I think I deserve a slacker award lately! The great thing about summer is that I can not post in a while and not feel a bit guilty about it.

A little over a week ago we went to Great Falls, MT and did the tourist thing. We stopped at Ulm Pishkun at the First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park. Ulm is the town near the jump and Pishkun comes from the Blackfeet word for ‘deep blood kettle’. At a mile long, it’s believe to be the largest jump in North America and was used for 600 years — much longer than most jumps are used.

We also made it out to Ryan Dam to see why Great Falls is called Great Falls. I’ll admit it — I first thought they should have named it ‘Meh Falls’, but before the dam was built, it would have been a beautiful sight.

Since it was going on, and well, we were there, we went to the Montana State Fair, which was also kind of ‘meh’. We did spend the two bucks to see the freak show, though. It was somewhat entertaining.

Other than that we’ve been doing some more fishing, a little geocaching and other various things. I’ve been making ATCs and plans for altering a candy box I have. Now that Dan has been laid-off from his job we plan on a few more trips around Montana and some major geocaching hunts. The Northwest Montana fair should be going live in a few days, so we’ll attend that and the rodeo as well.

Dat’s all I got!

This is the Ptychocheilus oregonensis, commonly known as the Northern Pikeminnow, or Squawfish. I caught it on the Flathead River yesterday evening. It was twelve inches long, and we guestimate the weight to be about three or four pounds. They’re very predatory and have done so much damage to trout and salmon populations, that Washington and Oregon have a bounty [pdf] on them. They’re also a very bony fish and do not make for good eatin’, so we threw him back.

This isn’t really the first fish I’ve ever caught, it’s just the first one I’ve caught in Montana that wasn’t what I call a remedial fish. I often get frustrated when fishing; either my line gets tangled, or I just don’t catch anything, so Dan takes me to the well-stocked childrens’ pond. Y’know, the one that had the alligator in it, and then the body. There I can easily, usually, catch a little trout and feel better about fishing in general. Hence, remedial pond/fish. This year I did a little reading on river fishing, and applied the techniques I’d been reading about and caught a real, wild fish in a real, wild river. I was grinning all night long!

And a pretty river, too:

Flathead River; Kalispell, MT; July 27, 2008