reevesr1

Mostly clinch and improved. I used to tie some palomars, but not so much any more. I'll try this though. I will probably do the extreme hook up knot on the front (worm) and the regular hook up knot on the other two. I'll still tie to the bend on the hooks on the worm and whatever I have second (probably a winter stone). I have a place in mind to try and I'll let you know how it works.

Sorta like when cutties are hitting the indicator. Switch to a dry. Or in the saltwater case, a nice red and white skitterwalk topwater. Funnest way there is to catch trout, short of a fly rod.

Ahh James, you're making me all misty... Caught more specks on the old gold 3/8 oz (which they don't make anymore) Johnson's Sprite than I could ever count. If we ever make it down south together, I'll introduce you to the magic that is the Pink 52MR (I would never come back to the dock with it on. Never wanted anyone else to see it. I nicknamed it "The Embarrassment") The only clear water mirrolure better than the old red and white!

Caught my one and only red on a spoon fly. If I had to fish to survive and could only have one lure, it would definitely be a spoon. Doesn't look like anything, but sure do catch fish.

Come on guys, of course they are real. I mean, there is one that advertises for Kokanee. And I think another one that used to do ads for Boston Pizza. I think Saltamontes has "dated" the Boston Pizza guys (what do you call a male sasquatch?) mom. By the way Saltamontes, didn't your buddies ever teach you NEVER to actually go to sleep with a girl when really drunk? Always leave, or politely ask her to leave if it is your house, while still drunk. That way you never have to know the truth, and she can always be as smokin' hot as she was at 2 am.

WhoooHoo! Any excuse to post Shark Fishing Pictures, again (sundancefisher started it).... All fish released to terrorize tourists another day!

Happy belated birthday Max!

This should be fun.

Probably part of the mentality. We like to think we're trickin' 'em.

Hey Hydro, After thinking about this, it did get me to wondering. A buzzbomb, like the mirrolures I used to use, don't represent anything really. I guess some would say a buzzbomb represents a juvenile fish or big ass minnow. Not really though.I think it, like some of the bigger saltwater baits, is trying to draw reaction strikes? Or "I don't know what it is, so I'll eat it" strikes. Are there any smaller "fly" equivalents? I'm sure there have to be fly equivalents. Flies that don't look like anything at all but seem to work?

Different world my man! And it's called a Mirrolure. On a river fly fishing is very effective, at least for trout. On a bay/surf you gotta WANT it to fish with a fly rod!

Gary, I would never have told it had I not read your story about your friend. First off, it triggered the memory. But more than that showed me that sometimes it's ok to tell pretty personal stories as they can help others remember important people in their life. Thanks to everyone for all the kind words. Now, I have to go back to being sarcastic. Too much touchy-feely for one week.

In saltwater, I catch fish using a 4" hard plastic bait. One of my favorites is pink/yellow with gold flash. Doesn't look like anything that is, or ever has been, alive. It also has 3 treble hooks sticking out of it. #2s. I've casted it into schools of fish that were feeding on shrimp so hard that the shrimp were jumping out of the water to flee. Unfortunately for the shrimp, the were fleeing right into the kill zone of waiting sea gulls. Anyway, you could throw the most realistic shrimp pattern you wanted and maybe hook a fish. Chunk that mirrolure in there and the strike was instantaneous. Also lots of soft plastics work, but mostly in colors that just do not appear in nature. My bet is a properly presented streamer would be deadly. But it would have lots of pretty colors. My point is that in saltwater, directly representing a food item rarely works as well as an impressionistic approach. I know that does not directly correlate to fresh water, but it has to mean something.

Nice fish!

Yeah, but sometimes you get free donuts!

Ryan, I have an old Dell Latitude laptop that I am typing on right now. It has a piece of crap internal mouse that basically does its own thing, but I'm too cheap to buy a new one. Actually, I did buy a new one, but I'm too lazy to move my wife's email stuff to the new laptop. Can you come over and do it for free? I'll teach you how to run a nuclear reactor, or maybe how to build a fancy electric fence......

Hey fisher26, Thanks for sparing my feelings! Edit: As an interesting aside, air on a nuclear sub is made by running massive amounts of electricity through sea water to disassociate the hydrogen (which was bubbled off) and oxygen (which we needed to breath). We affectionately called it the bomb. We did have a nuclear reactor to help with the whole electricity thing. I also agree with the Fox news thing. I don't believe that Fox will be the source of breaking energy news. (though there local coverage is not the same everywhere as national) Sorta like Bush getting a Nobel Peace Prize. Possible I guess, but highly unlikely. But can someone explain to me the heat thing? I don't know anything about HHO (a hydrogen/hydroxyl bond instead of 2 hydrogens bonded to oxygen? Diatomic hydrogen bonded to oxygen? Don't remember my chemistry that much, but does that make any sense?). But why would it be cool to the touch, but still cut metal? I understand the net energy loss (or we would have used the Oxygen generator as a power source instead of the Nuclear Reactor, hell, unlimited fuel), but I don't get the cutting part. Any chemists out there? College students pretending to be chemists. (A little research project for you BBB)

Interesting. But I would say it's about the 100th End of the American Dream scenario I've seen in my short life. This one could be right, but recent doom and gloom scenarios that did not come to pass would lead me to believe otherwise. By the way, did anyone other than me notice the Canadian Tire truck, or the gas meter in cubic meters? Me thinks parts were shot in Canada? Indistiguishable from the US, don't you think? Maybe this is the answer: But as a friend of mine said, it just means we'll run out of water in 200 yrs or so.....

Too true.

That's funny!

I liked the Urinal Cake Theory. Here is a related human equivalent. There was a study about performed where people were asked to count cards as they were shown face up. There were 53 cards in the deck, one of them was a queen of diamonds, but black instead of red(it may have been another card, but whatever the case, the suit did not match the color). I don't remember the numbers, but the vast majority of the people would ignore the card and not count it. So when they finished the deck, they had counted 52. In other words, since their mind did not expect a black queen of diamonds, the mind ignored it. Cool, huh? Once the recipients were shown the card after, they would count it on the next go around. Must be the same thing with fish. They don't expect a hook to be hanging from a bug, so they ignore it. They probably don't really even "see" it. There was a book I read one time that talked a bit about the same thing. If a technology is too advanced for the mind to grasp, the mind ignores it because it can't make sense of it. So if a human mind can be tricked, what chance does a poor fish have.

That would be great!

Happy Birthday Dave!

LS, Very nice story. Thanks. For all you young, and not so young fathers, and mothers out there.. This is why you fish, ski, hunt, whatever you need to do to with your kids. It's incredibly important, especially when they are teenager stupid! DBT, Thanks for that, but no way he'd be sitting on the rock watching. He's always working his way upstream ahead of me looking for more fish wondering why he never tried out this fly fishing game! (I've agreed with you once already this year. That was my quota.) Rev. Bob, She is a keeper.

Told a bit of this on the memorable trips of 2007 post, but here as Paul Harvey says is the rest of the story: I don't know exactly when my father got his first cell phone, but I would guess in 2000 or so. Guess he figured he should join the 21st century. Like many of his generation, I think he was a little afraid of it. He would leave it off most of the time to limit useage and it must have taken him 6 months to figure out how to set up voice mail and check messages. I might be exaggerating, but just a bit. What I remember most about my dad and the cell was him calling me during fishing trips. He always called when he knew I was fishing. Now, almost all of my fishing was wading flats and reefs, and I almost never took my cell into the water because saltwater and cellphones are a poor combination, as I have learned much to my chagrin too many times in the past. So when I came back to the boat from a wade and picked up the phone there were always a number of missed calls and at least one voice message, almost always exactly like this: Hey Rick, this is Richard, your father. Just calling to see how you're doing. Give me a call when you get a chance. Thank you. Goodbye. He always would identify himself as "Richard, your father". Like I wouldn't be able to identify him by if he just called himself Richard. Or my father. Or just by his voice. I found that hysterical for some reason. And he always said Thank You at the end. I found it all very formal. It was his way of living a bit vicariously through us (he always called my brothers as well) while he was working. The phone calls almost always came from the shrimp boat because if he wasn't working, he would be fishing with you. The calls themselves were pretty routine: How many, how big, where, using what; you all know, just standard fishing conversation. He would give advice on where to go, or what to try next if you weren't doing any good and wish you luck. I came to count on and look forward to the calls, especially when I was doing well. One thing I have learned is that a son never tires of bragging a bit to his dad. When he was dying, I realized that not only was I not going to get to fish with him again, he was not ever going to call me when I was fishing again. I told my wife how much I was going to miss those calls, and how hard my next fishing trip would be. So on my first fishing trip after he died, my wife called me at about 8 am to ask me how the fishing was going. I will never forget her doing that. It would be difficult to describe how much that meant to me. I'm not going to say I miss the calls more than fishing with him because that wouldn't be true. I miss fishing with him more. But not by much I don't think. I want to call him after every trip, and I probably always will.