6 random things from this weekend

1.Our local weatherman, who calls himself "Hurricane Schwartz", is full of sh*t. He had everyone amped up for a warm weekend. There was some mention of it being in the 50s. Maybe the clouds just followed me all weekend because it was cold, overcast, and windy as hell. I learned a lesson here. Never trust a guy who always wears a stupid bowtie.



2.I went fishing for an hour in the grinding wind on Saturday. There were a dozen other suckers out there who thought it would be nice. The fish had lockjaw and the wind prevented you from casting more than 15 feet.

3.I posted a month ago that I bought an Anvil Apex vise. Well, maybe I just got a defective one, but it was awful. When you loosened it for the rotary function, it was so loose that I thought the whole thing was going to fall apart. Also, a size 12 caddis hook chipped the jaw. It's not like it was a titanium hook or anything either. I boxed it up and sent it back. Since Hurricane Schwartz sucked, I quit fishing early, headed to Cabelas and wound up with the Renzetti Traveler. It just seemed easy to use, and I was able to test it on tiny 24 hooks all the way up to size 2 saltwater flies and it seemed to have no issue.

4.I also got a bunch of new material this weekend including Sili-skin, a few new colors of flashabou, some dyed peacock herl, and even some synthetic hackle. (Sounds weird, right?) I'll get to posting some new patterns I've been playing with shortly.

5.There's been a lot of traffic directed here from the "Father Nature's Life on the Fly" blog. First off, thanks for adding our site to your blog roll! But anyway, you all need to go look at the flies this guy is tying, specifically the jungle cock stonefly. They are amazing.

6.Holdovers - The stream that runs behind my house has not been stocked with trout since October 4th. I haven't caught one since mid-December. Today is the first time it's been more than 60% ice free in a month so I decided to check it out for a little while. This poor stream has had so much salt from the roads and tons of drainage dumped in to it so I was really suprised when I actually saw a trout. He was about a 13 inch rainbow, and looked pretty healthy. He was also smart. The second he saw me looking down on him he darted up in front of this rock that used to be a nice holding spot for fish. Now, since the water rose, it's covered in tree branches and would snap your tippet in seconds if you got without 5 feet of it. I did try another hole downstream where I actually had a hookup on a size 12 caddis pupa but he spit the hook. Oh well. At least I know some of them made it. That makes me happy.





Enjoy your week.