Now decorating our ranch with reds and gold

Stardate 101407

Yesterday with one of our horse owner/boarders - Kasey, Kittee and I rode the 10 mile loop of our local back country harvest roads/ rough trails that circles us high above Crouse Creek Canyon, around Lincton Mountain, and back to the ranch. We found this ride to be so beautiful that we had to do it again today, taking pictures.

It is hard to tell you here of the exhilaration of this weekend's rides, but I will try to share today's ride with you... cool autumn breezes, bright warm sunshine, clear blue skies, splashes of foliage color like blazing fires, hound dogs howling/chasing raccoons - spooking our horses, on and on... "A picture is worth a thousand words." So we will just share some pictures with you and hope it will bring you closer to the happenings around our ranch today.













This time of year the hunters are out, so we wear red as does the shades of the sumac foliage. This morning we had a horse spook episode, on Misty and Nugget that included a quarter mile run down the road with horses' heads high. It was not one of those turn on a dime and flee spooks, as we felt the horses getting nervous. We heard the dogs coming from a quarter of a mile away, with some crashing through the woods, but it still made a thrilling, fast ride to start the day. A good test for stay-in-the-saddle horsemanship... you know you just can't get a Sunday ride with an adrenalin rush like this, by sitting back on a bench seat with a wheel in your hands or watching TCM. After this episode the horses settled down, and we had a most enjoyable late morning ride out from the ranch for a couple of miles back up Cashe Hollow.
When we got to the top of the first long grade we rested in the shade of the walnut grove, enjoyed the great outdoors, then turn around and headed back for the ranch, the horses always know the way home...

Getting back to the ranch, it was after beer-thirty so we took a short break, to wet our whistles, wash down the trail dust and had a bite of lunch.











Right after lunch we began working with some more horses, as Kittee began with washing Derby's tail and prepping him for an afternoon photo opt session.

After Derby's tail washing, he and Justice had a photo session in the beautiful afternoon sun and then we took them out to pasture and arena to be horses.







Derby here on the left and Justice below.









Handsome group of fellas here, don't you think?

Derby making one of his best
Quarter Horse poses.

Justice and I squint with the wind in our eyes as we are working to stay ahead of the arena track dust.

Justice and I still have quite a bit of training work to do, before he is ready for the trail next year.

Kittee also took Derby for a ride around the back pasture, and a few nice fast cantering laps in the arena. After Kittee put Derby back out to pasture, she caught-up her Shaiela, groomed her, and did some bareback cantering on her around the back pasture and arena.
After Justice's workout everyone was ready to call it a day, we treated all the horses that had given us a ride with a spot of grain, and just kicked back and relaxed watching the geldings and goats feed on their evening hay rations and plums.After feeding the gelding herd, we moved up to the behind-the-house-yard and threw plums out into the pasture, and hand fed plums to the mare herd. Again Sheila proved herself to be the alpha mare/witch even being pregnant as she is.

So all in all we had another wonderful full two and a half day weekend of beautiful October weather, horseback riding, and polished off the weekend only using 6 horsepower of energy for three days. Oh the joy of riding around side-by-side with the wife on back country roads with responsive steering in our hands, fine leather seating under us, open roof above us, and cool fresh air on the face. In three days of riding we met a total of 3 vehicles on our northeast Oregon back roads.

By late afternoon, riding in the country all weekend we felt a need for aspirin and a drink of WWWW&BV, but these are the kind of aches that feel good. We know they are from a good weekend workout, and riding the back countryside with smiles on our faces.

Hope you will join us here sometime in beautiful October to ride together in our country RED's and gold.If you are not into horseback riding around our ranch country, we invite you to just come join us, enjoy our ranch setting, have a cup of tea, or sit back with a beer, or maybe we could just go to Walla Walla and visit a few of the 64 world class wineries and tasting rooms for a day. Yep, those folks on the Washington side of our river valley are becoming Californicated. Come any weekend and just relax, leave the driving to us.
Gitty-up.

Dale --- another weekend in the life at McKuster Ranch

12" of fresh snowfall, so let's just go trout fishing.

Stardate 105-807

Columbus Day Weekend... Kittee declares it to be a legal Custer Law Office (CLO) holiday.
At our Pendleton Back Country Horsemen meeting last Wednesday evening, Kittee and I were part of the club's formation to make a back county horseback ride into the Desolation Creek area of the North Fork John Day River area on Saturday. The Desolation Creek area is about 25-30 mile from nowhere in northeast Oregon, at the base of the Elkhorn Mountain Range. In the late 1800's it was a big gold mining area, and thereafter the film set for "Paint Your Wagon" -the movie. We have fished this area a number of times when I owned Blue Mountain Anglers, and we lived in PDT. Having moved to Milton-Freewater we, have not been out in that country for over 5 years and felt it was time to go see it again on horseback. It is beautiful country, generally with no one else in sight and we were eager to go back to do a horseback ride through the area.
Kittee took Friday off from CLO to cleanup/warm up our rides, Misty & Nugget, and help in the preparation for our ride of Saturday. We clean out Blue, the horse trailer, and got everything ready for a 6 a.m. departure on Saturday morning. Having petted all our horses, goats, outdoor cats it was after dark getting back to the house and we found a telephone message from Forrest (our PDT Back Country Horsemen point man who lives in Ukiah) saying that most of Friday there were deer/elk hunters coming out of the Desolation Creek area with a foot or more of fresh snow covering their rigs. He felt it would be best if we called off our plans to go into the Desolation Creek back country. We agreed... don't need to make a run into the high country pulling a trailer full of horses into 12 or more inches of fresh snow.

OH well, now what should we do for this weekend?
Let's ride horses; and go trout fishing in our backyard. So this is what we did...
~~~~~~~~~
Saturday, we saddled up Bobby and Misty, and rode them around for a couple of hours in the back pasture and arena, then I saddled up Justice and while riding him, Kittee did a bareback ride on Shaiela and then saddled up Nugget. We then worked Justice (cue training) with Nugget in the lead. This seemed to work well for the balance of our day's ride/ training session.
~~~~~~~~~
Sunday, we did almost a ditto of Saturday, except Kittee didn't ride Shaiela and spent most of her time riding Bobby hard and fast, while I worked with Justice. After working Bobby and Justice, we rode Misty and Nugget in a mild manner sort of way, just to keep them exercised.
~~~~~~~~~
Monday, Kittee started the morning grooming and saddling Derby. Derby was in a good mind and had been begging us all weekend to give him some work to do, so Kittee did. First she started working him in the round pen, making the rounds and jumps. Then she put him under saddle, first time since Friday, July 13th, and worked him some more, then she eased into his saddle. Again, Derby worked and acted like a champion ranch horse... one handsome, wonderful fella. Did we mention that Derby is a prize quarter horse - great grandget of Poco Bueno and a strong, smooth ride? Did I mention that I love my horse?

While Kittee was working Derby in the round pen and paddock, I was prepping Justice for another training session. Justice is a very easy horse to handle, but a bit difficult to control. We bought Justice this past summer from a boarder, and we understood that he had been a camp stock horse. Justice is mostly or all Arabian, and we are finding that his camp behavior is rather bomb proof but he's still difficult in the bit. We are also finding that he is much like Kittee's Shaiela under saddle... when allowing him to be a real saddle horse in open space, he has Arabian horse attitude, loves to run, and has a very smooth ride.
Anyway, after getting Derby warmed up and Justice ready to ride, we headed for our riverside riding arena.
Kittee and I both rode Justice to continue developing his McKuster Ranch training.
Not only does Justice have a hard mouth, he likes to run sideways down the arena track; so we have some work to do with Justice.

After our arena workout with Justice and Derby, I saddled up Misty and Kittee slid onto Nugget and finished her day of riding going bareback on her 1000 lbs. playboy/#1 pet.

While riding Misty in the arena, Kittee rode around the back pasture with Nugget, enjoying a number of stops and this beautiful day's viewing of our countryside. As we completed our day of horseback riding both of our backs had a need for an Aleve, and an evening shot of WWWW&BV. But we were not yet finished with our day's activities so a beer and aspirin with lunch would have to do.

After our lunch break and having a few minutes to sit back and relax, Kittee had some client legal work to take care of and I prepped myself to do a little wet-wade trout fishing in the backyard.

Since Saturday there was rain/mostly cloudy weather in our holiday forecast. We didn't have a drop of wet here at the ranch the entire weekend. Monday afternoon it did cloud up a bit and the weather was perfect for casting a fly.

After Kittee got most of her client contact work done, we both eased back to the river. It was a beautiful golden autumn afternoon, with temperature in the upper 60°. We had been seeing October Caddis flying around the ranch for a couple of weeks, so an Elk Hair Caddis/Stimulator would be the order of the day.

While Kittee took a seat at Solitary Sanctuary, I went downstream to ease into the river. As I approached the easy river access/ jumping-in spot, there jumped up a nice 4-6 point buck that was sleeping beside the river. That was a beautiful sight as he ran downriver into the heavy river underbrush. Having entered the river I fished upstream, noticing a lot of small rises around all the newly placed fish structures we (CTUIR/BPA) had put into place 6 weeks ago. Using a #10 Orange Stimulator, I caught nothing for the first hundred yards or so, working upstream.

Even without making a hookup, it was a most beautiful afternoon, with a golden hue on the water/in the trees, 49° wet wading water temp, and anticipation of what was to come to my fly, it felt great. When I got to the second cross river weir structure and rootwads, I found what I was looking for. As I laid my fly next to the rootwad, just behind the rock structures there as a sipping snout that rose to the occasion. A nice 13" redband trout... oh for the joy of it all. Having carefully released this beauty, I climbed over the rocks, and fish the pool on the upriver side of the structure. This now is a wonderful trout habitat of knee deep to waist deep water for about 100+ yards upriver. Fishing through this stretch of water, I hooked up and released maybe a dozen nice little 7-8" trout. As I got to the upper end of our pasture property/our quick fishing trip takeout, I hooked another nice 12" redband. I walked this fella back downstream to relocate it in the new fish friendly portion of McKuster Ranch river run. With that, I had about an hour or so fishing time, caught some nice fish and decided to come out of the river, with quite chilled toes, and rejoined Kittee at Solitary Sanctuary.

We headed back to the house weaving our way through the gelding herd, and giving everyone a few strokes, and pulled Ollokot in for his evening feeding.

Walla Walla River Bluebutts... this is Walla Walla River Valley Bluebutt season and this weekend they were out in mass. These little bugs are about the size of a small common aphid and have a very fuzzy blue butt/posterior on them. We rarely see them when there is a breeze blowing as they are next to nothing in size, but in still air they are everywhere.These little guys appear at this time every year since we have lived here, and we have seen them nowhere else, but this valley.

As the sun had sank into the southwestern sky on Monday, we were ready to call it a day and had a most wonderful holiday weekend, that we hadn't gone anywhere to enjoy.A wonderful way not to burn fuel for three days, and just enjoy riding, resting, communing with The Great Spirit, with a little fishing around the ranch to top it all off. Let us know when you can join us sometime, we would be glad to have you here.

P.S. a couple of weeks ago Kittee took off her spurs. Yesterday after riding/doing training work with Justice, I decided to hangup my spurs next to my ole fishing buddy's picture here in the ranch office.All our riding partners now seem to be getting the hang of neck reining and leg pressure cues to follow our lead around the ranch, along the trails of northeast Oregon.

Happy Trails, tight lines, and wet dreams,
Dale --- a holiday weekend at McKuster Ranch

Feels good to be back home -OR- Running thru September at the speed of life

Stardate 0921-2307

We're back home and settling in. The past four weekends we have been on the go, go, go and running in circles between the eastern Oregon mountains and the Pacific Ocean. It's been fun, glad it's done, it feels good to be back home again.

Three weekends ago 8/31- Labor Day Weekend it was... Kittee and I worked the Walla Walla County Fair in Walla Walla, WA. There Kittee worked with her ladies horseback riding group -Blue Mountain Riders selling entrance tickets at the front gate, and I work with the Walla Walla Wagon Wheelers horseback riding group selling beer at our club's scholarship fund raising booth. The work was fun and we got to say Hello to a lot of new faces. I really did enjoy drafting up a few hundred cups of beer in one afternoon, and having a couple brewskies thereafter when Kittee came to join me in the Wagon Wheelers' bar room. While serving up beers there was a powerful wind and rain storm that came through the area (cancelled the balance of the horse races taken place that afternoon outside), upon leaving the fair everywhere we looked there were lots of trees and tree limbs down. This same evening we went to a Thai restaurant that we had heard of in College Place, WA for dinner, it was delicious... we will go back, and would like to take you there. It was after sunset when we got home and found several large tree limbs had blown out of the maple tree in our front yard , one of our Equine Facility signs had blown out of the county, and several breaks had occurred in the Hot Tape fencing. I had my work laid out for me, for right after breakfast Saturday.
The rest of this weekend we stayed home and rode horses where no one else seems to go. Made a nice four day holiday.

Two weeks ago 9/9- we celebrated our wedding anniversary riding our horses around in the National Forest and out to our wedding site at 5200' elevation on the Breaks of the South Fork. This year we noticed that from our wedding site overlook we could see the upper end of our ranch's rock faced bluff... a pretty neat view of our world.

Last weekend 9/16- Kittee had a CLE to attend at Newport/Agate Beach across the bay from Yaquina Lighthouse, on the Oregon Coast. It made a fabulous 4 days outing of walking in the surf and eating dinners at Depoe Bay overlooking the beautiful Oregon coast. The upper picture here if from the window of the Agate Beach Hotel. The lower picture is the seascape view from our favorite table at Tidal Raves seafood restaurant. Did you notice a camera pointing at you in this pic?

This weekend 9/21- 23 we spent in a CCC built cabin of the National Forest at 7100' in the beautiful Oregon Elkhorn Range of the Blue Mountains at Anthony Lake... fishing with our fly fishing club, and catching lots of rainbow trout and a few brookies.
This year was the first time in the past few club trips made to Anthony Lakes that we didn't encounter a snow storm. When we arrived on Friday the weather was warm and clear - summer like, a most beautiful day but the fishing was slow. Saturday the morning was quite warm as I was outside before breakfast in T-shirt and shorts but as the day progressed it became cloudy and cooler. Late afternoon it had become mostly cloudy with light breeze and felt quite cool - autumn like. The fishing really began to turn-on as the cloud cover thicken and by late afternoon we were catching some nice 10"-12" rainbows. Sunday we woke up to sub-freezing temperatures with cloud cover that had formed rime ice in all the area trees - winter like. After breakfast we all packed up, cleaned up the cabin and headed for each his own home front.

Late this afternoon Kittee and I decided to stop running, mixed up a WWWW&BV, took a stroll through the mare and gelding herds to pet horses and then went back to our two-boulder Contemplation Station on the Walla Walla River, and just watched the river run through it. While there we watch a small herd of seven or eight mule deer running across the back of our bluff property and run down the draw to the river towards where we were sitting. It is a rough life here on the ranch... but someone has to do it. 9/23

Now I think we are ready to clean the fireplace, set/light a fire, just kickback and enjoy the cooling weather of autumn/early winter season. Barn is full of hay, and all I have pressing me is to: harrow the pastures, mend fences, prep the pastures for some reseeding, muck out the barn, put in one more short line of irrigation at the arena, install another valve in the irrigation mainline, clean up the garden, start getting ready of next year's planting, do 2007 tax preparations, and keep my Kittee, horses/ goats/cats/ fed, fit, fat and sassy through the coming winter months. This should be easy.

It feels so good to be back home again, with plans to go nowhere, but to take long horseback rides, and do a little fall fishing.
It's a simple life here at the ranch, and I wouldn't trade it for anything else I know of -period.

Dale --- September in the life of Kittee and Dale

Round-Up Week '07

Stardate 0909 - 1607













This week Kittee and I celebrated our SIXTH wedding anniversary (week) by heading for the hills.

Sunday we loaded Misty and Nugget into their travel trailer and headed for our wedding site on the Breaks of the South Fork of the Walla Walla. Wish you were here...This year the weather on September 9th was as beautiful as it was in September 2001, when we invited a number of our family and friends and Judge Rudy Murgo to join us on the Breaks of the South Fork to celebrate our wedding ceremony. For those that joined us, we are glad you were here.

~~~~

After our ride and return home, we continued our anniversary celebration by going to one of our favorite "home range beef" restaurant and had a eastern Oregon steak for dinner. This day was definitely what we would call a wonderful, memorable day of Our Golden Years together.

~ Round Up Week ~

Since our special day/week together in 2001, each year during the Pendleton Round Up week, Kittee tries to take off as much time as possible from her law office practices. This is a recap of what was happening during Round-Up Week '07.

Monday following the our ride of the 9th we made a day of relaxing and fishing around the ranch. We found the fishing is getting better in the newly constructed fish habitat in our stretch of the river. We had made plans to make another horseback ride on Tuesday so this was a kickback day for us and horses.

Tuesday's plans were to join up with our young friend Kasey and make a horseback ride to Tollgate. Tuesday morning Dale had an upset stomach, and was not up for a ride, so Kittee and Kasey loaded their horses in the trailer and headed for Big Saddle on Lincton Mtn. Road. From Big Saddle they rode horses on towards Tollgate. Dale came up later and picked the women up near Tollgate and we trailered everyone back to the ranch.

Wednesday was the opening day for the World Famous Pendleton "Let'er Buck" Round Up. This year we feel it was one of the best PDT rodeos that we have ever seen, as no one got hurt, while playing the rough/ tough cowboy games. This was the first time in a number of years that we sit in the North Grandstands, and had great seats on the sixth row just above the livestock chutes in the center of the arena (a little better than being on the 50 yard line of a football game, and sitting above a coach's field of vision). It was just by chance that when I asked for two adult tickets the ticket seller asked if I wanted North or South Grandstand, for the price I immediately said "North side - center". From our seats we were able to watch the livestock being loaded down chute's alley, and being so close to the chutes/ action I came to realize that these cowboys and bull riders are getting younger every year.
Kittee started riding Nugget and Shaiela bareback this year, so it was quite a thrill to watch the Native American horse races being run bareback. It was quite amazing to watch these Indian guys running their horses flat-out without the aid of a saddle/ stirrups (some did have Indian blankets, most were completely bare back). You don't see any white boys doing this type of racing!!!
After sitting through a great rodeo, I came to realize... there ain't no old guys doing this rodeo "stuff" anymore. There is something to be said for youth. Kittee did point out one saddle bronc ride and said it looked much like my last bucking ride on Derby, including the dismount without a pickup rider's help. (The younger guys appear to be able to hit the ground more softly/ better than I can). Another thing about this years rodeo was that most of the riders (bull and horse) stayed on for their full 8 second run and made score. There were some really good rides and we, had a couple of the best seats in the house. Wish you were here...

Thursday, Kittee and I had a full day. We started with a great McKuster Ranch breakfast and then went out and caught up Misty and Nugget and trailered them upriver to the South Fork Trail. We rode for two - three hours up through about six fords, seeing only one dead adult salmon. We had heard that the week before the bears were in the river cleaning up the spawned out salmon carcasses, we saw no bears. This too was one of the most enjoyable, relaxing rides we have made up the river... horses must be getting used to the routine, and the cooler autumn weather is rather soothing.
Getting back from our ride we began preparing for our trip for the Oregon coast. After lunch we moved the horse into their weekend pastures, reset their water troughs, for the weekend horse keeper, tidied up around the barn, got ourselves cleanup and headed for Lyle, WA. to spend the night with our friend Bill.

Friday we hit the trail early having a cup of coffee at Bill and Ed's, and leaving the house before Bill awoke. On the way to Newport we enjoyed some good mocha(s) and enjoyable scenery driving through the west Oregon countryside. Arriving at the beach/ our hotel we found the weather to be great. After checking in we made a stroll on the beach before Kittee had to go into her CLE conference. After the high sun of the day Dale made a stroll on the beach, and called his sister and had a nice long chat. It was a most enjoyable afternoon of rest and relaxation. After Kittee got out of her CLE for the day, we again headed for the beach and walked through the surf until the sea breeze got a bit cool for Kittee. Afterwards we went back to our hotel room and turned on the TV. Yes, we watched some television during this outing, in this case we watched TCM and was caught up by an old late 1950/ early 1960's black & white spy mystery, and really enjoyed it until we had to leave to meet a friend for dinner about 10 minutes before the movie was over, sorry we missed the ending. This year we again found dinner at Tidal Raves in Depot Bay to be great. Since we had a late dinner reservation, we spent the balance of the evening sitting and chatting with Janie, our friend from La Grande and sipping vino until near closing. We got back to our room just in time to call it bedtime... the end of another wonderful day.

Saturday we had breakfast at the CLE's breakfast bar... as usual for these occasions. Kittee had conference until noon, so Dale went back to the hotel room and tyed trout flies until time to go for a morning walk on the beach. The morning stroll was beautiful with the Oregon mountain to the sea coastline, the Yaquina Lighthouse on the northern point of view, and a sea haze off in the distance. On this walk I called my Mom and had a very nice 45 minute conversation. After the morning stroll on Agate Beach, I again joined Kittee for lunch at the CLE's lunch bar. A great spread of all-you-can-eat Mexican plate fillers. After lunch I continued to tye flies for the Anthony Lake outing with our fishing club the following weekend, while Kittee returned to her CLE. While tying flies I watched some more TV (multi-tasking) - a National Geographic program on wild animals and their bite. Pretty interesting since we don't get this stuff back at the ranch. After the fly tying session, I proceed to head back out to the beach for an after high-sun-hours stroll. It wasn't too long on the beach when I got a call from Kittee that her CLE was finished and she wanted to have a cocktail and a stroll on the beach together, so we did.After this afternoon stroll in the surf and hiking across the dunes we headed back to the room to prepare for dinner at Tidal Raves for our second evening's dinner of seafood at the coast. Upon returning to our room we found that the 1930's version of King Kong (starring King Kong - a marvel of the world ape and Fay Wray - the Queen of Scream) was on TCM so we sat and watch this until the end. As we were about to leave for dinner we were held up by the approaching sunset we found out of the hotel window.

Sunday was the return home, back to the ranch, checking on the herds of goats and horses. But first we had to find a good mocha as the day was starting out gray and damp. Traveling up Hwy. 101 we did find a coffee roasting house/ giftshop with a great mocha in Depot Bay. While waiting for our mocha, we sat and browsed the local what's happening publications while listened to James Taylor's "Carolina In My Mind" and other of his hits on the stereo. (While at the Oregon coast I still wear my Outer Banks, NC T-shirt of lighthouses and horses, for ole times sake.) Further up the road we pulled into the vista lookout and visitors shop at Cape Foulweather, so named by Capt. James Cook in 1778. This day it did hold foul weather, the ocean and sky were both gray. "Thar she blows" after looking around the coastline --- 500 feet below us we went into the visitors center/ giftshop and while there looking at the giftshop's "dust collectors", there was spotted a whale blowing and breaching the surf below. "Thar she blows", yep, we watched this whale for about 15-20 minutes swimming around in the bay below us, as it was mine and Kittee's first time to actually watch a whale swimming the surf in front of us. We have seen plenty of porpoise and sharks in the surf, but this was a whale, a world's largest mammal. A pretty neat experience to behold.
After leaving Cape Foulweather we continued up the coast to Hwy. 18 and headed for Portland, to see our friend Sherry. It has been quite awhile since we had seen Sherry, as our schedules have not been able to come together for well over a year. We had a late lunch at one of our favorite Hawaiian restaurants in Portland, where each of us feasted on kalua pig (oh, a feast of that stuff is sinful). Thereafter we made a beeline for home and our livestock.
Arriving home well after dark we found that the herd was taken care of very well, and everyone was happy to get an apple for their evening snack treat.

A week in the life of Kittee and Dale

Kittee's first time in two seasons -OR- They're Baack

Stardate 090107

Kittee sparkles while fishing upriver.

It was yesterday that Kittee and I decided not to use our Oregon State Fishing License to go fishing. It was about 4 p.m. when we were putting on our studded fishing boots and heading for the river to get onto the 3 o'clock bite. Kittee wanted me to go upstream first, so I hit a couple of spots to warm up the casting arm, develop my aim and move up to the first recently constructed cross-vane rock structure/ root wad. There I laid a Krystal Flash Elk Hair Caddis between the two. POW! first fish of the day was an 8" redband from right behind that rock.
Kittee had started fishing the first root wad structure coming up stream and was having trouble casting her fly with a 12' leader. I went back down to help her cut off about 4' of leader, and her fun started immediately.

Kittee waves while making a nice back cast...
they didn't teach her to do this at law school.

A happy fly fisherwoman
at work, in her own backyard.

Now, what a mess this is.

Kittee's last cast of the day somehow got a wind knot (here we call them "Kittee knots") in the leader that polished this fishing outing off. We had fished up to the upper pasture property line and exited the river where the excavator had made a gentle sloping exit ramp the week before, very convenient get-out/ take-out for our ranch fishing.

We fished for about two hours. During that time we saw, 4 adult salmon and one jack. We caught maybe 20 steelhead / salmon smolts between us and Dale caught four or five 8+ inch redbands. We also ran into a couple of other fly fisher coming downstream, one saying he had caught a 15"er upriver. We were glad to hear that.

Kittee and I were quite happy with the work done on our stretch of the river by the CTUIR and the results of 8"-9" trout that were now moving into the new fish habitat structures.

Dale --- a day in the life at McKuster Ranch