“How wild it was, to let it be.”
-Cheryl Strayed
Read moreNo More Black Blanks
No more black blacks. Period.
I realize I sound like a bit of a dictator when I say this, overly controlling, maybe even a little "witchy." But, you have not lived my life these past few months.
The Reason
A few weeks ago I was digging around in my desk in search of a memory card or pen or something relatively unimportant. I came across a newspaper clipping of an obituary from a few years back. It was for my father's best friend, Jack.
Jack was a carpenter and fisherman. He was a worm dunker, but I try not to hold that against him, and primarily had no interest in mountain fishing, but was much more fond of salt water. Every year Jack would migrate down to Florida for the winter and spend his time in a boat or kayak with a rod in his hand. I remember when we found out that Jack was sick. He decided that it wasn't time to waste his life in a hospital, but to spend it with the people he loved, fishing. And, that's exactly what he did.
Snap!
Snap! There it is, that moment every angler knows, and maybe the most frustrating part of the whole sport.
After spending some time, perhaps quite a bit of time if the flies are small and the air is cold, tying on your weapon of choice, your tippet snaps. It's a moment of grievance followed by profanity followed by frantically checking to see if you've fumbled the knot or if the tippet's gone bad.
A House Divided, Again...
If you're a regular reader of the blog, a friend of ours, or even just follow our journey on social media, you know that we live in a house divided.
Glass vs. Grass.
Thankfully, for the sake of our relationship, we agree on dry flies and reels.
This April is going to be a significant test for both of us, and our relationship, as our home of Pisgah Forest, NC is going to be taken over one weekend by bamboo builders and the next by glass geeks. We will be attending both events, together. Let's hope we both make it out alive!
Read moreFishing Small Streams
"I guess it's the size of the trout (or, should I say, the suspected size of the trout) that keeps many serious fly fishermen off the small streams. To be perfectly honest, if the deal being proposed was that you get the best of all the good things fly fishing offers in return for catching smaller trout, I'd take it. Actually, I did make that very deal with myself once and was perfectly happy with it."
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