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)

It's vacation time

Ah, yes. 5 days off work. I'm pretty damn happy right now. It's been a long few weeks. Not much fishing has happened, or tying for that matter. I'm sitting here tying clousers, deceivers, and surf candy flies because I'm getting ready to leave for the beach tomorrow morning. I'll be in Sea Isle City, NJ until Tuesday night. Reports are saying the striper fishing is great and I can't wait to get down there.

In reality, I know I'll get skunked on the fly rod and wind up throwing bunker for sand sharks and gulp for flounder on a spinning rod. But goddammit, I'm going to try to catch something other than a 7 inch bluefish on a fly this year.

Also, I'd like to give a shoutout to my awesome wife. She gave me an early Father's day present. I guess she got sick of me either breaking the camera by dropping it in the water, or hogging it to take pictures of new flies, so I was surprised when my son handed me a Fuji 14MP waterproof digital camera. Expect some nice shots from our mini-vacation when I get back. I can't wait to test it out underwater.




Well, if we get internet access down there (we steal from the neighbors every year) I'll hopefully get some posts up this weekend with fishing updates. If not, I'll be typing again on Tuesday night, hopefully with a hangover, sunburn, and some nice striper pictures. Enjoy your weekend!