You know you fish too much when..(first of 2011 edition)

You know you fish to much when you're tying size 22 midges as the ball is dropping. Did anyone else watch Dick Clark? I feel bad for the guy. It's kinda depressing. Also, watching him make out with his wife was somewhat disturbing.

Anyway, yes I was tying flies as the ball dropped. My wife and son were exhausted and asleep, and I'm getting ready for an AM trip with my step dad in the morning. I've heard people say that the fish have been taking tiny (22 or smaller) black midges over the past two weeks in all of the creeks around the Allentown area so that's what I focused on. First, I knocked out a few midges with black goose biots. I've never seen these before, but I'm sure someone else as tried them.

Mustad shrimp/caddis hook, size 22
8/0 Uni-Thread, iron grey
black dubbing
one black goose biot


I'm going to try this fly, but I don't know how much I like it. I then started digging through my material and found some medium black rubber legs. I tried those for the body, both with a black dubbed thorax and a pink ice dubbed thorax. I must say that I really like the looks of these.



Just to give you an idea of how small these things are...


Well, that's about it. Once again, happy new year. I'm getting together my 8x tippet for tomorrow morning and heading to bed.

You know you fish too much when..(a.k.a Christmas recap)

You know you fish too much when you're watching Elf and look at Buddy's shirt collar and think that it would make some nice parachute posts.

Well, Christmas came and went yet again. Only this time, I had a little guy who actually knew what was going on. Your whole view on Christmas changes once you have a child who understands it. He was up at 6:30 am ready to see what "Tan-ta" (we're working on the S's) put under the tree. I think he managed to get more presents this year than I got from when I was 2 through about 8. Keep in mind he's only 20 months old.

He walked off with about a dozen Thomas the Tank Engine characters, a ton of tracks and playsets, a train table, a Thomas Power Wheels car, a Moon Bounce, Little People stuff, a golf club set, stuffed animals, bath toys, a fishing set, DVDs, books, money, clothes, dinosaurs, race cars, a giant tool center, a McDonalds playset, a keyboard, mp3 player, an aquarium, a playskool grill, beanie babies, christmas ornaments, savings bonds, stickers, an easel, etc

I could keep going for a while. By the way, yes, I said a Moon Bounce. What kind of parent would set up a Moon Bounce in the kitchen because there was no more room anywhere else in the house to use it? This guy. That's who.


I also didn't do to bad with the presents. My wife hooked me up with some sweet New Balance Hikers in a 15 wide. They are super comfortable. She also got me a magnetic net release because my old one broke, and a copy of "An entirely synthetic fish" by Anders Halverson. I also received a Dr. Slick scissors gift set with 3 pairs in it, some Anvil midge scissors (which I love!), a few fly fishing books, and $100 towards a new vise. I think I'm going to pick up the Anvil Apex this week.

But the best present of all this year was definitely the Troy-Bilt 2100 snow blower from our in-laws! It came just a the right time! I was so excited to try it out and it worked like a charm this morning after our 10 inches of snow. I hate the white stuff, but it was fun taking Michael out last night to go sledding.



At this point you're probably wondering why you're reading a fishing blog post that has nothing to do with fishing. So, I guess I'll get in to that now. We did a family outing at the Little Lehigh yesterday morning with my stepdad, bro-in-law, and myself. We fished from about 6:45am-12:30pm. The bite was very slow. I hooked in to a small brown on a midge but he popped off as I went to grab him out of the water. I landed a small bow on a zebra midge. I caught a nicer bow on a chartreuse size 16 egg who again popped off the second I tried to unhook him. The other two got the skunk. It was a very uneventful day and it was too darn cold to bother pulling out the camera for pictures. Boring, I know.

And in the world of tying, I was cleaning up my stuff the other day and I came across some olive goose biots. Now, I've never bought olive biots, and I have no clue where the hell they came from, but I figured I'd make use of them. I tried some BWO parachute emergers tonight. I suck at parachute flies, I know. But they will probably work. Here's a size 20.


I have 3.5 free hours tomorrow from 9:30am-1pm. Is it worth driving 45 minutes each way to hit a trout stream that just got a foot of snow last night to fish for about 2 hours in 25 degree weather?

You know you fish too much when...

You're in Dunkin Donuts at 6am picking up coffee before an ungodly awful Sunday shift at work and you reach in to your jacket pocket for some spare change and get stabbed by a size 8 Slumpbuster.

Ouch.

Speaking of Slumpbusters, here's Trout Predator's tutorial on tying them. I really like this pattern and he makes it look easy. Although I have yet to find squirrel tale cut in strips. I've been using Zonker strips.