MONDAY MORNING MADNESS
We barely dodged incoming last night, as the Texas Spring ’19 came in like a lion from the west – gnarling its teeth and spitting hail the size of baseballs just about 30 miles east of home base.
I spent the better part of yesterday getting the boat TRAILER ready for the journey starting in four days. I will just say the boat trailer gods were with me yesterday … because I went through repacking the bearings on the curbside hub without a hitch, got that mess all cleaned up and shifted the operation to the driver side hub. And there’s the rub …
First let me suggest you start your towing season by getting your trailer’s wheels off the ground and spinning them. That will – almost instantly – tell you a lot. I heard the low grind when I spun the tire and it stopped pretty quickly. That’s warning one. Then, I popped off the cover that seals the front zerk from outside. Inside? White grease and water “condensation” in plain sight and apparent. The plot thickens, and the day shortens significantly. I knew the weather was coming, but in typical Texas style, we had no idea if we would get a taste.
The plan? The plan was to get this done and get the boat back into storage before the weather hit. Running around town to find a press was fruitless, so I had to go old school and hammer out the races, and hammer in the new Chinese bearings (generic 1-1/16”) from a local auto store (hint hint). That was surprisingly easy. I guess I was thinking of the nightmares of hammering on my old FJ-60’s hubs, which were a lot bigger and a lot harder to deal with. I packed the new bearings – a real grease fest – and just as I was torquing the lug nuts, the big rain drops started. Too late to make a run up to storage, I shut it down, got everything inside, and held on.
MEANWHILE, as lady luck would have it, we saw the storms flare up between here and Decatur, pass right over us, and as I said, pound the daylights out of McKinney, Texas, missing us by just that much.
DAYS AND WEEKS AHEAD
In the coming days before departure for Florida (go ahead and say another prayer), there should be a new Texas Fly Fishing Report out on the TexasFlyCaster YouTube Channel. There should be a Tournament Tuesday story tomorrow – on the Lake Fork Tournament, but I might have to let Wild Art Wednesday slide because Friday is launch. Also percolating is the “tournament concept” for a fall bass tournament – more of an exploratory concept called, “The Outlaw Sam Bass” tournament. We’ll see about that. Of all the carp tournaments I contacted, only one got back to me – the Fort Worth “Cowtown Carp Classic,” and that information is still being formulated.
That obviously means it may be extremely difficult to post for about seven full days. HOWEVER, you may catch some interesting play-by-play if you go ahead and subscribe to the Instagram feed.
And for the heads-up; In all likelihood this is the last year I will have any presence on Facebook. If I can find a way to shut that down, and give away the “Pages” that subsist under my Facebook name, I will be doing that – as I said, at the end of this calendar year. We must kill the devils we see among us, and Facebook obviously qualifies.
LOCAL FLY FISHING
I hooked a H-Bomb at the Lake Ray Roberts spillway on Saturday, but I must have worn a hole in his lip, because he unbuttoned just as I was lifting him close – never saw him. I used to lose sleep, literally, over a loss like that, but no longer. God made so many more, or should I say Man made so many more? Anyway, the sand bass came bang bang, until the rain started. I don’t know much about barometer, but they shut down (or were there that many to begin with?) as soon as the rain started. The ones I did catch, I didn’t have to measure.
NEW SEASON NEW IDEAS
The trip to Florida is so epic, so sleep depriving, so stressful before even driving a mile … This set me to thinking; maybe this is the way to celebrate the start of EVERY fly fishing spring I continue to live through? One thing that comes from making bucket lists is the question: Is this really the last time I will do this? I don’t have an expiration date, but no one I know has gotten out of here alive. (Thank you God, doctors and all who prayed and sent vibes for me back in the dark days) Well, I think we, or at least I, should proceed as if life has been shortened by events – by a substantial amount. If not, why not live like that anyway?
So, maybe this is the first of many more Spring Fly Flings. Regardless, I do like the idea of pushing the envelope to start, pushing all the endurance, all the gear, all reason — right off the bat. The rest of the season, the rest of this year, will likely be a cakewalk compared to the first Spring Fly Fling.
Thanks for reading, be sure to subscribe to the Instagram feed (yes I know they’re the Devil’s too), and I will post my first Texas Fly Fishing Report of the year this week – FINALLY!
Category: Adventure, Body-Mind-Soul, Culture on the Skids, Destination Fly Fishing, Fishing Reports, Flats Boats, North Texas, On The Road, Texas Skiff, TIPS, Tournaments and Contests
