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We have finally arrived. September is here and my head literally spins when I ponder the available outdoor options. What to do? Where to start? Run up to the North Shore for the salmon runs? Bow hunt the deer opener this weekend? Chase crappies and walleyes? Hit one of many blue ribbon trout rivers within a couple hours’ drive?

Honest to God, I just gave myself another headache writing that opening bit. Good thing I’ve slowed down in the duck, pheasant and grouse department these past few years. Throw those possibilities on top of what I’m currently faced with and my head is liable to explode.

I know my wife and children get a bit worried this time of year, too. My wife worries about our current financial status every time I lock myself in the bathroom with the Fall Master Catalog. (Please… don’t insult me by pretending you don’t know which catalog I’m referring to.) During this time of year, she also goes out of her way to beat me to the post office. Of course she’d never admit to it, but I know she does. Every day in September I can bet on turning my key and seeing the postal workers in the back room through an empty box. Lady Luck did smile at me the other day when, to my sheer delight, I found a yellow slip hiding in our P.O. Box informing me that a few oversized packages had arrived. It was sort of stuck in there flush with the side of the box, almost as if it had a life of its own and was hiding and waiting for only me. Huh, Su must’ve missed it. Either that or she left it in there purposely and is running a cruel experiment to see how long it’ll take before I break down and “fess up” to the purchases.

Regardless, if ever there was a good day to be first to the post office, that was the day. The big boxes contained a wading net for salmon and steelhead, a 110-volt minnow aerator, various pink salmon flies and a 57-piece short-shank walleye jig kit, complete with rigged stinger hooks. There were plenty more things in that catalog that beckoned me from the glossy pages, but in the interest of our sketchy finances and domestic tranquility, I shunned them. The items I did order were the items I simply couldn’t live without…that particular day.

The extent that my children worry is whether or not they will be an integral part of my fall plans. They will most certainly come along with me most of the time, when I’m chasing fish, but they’ll need to wait a few years before heading out into the woods to hunt deer with me. Sanitized and heavily edited hunting shows on Sunday morning television isn’t real life, and we certainly can’t afford to shell out $100/hour for post-traumatic stress counseling at this time.

My greatest hope is that I don’t get roped into attending seasonal social events that’ll gum up my fall plans. I really don’t think that people should get married in September or October. The timing is horrible. If folks do get married in the fall of the year, the woman could very well be setting herself up for some disappointing anniversaries in the future.

And I’m hesitant to open any festive-looking cards from family or friends this time of year. It usually means that somebody had the terrific plan to host some sort of Fall Leaf Celebration or Autumn Booya Feed deal. I can’t sit in a tree, hold my bow, grunt into a tube and eat booya at the same time. The smell alone would give me away.

Dan Brown’s weekly outdoor column is brought to you by Frankie’s Bait and Marine, in Chisago City, and St. Croix Outdoors, in St. Croix Falls, Wis.

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