SADness

Yes, I'm alive.

No, I haven't been fishing...except for a few hours chucking fowl-sized flies for muskie. And no, I didn't hook (or see) any.

The vise was hauled out a few nights back, tying a few mid-sized ugly flies to refill the bass box for next season. But even that burst of spontaneous creativity was short-lived due to traveling for work.

It's -12°C here in Idaho (about 10°F in Yankee units), with snow on the way. I didn't bother to bring any fishing gear this trip for my post-work / pre-flight pilgrimage to the Boise River. Time constraints and such.

If you can't tell, I'm about three weeks deep into the winter blues and we're not even past the midway point of November.

I'm hoping for Sage to release a high-priced, angler-themed ultraviolet light to combat Seasonal Affective Disorder. I'll be one of the first to buy.

Only 154 days to go...

Note: my SADness is self-diagnosed and caused almost exclusively by lack of fishing. And probably not real. I'm sorry if people who truly suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder are offended at what they may perceive as insensitive humour. It's not my intention to offend, only to entertain...and whine...

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One thing that isn't 154 days away that I'm looking forward to is going to the International Fly Tying Symposium!

I'm going to help spread the word about Clear Cure Goo and its overall awesomeness, so if you're at the show this coming weekend, stop by the CCG booth to say hi to Brian and I...and buy some Clear Cure Goo!

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One of the mid-sized uglies I tied up the other night came out pretty good, if I do say so myself:

It's pretty simple, can be done in any number of colours, and only has seven ingredients including hook & thread:

• Hook: TMC 8089 #10
• Thread: black 6/0
• Tail: rabbit strip w/ Krystal flash above (long) & below (short)
• Body: Cactus chenille (black & copper shown above)
• Eyes: Medium dumbbell eyes
• Silli-legs

I used some Clear Cure Goo on the eyes & to finish the head, but any head cement could do the trick.

In the bass bug pictured, I used three legs per side (resulting in six legs/side), which, in the end, is a little excessive & a bit of a pain in the arsehole to deal with when wrapping the chenille. I'll only use two legs per side (four legs a-danglin') in the future.

This was the first fly in my new Bass Fly Philosopher's Collection, in which there are two components:

1. Surface flies: Sexy is good. Flashy is good. Precision is good. Think of deer hair bass bugs, hand-crafted foam & balsa poppers, so on, so forth. Care & effort is worth it.
2. Sub-surface flies: quick & dirty ties. Clousers, buggers and their variants that can be tied quickly, cheaply, and thus lost on bottom or structure without too much grief for time and dollars spent.

Most of my bass fishing is in a smallish river; hence, the majority of bass flies I use (and lose) are weighted flies I dead-drift along bottom or toss into structure. Because I'm one of only a handful of bass-on-the-fly guys in the area, the fish aren't all that heavily pressured by seeing a lot of flies. I don't need to antagonize over near-perfect appearance of crawfish claws to get some fish to eat.

For subsurface, simple is better. And cheaper.

The Ancient Greeks said it best, lamda phi balla ding dong: Keep it simple, shithead!

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A couple of notes about the TMC (aka Tiemco) 8089 bass bug hooks:

They are awesome. Big, wide gap & a good, stiff shank (that sounds dirty, huh?).

They're sharp as f**k (if you need a translation for that, here's a handy guide on understanding my people). I wasn't paying attention while palmering some rabbit hair, and, well, it really fuckin' hurt.

They are really big. Like, big. Don't think a TMC 8089 #10 is equivalent in size to some Mustad streamer #10. Because they are not. Not at all. I even did a little graphic for y'all on how goddamned huge these TMC 8089s are:

Yes, that's your standard Mustad 34007 saltwater hook. Like redfish, baby tarpon, snook-sized fly hook. The TMC 8089 #10 is almost the exact same size, albeit with a thinner gauge wire. The Tiemco engineers must've been huffing a little too much glue when labelling the 8089 series...

But still an awesome hook.