year. No matter how hard we fight. No matter how much we protest it. We can write as many letters to our representatives as we want. It will come every year: the dreaded off season. A time of reflection, reminiscing and losing your damn mind because all you want to do is, well, anything really. You want to go grouse hunting but there is too much snow. You want to fly fish but everything is frozen. Deer season is closed. Waterfowl is closed. Everything just kind of sucks for a couple of months.

For me, this hits in January and February. It doesn't have to be all bad though. There are a few things I like to do to keep my head screwed on straight until the next season.

My go-to is always tying flies. By the end of steelhead season, my box is pretty light. Between breaking flies off on logs, bending hooks out, or missing materials after fighting fish I usually am left with less than half the number of flies I start with. So this is a good way to shake off the off season blues. I will start off by getting my essentials tied up. I will go over those in a later blog. Once I feel like I have a good start on those, I will start to get creative and come up with some new patterns. If I get tired of tying steelhead flies there is always spring cutthroat, summer cutthroat, and fall dollies and cutthroat to get ready for.

Sometimes, however, sitting at a desk tying flies just won't cut. I need to get out and experience the outdoors. This is when I will usually turn to squirrels. Squirrels in Southeast Alaska aren't quite like a grey squirrel from the south, but they are plentiful and taste pretty good. If nothing else its a walk in the woods with a gun. Sometimes a day time low tide will line up with a day where I need to go for a walk and I will grab the .22 and go look for a mink. They aren't worth a lot of money right now but $5 is $5.

My absolute favorite way to ward off the off-season blues is winter king salmon trolling. We are very blessed to have that option around here. While it may not seem like all that much fun to freeze my ass off to maybe go catch one fish when it all comes together and I have one sitting on the deck, it is all worth it.

Luckily, the off-season always ends and I can resume normal operations. Of course, these aren't the only ways to deal with it and if you have any suggestions, let me know.