Punk
Posted on March 12th, 2012
Pierced, spiked and branded, with the austere bars of Black Flag.
Tagged: Flurda, forced fly fishing analogies, peacock bass
Posts from the “Fly Fishing” Category
Brutality
Posted on March 5th, 2012
Doing a little free-word association, what comes to mind with the jack crevalle. Whether they’re half-pounders or 20-pounders, jacks are just mean. Nobody’s going to put together a four-digit travel budget plan to chase them but when they’re around and engaged in brutality against the lesser species (known as bait), tie on your most durable popper and be glad for it. BONUS COVERAGE: More free word association. Tarpon. Ascendancy. False Albacore. Velocity. Trout. Sagacity. Peacock bass. Vibrancy. Bluefish. Savagery. Carp. Quixotical. This could go on.
Super Terrific Happy Hour
Posted on March 2nd, 2012
During my Friday rundown of blogs I enjoy, I came across this perceptive post on the cultural phenomenon that is the Florida Keys Happy Hour. Well said, sir. (Be sure to click on the mugshots.)
Tagged: Happy Hour, Headhunters Fly Shop
Off Label
Posted on February 24th, 2012
An unexpected package came in the mail last spring and I opened it. These electric little plastic baggies fell out and I thought, this was meant for somebody on the Furthur tour. But it was clearly labeled, Free Range Dubbing. I didn’t know what to make of it, or with it. I am not a fly tier but someone who ties flies, a selection of saltwater patterns and some bastardized variants, none of which require dubbing. I resolved to learn some patterns that do, but I am lazy. And forgetful. The other day I started rummaging for other materials and saw the package and remembered. I bought some dubbing wax. I know just enough to be dangerous but it doesn’t matter because there…
Color Safe
Posted on February 23rd, 2012
If I lived there still I might get tired of it. Maybe. (If I lived there I’d do everything possible to be in the express lane passing through Whitewater Bay.) But if I’m down there and I have a free moment in the right place, it’s a safe bet to figure what’s lighting up my train of thought.
First, There Was Alistair
Posted on February 21st, 2012
At this moment, there are exactly 113,347 fly fishing blogs in existence. Twice that many have come and gone. (Where are you, Blanco Honky?) But of all the blogs that are, were and will be, none can make the same claim as the the Urban Flyfisher: World’s First Fly Fishing Blog. His name is Alistair, he fishes in Scotland, and this is his story. You are recognized as the first fly fishing blogger. With no real contemporaries at the time, what compelled you to start a fly fishing blog? Essentially I wanted to start a diary that I could update easily involving photos. I did not know any html so found this new fangled thing called “blogging” and it looked like it would…
Untouchable
Posted on February 18th, 2012
In the back corner I sat and ate two cheeseburgers at the saddest fast food joint in the universe. It occupies the ground floor of a building off Lincoln Road, through the gauntlet of shops and street performers and open air restaurants filled with people drawn in from every habited continent. A current of energy flows by, funneling from Collins and Washington and A1A, but it doesn’t swirl into the windowless interior where the broken silver haired man sits staring at an empty cup of coffee. The Venetian is the back way off the island, safeguarded by a series of toll booths and draw bridges that bring transit to a halt. At the foot of one bridge women on skateboards wait for the gates…
Tagged: Biscayne Bay, South beach, tarpon
Agent Foster Grant*
Posted on February 13th, 2012
I dig cheap sunglasses. I used to buy counterfeit Oakley jackets for five bucks in Midtown until I feared they were burning out my retinas. And I started fishing heavily. On the water switching from regular (street-legal) polarized to Costa 580 lenses rocked my world. I have two pair and the frames don’t fit me right but I don’t care because they give me HD X-Ray vision. I don’t wear my HD shades on the street anymore. They are susceptible to the indelicate hands of my two young children, who like to grab them bend them smudge them and, in the younger’s case, use them as a teething biscuit. For that reason alone I hit the Walgreen’s circular-spinning sunglass rack and found a bitchin…
Tagged: Foster Grants, Midnight Run, polarized sunglasses
The Only Time I Bit The Cork
Posted on February 7th, 2012
Thanksgiving 2002. I don’t know why I felt compelled to do it, maybe an insecure need to prove I actually did catch that bass on a fly rod. Although in reality it proves nothing; it could have been a stage prop for all you know. (It wasn’t, piss off.) A recent post by Bows and Browns reminded me of my personal evolution in fish-related point and shoot. I have a large catalogue of hero shots that will likely sit unviewed for generations until my offspring’s progeny discover them in a hidden box and discard them after the estate sale. For a while I wanted to document everything. I bought a sleek and compact Elph and thought that Eastman Kodak really hit on something big…
Tagged: fun with cameras, striped bass
The Drinking Man’s Guide To Drinking
Posted on February 3rd, 2012
He was a Brit living in Singapore and he smoked cigarettes that smelled like incense. He kept buying us expensive vodka as a reward for our work and, at some point, suggested it would be a good idea to snort it. He turned out to be a fisherman and he told stories about chasing trout in Pakistan and we chose to believe him. He headed an agency branch and traveled Asia to work on ad campaigns and he appreciated our mindless intern support over here. He wanted us to try absinthe but of course we couldn’t get it so he ordered some 100 proof. Abby started to slump in her chair and I found myself unable to stop talking about this one Adirondack brook…
