tjm

Ca. has many laws that other states don't have, you can do stuff to boats that would be restricted there. Fishing gear causes cancer there but no where else. And state lines are not drawn according top the fertility of the dirt. I guess being half Russian and half Mexican prior to USA acquiring it has left a residual effect on Ca. that other states don't understand. Anyhow 'regional' may include multiple states or only a part of a state, fe Midwest region or lake of the Ozarks region. I'm sure that 'top soil' is not Ozarks compatible, because it contains no chert and topsoil obviously does -

yes and I bet your friend needs to know the exact place on the interstate too. Mile marker, exit number, not just somewhere between NYC and LA.

Actually it says that it regionally formulated from a list of materials, then it says that if it is formulated in California the ingredients is precisly those listed. If the regional facility is in Mo or Tx, the formulation can include things not listed in Ca. Like rice hulls, native soils, food waste etc that can't be used in Ca.

You simply can not buy homegrown tomatoes. Not nowhere. They by definition must be grown at home. To think otherwise is obtuse. You might be given tomatoes that were homegrown by a friend or neighbor, but if they are for sale they are commercially grown. $$= commerce. I love tomatoes but I won't the ones from a store, grown in Asia or South America with chemicals that are illegal here, picked green and chemically reddened at the destination before sale, so that they look ripe. Don't usually eat them at restaurants either, the taste is just wrong. That is why they invented "salad dressing"; to cover up the taste of imported veggies.

If that's "closing time", then all the gals would prettier; says so in a song.

I had seen a similar video on a fly fishing forum a couple years ago and the movie reminded me of it. After a web search I also found this one of how they dress the barbless hooks, but I can find nothing on a source of the hooks. They have very little "hook" and appear to weighted something like a jig.

These guys still fish that way, kinda reminds me of opening day in the trout park. I wonder though if they don't use gorge rather then the hooks as we know them?

It's absolutely good business to close the doors and and scrap the inventory when the "customers" are fondling the merchandise rather than buying it. The shop owner can't put all that fondling and casting and bull shooting in the bank or use it to purchase new stock. Personally I always buy something at every trip to the fly shop, honestly the $20-30 purchase probably doesn't net the shop owner enough to have kept the lights on while I browsed. I love to hang out in a fly shop, but I've always thought that the shop owners could have made more money selling anything else. Good fly shops that are successful always seem to be tied to another business; resort, bait shop, guide business, a corner of a drug store, liquor store or gas station. I think it'd be interesting to see what an initial inventory of a fully stocked fly shop would add up to plus the overhead costs and what the projected return is. And after a year how the actual costs and profits compared with the set up plan. Would you stock one each of all the available fly rod brands and models in each weight? In 'glass, carbon and bamboo? Whiting feathers alone must have 500-1000 products if each color and quality is counted? Would you stock all brands and styles and sizes of hooks?

Online sales will eventually kill all the shops that don't have a great online storefront. We as fly fishers are very small niche market for relatively expensive gear and since most of us don't buy new gear every year, but want it avaiable to look at, the inventory can far exceed the annual sales. I have chicken necks and fur bits that I bought 40-50 years ago that I'm still tying with so once the shop sells that prime skin at a modest profit, it may be a long time until they sell me another. Throw in the rest of the factors like rent and upkeep of premises, salaries of employees insurance costs, etc. and I'm kinda surprised that any fly shops not part of a resort are still going. I suspect that any material one wants is available fast and cheap on eBay.

Nice. Tell the truth, I use more knitting yarn than fur these days for nymphs/wets, or a mix of yarn and fur. I guess that I've never fully tanned a hide. I found though that putting the furs up gave a lot better return on the time than selling wet or in the round, and it gave the option of shipping, which almost always got a higher price than the country buyers paid. With the current lack of garment fur market, I'm thinking about prepping some stuff for fly and craft use, just need to explore venues.

Fleshing is always the 2'nd hardest part, I think. Skinning for fur is a bit harder than skinning for meat, and old squirrels, like old ground hogs, are almost as tough as coyotes. Best part about a possum is how easy they are skin and scrape. I don't like salt and alum and haven't used it since the '60s when a furbuyer advised me not to and paid 1/2 price for my 'coons. Salt attracts water from the air on humid days and can, if used alone, actually rot the hide over time. Alum does dry things very well but tends to make the leather very hard and seems to shrink some parts of the leather more than other parts, resulting in a twisted pelt. (or maybe I just didn't use it correctly) For fur market I simply air dry, or rub borax into the hide for fast drying on fur out pelts. Borax also seems to work well for preserving and insect prevention. I've used borax solution to wash whole pelts and also just used the dry powder to dry clean and brighten the fur. To soften the leather on small pelts (like birds) I've used 3 parts water with 1 part glycerin, worked into the flesh side. I watched a fellow from NY at the Mountain Home show demonstrating Whitlock's squirrel hair nymphs with the sheared belly mixed with SLF. He did 6 or 7 variations representing different species of trout food, and yes I believe that 1/2 a hide would last a long time. Whitlock's website says the flies are tied by Rainy's Flies, so I'd guess Rainy might be a potential pelt buyer, but it'd be simpler to just package the tails and sell to Mepps.

There is a lot of Red Fox Squirrel Nymphs right there. I reckon you could sell those pelts at Clinton next fall.

Why not just buy a base for the Regal you have? The generic base for 3/8" stem can be had for ~$20 from Amazon or J Stockard (probably other places too) or the Regal Travel Base for ~$150 but still less than a whole vise. I made a base for my "A" about one month after getting it back in '75, hard maple with pipe fittings and still use it, I've seldom found a table that the C-clamp fit. (with home made gallows tool, I also made a similar bobbin/thread support and rarely use either)

Advice that I've seen on learning with the non-dominate hand, have included starting with a Belgian cast and starting by holding a rod in each hand with ~30' of line out each and casting them simultaneously, the idea of the two rods being that the one hand mirrors the action of the other. This can actually be practiced by going through the casting motion with both hands and no rods. I'd suggest working with a constant line length on the start as line handling with my dominate hand causes me more trouble than rod handling with my non-dominate hand does. The book stuff has never appealed to me because it only ever works for a particular body type. Unless you use a really thick book like the unabridged dictionary for one person and a Reader's Digest for another. To me it's better to concentrate on the rod tip and to recognize that where the tip goes is where the line goes.

Shouldn't be that hard, it only takes a few inches of motion? Try starting left handed with a roll cast? I think that I've always switched hands, bat, axe, pickax, guns, etc.; but I've read that others claim it's easier to learn casting correctly with the weak hand because you don't have the ingrained mistakes/muscle memory to unlearn.

The effect of too many satellites?

It seems like weeks of east wind and I don't recall it ever being this way in the past. Prevailing wind direction seems to have changed.

I turn almost all fish loose, just because I'm too lazy to carry a stringer or to butcher the fish at the end of the day.

You've mentioned these before, I think. I know that I looked up some "how to tie" stuff on them in the past and decided that they were more complicated than the gurglers that I like. And that reminds me that I need to build a few gurglers.

Good vise. Unless it's interfering with her health or other life areas, I wouldn't consider it a vice. I have one of those and it's nice, but like wrench I prefer the Thompson A for speed and comfort. Bought the Renzetti second hand 5-6 years ago because I'd always wanted one, and have tied only a dozen or so flies on it. The right angle between stem and shaft that lets it rotate is where I want my hand to be, too many years of using the A, I guess, but the altered hand position is uncomfortable to me. Takes about three times as long for each fly.

List of 321 Conservation Areas that have camping, some with water to fish and some without. https://mdc.mo.gov/conservation-areas-search?field_atlas_activities[4263]=4263&field_geofield_lat_lng_proximity[value]=0&field_geofield_lat_lng_proximity[source_configuration][origin_address]= MO&page=0

Get lots of the jap beetles some years. Last summer was bad with them. I was thinking back to when I was kid and we had lots of June bugs, we also had lots of June bearing strawberries, shipped by train car loads, and then all that crop land became fesque. I'm sure there are some June bugs in the area that I just haven't had a close encounter with, but the last time I recall seeing any they were in a town.

I haven't sen a June bug in years. and even back in the '50s never in the numbers that you describe. Must be some crop that encourages them.

I guess they took the video down. I don't get why it is considered poaching? Evidently the season was open if the video person was also hunting as the write up said.

Thanks for that pear comparison. Saves me buying them.