Who wants free stuff?

A common pathetic ploy to get more and new visitors to your blog is to host a give-away. I recently realized my fly stock is doing quite well for this late in the year; thus, here I am hosting a give-away!

Here's the deal: I'm going to repeat a backpacking/fishing trip on the Minam River that I did last year and you have to guess how many fish I will catch. It's that easy. The closest to the final number wins a box of flies! Yes, free stuff! No, not closest without going over, just closest.

Here is the prize. They'll be in a box, but the box sucks; the flies are the real prize.

The plan for this year is to drive out Thursday night (tomorrow), camp at the trailhead, and hike in the next morning. I expect to hike the 6 miles to the pass by well before noon, then hike another 4 or so miles down, stopping a few times along the way to dangle fake bugs into the water. I then have all day Sat, Sun, and Mon to fish. Some of this will be up higher in the headwaters stinging small fish left and right, but some time will also be spent further downstream fishing slightly bigger waters for possibly bigger fish including bull trout and a chance for some anadromous fish. I talked to an elk hunter out here last year who claimed that there can be some salmons in the river this time of year, so I may waste some time in search of those. Tuesday I have to hike out and will probably just spend a couple hours here or there fishing since I want to be back to the trailhead by early afternoon. In fact I will probably try fishing the other side of the pass since I didn't last year.

Now I should give some details from last year so you can make an even more educated guess. I caught 7 fish the day I hiked in, 20 fish the next day in the river, the day after I had decided to try fishing one of the lakes and managed to catch about a dozen, and that was the trip. The other bit of info to consider is I took my small dog, Ernie, along last year who was enough of a hindrance that he gets to go visit friends instead this year. So add a day and swap the lake fishing for more productive river fishing, and make a guess in the comments.

I'll take a look at the comments when I get back Tuesday night and declare the winner. Comments will be hidden until the winner is declared to avoid strategic guessing. Tie goes to the first guess.

Spread the word!