Flooded Fright Day Gives Way to Sunny Friday Over Much of Texas
texas fly fishing
There’s nothing like following a “Water Wednesday” with a flooded Friday, but across East Texas, and down into Austin, Texas, word is there have been quite a few flooding events in the last 48 hours.
Here in Houston, the sun came out Thursday after five inches of rain drenched the Bayou City, and this morning I saw plenty of flash flooding just as I did on the drive down here yesterday. I heard Austin was hit a lot harder. East Texas, in general, got a gob of rain in time for goblin day. Thankfully, the rain cleared off for trick-or-treaters Thursday night, and apparently around here the ghosts, goblins, superheroes and ballerinas scored lots of sweets.
I say “apparently” because we spent long hours at the Houston International Quilt Festival working the Cimarrona booth. Now before you go judging, let me just say there among all the quilts, and ladies from all over the world, and gimmicks, among all that I found some items that actually are potentially applicable to fly fishing!
Keeping in mind that the Festival is the largest convention event in Houston, with (I’ve heard) 100-thousand attendees, and the vendors have deep inventories in their booths, I knew I would filter through, and I would find something that I could bring back to fly fishing reality.
At one booth I picked up a pair of needle point opposed tweezers, the finest point I’ve ever seen, and that same booth that carries the Famore’ Cutlery scissors and tweezers, has a 4″ large finger straight micro tip pair of straight that were just too good to pass up. The point on those is the kind of point that picks up individual threads on a seam and cuts with room to spare. It’s the finest point I’ve ever seen. Their website is www.famorecutlery.com
Friday, I get another look at some amazing LED lights that not only are bright, the seller says they actually last and are made in the USA. These little lights pack a heavy punch! One or two super small LED’s on the end of a flex tube (about the thickness of 12 gauge wire), and the light will leave you seeing spots. These lights are intended for lighting the areas under the arm of sewing machines to illuminate the working foot of the machine (where the sewing happens), and they come in a lot of configurations, from stick-ons to stand alone flex armed ones that plug straight into a USB port.
This company, which is based in Mesa, Arizona, will probably be the fly fishing find of the Quilt Festival. Sewlite at www.sewlite.com, and RV LED Bulb (a story for the Airstreamers reading here) at www.rvledbulb.com are using US made LED’s and US assembly for their products. These two are in the same booth, and the RV LED’s are sold in strips any length you want, and they’re 12 volt. The brightness of all their lights, per size, is simply amazing. And they have taken things an extra step that brings them into the fly world by thinking through their power sources.
I don’t think you’ll get any buzz out of photographs of scissors or tweezers, but I will try and get some of these LED’s in hand, and you can be the judge of just how effective they would be on your person, your boat or your fly tying bench/indoor (or about a zillion other outdoor applications).
Category: Culture on the Skids
