What if you combined Fishing and Biking?

I was looking for a cool image that I could put onto the blog of a biker and I came up with this! Please submit your ideas of funny captions.

I know it has been too long!

The time has come and gone for me to make a new post. I have been working on a project but it is top secret so I will not be able to post until it is completed. In the meantime I want to share a Haiku with you. Over the fourth of July we spent some time with the Nelsons and it was Kaye's ideas to write Haiku's about the 4th and have a contest to see who could write the best. Most of you know that I am not great at writing if you have read my blog at all but I attempted it anyway. Here it is:

When I ride my bike
The smooth road beneath my wheels
Hurts when I fall down.

As you can tell I did not follow the rules of the game and it is not about independence day, but I liked it anyway. Try writing one of your own. It needs to have 5 syllables in the first line 7 in the second and 5 again in the third. Have fun and share some with me. They can be about anything.

The Finished Product

So I have been working on my rod for a few weeks now and I put the varnish on last night. It took some time to dry so I waited until today to put it together and throw some line. It is a pretty nice rod and it loads a 5 weight line well. It is heavy so it would not be a rod that I would want to fish all day but would be fun for a short day on a small stream.

Disco Hare

This is the fly that produced most of the action for me while we were in Idaho. It is a variation of a Hare's Ear Nymph. I added a little crystal flash wing emerging from the wing case and I think it adds a little sparkle to the fly. The pictures are of a Disco Hare with read rib and then another with copper rib. They both work well. Tie one up and give it go!

An update on the fly rod

I have done a lot of work on the rod. I have stripped all of the old spar varnish off and I have reset the ferrules. I also taped the new snake guides and hook keeper in the right places ready to be wrapped. I was going to start wrapping tonight but I got carried away tying some flies. Here are the updated pictures.

It Was Another Beautiful Day in Southeast Idaho

Without consulting Kris, my brother in-law Nick and I decided to go to Idaho this weekend for the Eastern Idaho Fly Tying Expo. From the time I took the fly tying class in college I have tied all my own flies and have fished with them with much success. The expo gave us both lots of new ideas and techniques to improve the flies we tie. We left on Thursday night after work and attended the expo both Friday and Saturday morning. On Friday afternoon we decided to pick up Nate Barker in Rexburg and go fish the Henry's Fork of the Snake river. We wont divulge the exact spot because of the giant fish that we took on teeny tiny flies. I am proud to say that the second largest fish, 19 inches, of the trip was taken, by myself, on a fly of my own design. I will post a picture of it soon but I call it the 'Disco Hare'. The largest fish was taken by Nick and it measured 20 inches. Unfortunately one member of our party who shall remain anonymous forgot the camera on the first day so we missed getting pictures of those two fish. You will have to take the word of two fisherman that these fish were beasts. Here are some photos of the second day of fishing.
Here is a different shot of the same fish to make it look bigger!

Bamboo Rod

Last year my parents found a bamboo fly rod at a flea market in Denver. The price was right and it came with an old automatic reel (South Bend). The rod was in horrible shape and it was not going to be functioning as a fly rod any time soon. They gave it to me for Christmas and it has been sitting on the shelf since then. The other day I decided it was time to start rebuilding it and so before I started I decided to take some pictures. The only thing that I did before I started was to sand the grip down so it looks new. Here are the before photos of the rod. I will be posting the updates as I work and progress on it.