One fish, two fish, REDFISH, bluefish

It's a brand new year and I've found myself with a new obsession about which to daydream - redfish. Yes, red drum (another name for them), black drum, spotted sea trout, white sea bass, weakfish, corbina, and so on. Just as the diurnal raptors are my favorite birds, the members of the family Sciaenidae (aka croakers or drum) are my favorite fish.

And it's more than being a zoology nerd - I'm also an angler. I've only ever caught a couple of white croaker, but I now want to get out and fish for red drum and/or spotted sea trout. For better or worse, this means a road trip to the Laguna Madre of south Texas - the closest place to wet a line for reds. I'd also need to hire a guide, so I'll need to wait for the piggy bank to get a bit more full.

If there's such a thing as a croaker fix and if I absolutely must get one, I suppose I could head over to SoCal and go after corbina in the surf. I haven't felt such a yen for fishing in a lot of years, and I'm looking forward to dusting off my tackle some time soon.

I'm also hoping to test myself in Flagstaff to see if I'm strong enough to ride a singlespeed on the sorts of trails that used to have me clicking down into my granny gear. I'd like to think I'm a stronger rider than I was in my 20s, or that I at least have a better attitude about riding through the pain of climbing.

But I can't get too far ahead of myself, as I still have plenty of things to wrap up here in Tucson. I have a huge backlog of projects to clear at work before I can contemplate anything more than an out-and-back day trip to a local water or a nearby trail. Also, my motorcycle is impossibly more broken than it was before, and I'd like to get it off the blocks sooner rather than later.

But before any of this can happen, I need to go out back and spend some time lifting weights. It's a fitness-type activity but of equal importance is its ability to help me work out my frustrations (see workload and broken motorcycle discussions, above). Expect another report once I've actually done something fun.