Don Ho...

Brother Don and wife Linda from Kalifornia came to visit us in DaHo this week for a two night/three day stop on their vacation to see a lot of relatives throughout the country. The last time they were here was when Pam and I got married almost 3 years ago. We had a great time and watched all of the old family movies I had converted to DVD from the old 1940s through 1970s 8mm film reels. It was quite a scene, as neither of us can remember a lot of the people and places shown in the films. They are taking copies of the DVDs back to Illinois with them to show all the older relatives and try to shed some more light into the missing details, so I can publish it all on the computer and hopefully make some sense out of it all. We also have a couple of boxes of still photos and memorbiblia that I am going to scan and include in the whole package.

They arrrived here on Tuesday evening and we went out to eat at the Rock Creek. It is a great local resturant with great food. They both had the famous local Idaho Trout and loved it. Then, we came home and watched old movies and went to bed pretty late as Don and I were going Sturgeon fishing early in the morning.

After making sandwitches and preping all the trip supplies, I got Don up about 6am and we were off to DaHole, my favorite Sturgeon fishing spot. Its about 40 miles away and takes the 4X4 Jeep to get there, but once you do, its a real pretty place. We started fishing and had a great time talking about old, current and future times for hours. It was really great to be together again and talk. A couple of hours into all this fun, Don hooked up with a big sturgeon. Below is a picture of him fighting the fish. I had him lean up against that rock after a while as they can wear you out during a long fight.

Don with a Big On


The fish ended up breaking the line after 15 minutes or so of Don pretty much being in that position, hanging onto the rod as the fish took off line and he tried to bring line in back in when possible. In the middle of the fight, the fish jumped out of the water for the thrill of the crowd - it was quite impressive. From my experience, I am guessing that it was in the 6' to 7' length and probably 150# to 200# in size. When, you are using 80# test line and the fish can break it, you know its a large fish. Bigger than I have caught this year...

That was the only fish we had hooked up there at DaHole by noon and decided to try our luck elsewhere. So, we packed up all the gear and went down to Hagerman and to Riley Creek. I hadn't been there since I was converted to fishing for Sturgeon last year. Its a big trophy trout fishing location that requires the fish to be at least 20" long to keep. The problem was that the season for fishing there doesn't start until May 26th so we just walked down to see some of the big rainbow, brown and golden trout swiming around and there were a lot of really big ones. I then showed him this local lake that was built by this very famous poet, Vargas Fisher, back in the early 1900s. It is fed with a natural stream and he planted all these large Pines around it and built a cabin and lots of other little buildings there. The water is 30-40 feed deep in the middle and cristal clear blue. It is quite a sight to behold. His home/cabin burned down many years ago and its all abandoned now.

Anyway, after that we went over to the Hagerman State Fish Hatchery where I do a lot of fishing with Oliver and Aaron when they are here. There are trout, carp, bass and even some smaller sturgeon there. So we got out some trout rods and Don hooked up a nice large trout on the first cast. While he was playing with the trout, I got out a smaller sturgeon rod and threw it out. Don and I each caught a 3' to 4', 40 to 50#, sturgeon while there. But after that first trout, the trout didn't bite any more - I guess the heard that 'The Don' was there...

After we got done there, we stopped by the show pond they have there and I showed him a couple of 6' to 7' sturgeon, about the same size that he had on the line eariler in the day, and he was really impressed. They are BIG fish.

Then, after coming home and getting cleaned up, we gathered up the ladies and went back down to Hagerman to have dinner at the Snake River Grill. They are the only local resutrant that serves sturgeon and we thought it was time to get some revienge for that big fish beating we took eariler. So we had sturgeon and an alligator appitizer and some good wine. It was all great and we had a great time as usual. Here is a picture of us enjoying dinner.



Then, after dinner we stopped by the Malad River State Park. Its a pretty amazing natural phenonum. About 100 yards from this bridge there that you can walk over, the river is underground and it is farm land. Then this canyon/gorge starts and within a hundred yards or so, its this giant canyon as you can see below. This is on the bridge looking down from the starting point of the canyon.



Its hard to get a good feel of the size and depth of this canyon from this cameraphone picture, but its deep. It makes me dizzy looking down into it from that bridge. There is also a water fall or two dumping water into the canyon at various places along the way from other underground streams. The rock formations are just amazing and the thought of how long it must have taken to create a canyon that size just boggles the mind.

We then went home and watched hours more of the home movies and went to bed. The next morning they were off to visit other folks at Lava Hot Springs about 3 hours away. We had a great time and it was great seeing them both again. That is the only real downside to living here in DaHo - being so far away from family and friends, and not being able to visit very often. But, we love it here and its wonderful to have people come and share this place with us when they can...