This is not a noose. Fishing knots are so final, but a bowline is a simple feat of engineering and utility: The fortitude to hold a 6,000 pound boat to a mooring ball in a Noreaster, and then be untied in three seconds. I have this section of orange rope in my office and it gets tied and retied, until I can think of something to say, or how to say it. Sometimes it’s a vacuous time wasting activity, too, but it beats the hell out of Twitter.
Oftentimes it seems presentation trumps selection, but sometimes it really is the fly. Thanks JP, for the carp crack.
Tagged: carp
The guy catching the fish had flies I didn’t have, tied in a way I can’t tie. But he let me take a look at them and I figured I’d try to replicate to the best of my ability and see what takes. I took a tying class a few years back and bought a vise. Nobody told me at the time they made left handed ones or that you can convert them, so I just turned it backwards. I use scissors with my right hand because they never had the lefties in school. It’s all screwed up but I won’t be on display at Somerset anytime soon, so what’s the difference? Baseball works as a backdrop because there’s a lot of nothing going…
Tagged: fly tying, new york yankees
I’m sitting in the Roscoe Diner eating a bison burger with an order of potato pancakes on the side. It is 11 degrees fahrenheit outside and snowing and my two-year-old is throwing her carrots. I’m in the heartland of Eastern trout fishing but as far away from casting a fly as you could possibly be. Route 17 winds along the flowing river and as we drive I have thoughts about that. I have fantasies of loading up a car, throwing a canoe on top, and just going, hitting every spot of water I run across. I could do it every day until I’m 80 and still not cover enough water. I look in the rear view mirror at my daughter in her car seat.…
Nick Murray posts a photo essay of his first striper quest of the season, hoping for the first Hudson schoolies to show up in the Bronx.
This is kind of what it looks like to sight fish for peacock bass. It’s an iPhone photo so it’s lo fi, but if you look just beyond the drain pipe you can see the orange flashes of the peacock’s fins. I got closer than I would for making a cast, so you can make out the vertical striping and profile of the fish as well, but most of the time from casting distance, it’s just looking for that little orange flash. It’s like they’re all decked out in camo and they added the hunter’s safety vest.
