Life for the past month has been a little more hectic than normal. Fishing has been on the back burning for almost (or is it over?) a month, but with the trout season soon to be closed at the Blue I had to make it down to take in the C&R area at least once before the season ended. It is a much longer hike than expected, but you can fish some beautiful falls along the way. There are four very fishy falls before the C&R area and it is a good 30 minute walk in if you don’t dilly dally and fish on your way in. Here was a spot where I caught five or six average fish for the Blue.
I love the natural vibe this river has, and its a great departure from the tailwater fishing I normally do for trout. This natural vibe also has some distinct differences from a tailwater. Many of the stretches of water on the Blue are very slow moving and quite deep. A lot of the water is difficult to wade and mainly streamer water, but the falls are always a great place to hang a few short drifts and in the C&R area you can be rewarded with some pulls that are much more authoritative from one of the bigger than average fish in the area. After a day of catching average fish this area is sure to to make any angler crack a grin.
I ended up catching a fair amount of fish which is generally the case on the Blue, but I know I am only scratching the surface and still have many more miles of water to search when the smallmouth get a little more active. Now if I only could figure out how to get the kayaks around all those damn falls.
February 24th, 2008
The reason I never really tied flies all the time is because as Singlebarbed puts it, I was in phase one of fly tying. I don’t know how deep I will descend into his phases, but I have finally left phase one behind.
Behold.
There are so many things wrong with this desk, but the price was right and it was the right size. I am lucky enough to have an office with my geek desk, but I do have to share it with the treadmill and the some of my kids toys. I had been eying a spot for months in the office occupied by a weight bench and tried to figure out away to get an older desk we have in the garage to fit in the alloted space. I wish it would have fit and I contrived many scenarios in my head of how I could make it work, but alas it was not to be. Minutes after I hung my new brook trout photo where the desk was destined to sit we were in the car on the way to find a cheap desk. The desk I got doesn’t have any storage, but I will make do with bins on the shelves for awhile. I dream of having a nice custom piece of furniture like Singlebarbed, but that will come when the we finally break down and buy a house later this year. I am quite disorganized when it comes to my materials, but I will work it out eventually. For the time being slightly organized chaos will do much better than having to haul my every growing amount of crap out to the kitchen hours before my next outing. Having my vice out all the time will hopefully produce more flies before the spring hits because I need to fill that swanky new box you see.
I have never really liked the fly holding ability of the Fishpond pack so I am replacing the built in foam with interchangeable C&F foam sleeves. I got a very nice gift of an Amazon gift card from a client and was able to buy the system box and three sleeves. One of the sleeves came with a rudimentary plastic sleeve and it fits great in my man purse. I think this will be a much better solution for me as I always seemed to loose flies inside my pack from not getting them seated well. Once I have a better showing of my lack of tying talent I will post a picture. For now its off to tie more tiny flies as I still don’t have the size right for the Lower Illinois. I think they want 24s. Ugh.
February 17th, 2008