ness

Personally, I don't use a sinking tip. Not that it's a bad idea -- it would be helpful in a lot of situations. If you are fishing bigger water and want to drag streamers through deep holes targeting larger fish, a sink tip will help you get down there. For the most part, I fish smaller water and I want the versatility of the floating-tip line. I can sink a floating line with enough lead if the situation dictates. I need to try out a double taper sometime.

Hey Labguy, Welcome to the forum. I've got twin 18-year olds that are in the 'rather do ANYTHING but hang with dad' phase of life. Enjoy it, plant the seeds, and reap the rewards later on. I didn't see how much fly fishing experience you have, so I'll assume you're all relatively new to it. I'd suggest you go in with a few flies of each type: dry, wet, and nymph. Dry flies can be the most fun and rewarding -- who doesn't love to see a fish take the fly? -- but they can also be the biggest challenge. They generally need to drift just about perfectly with the current -- any unnatural drag will turn off the fish. MO doesn't have the classic by-the-calendar hatches you read about. It's more generalized than that. A few white or tan Elk Hair Caddis in sizes from 16 to 20 and a few Stimulators in 12-16 for fishing mid summer through fall will cover a lot of the bases for dry flies. For wets/streamers: some olive/tan/black beadhead Wooly Buggers in 12-16 are on my 'must have' list. These can be dead drifted under an indicator or stripped. I'll also have generic streamers like Clouser Minnows in the same sizes/colors. For nymphs: a few Pheasant Tails, Copper Johns or Hare's Ear in 16-20 will cover the spectrum pretty well. Drift them under an indicator, or tie smaller sizes on a 12-24 inch piece of tippet connected to the bend of one of those larger Stimulators. For someone starting out, the stripping Wooly Buggers are a pretty easy way to get going. Cast upstream slightly, let it sink some, begin short strips while the current carries them down. Let them stay out a way as they pass, and swing all the way down stream below you then strip in the rest of the way. Do it a few more times at various distances, then move upstream about 10-20 feet and do it again. Keep moving. For the nymphs, get them below an indicator and as close to the bottom as possible using the correct length of tippet and right amount of weight -- adjusting as often as needed. They need to drift with the current, like a dry, and near the bottom. Cover an area and move on. Dries require the most finesse -- you're laying your line/leader/tippet across moving water, so the fly and line can be moving are different speeds, or even directions. Learn to 'mend', which is a little flick of the line up or downstream, leaving the fly in the same spot, for the purpose of canceling out the effect of the conflicting current. You don't need to match the insect down to it's DNA, but get something in the ballpark size and color-wise presented on the surface, moving at exactly the same speed and in the same direction as something NOT tied to your tippet would be. There'll be something on the water to watch: do what it does. Drift that over the likely places, and move on after a few casts Hope this helps

Oh, man. Sorry to hear that. Thankfully there's still the right eye.

Very nice report, BH. You've kinda got me interested in the whole field hunting thing. Less equipment, no special dog -- though my Britts might not mind snuggling up in a layout doing a retrieve or 2.

Wrench: What is that -- Elf on the Shelf there at the bottom?

I hope you have the decency to let them finish boinking before you blast them. I mean, really.

He sends his regards. He wanted me to ask if you followed his advice and kept your betas in separate fish bowls after that??

I'm sitting here at the club with T. Venable Beaumont, DVM, Chief of Canine Opthalmology Emeritus at University of Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA. He says taking sick dogs to the vet is usually the right thing to do.

I like the Onion, but haven't looked at it in a long time. Anchower and Smoov B cracked me up.

I never did like the superhero/sci-fi/fantasy genres. Not in comics or movies. I did like Mad magazine and the old Car Toons though. I liked the spoofs and caricatures in both.

Pat's Rubberlegs. Gotcha. BUBfly - there's one I haven't heard mentioned in a while.

I thought it was great. I didn't hear any media reaction, but I did hear the AD stood by him and there wasn't going to be any action taken. Soooo many times it seems folks caught up in what would be a quickly-forgotten story cave in a make a stupid knee-jerk decision.

Nice! What are 'pats'?

Yeah -- piecemeal it. Good thinking, Wayne.

Yeah, that's always the case unless they're selling on consignment with the seller imposing a floor. From their standpoint, they want to move the whole thing at once if they can, and they just may get that done. It's Branson, by gawd -- stranger things have happened! More likely, they'll piecemeal it out though. Most of the materials are pretty unremarkable. If I could hold some of the feathers in my hand -- mebbe. The vice, tools, hooks and suitcase may do better on their own.

Those bobbins are cool.

Mrs. BilletHead, Welcome to the forum and thank you for the BBQ sauce. Hopefully, with your presence here, some of the forum slobs will straighten up a little.

Did anybody else ever notice that Red Sovine's 'Teddy Bear' scenario could get a trucker in a lot of trouble these days? I'm talking like, 'Hello Rubber Ducky, I'm Chris Hansen with NBC news.'

Wrench -- you selling the frogs as a pair, or can I just buy the hen?

Wettinline, Welcome to the stream-of-conciousness, no-holds-barred, argue-with-an-avatar world of internet forums....where you get what you pay for, every time.

...and think a spot or two ahead. Sometimes it makes sense to pass on one spot if it's sure to screw up the next. On a stream like BSC, those two might be just a few feet apart.

Wrench -- that's some of your best work to date. LOL, literally.

I don't know squat about the topic at hand, but common sense tells me that undocumented stocking is certainly a possibility. And, it doesn't take a whole bunch of fish dumped in a stream for them to get a foothold, if the conditions are right. Interesting conversation though. I'm a little confused about the Neosho at this point though. Did we solve that anywhere that I may have missed?

LOL -- I was just sitting here thinking, 'Well, the weekend's almost over and we haven't gotten an update on the teardrop.' Come back here and...

I'll throw this out there again -- I've probably told this here a half dozen times by now. I bought a pair of prescription, polarized, photochromatic sunglasses from Action (now Smith) Optics more than 10 years ago. Glass lenses, Padre frame. I'm on my third pair of frames -- they've replaced them twice, most recently about 6 months ago. Lenses are near pristine because I'm careful: always in a case or always on a lanyard. They are great glasses, fit my huge noggin well, and don't slip. They're not super dark, and lighten as light gets low. They do fog pretty bad -- especially after a night of brown likker -- but I suppose I can't blame the glasses. The prescription is about 3 clicks off now but passable, and I need bifocals now because my arms are too short and my flies are too tiny. About $300 to do it new. Greasy, please stop littering our delicate resources with your el-cheapos