The car is packed.  I've double checked my lists.  Hopefully, in 24 hours I will have arrived safe and sound in steelhead nirvana.   
 My "Mancation" officially starts tomorrow.  I've been tying flies, re-lining reels, patching waders, and a million other little tasks so that I can spend a week away from home and hopefully not have any major gear failures.  This years goal.....To finally catch a steelhead on a dry fly.   I've been dreaming of big slashing surface takes all week.  I've been trying to prepare myself mentally to NOT strike on the take.  That has been my downfall while trying to fish surface flies.....The take.  I'm not sure how you teach yourself not to react after hours of boredom, watching that little fly plow it's furrow across a tailout  for the zillionth time, only to have a 6 pound fish try to crush it.   It's kind of like having the doctor hit your knee with that little hammer, except you don't know when he's gonna do it.   Your sitting in the lobby of the doctors office reading a popular mechanics magazine and the BAM! he hits you square in the knee with that stupid little hammer.....How do you not react to that?   Knee-jerk is a fitting description. I'm thinking ropes and duct tape might be the ticket to a flailing rod arm.  Hopefully I don't have to resort to those drastic measures. 

 Whatever happens, I'm sure I'll have a great time.   I'm looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new acquaintances.......A good, clean mental detox at the absolute best time of the year!

Please note......I'll not be able to fill orders until I get back.   Sorry for any inconvenience this might cause.  Later!!!!

  It seems that there are alot of holy things in fly fishing......

There is that storied water on most famous rivers that is labeled "holy water".  There is the "holy grail" of each segment of fly fishing, ( skating dry flies for steelhead, stalking huge fish on the flats, or some exciting virgin backcountry fishery.) Then there are the expressions used by most anglers, usually in disbelief of the size of fish just hooked, such as "holy cow!", "holy smokes!" and the ever popular "holy sh**!!"  And then.....There are my waders.


My poor holy waders.  I guess I am living my mother's prophetic words from my youth..... "I guess we'll just never be able to own anything NICE in this house!"  Those words uttered over 30 years ago (usually after I had broken or ruined a piece of the family's community property) have seemed to have followed me through my whole adult life.   I'm just hard on equipment. 

 Unless I'm miraculously gifted a pair, or some other similar stroke of luck comes my way, you'll never see me in a pair of Simm's (I'd never get the "value" out of them, and they'd spend more time at the factory than in the river).   In fact, it doesn't really matter what brand, construction or size of waders that grace my growing midsection.....I will make them leak.  I put holes in things.  Sometimes big ones (and usually at the most inopportune time!).  I could be wading up to my ankles on an endless white sand beach in a brand new pair of breathables, and find the only broken Corona bottle within miles to puncture the dang things.  Stuff like that happens to me.  Who decided to put a ball of barbed wire in the river in the middle of a coastal canyon wilderness?  I'd sure the hell like to know, cause I spent a pretty darned cold February day wet, trying to spey cast as my teeth chattered a nonstop hypothermic rhythm, because of it.   Or my favorite... "I can't believe they're not punji sticks" that every beaver seems to leave in his wake.  The only downside about those death traps is that they usually pierce skin too. Now you've got a hole in your waders, and your leg!

But there is a bright side.  Enter the "Jesus" of holy waders.  A Christ-like savior in a 1oz. tube.  "The redeemer of impaled neoprene" also goes by the name "AQUASEAL".   If I couldn't get Aquaseal, I'd probably just have to bite the bullet like a skin diver and get a good wetsuit (I mean, I'm gonna get wet anyways, right?) .  At least with a wetsuit I could pee in it and get a quick warm-up during the winter (don't tell me you've never done that in a wetsuit).  But thankfully, I don't have to do that.   With just a tube of Aquaseal, I can keep just about any pair of waders fishing year round.   When the waders near the point where they are more than 30% Aquaseal, its time to replace them (don't laugh, you should see my poor holy waders).   The only downside is the drying time of the repairs.
This brings me to my closing thought.  "Why doesn't Aquaseal make waders?"  I'd be the first one in line to buy them!

  "You know, Meg...I've been thinking about maybe getting another recurve bow."  
The phrase sounds innocent enough, but if you were in the presence of my wife while I uttered these words for the ump-teenth time, you would see her eyes roll, you would catch the wince as she prepared for the sucking vacuum that is traditional archery to empty our checking account.  
 Traditional archery was a natural fit for me. Not only was the shooting fun and the bows beautiful, but you could make just about any item you could use for the  hobby yourself (just like fly fishing!).  So not only did I end up buying a bow, but I had to have arrow cresters, dipping tubes, fletchers, fletching cutters,  shaft spine testers, arrow quivers, golves, string silencers, etc.  The list was endless. 
  But there was only one problem.   Even though I was a great arrow maker, a fine fletching cutter, a fair quiver maker......I was a terrible shot.   This minor problem seemed easy enough to overcome.  I'd just practice more.  Well, practice I did.  I practiced every day before work.  I'd shoot the range on weekends.  I was ok.  I had some minor form problems, but I could usually hit a pie plate at about 20 or so yards, and that's about what you need to be able to do to ethically hunt with a recurve.  
  So, off to the woods I went.  My quarry was elk.  I won't bore you with stories of stalks and wind currents and out witting the mighty wapiti.  I'll sum up my hunting experience with a simple word.... MISS.  And did I miss.  Not just once, but every time I had an elk within my self imposed limit of 20 yards.   I don't think it was "buck fever" because I missed cows (female elk) too.  I had never had as many opportunities to be that close to elk during any other season of elk hunting, and none of them had much to worry about.  
   Feeling a bit bummed about the whole season and my poor shooting abilities.  I swore off the recurve.  It was hard for me to do.  I had flirted with traditional archery for almost a whole decade.  I'd dabbled in shooting, even tried bowhunting a couple of prior years, gave up, started again, and bought and sold a pile of traditional bows.   But, looking back, I think it was the right thing to do.  Although I do wonder if my failure wasn't because of the bow I was using...You know, there was this really sweet Black Widow recurve I saw on ebay the other day, it's got longer limbs than that old clunker I was using before........

            
                                                                                   

Ok, time for a blantant commercial with the sole intent of trying to get you to buy something from my website...
Please be sure to check out my new Spey Hackle/Heron Substitute on the "Feathers" Page.  I'm excited about this new product.  Its the best and longest goose shoulder I've split into fine spey hackles.  I'm offering it in 10 colors, 6 of them UV reactive.  You should be able to get about 5 turns of hackle from these plumes before the stem is too large. 

Try them out, I'm sure you'll like them!!

"Don't ever stand in a canoe."  "Canoes are tippy."  
Sound familiar?  If I had a dime for every time I've heard those two sayings, I'd have...about  $2.60,   Regardless, I hear it alot. Most people would rather take a vinegar bath after rolling in razor blades than paddle a canoe, "they're tippy,  ya know!" 
 Well, I just don't buy it.  
There is a reason our Native American brethren chose the design of the canoe.  Without modern conveniences like electricity, or gasoline, they needed a craft that would go upstream, downstream, across big lakes, down rapids and was light enough to carry.  Thousands of years of native boat building evolution and enginuity  brought us the double ended birch bark canoe. Every canoe made after that first birch bark on wood frame model has just been a modification of that original design.  Regardless of manufacturer, or material....Fiberglass, aluminum, cedar, plastic or canvas...they all mimic that original concept.  
  So what about canoes being tippy?  Well, they CAN be tippy if you consume enough alcoholic beverages.  They can be tippy if your center of gravity is too high.  They can be tippy if you aren't used to the feel of secondary stability.  But, think about another tippy mode of transportation  (if you aren't used to it)...The Bicycle.  Now, that's a darn tippy machine.  But, after hours of use, keeping it upright is second nature.  A canoe is the same way.  I like to think of my canoes as individuals.  Each of them has a different attitude and function.  Each one has a different feel. Each canoe excels at a certain task. 

  Canoes can do all sorts of things other watercraft just can't do.  Ever see someone paddle a whole moose in a kayak?  Ever see someone pole a runabout up a set of rapids?   Canoes excel at carrying heavy loads and draft little water doing it.   My favorite way to propel a canoe is by pole.  Poling allows you to go upstream in a canoe.  It takes a bit of getting used to, but after a few sessions on flat water and gradually taking on swift rivers, poling upstream can be an enjoyable way to travel.  The next time you find yourself in a canoe, grab a pole and do some shoving about.  You can also use the pole as a kayak paddle if you find yourself in water that is too deep to reach the bottom with the pole. You'd be surprised how much water a pole will move when used that way.  
 I guess if you've read this far, you can tell I'm a bit biased.  I grew up around canoes, and my daughter is doing the same.   Canoes kind of grow on you....... Especially the ones made of wood, and especially the ones with a pretty girl in them. 

 
We're talking about one of the most hated feathers known for tying spey flies. Burnt Goose.  Oh, it looks great in the package.  You buy it, you get it home and are excited to tie with it.  Then it happens....The stem.  That huge ugly stem.  It's the downfall of burnt goose.   The fibers are great and look very similar to heron, but the stem is so ungainly, ugly and cumbersome to wrap, that it negates any benefit the sweet looking fibers had. The answer, just split the stem and soak them in water before wrapping.  But...that's a major pain.  Enter the Feather Pusher....(that'd be me)

The picture above shows my answer to the burnt goose dilemma.  What I have done is finely split the quill.  My experience in building wooden arrows and making my own feather fletching had taught me how to split a large quill to leave the minimum of stem attached to the fibers.  That's what I've done here.  Each feather is painstakingly hand split.  Then I've dyed them in 10 different fish catching colors. That way you don't end up with an annoying white stripe down the center of the quill, like would happen if you tried to split a quill that had already been dyed.  All that's left to do is soak the feather for a few minutes and then tie with it. The fiber length on these quills is about 2" or better and they will hackle a large fly. They wrap as nice as any blue eared I've used and I'm excited to be offering these new feathers.  Be sure to check my "Feathers" page in the following days for pricing and packaging options as I get them processed.  Here's a fly I tied with the orange and purple ones.  

4000 years.  That's a long freakin' time.  Not many things last that long.  I'm pretty sure my Subaru Forester would rust into a heap of burnt umber oxide, the tires rotted and crumbled, the plastic dash and signal covers long cracked and consumed by UV light, if left exposed for 400 decades.  There would mostly likely be nothing to ever tell of its existence.  (Hell, I hope it lasts me 2 more years, then I'd be happy.)  Enter the Great basin bristlecone pine:  

  This tree laughs at eternity.  It scoffs mortality. A thousand years of time... merely its youth, another grand....middle age.  A lightning strike or 12, a forest fire or 3, floods, droughts, you name it.....It still lives on.  Three thousand years....Just chillin.   In today's fast pace, disposable world, something this long lived is almost incomprehensible.  Time moves so fast.  I know I'm just a blip on the radar screen of reality.  My daughter is growing like a weed, things in my body hurt that didn't used to.  Change comes daily.   I've gotta give respect to the bristlecone pine and it's creator for reminding me of just how miniscule my tenure on the planet is.  Those sobering thoughts are often the kick in the pants I need to get things done, asap! 

 But, I don't need 4000 years.  Give me 80, (ok, maybe 100) and I'll be happy.  Hopefully I'll age as well as the old bristlecone.. Only time will tell.

 No, I 'm not talking about spreading excrement on a hook (although some feel it is about the equivalent of that).  What I'm talking about today is False (cack) Hackling.  I first read about false hackling in Paul Jorgensen's great book "Salmon Flies" , 
and I've practiced and used the technique ever since.  What it amounts to is stripping fibers from a feather's rachis and tying them in a bundle to the hook shank (most often as a throat) to simulate a wrapped hackle.  See the picture of the Popham salmon fly below, it has a false hackle of jay wing. 

We can take this technique even one step further.  Instead of the false hackle on just the underside of the hook, why not have the hackle all the way around the hook?  This is what I have started doing on most of my spey flies.  I've started using dyed pheasant tails (golden, amherst, silver, and even ringneck) and tying the fibers in as a false hackle all the way around the hookshank.  Then I am following it with a wrap or two of teal, or just leaving it as is.  With the pheasant tail, you get a nice long fiber length that simulates heron well (if dyed black) or you can get some great creative looking flies using the dyed amherst.  The pheasant fibers also have some great movement in the water.  Here's another picture of a cack hackled spey fly, "The Beauly Snow Fly" tied the way I've just described. 

So, regardless of what some traditionalists might say, get some hackle fibers and get to cack hackling some flies!!

Saturday morning dawned wet, and steamy.  I was waist deep in a steelhead run on one of my favorite rivers.  I had just landed a dandy native trout of about 18", that had enough spunk and determination to put a pretty good flex in my spey rod and  get the adrenaline running with its initial tug.  Shortly after that I managed to hook a steelhead that gave me 3 good jumps on a smoking run, but it came unpinned after a couple of minutes (like most of the fish I've hooked this summer). But even though I was having some luck fishing, my heart just wasn't in the game.   I reeled up and decided to call it quits even though there was still hours of prime fishing left in the morning.  I drove home through pretty good rain showers, reminding me that I needed new wipers after a  couple of months of summer weather, that had obviously been their death knell.  
  The thing that had been on my mind all morning was not fishing, but hunting.  I've been chasing feathered and furred things for almost as long as I've fished, and every fall that deep, primitive instinct to hunt starts stirring.  I could almost throw my calendar away, the feeling is so strong and accurate at the same time every year.  It all starts with the rain.  Leaves start turning, and then the nights start getting cooler.  Then the first real rains of fall come.  It is usually accompanied by a bit of wind, and its enough to convince some maples to shed a few leaves early.  A spring rain has a fresh, green smell that signals growth and prosperity, but this first good fall rain has an almost peaty, pungent smell ushering in the death and hibernation of another winter.  Within days mushrooms will pop up out of the forest duff, elk will be in full on rut, and the grouse coveys will break up.   Its the best time of the year to be outdoors, as far as I'm concerned, and that's exactly what I plan to do the rest of the day.   
   As I arrive home, I explain the situation to my wife Meg (who's heard the same story, every year at this same time), who is understanding of my continued absence for the day.  Its not that I need to go hunting, I really HAVE to go hunting.  If I were to do anything else for the day, I'd be totally useless.  
  I head to my gun safe and pull out the trusty side-by-side twelve bore shotgun, I get my tattered shell vest, and hunting jacket.  I pull on a pair of  "brush pants" and find that they have somehow shrunk to the point that they won't quite button without a bunch of sucking in....Damn it!  (it seems my lack of summer activity and aging metabolism has not kept pace with my love for sweets and junk food),. So I grab a pair of wool hunting pants that luckily I bought  a size to big, now they fit, and will have to do for the day.  
  I head to the Grouse woods and a familiar covert I've hunted for years.  As I walk down the overgrown logging road, I feel at peace.  I take a deep breath through my nose, drinking in the moist smells of the fall rain, as drops splatter on the bill of my hat.  It feels great to be back in the woods.