Change is good

I love when things change...like when they put a new seam placement and zipper color on the 2008 Simms G3 waders and sell the 2007 at 30% off (plus free shipping). I had my last pair of G3's for 5 or 6 years and they have slowly become 1 part Simms to 2 parts Aqua Seal . They fit like a pair of sweatpants and Simms has taken very good care of me in the customer service department.
If anyone is looking for a new pair of waders...now might be a good time. I even found the "New Guides" on sale for $259....sheesh I should buy a back-up pair.

Permit me...

Snook & Redfish

I have a trip planned for mid November. I'm heading to Naples FL. for a week. The guys down at Everglades Angler told me that Snook and Redfish will be my best bet and I am considering hiring one of their guides for a day. I don't know squat about Snook or Redfish. I know very little about saltwater angling in general. I do know that these are the types of situations where I will spend 47 hours at the vice tying 11 shades of still-born squid emerger patterns in sizes 24-3/0. I'll pore over maps, charts, forums, reports and gossip columns trying to crack the nut. I also know that despite my hard work and research...I'll have a great time. It's the paradox of my angling life: Fear the unknown and numbness to the familiar. Ok, maybe it's not quite that extreme...but that's the gist. I always have a great time when I haven't got the foggiest notion of what to expect. I also suspect I could have a better time at home if I always approached my fishing with that perspective. The danger with observation and learning, especially as it applies to fly fishing, is that the more you know the less you'll be willing to venture. I tend to think that the guy nymphing with a deer-hair mouse who is absolutely clobbering big fat fish may not be an anomaly. I have a friend who asked me to tie him some size 10 mahogany spinners. I wasn't aware that he was fishing the isonychia spinner fall, so I asked him about it. His reply: "Oh, no I like to swing a them down and across...". Like I said. So despite the revelation that learning is my own undoing, I'll continue to study the tides and read the latest "Snook Book", right after I finish up the slate gray and light olive still-born squid emergers in 1/0, 2/0 and 3/0 and maybe a dozen deer-hair mice with a size 10 mahogany spinner dropper.

Don't ask...

I just had a flashback... of being 11 years old, walking up Highway 1 in Northern Minnesota with a childhood friend of mine, our pellet guns over our shoulders and toting a taxidermy stuffed Iguana by the tail. Just to see what the traffic would do.

Oh yeah and it was the dead of winter.

This is a reasonable re-creation of the event except we aren't in the photo and we were carrying the iguana.

Answer me this:

If you had just 1 day left to fish and you could go anywhere, where would it be and why?

I'll Start...
I'd go to: Belize to fish Permit.
Here's why: Gin clear water, warm sunny weather, sight fishing wary prey after an intense stalk, mind blowing runs when hooked...and wet wading. Plus, wailing on alternative species off the edge of the flat if there are no tails in the air.

Post to comments and let me know what you'd do.

Get back to work!

So I am. Back to work. Made my first sales trip to the new territory last week. Maine, Vermont, New Hampshuh, Massachusets, Rhode Island. When I took the job I was 2 months through reading Lou Tabory's book Inshore Fly Fishing. (I cannot recommend it because I have zero point of reference, although I have a sense that he may comprehend a thing or two more than most on the subject). So when the "man" said "Your territory would be....", I immediately zoned into stripers. When I came to, he was shaking my hand and mumbling something about making a great addition to the team.
So as I was saying I was out in "the territory" last week and the first door I walk through I see two guys looking at the local paper (I was in Northeastern NH). It took me a second to focus on the picture above the article they were talking about. It was a picture of a guy holding up a Big Ass Striper. So that was an easy ice breaker. We talked fishing. They turned out to be nice guys . (I have their number and I fully intend to get them drunk and make them slur all of their secrets at some future date.) Three sales calls later I walk in and there are 2 shadowboxes on the wall containing classic Carrie Stevens-esque flies.



So now I'm thinking. Is this a sign? An Omen? As I was processing this, my (small, narrow) mind does what it often does during complicated and unsolvable processes and jumped to a side item thought, a footnote on the original idea. The footnote became the new idea and I completely forgot about the "Omen Factor" until 5 minutes ago.

The original subject of this post was going to be "good fishing found where you look for it".
These two guys at the counter were trying to make it through another day at work and, unable to do it, turned to discussing just what they were going to do once they were punched out of that underpaid and overworked segment of their day...they were going fishing. And they were fired up. I've seen this same thing happen in St. Louis MO, McAllen TX, and Jupiter FL to name but a few.

The point is this: Home waters are great. Comfortable, familiar and close...but there is an absolute steamer trunk full of exceptional fishing water out there. Don't get too smug and cocksure about being the king of your own turf and master of your watershed. And I say this for two reasons:
1. You don't get to heaven by catching the most sea-run gar on whatever creek runs through your back yard.
and
2. Somewhere out east or down south or up north or out west or in St Louis there are two guys fishing (stripers for example) on an ocean you vaguely remember from 6th grade geography and they are having the time of their lives...and if you were there, you would be too.