Fishing Limbo = Tying Times

  Weather conditions late last week had finally come together in a wintry way to make 5"-8" of safe, black ice on Cook's Bay, prompting Tackle Shop and I to plan our first trip of the season out for jumbo perch. We spent Thursday night charging batteries, swapping reels over to the short rods, and generally organizing tackle and sleds. My phone rang long before sunup Friday morning with the news from TS that there were 50kph wind gusts out on the bay and even the ice hut operators were hesitant to venture out on the slick , barren ice under such conditions. Since then we've taken another ride on this winter's weird weather roller-coaster. This afternoon it was shirt sleeve temperatures out and our start to the 2016 ice fishing season has taken another giant leap backwards.

  So...one door closes, another door opens. While waiting for optimal ice and weather conditions I've continued to over pack my fly boxes with new creations. The other day I found a few things that had worked their way to the back of a couple drawers: some popper bodies and some Fish Skull Sculpin Heads.

  These were tied with marabou tails, mohair leech yarn bodies and collars of either marabou or polar ice chenille.

  I suppose the "art" in tying popper bodies lies primarily in painting and to a lesser degree in material selection for the tail. I don't own an air brush or any paints, just a couple bottles of nail polish but I've got tail materials coming out of my tail.

  While at Bass Pro Shops a few weeks ago I made a point of re-stocking my supply of deer belly hair. hoping to get more practice in spinning and stacking. My first project was an exercise to practice shaving the hair to it's final shape using a double edged razor blade, so I chose to do a simple bomber.

  Using the flexible blade is far faster and easier than clippers and allows for a smother curved surface but requires a subtle, practiced hand. Once the material's removed, there's no putting it back.

 You really couldn't call this a popper as it doesn't have the classic cupped face. I'd over trimmed the deer hair around the hook eye to the point where a cupped face was impossible to make so I left a lip projecting above the eye and applied a thin coat of 5 minute epoxy to stiffen it up. One door closes... this gave me a brainstorm for my next tie.

Before trimming

After trimming

   After trimming I made several thin coats of epoxy on the lip, gently shaping it into a slightly cupped shape that you might find on a crank bait. My aim was to create a fly that would dive with a gentle side to side wobble on the strip and bob back to the surface on a slack line. Whatever the final results may be when I finally get a chance to try it, I made a huge pile of shaved hair and had a great time in the process of making it! What else are you going to do when you find yourself in fishing limbo?

Ephemera Catalogi

 HA!

  All you dry fly fishers were possibly expecting another post on fur and feather or something from Wile E. Coyote. Sorry to disappoint you but stick around anyways, you might find this entertaining. "The Way We Were" was my first idea for the title but after thinking it over decided I'd miss my demographic and attract those pesky Streisand fanatics instead. Ephemera is Greek meaning short lived such as a mayfly. It's also a collector's classification for anything produced with a limited useful lifespan such as tickets, posters, newspapers, and catalogs etc..

  Ever since I was a little goober I'd had an unusual affinity for "goofy old stuff". Coin collecting was an obvious pursuit...I mean if you're going to collect anything, collecting money sure seems to make a lot of sense and it made my parents proud to see me diligently researching and saving for my future. What did concern them though, was my love of ephemera, particularly  magazines and catalogs. Their worry was that I was exhibiting signs of becoming a hoarder, long before it became popular with the advent of "reality TV". What they didn't understand was that every slip of old paper gave me small glimpses into the world that came before me.

We live in a time where a click of a button connects you to retailers around the world and your purchase arrives a few days later with no cash exchanged, so for some it may seem incomprehensible that a few generations ago, mail order catalogs were frequently the only way to access the goods you needed. I still remember the thrill of opening Sears, Simpsons, and especially Canadian Tire catalogs back in the '60s. They fueled the dreams of  generations of kids, It was a candy store window transported to our front door for our microscopic inspection, lovingly dog eared and fiercely protected  in the weeks leading up to Christmas.

  At a lawn sale several years ago, I picked up a wrapped bundle of paper being sold for a buck. On the back page was a full page ad for Tiffany& Co.. No brainer! Upon opening the bundle I found the Tiffany ad was a singe page which I regrettably gave away before scanning. The rest of the bundle contained several building supply and farmers catalogs from the '30s and '40s.