Counting down

Much like a child awaiting the arrival of Christmas morning, I'm counting down the days.

There's slightly more than two weeks left to go for me on this project; once I arrive home, I'll be taking a break from work for six to eight weeks. Note I've omitted placing the words 'much needed' prior to 'break.' This past week is the first I've worked since leaving here on December 18th; I won't try to convince you I have it that rough...though the chaps in the picture above (part of my security detail) might suggest otherwise.

After arriving home in February, my lovely girlfriend and I will spend the next week sorting our belongings and packing what won't be sold, donated or tossed. Frantically, I might add.

I'll be attempting to replicate the packing abilities of minibus drivers seen here in West Africa, with assorted baggage, bicycle and fishing kayak towering several feet over the height of my truck's roof.

I'll admit I'm looking forward to this.

A lot, I might add, because it's just another step closer to us getting on the road to our new adventures on Vancouver Island.

And that's what I'm really looking forward to.

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Here are a few Vancouver Island beach flies I've tied for coho & pink salmon.

All are variants on fairly well-known (locally, at least) Pacific NW salt patterns. Changes to the original fly recipes were made not to add in a 'creative touch' but due to lack of availability of the originally-listed tying materials.

Ferguson Green and Silver

Pink and blue Handlebars

Cathy's Coat (or Kathy's Koat) variant

Bead-head Handlebars

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Birth of a Tournament Angler

Moments before the starting horn.
Downtown Fredericton in background

This past Saturday I participated in my second-ever bass tournament.

In last year's tournament I mostly used spinning gear until we caught our limit. I had fun, and I managed to catch my first bass on the fly late into the day.

Fast forward 13 months: a lot has changed since that first smallie on the fly, with the one of the biggest changes being smallmouth usurping trout as my favourite local fly rod species.

I had been pretty excited about the tournament for the past few months. But it had nothing to do with money, nor did I expect to win it; if anything, I just wanted to prove an angler could compete in a tournament using fly gear (without embarrassing himself, of course).

The event was being held by the Fredericton Anglers Club, a local group that holds five for-fun tournaments per year. 'For-fun' means exactly that: it costs $10 per person for an annual membership, and $10 per boat for each of the tournament.

The lead-up to tournament day wasn't without hiccups, however: my truck had fallen ill and was unable to tow my boat to get a spring tune-up. And my partner Pat had his boat trailer's axle snap while towing the boat a few days prior to the tournament.

Then there was the weather. A cold front was scheduled to move through, with wind gusts shooting up to 45km/h throughout the day. Not necessarily the best conditions to be flinging a fly line back & forth.

But Pat's trailer axle was fixed in time, and I rigged up a spinning rod as a worse-case solution to deal with high wind speeds. We were good to go.

The morning of, I woke up a few minutes before the alarm on my phone went off. It's funny how anticipation causes that to happen as often as it does. After getting the dog fed & out for a quick stroll, I grabbed my pre-rigged rods and backpack and was off.

When I pulled into Carleton Park, I was a little surprised at the number of boats, either in the water already or lined up for the launch.

The boats (and sometimes, matching trucks) always amaze me, especially when you compare them to the love-hate relationship I have with the Magnificent Basstard. I have less than $5000 tied up in the aluminum bastard, including purchase price, registration, accessories and boater safety course. Some of these guys have 8-10 times that amount tied up into their boats & gear...that blows my mind!

Looking around the parking lot and boat launch, I started to hope I could meet the goal of not embarrassing myself. It's about setting the bar high, folks...

Pat & I decided to have a more relaxed start to our competition: we weren't even in the water for the starting horn. We could barely hear ourselves think with the roar of some of the boats taking off; some guys were not letting the price of gas get in the way of a quick launch.

Meanwhile, back on terra firma, coffee was sipped while we loaded our gear on his boat. Ten minutes after the starting horn howled, we shoved off at a leisurely pace, bound for fishing fun & glory.

It was a good day.

And at no point did I feel embarrassed. By any stretch of the word.

I look forward to the next tournament.

Stats for the Day:

• Winners' total length: 90.5"
• Winning lunker: 19"
• Total prize: $170
• Our boat total: 67"
• Biggest of the boat: 16.5" (shown at left)

Flies:

• Top fly: #4 Clouser, all-white (3 bass, including one 15" scrapper)
• Lunker fly: Barr's Meat Whistle (16.5" bass)

Rods: 

• Redington Predator 7'10", 6wt, with Redington Rise 5/6 reel & Rio Smallmouth line.
• Cabela's CGR 7'6", 7/8wt, with Hardy Ultralite 7000DD reel & Sage Performance Bluegill line

Beginner Bass Bugs...

Time/Date: 2235 AST, 16-Jan-12
Location: My tying bench

I decided to plunk my ass at my tying bench to give myself a crash course in spinning deer hair for bass bugs...and try out my new Peak Rotary Vise in the process.

My lovely gf gave me a gift card to the bookstore for Christmas so I ordered up Bass Bug Basics by John M. Likakis to help speed the self-taught crash course up a little bit. If you're interested in tying bass bugs, it's definitely a handy resource to have on hand.

For my first tie, I decided on trying my hand at Tap's Bug, which was declared the "best bass bug ever" in the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Fly Rod & Reel magazine. You see step-by-step pics & instructions to tie the bug on Fy Rod & Reel Online here.

This is what the finished bug is supposed to look like (from the Fly Rod & Reel article):

And, after a few thread-snaps, a lot of trimming and minor cursing, this is what I ended up with:

I'm usually pretty critical of my tying...but realize bass aren't typically as critical & selective; if they're eating, they'll eat that. So I'm ok with this first effort. I'm not going to fish it; instead, I'm keeping it as a benchmark to measure up future bass bugs to. And yes, there will be many future bass bugs.

A few things to point out if you're going to start tying deer hair bass bugs:

• make sure your tying scissors are sharp;
• pick up some old-timey, flexible razor blades for trimming the deer hair. I found a package of Wilkinson Sword Classics at Shoppers Drug Mart. Ten double-sided blades = 20 razor blades for sculpting bass bugs; just snip 'em in half with a Leatherman or similar;
• get a strong thread. I'm using UNI BigFly thread...and snapped it a few times while tying my first bug
• be patient! I ended up cutting off my second bug of the night to start over due to trying to rush. Take your time & follow the steps;
• be prepared to make a mess. I don't think I have ever done a recreational activity that makes a mess like this. If you're married, do NOT do this at the dining room table if your better half is within a three hours' drive radius of your home. Bass bugs are that perfect excuse to set up a personal tying area, far from any potential marital disputes.
• In addition to the razor blades, other items that are handy to have are: rounded-tip tweezers (for pushing thread/knots along the hook shank) and a fine-toothed comb (for cleaning underfur from deer hair).
• If you want to put on those rattling, googly doll eyes, you can pick up packages of 300 for cheap at craft shops. A drop of ZapAGap or similar cyanoacrylate adhesive will keep them on the bug through most battles with bronzebacks...or bucketmouths...

Once I improve spinning/packing/sculpting these bad boys, I'll post a few more.

Enjoy some music:

Playing with foam

Time/Date: 1900, 02-Jan-12
Location: F'ton

Seeing this is the first post of 2012, happy New Year, everyone! I hope all had a enjoyable & relaxing holiday season with friends & loved ones.

I'll be continuing with some posts from last month's adventure in Guatemala soon enough (like, tomorrow or the next day).

As a solid form of procrastination from doing anything overly productive (such as cleaning & organizing my tying bench), I tied up a few bass flies using some craft foam. Foam is a material I'll be diving into more over the course of winter for tying smallmouth patterns; it's quite versatile, comes in a wide variety of colours, and it's CHEAP!

This Sneaky Duck fly recipe, by Roger Duckworth, was in Fly Tyer magazine a few months back. It's a pretty quick & easy fly to tie.

Unfortunately you'll have to wait at least 104 days until I can give them a solid run-through on the water.

Here's some music:

Bass Bugs

Time/Date: 1525 AST, 25-Jun-11
Location: A rain & lightning-filled Fredericton

Heavy rain and intermittent thunder & lightning for the past 6 hours has scuttled any plans for getting a quick hour of fishing in before departing for Northern Ontario tomorrow, but I was able to reallocate my time to organizing my still-evolving collection of flies for smallmouth bass

A few of the Clousers I tied for my saltwater misadventures have migrated their way into this box, in size 1 & 2; however, I've been having the most luck on a size 8 black Clouser on a freshwater streamer hook.

Last night I tied up a few more of the #8 black Clousers using bear hair. It should have a little more seductive action in the water than bucktail. I'll keep you posted on that.

The big coloured deer hair poppers & divers were tied up by the fly shop's resident whiz kid, James (Twitter: @JRWishart). Behind his back, I call him the Phenom...but I don't want him to be getting all egotistical and such, so don't tell him.

James tied up the orange & chartreuse poppers in a solid colour, then I added the eyes & stripes myself. I'm keeping two of them unaltered, i.e., a control group or something like that...

James gave the orange & white diver to me on a trade. It's sick looking & I can't wait to toss that out there to see what's hungry and/or angry.

The Phenom's creations

This should be my last post for a few days. I'm still trying to determine if I should bring a fly rod to Ontario with me, but I might go light this trip, seeing it's only for four days.

Stay tuned...

Here's some weather-appropriate music:

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Goodness

Time/Date: 1050, 10-Jun-11
Location: HOME!!!

I made it home on Wednesday afternoon...it was a long four weeks, but all is good (even better once my invoice gets paid).

In addition to my adorable dog & my beautiful girlfriend, I had a couple packages waiting for my arrival as well.

One was my new pair of Costa sunglasses I won from SoCal Salty's #Salty500 contest. They are pretty sweet. I'll have a review & pics of them posted soon (like, Sunday-soon).

The other was this gem:

Yeah. That's right. The new John Gierach book, No Shortage of Good Days, autographed by the man himself. And Bob White, too. One of Bob's paintings was used as the cover illustration.

I'm a pretty big fan of Gierach's writing; in fact, one of my earliest posts featured some of his quotes. You can read that post here.

The Trout Underground has an epic review of the book (I'm still reading it); Tom also has an interview with Gierach that he's working on as well.

On top of all this goodness, I went fishing yesterday, too. I slept through an epic rain & thunderstorm that happened the night before last; unfortunately, water conditions on the Nashwaak were high, swift & cloudy.

I still caught an above-average sized fish, though: a 10" creek chub.

Tomorrow will bring a 5AM wake-up for another fly fishing adventure: muskie on the fly rod.

I will be hitting the vise this afternoon for a few more big "eff-off" flies like this:

Being back in the land of reliable & fast interhorn connections, I was also able to finally download Matthew Good's new album, Lights of Endangered Species. It will be on while I clean...and tie big "eff-off" flies for the muskie (mis)adventures tomorrow.

Here's some Friday music goodness:

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Hurry up & wait...

Time/Date: 0105 CST, 05-June-11
Location: Saskatchewan...still...

I'm making the transition to night shifts for my last few days onsite here. The new drill hole is taking some time to get started due to technical difficulties. I say technical difficulties as I don't want to dive into any more details than that for fear of losing my readers to boredom.

So there's a whole bunch of hurry up & wait going on in my life. All I want is to hurry up & get home, but that's coming soon enough.

Of course, there are a couple pluses to this: time at the tying vise as well as playing around with new apps for my iPod.

First new addition is DropBox. It's kinda cool, if you're interested in that whole 'cloud computing' thing. I have it installed on both my laptop and iPod. A free account nets you 2GB of online storage, with paid subscriptions available for many more gigabytes if you need them.

You should check it out, and, if you use this link to sign up, both you & I will receive an extra 256mb of storage for free as part of their referral program. Lifehacker has a few more methods to increase free storage amounts here.

Next up is Instagram, which is a photo sharing app. It shoots pics, modifies them with different finishing effects, and posts them to various social media accounts a person might have. I shot a couple pics this evening & I like what I see of the app so far.

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like when someone clicks the link:

Here are the two pics I snapped using Instagram (conveniently transferred from my iPod to my laptop via DropBox):

As for fly tying, the top pic is a black & white Clouser, aka a "Bow River Cop Car Clouser." Nothing fancy, but apparently it works. It brings the official count of Clousers tied here to 15.

The monstrosity below it is a chartreuse & white yak hair streamer, with striping on the chartreuse hair artistically done up with a black sharpie. It will (hopefully) feed a muskie on an upcoming adventure...if I can cast the bastard.

This will be my first time muskie fishing, and I'm fairly certain there aren't a lot of guys in New Brunswick chasing them with a fly rod. The muskie fishery in New Brunswick is relatively new, but it's catching on quick. I know I'm looking forward to giving it a shot!

This will also be my first time fishing with my new Redington CPX 10-weight, though I hope to get some casting practice in beforehand.

(If you have noticed an increase in mentions of Redington (Twitter: @RedingtonGear) lately, well, it's because I received their guide deal through my association with Fredericton Outfitters. And also because they make awesome stuff. Hence me choosing Redington over any other brand carried at FOA.)

Here's some music:

(I have really been pushing the Canadian content lately, huh?)

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Random Saskatchewan Post

Time/Date: 1605 CST, 03-Jun-11
Location: Northern Saskatchewan

It's been three weeks plus a day since I left for this project.

I'm headed home on Wednesday, and I can't wait.

I want to see my girlfriend. I want to see my dog. I want to see my friends. And I need to go fishing.

Exploration camps are usually pretty enjoyable for me; I like the 'smallness' of them & the camaraderie among the people there.

Mine sites are (apparently) a different story: the dregs of modern day society permeate this place (way too many MMA shirts & wannabes for a project site here, btw...).

I travel to work to get away from that shit (and to make some money to finance my fishing 'career').

Unfortunately I'm surrounded by it here.

As I tweeted the other day, perhaps reading too much Edward Abbey and Carl Hiaasen at an impressionable age is coming back to bite me in the ass.

At least I'm tying flies:

Building an army of Clousers to pass the time...

Music-wise, the new Matthew Good album, Lights of Endangered Species, was released this past Tuesday. I am really looking forward to getting home to a reliable web connection to buy it (my fine Yankee friends: if you're unfamiliar, you should really get familiar. One of our greatest musicians).

Here's one of his tracks from a few years back.

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Clouser Madness!!!

Time/Date: 2200 CST, 21-May-11

Location: An undisclosed top-secret saltwater fly-tying training facility above 57° North (Canada). Nowhere close to saltwater.

Alternate title: I have no friggin' clue. Apparently I have the rare case of writer's block known as Title Writer's Block. #Lame

Also, this is not a rant. Well, maybe a little bit...

I was swiping through an article in a back issue of Fly Fishing in Saltwaters magazine I downloaded through the Zinio app on my iPod last night.

The publication is great; they have a contributing editors list that has, by my calculations, roughly 3,457 years of fly fishing experience. The fact I can carry 9 or so issues of the mag on my iPod is pretty damn awesome, too.

I read an article about year-round angling opportunities in the Fort Myers area. It was a really good article and was simultaneously entertaining & informative.

Then I stumbled upon their little FFSW Tackle Bag sidebar for angling in Fort Myers and read this:

REELS: Any of the reputable brands, such as Tibor or Islander, that have smooth drags and large-arbour designs.

For fly rods, the author wrote "8- or 9-weight for redfish, snook, tripletail and Spanish mackerel; 11- or 12- weight for tarpon and cobia." No mention of brand names. Same for lines, leaders & polarized sunglasses.

Any old rod, line or sunglasses will do. But for reels, any of the reputable brands, such as Tibor or Islander. I mean, nothing against Tibor or Islander, but why the plug for them?

I know a smooth drag & large-arbour design is pretty much needed for those species. I also know Tibor & Islander, and others (Nautilus, Hatch, et al.) are among the best for providing those. But they're the top of the line.

Suppose some newbie (aka, me, 8 months ago), just trying to figure this whole fly fishing in saltwaters (ha! got that in there!) thing out, reads that, hops online and sees a $700 price tag for a reel.

Do you think that's going to bring more people into the sport (and lifestyle) of fly fishing?

This goes back to an earlier post (rant?) about $800 fly rods vs. $250 fly rods, and something Dylan over at Skate the Fly has written about as well.

Too many people semi-interested in trying out fly fishing are intimidated by the (supposed) money & skills required. And some companies & publications & people in and around the industry perpetuate this, whether purposely or not.

Simple math:

More people fly fishing
= more money for shops/manufacturers/publishers
+ (hopefully) more people involved in conservation
+ a happier society in general (& less focus on shit like reality TV and the like)

Getting into fly fishing ranks in my top 5 things I have done with my life. Yeah, there are still lots of skills I need to learn. But they're not that hard (except whip-finishers...bastard tool of the devil, those things are). 

It hasn't left me in the poorhouse, either. In fact, for the price of one of those reels, I could outfit a person with TWO of my rigs. Possibly three, if you tossed in my 3-weight set-up.

So here is my edited version of that section of FFSW's Tackle Box for Fort Myers, Florida:

REELS: smooth drags are highly recommended. Reels with large-arbour designs are an asset, as they retrieve line quickly. 200 yards of 20lb backing for 8- or 9-weights or 250-300 yards of 30lb backing for 10- or 12-weights.

See? Not being a corporate shill, and not scaring potential anglers away with $700 price tags for reels.

By the way, I caught redfish last fall on a reel that retails for $125 and did just fine, thank you very much. Even got my saltwater fly line off of ebay for $36.

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This is what I tied up tonight. I find my very limited materials here are keeping my options for tying, well, limited. But I like how this one came out.

I have a fever, and the only cure is more Clouser!

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Just because I was humming this song all day:

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Saltwater 101 - Extended Reading List

Time/Date: 2225 CST,15-May-11
Location: Northern Saskatchewan

I posted my first reading list for my self-directed saltwater fly fishing course a couple months ago. Here are a few more titles I've been reading while waiting for stripers to arrive (and now waiting to leave here so I can return closer to saltwater).

I'm not completely through all of them yet but, based on what I've read of them so far, they would be good additions to any (wannabe) striper fisherman's library.

• Fly-Fishing the Saltwater Shoreline by Ed Mitchell: This is the sequel of Fly Rodding the Coast and is more detailed with regards to various species found along the coast of Northeastern US (and, sort of by default, the Maritime Provinces). Like the previous book, this is a reference manual that will be handy to keep close at hand.
• Fly Fishing the Striper Surf by Frank Daignault: This guy is a crusty old salt and well-known sharpie when it comes to fishing stripers. He's published about four thousand books about surfcasting (which I haven't read). This book is alright & I enjoyed his crustiness that comes through in his writing. You'll learn lots of useful tips from this book.
• Striper Moon by J. Kenney Abrames: Don't be put off by this book being half the number of pages of a magazine: this is a good read. This book is written almost purely on opinions & observations, and not necessarily a how-to book. As Lefty Kreh wrote in the foreward: "My only regret is that Ken did not write a bigger book."

There would have been a fourth title to review in this post, but it's has been on backorder since the first week of March. Apparently (as I found out after the fact) it's a "must-have" title for anything & everything about fishing stripers on the fly; in fact, that's the title: Stripers on the Fly, by Lou Tabory. 

I keep forgetting I ordered it, but Amazon keeps emailing me every 3-4 weeks to say the delivery date is going to be 4-6 weeks later than planned. So maybe in July I'll have a blurb about it.

Of course, by July, I'm hoping to have landed my first striper on the fly.

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I brought my fly-tying vice to Saskatchewan. And, unlike Mexico, I'm actually using it!

I find a bit of irony in tying my first flies of 2011, saltwater flies at that, while located in Saskatchewan, the furthest I have been from an ocean in over a year (I think...?).

I brought a very small sample of tying material with me: bucktail, yak hair, marabou, crystal flash, thread, eyes, stainless steel hooks, head cement.

It's been good practice for the last couple nights, which I sorely need: I've probably tied less than a dozen flies in my life. I hope to stay motivated to bang out one or two each night I'm here...or until my materials run out.

Here are a few examples (in chronological order, since Friday):

Blue over white bucktail with pearl flash, size 1 hook

Clouser practice: Night Clouser with red flash

Black bucktail streamer with red head & chartreuse flash

Black on black bucktail with black flash
(my heads are getting a little more tidy)

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Music time. An appropriately-titled song for me for 2011.

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