Gear Up For Fishing

I will be manning the Fayetteville Area Anglers Network booth at Gander Mountain here in Fayetteville this Saturday. We will be there to talk about fishing, and answer any questions about the FAAN. We will also have our Mono Recycling receptacle there , so bring that old mono line in to recycle. There will be a knot display board there and I will be happy to help with any knots you have problems with or want to learn. Just look for the banner displayed below.

 The Coast Guard Auxiliary will be there doing free Boat inspections, when the boat passes the inspection they place a sticker to show you have been inspected, This sticker is ,most of the time, all you need to avoid safety checks by Wildlife and Coast Guard on the water.
So if your in the area  stop by and say hey ,Get you boat inspected, and lots of other stuff going on there also. Should be a fun day.
Hope to meet some of you there.

Drew's Adventures in Fishing - Man Powered Outdoors

Check out this blog , He has some great fishing stories and pictures of kayak fishing.

Drew's Adventures in Fishing - Man Powered Outdoors

Fishing Tackle Swap Meet

If you are in or near the Fayetteville NC you should come check this out. 

Clear out your closets, shed, garage, or other fishing tackle hiding places and join us at A.K.MccCallum's in Fayetteville Nc, March 31 at 8:30 for our first Annual Fishing Tackle Swap Meet. Buy, sell, ortrade your excess or unwanted with FAAN (Fayetteville Area Anglers Network) Members.Tables will be rented for $10 each and proceeds will help the FAAN with their promotion of fishing activities throughout the year. We well set aside one table for equipment donations to the FAAN to be sold to help with our activities. Special Thanks to A.K.McCallum's for hosting this event. Please contact Tom Carpenter at T.carpenter@fayettevilleanglers.com to reserve a table. check it out on Facebook.

Back Home form Wyoming

    We got back Thursday night around mid night. Long long flight from Salt Lake  to Atlanta. On the way out there we flew from Fayetteville to Atlanta to Minneapolis/Saint Paul then into Billings Montana. A little different route on the way back we flew from Billings to Salt lake and then to Atlanta. Took about an hour longer , just seemed like four, really hate to fly commercial. Funny the last plane I flew in before this trip, I jumped out of, yeah its been awhile .

    Had a great trip, fished a little, caught a few fish , saw a lot of great country. Here are some pictures :

My Father in law fishing Lake De Smet Buffalo Wyoming.

Here is the first fish I caught in Wyoming. This is the first Red Eyed Bass
(Rock Bass)  I have caught. Funny had to go all the way to Buffalo to catch it.
This was on Lake De Smet .

Here I am getting ready to fish below the Dam on
Sibley lake in the Big horn mountains.

Sneaking up on the brookies in this small tail race

Caught this little Brookie Prune Creek just beyond the dam on
Sibley Lake .

This is just down the creek from where I caught the Brookie,
a beaver pound, I caught a nice Brown trout here . Didn't get a picture
So we're going to say it was a whopper ...lol

This is the South Tongue, Missed one and that was all she wrote.
But only fished a little while. My back was killing me by then.

Will post more Pics later have to sort through them all . We had two digitals and did what we could to fill up both 8gig cards. 

At the Bench Today

I got back to the tying bench today , I have been remiss in my tying. Since the trip to Wyoming is coming up fast thought I had better get busy. I was looking through the apps for my new phone and found one that is a little booklet on Nymphing. So  I downloaded it , it is a pretty good app. It is called Buzzer Fly Fishing, here is a link to a little write up about it. http://blog.theessentialfly.com/flyfishing/new-buzzer-fly-fishing-mobile-app-released/

Any way back to the bench I liked  the flies that he had tied. I know that most of the feeding that fish do is below the surface, and I like anyone love to see a top water crash of a fish nailing your dry fly. But realistically I fish more wets than anything so I am always interested in new flies. These are Midges in the larva stage and pupa stages. These are in the water all the time with the fish , so they are used to seeing and eating them. These are not new but are rather new to me. So here's what I came up with:

These are all un-weighted to allow them to fall very slowly  to the
 bottom. Should be fished in very slow water or lakes. 

Blank Buster Buzzers plus a couple of Emergers
and a couple of  Spiders

There are four Emegers  between the spiders and the buzzers
two with rainbow crystal flash and two with glow in the dark
Flashabou 

The Buzzers use Fluorescent Embroidery thread which acts as
 a trigger point.

Under Black light to show the glow in the dark Flashabou

The Spiders are basically a buzzer with a hackle tied in wet style. The
black thread doesn't go as far down the hook shank.

You can see the ribbing here, this is done with the same flat nylon
thread used as the body, but it is twirled into a round thread then brought
back up the body plamer style to create the segmented body. 

I will probably go back and tie up some blood worms and some bead heads also. So that's it for now but will post up any others I tie later.

Custom Rod Blanks

Steve over at Custom Rod Blanks has been in the fishing and rod building business for over thirty years.With  his many year of experience with sport fishing, he shares his knowledge of where to buy, how to repair and how to build custom fishing rods. Plus, much  more. Here is a link to his site :http://www.customrodblanks.com/customrodbuilder.html  Check it out , he has a lot of good products at good prices. I also added this link to the favorites at the right.

Finished Six Piece Fly Rod

I got 2 coats of epoxy on the rod and in the turners. Not much to do now but let them go until cured..

 Here is my set up for applying the epoxy and drying the rods.I have a 6 rpm drier from http://www.okierodbuildingtools.com
the turner I use to apply the epoxy is home made . I took the motor out of my BOHNING Pro-Model Arrow Crester it is a 300 rpm motor. The chuck I use for the rod handle is a piece of pool noodle, for multi-piece rods I use the rubber gasket type that comes with the motor.

 Got the AC running in the back room, so it cooled it down. Did keep it set low to keep it above 70.

Here you can see the rod parts in the respective turners. The one from Bohning is a little noisy, but I just close the sliding glass door to the back room and it was good to go.

 This is the rod sock that came with the original rod. Let me back up a bit. I built this rod to replace an an identical rod that I broke during a kayak smallie trip on the New River in NC. My wife had given me this rod for our anniversary. She said that I needed a travel rod to always go in the suit case were ever we go. So this one was great, it is 18 inches long, and in the case it is only 21 1/2 inches. So it fits in the smallest of duffels or suit cases.

This sock is made of the same material as Frog Toggs I believe.

 I have the rod matched up with a Greys GRXI #516 reel. Really like this reel it has three extra spools that snap in and out to make line changes a snap.

 I think the reel seat looks sharp with the trout on it, and the cage.

 Here is my take on the Cabelas Stoaway6. A 6 piece 6wt travel rod.

As you can see very compact.

The tip got a little thick with the epoxy, but its ok .












I received an email from Mud Hole last night that the guide set that was on back order for the rod I am making my Father-in-law , came in and should have gone out yesterday. So I should have it in the next day or so , and will get back to that rod.  Can't wait to try them out in Wyoming , on the trout, in Sept.