Mike and I went fishing today- fly fishing on the trout stream and I needed the break.

So…we had a great day out there! It was about 30 degrees, the guides kept icing up (referring to both the guides on the rods and the guides known as us!) and we frequently had to push through skim layers of ice. I personally landed two trophy rainbow trout- a 22 inch and a 24 inch. The sad part about the 24 was that we were all spread out and there was no one to take a pic. I snapped one in the water before I landed it. Beautiful fish. Besides those two, I caught four little guys (comparatively speaking) and broke off another big one.

Here are some pics:

The 22-

The 24-

When I got up at 5:30 this morning it was 4 degrees outside. Funny how you get used to cold temps; even though it hasn’t been that cold (its been in the 30’s for the most part) it really didn’t seem all that frigid when I let the dogs out and got more wood for the fire. I am glad that I will be working inside the house for the most part today though! I’ve got the blemishes that were covered by wallpaper fixed in the hallway with one more skim coat to go on a couple places and I’ll be ready to prime and then paint. I can’t wait to get done and post pictures!

We’ve settled on a name and theme for the new suite- it will be called “The Moon River Suite” in keeping with the tradition of naming the rooms after songs. So much to do, so much to do! We’ve got the basic plan down and now I need to go and get the permits for the work so that we stay on the good side of the law. So many people are tempted to sneak around the regs, but it’s just so much easier to simply do the paperwork and know that your plans are properly approved.

Click here to go to the new rooms page for more info on the suite.

Moon River, wider than a mile,
I’m crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you’re going I’m going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There’s such a lot of world to see.
We’re after the same rainbow’s end–
waiting ’round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.

© 1961 Paramount Music Corporation, ASCAP

So I think I will! Still moving forward on the wallpaper removal project- I can’t wait to get it all down and have it done. I’m almost ready to paint the hallway with the base coat and then move forward from there. Once I am done, I’ll post before and after pics and a link to where you can send your comments to get a reaction.

Well, 2007 was a busy year if nothing else- I had over 40 fishing trips with some really great people and finished the season skunkless! Looks like I’m on track for an 80+ trip year as I already have a bunch of trips scheduled and it’s only January. The water conditions were really tough due to lack of rain but this year is looking up already as we’ve had more snow today alone than I think we had all winter last year and it looks like we’ll get more this Saturday.

My boat couldn’t have performed any better than it did; no problems what-so-ever and it was subjected to some serious abuse. I still have some modifications that I need to make to it as I never got time during the season. I made a prototype canvas cover for it that made it extremely fly-fisherman friendly and got great reviews- now I just have to get the heavy canvas that the final product will be made out of and finish it up.

Flies, flies, flies:
I’ve started tying my own flies after buying a kit featuring a Lefty Kreh video. I’ll get to meet Lefty this year and I can’t wait! Look up the kits on bassproshops.com and you’ll find it. Great set of equipment and a video that is worth the price of admission alone. I got the Bass version of it.

Lefty & Mike Huffman cover a wide variety of flies and also tools and techniques. You’ll notice that there is no whip finisher included in the kit- don’t buy one like I did; once you learn to whip finish by hand, you’ll realize that whip finishers are to make a simple task difficult. I can’t do it as casually as Lefty and Mike yet, but I can tie a whip finish much better with two fingers than I can the whip finisher already…plus, I already knew how to use a whip finisher!

So far, I’ve tied a ’seaducer’, a wooly bugger, a floating deer hair popper with weed guard and a little Quido hair streamer just for fun. The popper was the only tough one of the bunch, but it turned out a lot better than I expected. I haven’t tied ‘Lefty’s Deceiver’ yet- I wanted to get some practice in and get the skills down so that I do a good job with it. The video (DVD) is great to learn from. I’m planning on buying all of the DVD’s in the series and at $40 a kit it would be worth it to have the extra tools so I may just buy kit after kit. I’ve also got some ideas for flies I want to make that I’ll talk more about once I get around to them- I’m hoping they’ll work well.

Here’s a pic of my popper:

I resolved myself to the fact that it was going to turn out bad since it was my first attempt at one, but was pretty surprised at how well I did. I need to make the next one(s) much more densely packed and I need to use lighter test mono on the weed guard (if I use any at all) but I think it turned out ok. I am going to make a shadow box of flies and this is one for the display.