Gone steelheadin’ …

Dear Friends, Family and Loved Ones

This is where I'll be this winter ...

I wish I could explain it all to you, why myself and so many of my crazy-ass little band of misfits fall so far off the radar this time every
year. No, we don’t suffer from the dreaded holiday depression. No, we don’t all go away on sabbatical. No, we don’t have second jobs as secret agents

A handful of you – Bill, Nick, Ade, Squires, Martin, J.D., etc. – know the story. Hell, you’re probably not even reading this letter. You’re
standing right next to me. Can I borrow your leader roll, please

For the rest of you, though (especially those of you living outside the Pacific Northwest and Great Lakes), I’ll do my best to explain.

To my bass-fishing buddies (listen up Luke Clausen, Brandon Palaniuk, Kent Brown, Joe Everett, Mike Long, etc.), the next four months for
us are like the longest pre-spawn you’ve ever seen in your lives. I know how every one of you get when that time comes around and you start catching 10-plus-pound largemouth: you lose your freakin’ minds. You start to talk in gibberish. Your eyes get sunken, you lose weight, and your families start to think seriously about calling a help line.

Some of us will suffer from that same affliction for the next four months.

To my tuna-fishing buddies, I’ll give you this: You understand what it means to suffer some discomfort to satisfy your affliction. You’ll
travel miles and miles and miles offshore and get your butts whipped by both Poseiden and a fish that swims 50 miles per hour.

Kudos to you. Still, most of you scratch your head about this wintertime disappearing act that many of us pull.

My dear mother, God rest her soul, would start worrying around Thanksgiving and eventually stop fretting around Easter. She never understood it, and Lord knows, my exes certainly didn’t understand it, either.

So, dear loved one, maybe I can’t explain where I’ll be, who I’ll be hanging out with, or why I’ll be there between now and late March. Just do
your best to be patient with me. I’ll check in when I get out of the Canyon.

Sincerely,

Gone Steelheading

P.S. If you’re similarly afflicted and on a different system, share your pictures with me: jshangle@media-inc.com