Grand Traverse Bay - The Pre Party

The plan was to roll into Traverse City early to do a little pre-fishing with Brother Matt Dunn. Beaver Island was the main objective of the trip, but Grand Traverse Bay is no slouch either. After a quick lunch and license purchase, we rolled up to the tip of Old Mission Point. First mistake of the trip, I left my polarized glasses in the truck back at the hotel. Oops. Luckily in crystal clear water, it is fairly easy to locate fish under bright sunny conditions. I somehow spot a shadow in the water and tell Matt to cast to it. He successfully hooks up with a beautiful golden bone and we think the day is getting off to a great start. We proceed to find hundreds of fish cruising around the flats. Cast after cast, some of them so on the money that you can't write up a finer presentation in a text book, but no takers. Every single one of these fish had a case of the lockjaw. No worries, though, I grab a Hurricane High Gravity on the way back to the hotel and settle in for the evening.


The next day was a complete 180 from the day prior. The wind shifted direction, picked up in gusts, and brought clouds and rain with it. As we scouted the flats, we could not find a single fish where we had found hundreds the day before. We regrouped and headed back to the hotel where the mouth of the Boardman entered the lake. I rigged up a new pattern I whipped up the night before, the Mustache Ride, and proceed to swing my flies along the bottom at the mouth of the river. I was surprised as I managed to dredge up a few smallies off the bottom in relative short order. Now, I was in my element. Matt and I hooked up several decent smallmouth, a white sucker, and one corpulent lake run brown who looked like it was about to pop. The day was salvaged.




Some new blood arrived and joined up with us in Traverse City; Caleb Reinhold and Bill Konway were joining us on Beaver Island. We grabbed dinner and headed to an Irish pub for some local flavor. Third Coast was responsible for the entertainment that evening, half price stouts courtesy of "Guy's Night" (I didn't know there was such a thing), foosball, and a late night run to the border, involving more burritos than you could load a ferry with. Good times...



Coming up next: getting to Beaver Island.

squirrelz

I recently scored on a bunch of squirrel pelts off of ebay. Five for $12, plus free priority mail shipping to boot. To add to the awesomeness, there were two extra hides thrown in the box. Price per pelt was down to $2.18, the cheapest I've been able to find, even cheaper than Coffin Creek Furs when you factor in shipping and handling costs. The hides were in great condition, all fleshed out, salted, and dried. I didn't find any bugs, but I'm taking no chances. The hides have already been quarantined and sent to the deep freeze chamber for a week's sentence. Between the freeze, a dye bath, and some borax for the non-dyed skins, that should take care of all the critters. Besides, there's nothing a little trip into the microwave can't take care of.


You may wonder what in the hell I'm gonna do with 22 squirrel pelts. No, I'm not gonna make myself a toupée or a squirrel suit. And I'm not gonna use them for Zonkers, though that is a great idea but better suited for a tanned skin. I'm gonna dye up a bunch of them skins and chop them furs for dubbin'. I've got a few big batches I need to make for use down the road. Squirrel is the ultimate fur for a buggy nymph blend.

Bargain Basement Bonanza

You can never have too much wire.

Roadside Treasures: Morality Check

Hypotheticals:
You find a fresh roadkill in the morning hours, victim of someone's commute to work. Normally it's a no-brainer situation; you pull over, grab the critter, and process the fur/feathers when you get a chance, further down the road. But what happens when the animal is protected or closed to possession? It's already dead right?

What do you do?


The Score:
The ring-necked pheasant is a treasure trove of feathers and hackle to the casual fly tyer. Everyday patterns like the PT Nymph would not be possible were it not for the beautifully barbed tail feathers from a rooster ringneck. Aside from the vibrant and iridescent flank and rump feathers, however, there isn't a ton of uses/patterns for the remaining feathers off of the rooster. Enter the hen ringneck. While much more subdued in coloration, the tan, cream, and brown-mottled feathers of the hen contain some wonderful soft hackles, even rivaling those of the Hungarian Partridge. While legal for purchase stateside, hen ring-necked pheasant skins are much harder to find off the rack, and the $15 to $30 price tag can be a bit hard to swallow for a female ditch parrot. And everyone knows that the feather quality of shot birds is second to none over those chemically treated commercial skins.

Legalese:
Minnesota Rule states that only cock roosters may be taken (albeit by firearm or bow and arrow), whereas State Statute provides contradictory language, such that "A person may not take more than one hen pheasant in one day or possess more than two hen pheasants". Which supersedes which, Statute or Rule? Of course, the regulations booklet trumps all, stating that "Road-killed animals may not be legally possessed, except by special permit from a DNR conservation officer, state patrol, county sheriff or other law enforcement officer."

So what do you do? Do you take the bird and secretly pluck and "possess" the feathers off the hen, I mean, It's already dead right? No harm, no foul? Or do you leave the bird lay, as it's just not worth the risk of getting caught for possession?


That's what I thought....

Caveat Emptor: The author, nor roughfisher.com, condone the breaking of any federal or state game and fish laws. 
Take the post for what it's worth. No statutes, laws, or rules were broken for the creation and purpose of this post.

friends in low places

Much can be said about your coworkers. Everyone has a few horror stories to share, and there always seems to be a Milton Waddams, Tom Smykowski, or Bill Lumbergh in the crowd. Love 'em or leave 'em, every once in a while one of them will come through and hook you up.




The beauty of working in a co-located office are the perks with working alongside other sections and divisions. One of my wildlife cohorts surprised me the other day by bringing two boxes of feathers into my office. When I opened them up, I discovered a bounty of pheasant, grouse, turkey, and mallard feathers. Now this was the mother lode. Now I've got more hackle than I could ever use in 20 years. Once I sorted, treated, and packed all of the feathers, I managed to fill up an entire grocery bag, to the top. That's over 7 gallons of feathers.



Speaking of sweet ass hackle, I couldn't pass up a chance at picking up a starling skin when I was over at the Fly Angler last week. Thanks to Justin over at WFF for piquing my interest earlier this winter. One major bonus at the shop: they had pheasant rump in golden yellow! Hot damn! Been looking for this stuff for a couple years now, and this is the first shop I've come across that actually had some in stock. I was just about ready to mail order some from a company in the PNW, but luckily I was able to procure some "locally". That is if you consider a 200 mile distance local. Unfortunately for me, that's the closest fly shop around. Now I can finally get started tying up a patch of carp carrots, but that's for another story.

Has anyone seen my red Swingline stapler?

More Scores and Seven Spools Ago

The trip back home from visiting relatives over the Holiday break involved a couple of pit stops along the way. First stop: Cabelas. Some people consider Cabelas the holy grail of all things outdoors, as the retailer proclaims themselves the "World's Foremost Outfitter". Hardly. Their retail locations look more like a clothier than a sporting goods store, and their fly fishing sections seem to shrink with every visit.



I realize that people probably do more window shopping than actually buy hard goods and that soft goods are where the real money's at, but still, stock some shit on your shelves that we want to buy. Nonetheless, I usually manage to find a bargain or two at the store during a visit. This trip: Ultrawire spools in Fluorescent Orange and Yellow marked down from $2.25 to $0.80. I cleaned out everything they had on the shelf. I threw in a dubbing loop tool for $2.49 (not a bargain) to work on creating some buggy ass looking nymph bodies. The saving grace? They had several roughfish species representing their aquarium. Greater Redhorse, Silver Redhorse, Bowfin, and carp swam the waters alongside sturgeon, muskie, walleye and pike.

On to the next stop, Craft's Direct. I knew this place held much promise. I had the opportunity to shop here once a few years back, unfortunately, I was under a strict timeline as my family waited for me in the truck outside. Hard to find bargains on an "in and out" trip. Lucky for me Mrs. Roughfisher wanted to shop too, so I had the opportunity to inspect each and every aisle. Talk about a jackpot. Not only did they have more variety and a higher inventory of items, they were cheaper than the typical retail craft store.




I don't know much about tapestry wool. I do know that the virgin yarn contains antimite so it should provide my nymphs moth protection. It was marked down to $0.50, came in a cool caddis green color, and had some nice textural properties that would blend up well. I also picked up a few more skeins of the Needloft craft cord, priced at $0.50 a skien. To my surprise they had a bunch of wacky colors like chartreuse, bright green, tangerine, and burgundy. These colors should help round out my current collection, and provide a fine compliment to my custom dubbing blends. I'm gonna experiment with pom-poms and use them as body segments and thoraces on nymph patterns. I might experiment with using the larger sized ones for clam patterns. If a carp will eat, I'll tie it up.

The craft warehouse had a significant stash of gift shred. There were more colors and they even stocked the fine metallic shred. I had been interested in this material, but didn't want to pay for shipping on a two dollar item. The brown, copper, burgundy, and pearl shred were looking might tasty and found their way into my cart. This stuff would make nice streamer bodies, but it is fine enough for adding to dubbing. Same with the next score, more silver tinsel. This stuff is holographic and crinkle cut; I've never seen a cut like this before. Best of all, it was marked down from $2.99 to $1. Looks like the grinder will be plenty busy this winter.





The score of the century: Angel Hair, aka Krystal Flash. Marked down from $9.99 to $3.99 for silver and gold, and $2.50 for the pearl. 15 gram containers, that equates to just over half an ounce and way more than the tiny hank you'll find at the fly shop. Considering that I can buy krystal flash at wholesale for $22 bucks per two ounce skein, this was a solid find.


Looks like I better get busy tying.

More scores

Now's the time to hit the craft stores and super centers for holiday decorating closeouts. Most of the stores I've been frequenting have their Christmas decorations on sale, much of it at 50% off. Like every other trip this season, random scores seem to be popping up at every visit, more reason to peruse each aisle and shelf every time. Unfortunately, the bulk of the seasonal inventory are "send-out" items, bought one time and are sent out directly to stores. Once locating a seasonal score, it is imperative you horde and liquidate the entire supply, lest you never find the item again.



This copper mylar shred is the shiznit. It has just enough elasticity to not snap, crackle and pop off the hook shank when wrapped under moderate tension. Pieces range from flat copper to a wicked variegated pattern. This stuff will tie some nasty wrapped bodies and wing cases.



I picked up more Magic Loops in glitter. The colors are different from the standard tubes and are translucent. What's even more tits is the fact that the pink, orange, and green tubes have fiber optic properties. Talk about a hot spot.


Needloft craft cord. Traditionally this stuff came in 10 yard skeins at $0.79 at the craft store. I found 20 yard cards of this stuff at Wally-world for $0.97. The price is right bitch.


Micro tinsel. We're looking at about a 1/32" width. This stuff retails for a buck and was marked down 50%. Tie in as wings with a bunch of craft fur or superhair and you'll have those esocids drooling.


At a dollar, this bow was definitely not a bargain, but it found it's way in to my cart because it was purple. I haven't found purple flash anywhere and this will compliment the pink and blue shred I picked up earlier this month, and my other stash of pearl shred. Peel the tape off the outer wrap of flash and you can unravel the entire bow into one long strip. This purple flash has a poppin' UV look to it and will make some nice wing cases and wrapped soft hackle bodies.


$2 bones a bag plus half off. Can't beat a buck for two ounces of shred. Not quite sure what I'll do with the magenta colored mylar, but the candy apple green gives me blue steel. Caddis, caddis, caddis. This will also make some cool mayfly nymph patterns as well. I like this hot new color for Christmas and wish it sticks around for a few years. Hopefully there will be some cool shit entering the market in this hue.

Get plundering.