Tying Meat!
I am not normal…..
If you are Mrs. Brownliner you can attest to this with certainty. If you are the Carp Whisperer, you can echo that sentiment as well. In fact, if you have ever read this blog it was probably fairly apparent rather quickly.
Most fly fishers begin with trout. From there they branch out into the salt or other warm water predatory species. Some never branch out at all. As a life long bass and still water fisherman, streams and trout just didn’t speak to me for a very long time. I was used to big water, big hardware, and big boats. So it was logical that my greenhorn years as a fly fisherman were spent chasing bass and stripers in the salt. Double hauling a 1/0 Clouser into the wind made much more sense to me than a reach cast and three mends to float an elk hair caddis with no drag did.
I was living in the DC area at the time and chucking lead in Baltimore for schoolies was big fun. This was also when I began to tie flies. I took a class at the Orvis store in Tyson’s Corner, VA and I was hooked. The idea of creating was absolutely fascinating to me. I went out and bought (on VHS!) Lefty Kreh’s fly tying series as well and I began a journey that has been near and dear to my heart for the past 15 years.
I recently was going through some fly boxes as I was prepping for my annual trip to Presque Isle with CW and I found some flies that I had tied back when I had first began. I recall at the time being very proud of some of my ties and even more so when they yielded a take. Evolution is a funny thing…. My hackle turns were sloppy, my heads were not finished well… in general, they looked like they had been tied by a child. In many ways they had.
So as I sat down to the vise to tie for my trip, I couldn’t help but to notice the attention to detail that only comes with years and mistakes. It took me ages before I was comfortable tying flies for trout. I don’t think I even owned hooks smaller than a size 2!
So as I sat down and began to tie, my mind started to wander down amnesia lane. I had vivid memories of pulling specific patterns from the jaws of specific fish. I remember driving a chartreuse over white 1/0 Clouser Minnow into the back of my head while fishing some bridge pilings at night in Virginia Beach…. I think I still have a small lump from that one a decade later.
Tying meat is just different. Big hooks, big profiles, big dumbells, big popper heads, big weed guards, etc…. Hopefully yielding big fish! The truth is I have enough flies tied to last for years yet I still tie more. At times I wonder if it is a sickness or some kind of compulsion? I give flies to friends…. hell I give them to complete strangers as well. (good karma)
So just for the record….. this is the first fly I ever tied. I landed a massive 12″ grunt on it and promptly retired it to the top of my desk where it remains!
Where has your tying journey taken you? Fond memories? Crazy stories? Love to hear them if you care to share. And if you have never tied meat…. go for it! It will give you a good excuse to go buy that 8 or 9 weight rod you had your eye on.
Good Luck, Tight Lines, and Lots of Beef Jerkey,
MBL
I Seriously Need My Head Examined!
It was mid-afternoon and the sun was beating down relentlessly upon the water. What was I thinking? Well that is exactly what Mrs. Brownliner asked me as I came home sunburned and dehydrated. What kind of moron goes fishing when it is this hot out?????
I suppose this moron does! Now I would be a complete liar if I told you the fishing was prolific or that the fight in the fish I caught was top shelf. I think the dog days of summer pretty much left all of us uncomfortable and gasping for air. My motivation however is both specific and timely. You see, to put it in fly fishing terms, Mrs. Brownliner has a double on and she is just about to land both fish!
So life has taken some amazing turns. Any time between NOW and six weeks from now I will be driving the fish mobile mach 3 to the hospital with a woman in the passenger seat telling me where to turn and smacking me in the head the entire way. This means a tremendous joy for the Brownliner clan and for me personally. It also means that my fishing crack habit is going into detox for a bit until life settles back down. So for now, I am getting every minute on the water that I can. I don’t care if I have to fish downstream from a sewage outlet dumping little chunks of toilet paper into the creek! Wait a minute, I was fishing downstream from a sewage outlet dumping little chunks of toilet paper into the creek! My brain can still smell it to be honest… ughhh.
But I did bring some fish to hand! I’m hoping to get a few more hours on the water before two little brownliners make their way into the world. Wish me luck… I think I’m going to need it!
Childhood Lessons Pay Off on the Creek
When I was a young teen, my father took me on a fishing trip to Raystown Lake in central PA. The trip was a striper trip and we went with some cousins and their friends. The weather was beautiful and the lake looked to be in great shape. What we did not know at the time was that it was the year of locusts (17 year) and prolific does not even come close to describing what we saw. I shit you not… thousands and thousands of huge bugs dive bombing into the drink. They would buzz on the surface unable to escape until a fish came up and gulped them down or they drowned sinking to the bottom to a similar fate.
We threw everything in the box at the stripers with not even a strike on either boat. At this point in my life I had never picked up a fly rod so please excuse my trip back into a different era of fishing. As day two of no action wore on, my dad had to make a stop at the marina and use the facilities. I sat there watching the locusts buzzing on the surface near the dock. Just then a huge carp just came up and inhaled it. It looked like a Dyson moving across the surface sucking up every huge morsel in it’s path. A grin spread across my face.
My father was walking back up the dock as I was taking the minnow bucket out of our boat and dumping it into the lake… “What the hell are you doing????” he barked. I looked up at him and asked him if he wanted to beat water or go catch some fish. With that I took the empty minnow bucket and ran up the grass hand picking locusts off the tree’s and the shrubs and depositing them into my now empty minnow bucket. When the bucket was buzzing like a Hitachi Magic Wand, I made my way back to the boat. As we idled out I tied a floating jig head on to each of our spinning rods. My dad just looked at me asking if I was going to clue him in.
When we told our cousins what we were doing they scoffed at us….. “We didn’t come all the way to Raystown to catch CARP!” OK… we said… catch you later. My dad and I pulled off into a cove and hooked a locust onto the jig and let it drift. It didn’t take long. The V wakes coming at the bug here hysterical. It was like an outtake from the movie “Jaws”. I have no idea how many carp we caught that day, but it was a ton and we had a BLAST! By the way, my cousins went home fishless and unhappy.
So what’s the lesson you ask? No, it is not about the virtue of the much maligned carp. Nor is it about judging a trip by the number of fish you catch. The lesson I learned is that sometimes you have to take what the conditions are willing to yield.
Last night on the creek was a perfect example. The water was stained and the clouds had shut off any site fishing so chasing carp was a pretty tall order. After an hour I realized the futility of what I was doing and figured I’d change up. It turns out I had a pretty good night with some very eager and game smallies and a nice Sauger. Some of you might disagree but I try to keep multiple game plans in my pocket so regardless of what happens when you hit the water there is always fun to be had!
So… what would you have done? Continue to chase your intended quarry? Or go with what the conditions presented? Curious to know.
Good Luck and Tight Lines!
MBL
Pretty White for a Fly Guy
So last night I met a few friends to hit the white fly hatch. Tim dropped me a message and we set our meeting time for 6:00PM. After fiddling with my fly boxes (which I do often) and making sure I had all my gear, I took a look at the clock which read 2:30PM… Hmmmm… what to do?
I figured hell, that’s plenty of time to get in some brown lining on my local creek before we meet up. I kissed my wife as she rolled here eyes at me and headed out. Summer always brings such a conflict for me. The temperatures have been ungodly hot and the humidity is off the charts. Stepping into a pair of chest waders is like boiling yourself from the inside. Wet wading sounds like the logical choice until you google a few stories about micro-bacterial infections, chemical burns, and trips to the emergency room. I think I’ll just sweat…. and sweat I did. I had to move my glasses down to the tip of my nose so they would stop fogging up. Yeah, it was frigging hot.
We had just had some rain so the water was still pretty off color but I did manage to jump two nice smallies which both managed to spit the hook out faster than my 10th grade girl friend and this bad boy who I am still not sure how he opened his mouth wide enough to eat my fly
So we finally made it to the creek with a few hours of daylight still intact and we suited up. I decided to once again put on my soaking wet waders despite our decent hike to the spot we were going to fish. Two words… SWAMP Ass… While we were in the car I had given the guys a few pencil poppers that I had tied for the Allegheny and totally forgot to put any in my box because I figured they would be a bit large for the occasion. Sean tied his on for shits and giggles. What ensued was pretty cool. He had fish literally knocking each other out of the way trying to eat this thing. He landed fish after chunky fish as Tim and I pretty much beat water.
As nightfall set in the hatch started to go off and it was pretty darn cool. It was near blizzard conditions and smallies started sipping our dry flies amidst the white chaos. I busted one really nice fish off and landed a few others that put up some nice battles. Anyone who has eve fished with me knows the one thing I never forget is my camera. I reached into my pocket to snap some pics of the thousands of white flies filling the air and the bass that were kind enough to cooperate and of course it was nowhere to be found. Unhappy is an understatement but I guess I can’t complain. I was fishing with good friend, good fish, and good karma.
I came home to Mrs. Brownliner who was still rolling her eyes at me wondering what would possess a grown man to want to stand in a cloud of bugs in the dark waving a fly rod for 8 hours. The only thing I could say was, “honey… It’s the white fly hatch!” insert eye roll here.
Good Luck and Tight Lines,
MBL
Top Water Smallies Make Me Smile… and so does Cherry Jello
As the dog days of summer set in and the trout gasp for air like an asthmatic searching for his inhaler any of us with half a heart begin searching for other fish to harass for the next month or so. For the highbrow trout purist who would sooner take a dump in his Simms G4 waders than to intentionally throw a fly at a carp or cat, smallies seem to be the moderately acceptable alternative. They are the annoying uncle who you still invite to your family functions despite the fact that he tries too hard to be cool and double dips the salsa bowl with his unwashed hands while everyone else watches in horror.
Me… what can I say… I don’t mind slumming it and that Uncle that rubs you the wrong way… I think he’s frigging hysterical. (even though I still won’t dunk a chip in that salsa bowl)
Summer smallies can be as much fun as a man can have if you are minus two twenty four year old blondes in a kiddie pool with 25lbs of cherry jello and a fly swatter. Something about watching them explode on a white popper as the sun is setting over the water that is absolutely magical. (now if only I had a cherry jello fly!)
Anyhow…. I digress. Last week CW and I headed down to the Allegheny for an evening as Mrs. Brownliner was kind enough to give me a free pass for the night because I was a good boy. Well maybe I wasn’t a good boy, but I wasn’t in trouble like I usually am. So we headed off into the fading light throwing poppers, eating beef jerky, and telling bad jokes. All of which are integral parts of the experience.
The fishing was not crazy and we didn’t catch record numbers of fish, but we did manage to scare up a few bronze backs looking for a fight and had a great time.
So if you are looking for a great time fishing this summer and want to cut the trout a bit of slack, get out of that kiddie pool (the blondes are not on their way!) and chase some summer bronze…. BIG FUN!
Good Luck and Tight Lines
MBL
Why the PA Fish and Boat Commission SUCKS!!!!!!
Sick to my stomach is the only way to describe how I feel about what I saw this week. The news has been swirling for some time about the closing of Glade Run Lake in Butler county. Apparently the dam that held the lake was high risk and there was no money to fix it. OK…. I get that. There are a lot of things right now that there is no money to fix…. the rust spot on the rear lift gate on my Subaru for example or the lack of hard drive space on my MacBook!
But nothing…. and I repeat NOTHING provides an excuse for what I saw when I went to visit the lake. I heard from a friend that they were drawing the lake down. We headed up with our fly rods to see if we could enjoy some shallow water site fishing since that was all that was supposedly left. What we saw was an atrocity.
They gated off the area to keep people out and I totally understand why…..
The PA Fish and Boat Commission should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. Supposedly they electroshocked and transported a few hundred fish to N. Park lake. What about the rest? You couldn’t have loaded up a stocking truck and taken them to other lakes? The Allegheny river? Offered them to private pond owners? Was it a money issue? Send out a call to action on the web for donations to help remove the fish from the lake! I would have helped and I’m sure many of you would have too.
I pay my license fee because I have to. I pay my license fee because they are supposed to support the fish populations of our state. This is a prime example of politics getting in the way of the right thing.
These images have been burned in my mind and will not soon forget them. If you are reading this blog chances are you have a passion for fishing and hopefully a deep respect for managing the resource that allows us to enjoy our hobby. I hope that you will take this opportunity to voice your displeasure with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission for how poorly this was handled…. I know I will be.
I Think Someone Put a HEX on me!
So last night me, CW, and our friend Tim hit the Allegheny for some evening smallie action. The action was a bit spotty through the night, but Tim truly laid the smack down on us when it was all said and done. I think he brought 16 fish to hand to my 3… Ouch! Looks like I need some practice. None of the fish were very big but it was fun picking up some evening top water action with some good friends.
After capping the night off with some Primanti’s and a beer courtesy of CW, I made my way to work this morning.
When I opened my car door in the parking lot I just stood and stared……
How in god’s green earth is a man supposed to concentrate on work when the pending spinner fall is upon us? As luck would have it I still had my camera gear in the car from last night so after a low grade iphone shot I had to bust out the camera. Unfortunately I did not have my macro lens with me but I did manage to get a few good shots.
After getting a pass from Mrs. Brownliner to fish last night I would be in one serious dog house if I bolted again tonight…. but damn is that tempting. Should be a great spinner fall.
Good Luck and Tight Lines!
MBL
Warm Water Pursuits – Spring of 2011
Hey all, I have been threatening to put a video together of some of our warm water pursuits from this spring so here it is. As usual I will apologize for the serious amateur camera work (hard to fish and film at the same time!) and for the rather poor editing but alas I am not Spielberg. Hope you enjoy!
Presque Isle Looming
Carp Whisperer and I have had a bass trip to Erie planned for months. Of course the weather looks absolutely…. how should we say… SHITTY! I refuse however to allow that to dampen my spirits. I have been busy at the vise despite already having enough bass flies to fish for the next 3 years without running out of flies.
I told CW of my affliction and he laughed as he has been doing the same. I told him it is a sever case of “fish-sturbation”. Granted, yes it is a poor substitute for being on the water, but sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do! So my rain gear is packed. My 6 weight and my 8 weight are both ready to rock. The only thing I have yet to do is figure out how I plan to gear up. Vest, sling pack, sherpa? Carrying trout flies or carp flies are easy. When it comes to packing up meat boxes… whole new ballgame! I think I am leaning toward my Orvis Sling Pack, but have been partial to my Fishpond vest lately.
You see while some men are charged with fixing the economy, creating peace in the middle east, or eliminating our dependency on foreign energy, I have been tasked with the truly vital societal burden of how I plan to carry a bunch of bulky bass and pike flies over memorial day weekend. I know you all just breathed a collective sigh of relief knowing that I am focused on the high priority tasks at hand.
