A few extra bucks

[Flysmallie]

4 hours ago, Daryk Campbell Sr said:

50 bucks is fifty bucks.

True. Maybe I could shoot them with a tranquilizer dart and just cut their tail off. I quit cleaning animals many years ago. Haven’t even cleaned a fish in a few years. Though I do love the taste of smallmouth. LOL. 
 

You see a bunch of squirrels around with no tails, mind yo own business. 

[rps]

On 4/27/2026 at 5:00 PM, BilletHead said:

    You are still a pup.  I was 18 in 76. 

In 76, I was married, out of law school, and staring 27 in the face. I had a Lowe semi V jon boat with an inherited 18 horse Evinrude in the garage. We had just moved into our first house. Life was good.

 

[tjm]

'76,  married with two kids, another on the way, USN veteran working full time and going to night school. Guess rps and I are about the same age. 

I have never owned nor wanted an "adult reel";  went from spinning to fly about '76, with no detours. I do recall the "casting" reels my dad owned, they were best used as paper weights or ballast. I discovered as boy that faking the line out on the ground and wrapping a bit of it around a good sized rock then throwing the rock was by far the best way to get the bait where you wanted it. They all had the cranks on the wrong side too, so that you had to swap hands to crank. Nope I never wanted one of those. I know they are better now, but I still don't want one. 

[kjackson]

'76--

15 hours ago, rps said:

In 76, I was married, out of law school, and staring 27 in the face. I had a Lowe semi V jon boat with an inherited 18 horse Evinrude in the garage. We had just moved into our first house. Life was good.

 

RPS and I are close in age. In '76, I was married, working for a timber company on Washington's Olympic  Peninsula and was breaking in a new boat--a 10-foot Livingston. After being severely bitten by fly fishing and tying after spending two years attending  U of M in Missoula, after the move to the OP, I was in thrall to salmon fishing--something I was familiar with since my parents had included me in salmon trips since before I was old enough to walk. They used to put me in some kind of lifejacket and then tied that to the boat on trips to Puget Sound.  When the salmon bug bit again, I pretty much put away the fly gear and stuck with the kings and silvers and pinks. Did a little steelhead fishing and some fly stuff chasing searun cuts (did a lot more of that later in life). That was a time when the direct-drive Penn 109 was the reel of choice.