We're in the midst of our spring-green here. Cool with some rain and hail and even snow for the next few days.

May is a favorite month of mine. Great clouds and it's green and generally a bit warmer and warming and our rivers here are generally too high to fish so I don't feel as though I need to be on the river every day and end up exploring other places I might not otherwise check out. I am off to, for example, the Fall River in Northern California and then the East Cape in Baja, Mexico and then the Oregon Coast over the next three or four weeks.

The image below was my first image with a new camera--Nikon D810--taken today. Like any new tool, there are minor adjustments to make in order for the tool to become virtually invisible much like a pen to the hand of a writer. I have been shooting with the Nikon D3s for the past 5 or so years and upgraded yesterday to the D810.

Why the upgrade? My D3s is essentially lumbering into the mortuary to find its place. The memory card slots are broken. The frame is partially bent from a fall. The grip has fallen off in many places. I want a back-up camera. I'd like to print much higher resolution files (the D810 is a 35mm sensor with 36 mega pixels compared to the faster 12 mega pixel D3s), I am indeed sacrificing speed (ie frames per second and iso in exchange for much higher resolution) but really want a higher resolution file as I am shooting more and more at a relatively low (100-1,600) iso and decided against the Nikon D5. If iso and frames per second were my two priorities than the Nikon D5 would be my choice but that's not my case.

In any event, the image below was my first image taken with the Nikon D810. Shot today near Hailey, Idaho.

Upland Larkspur--Taken at The Silver Creek Preserve With The Nikon 105 2.8 Lens

I drove down to Silver Creek yesterday and spent the morning shooting. The skies were gun-metal gray and it rained on and off lightly. Raptors were perched here and there on fence posts and telephone poles. The soil was damp and it finally smelled like early summer despite the cool, wet weather. There was not much going on in the way of hatches--I was hoping to see a few baetis or PMD's. It really feels like everything is almost two weeks later this year. The Big Wood water flow has essentially dropped to half the flow of 4 days ago--it's roughly 1,000 cfs at the moment with about 3 feet of clarity. That won't last for long though... By next week the daytime highs are supposed to be in the 70's and depending on how warm it stays and for how long and how warm/cold our overnight lows are will tell the story of just how big the Wood will get this year. Add to that a little rain and well, we'll just see.

The Big Lost has DROPPED back down to 214 cfs. Again, that could change any day but at the current level it should be nothing short of stellar!

The one promise of Summer, though, that I discovered walking around the Nature Conservancy were a few of the wildflowers which had emerged here and there. Phlox and Bluebells & Upland Larkspur littered the trail from the cabin down to Silver Creek. The light was perfect for wildflower close-ups. Here are a few more...

Upland Larkspur

Phlox

Bluebells

Bluebells 2

Spring Lupine

Silver Creek Wild Flowers And Current Sun Valley Conditions

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