Braving the cold and getting my first fish of the year

When my wife said that I had some free time from babyville and that I should go fishing yesterday, I packed my gear and was out the door in ten minutes. I immediately ran back inside and put on another layer of clothes. I didn't realize how cold it got. It was 16 degrees when I left the house, and 18 degrees with 25 MPH winds when I got to the stream. It was probably a dumb idea to fish, but it was over two weeks since I wet a line and my cabin fever was setting in big time. Thank got for my Orvis fleece gloves. I highly suggest getting a pair of these things. Your hands stay toasty, and they have the finger covers which fold back when you need to tie a knot or strip line.

I was very happy to see not a single other person on the stream. I figured that would be the case, because my nose started to run and was freezing on my home-from-work-for-2-weeks beard within a few minutes. After about a dozen casts, I remembered how much winter fishing can suck. The guide ice was awful, especially with the bad winds. The only good thing was that the areas that are usually a muddy mess were nice and solid.

I already had a bugger on so I started off with that but a I quickly realized it was a bad idea since the thing turned into an icicle pretty darn quick.

Switching over to midges, I no longer minded the cold. Fish came to hand one after another on a new red midge pattern I tied up the other night. I must have landed 5 or 6 fish in about an hour. My hands were too cold to keep taking pictures, but I did snap one of my first fish of 2012, a nice wild brown.

I didn't last too long in the cold weather, so I headed home to down a few beers and playing with my new Christmas present I finally picked up with all my gift cards, an Acer Android Tablet. After a few days of use, I can say that I do prefer the Apple interface better on my iPhone, but I'm still learning this and I look forward to all the open sourced tweaking goodness. Now I just need some new fly fishing apps for it (Hint Hint Orvis - I'd be happy to do an app review!)

A couple of beers later, the vise came out......

and eggs were tied with a quickness. (I always run out of hot pink and orange for some reason)