About Me

Adam Trahan

Fishing Equipment 

Fly Rod: G.Loomis IMX-Pro V2S 6wt - CTS Quartz Turbo Taper 6wt
Reel: Nautilus CCFX-2 6/8 - Galvan Torque T-6
Lines: Scientific Anglers Sonar Stillwater Seamless Density Sink 5/Sink 7 sinking line
Leaders: SA 10 lb fluorocarbon tapered leader
Tippet: Seaguar GrandMax FX
Stripping Basket: ECOastal Stripping Basket
Fishing Bag: Mont Bell M Travel Bag

Cameras

Nikon FE2 s/n 2394639
Nikon F3 s/n 1528436

Lenses

Nikon 20mm f2.8 AIS

Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AIS 
Nikon Series E 50mm f1.8 AIS
Nikon Series E 135mm f2.8 AIS 
Nikon 75-150mm f/3.5 AIS

Nikon 80-200mm f4 AIS

Nikon 100-300mm f5.6 AIS

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Mission Statement

Fuck it, this is my spot. I'm going to do what I want to do.

I take care of my family, and I serve the community through my work in cardiology. This blog is mine, I'm an adult, you are who you are, and it is what it is.

I am NOT what you normally see online, I don’t care about being better or catching bigger fish than you, I’m not that guy. I’m so ok with just fishing and having a good time and taking pictures and writing remembrances of my adventures. 

This is honest and I am real.

I started blogging ever before this sort of thing was called a blog. My first web site was a picture of a cartoon fly fisherman with a link to my e-mail. First day out online, fly fishing, I think the year was 1994. My Mom had a nice Macintosh computer that she just didn't use, and she gave it to me. Those early Mac days were cool, there weren't many of us and we sort of stuck together. I'm writing this on my non-Mac laptop now but 95% of the site is made on my iPad mini while I'm lying on the couch, my wife looking at her phone, listening to a murder podcast while we are both watching something on Hulu or some other series on the television.

I dream shit up on the couch, then I make a plan and do it. I've been doing it this way my whole life.

Some of my earliest memories of fishing were drawing things like Salmon flys. I remember that vividly as a child. I have no idea why I was drawing Salmon flys living in the desert as a child in the 1960's. Fly fishing wasn’t big back then in Phoenix. And my first dreams were running down the street in front of the house and running so fast, I flew in the air.

Sometimes my dreams come true, family, flying and fishing...

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From a social media post: It really stressed my family. As I had kids, they got to know my pilot friends and as they would pass away from a crash, the kids just didn’t understand why I would do that. I would quit for a few years, start flying again and the last time, close call high near the Navajo Nation in high wind.

Once, I chose too strong of a day to fly. I took off and immediately went up to ten thousand feet, I was climbing at about two thousand feet per minute in a big booming thermal. In a minute I was at twelve thousand and climbing steady and fast. I was getting cold and worried as I was drifting toward Grand Falls, now over it at fourteen thousand feet. My Volkswagen bus could not cross the Little Colorado, and I started crying.

I could not fly out of the thermal, fifteen thousand and the bar is pulled in as hard as I could to fly fast and increase my sink rate, sixteen thousand and now Im on the other side of Grand Falls, terrified, freezing cold, hypoxic, can’t really control the glider going that fast and it’s making creaking noises I haven’t heard before.

If I flip over, I’ll fall into the aluminum tubes, the frame of the glider and break it. I’ll spin violently down wrapped in the wreckage. I carry a parachute, but it will be difficult to throw but I will have to.

Unless I gain control of my mind, I was going to screw up and break the glider in the strongest conditions I’ve ever flown in so I thought to myself, “gain control over each axis, one at a time.”

I worked on pitch first and stopped swooping, then concentrated on keeping the wing level and flying into the wind, I stopped getting blown downwind. I gained control over the glider and could only affect a glide of about 400’ per minute down. I can’t remember the ground altitude at Grand Falls, but I was at least ten or twelve thousand feet coming down at only four hundred feet per minute.

When the air goes up, it has to go down somewhere so I started to fly at an angle off of straight upwind. Four hundred feet per minute down, eleven thousand feet high, it’s going to take a while to come down.

So scared.

Long story short, I finally got down and it fucked me up so bad. Imagine being terrified for an hour. A solid hour of out of your head fearful, scared. It was a psychological event for me. I didn’t fly for a couple of months.

This time of my life was intense. I was on an open-heart team, my job was tough, learning to fly cross country was intense, everything was pegged.

Toward the end of flying my hang glider, I was also flying early paragliders, and they were not that safe, and I was teaching myself to fly. I knew I had to quit.

My wife would not go with me, she was terrified of it and she made me get special life insurance.

I knew I loved fishing, and I was dabbling in making web sites early on in the timeline of the internet so I quite flying and went the other way, solitude deep in the forest with a fly rod. I gathered a group of writer photographer fishers and we started filling out web sites.

Fly fishing salt water ended up being my favorite and it is just wonderful to be back at it after learning tenkara.

I flew pretty well, placed in some contests, flew in the southwest and off big mountains of Colorado.

My favorite flight in AZ was taking off at Mount Eldon in Flagstaff and gliding to and circling over Humphreys Peak where I used to snow surf.

It makes me smile when I see people get so serious about fly fishing. It’s such a quiet thing to do, little bits of fun, excitement overall but quite sedate in comparison.

 

A couple of really cool flights that I did

I enjoy travelling to catch fish. I've travelled to Japan to learn about Japanese style fly fishing (tenkara) and I caught the indigenous trout in the central mountains. I've travelled to Hawaii to catch a wild strain of Rainbows in Waimea Canyon, one of the rainiest places in the world and definitely the most remote population of trout. I've built bamboo fly rods and I tye some of my flys. I fish stream | river | lake | sea. I return home and blog about it on my computers and upload it to the web as you see here. 

I have done some professional writing, generating content for a commercial web site and for a couple of magazines. I like cashing checks, getting paid for having fun writing about my fishing. I don't need that anymore, so I blog about it here, same person doing the same thing. 

Below are a few photographs from the things that I've done. I do hope you enjoy them.

I know I have enjoyed my life very much.