NUMENON |
PONDERING CORE ESSENCE
NUMENON |
I am not much of a fly fisherman. I am certainly not averse to it, I've just never convinced myself that it is either a superior method of fishing, or generally more enjoyable. To me, it's simply another way to enjoy this great, multifaceted distraction. It's also another tool in the tool box, and should certainly be utilized when appropriate for the task at hand. Still, it's been over a decade since I've delivered a fly with the long rod. In fact, other than a recent casting practice session on the lawn of the local high school, I'd not even touched my fly rod since a 2008 trip to Montana. I'm still not sure I could ever match the experience described in the third-from-last paragraph in my description of that trip; check out numenon.blogspot.com/2012/10/out-west.html. But maybe I am finally getting ready to make some new fly-fishing memories of a different sort. This winter has been in-between; no local safe ice, too cold and windy for enjoyable or productive shore fishing (especially for somebody new to the area), too sloppy to expect to travel North comfortably, and so forth. But the clock continues, and it's been over four months since I've successfully casted to a fish. I feel that in my bones. And so, I daydream. And one of those daydreams somehow morphed itself into some (admittedly manic) action. I decided that I should try catching school stripers on my fly rod, especially if I am trapped inshore by the wind (which seems pretty likely given my experiences on Cape Cod in the spring and fall.) A simple approach to this would be to wait until spring, remember to string up the rod before my first trip to the Cape, tie on a straight and short fluorocarbon leader, and pick up a couple of flies on the way to the water. My mid-winter self has turned this into a time-consuming, sprawling project in which I've acquired a few new fly-tying skills, poured a few hundred dollars into supplies, and have generated several dozen Clouser-style flies in a variety of sizes, colors, weights, materials and sparseness. Well, this has been fun, at least in a get-through-winter kind of way. I've also added a dozen or so teaser-style flies for surf fishing and sea-bass jigging. I've added some small and sparse Clousers for tossing at albies with a casting egg, or to add as a teaser with my skipping epoxy jigs. There's a good chance that these flies could pay off in multiple ways as I pursue my 2020 goals. Speaking of which, I'll officially add another to the list presented in a previous post; here's to capturing a striper on the fly rod with a self-made fly! Pondering the questions of core essence and finding meaning in unexpected ways
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Steve LachanceVia Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Michigan and now, back to New England! Archives
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