Monday Morning Put Out The Lights
Welcome to the Monday Morning Sidewalk at the Texas fly fisher’s number one source for current information on fly fishing in Texas! I hope you had a fun, safe weekend, and arrived without delays (yeah, right) to wherever you find yourself this morning. Today closes the hottest October on record for North Texas, which should be no surprise. It’s the new normal, and now the stress on water supplies begins to rise in awareness again. Famine follows our feast. (Warning: Many more cliche’s follow)
I sincerely love the reaction when I say, “Put out the lights. The party’s over,” to another carp season. It means a bunch of readers take it upon themselves to prove, “It ain’t over, until it’s over,” and they get out and stick more carp, reeling them like frozen logs, posting it on forums and starting threads about “Carp in Snow,” and other nonsensical one-upmanships . Sure, anything can happen, and anything can be done when it comes to carp, anytime anywhere. My little secret is, part of saying “Put out the lights,” is the reaction is exactly what I want and expect – been there, done that.
So officially: Put out the lights, the party’s over. I am sure I could take myself out on the skiff, and stick a carp today, but why? It’s like the difference between finishing on a cast, or finishing on a catch. Sometimes it’s a cast.
I took a guest out Sunday, and although we saw and blew some carp out yesterday, very few … it was more like sleepwalking through the Ray Roberts flats, than being on a hot summer stalk when the fish are climbing down your leader to get to the fly. Conditions were nothing but favorable, with winds about 8-10 out of the south, and temperatures pushing 80, but none of it was enough for an old time revival. The tent was down, and the poles laid straight.
TYING IT ON AT THE FLY BAR
Lawrence Waldron vise manned by Zach at the Fly Bar Sunday afternoon.
But before we headed for the border, we had a brief fly tie at the Fly Bar yesterday afternoon. It was Kevin and Zach bellying up to the bar to tie a few on, a few flies on that is. Kevin was breaking in his new Regal Rotary Vise, and Zach had his Lawrence Waldron … yes, that Lawrence Wadron vise. Close-up experience with other brands of vises is pretty valuable in knowing what I’m talking about when it comes to vise recommendations for complete strangers with wide ranging levels of interest and skills. Of course I’ll probably never see another Waldron in person, but with the power of CNC machining and CAD design? Someone somewhere (maybe in the basement) is already working on a more evolved, more perfect version of the Waldron. Coming across a Waldron reminded me of that last elite encounter, seeing a $230-thousand dollar Mercedes in in the flesh, in the parking lot of the Federal Reserve a couple of weeks ago – two more unicorns in my journey. Aging allows, even encourages me, to more gracefully add these two things to the growing list of things I will never own. It was certainly interesting to have three different vises, the Dyna-King Barracuda Deluxe (mine), the Regal and the Waldron all turning in one place, fur and feathers flying. It’s about time to host another fly tie to offset the effects of carp withdrawal.
New fly tier, new Regal vise manned by Kevin at the Fly Bar Sunday afternoon.
This will be an interesting week. It’s time to again go west, to San Angelo, and see if I can EVER catch a fish there. So far, I have come up as dry as the landscape on my limited searches in that part of West Texas. Honestly, my art family there gets a whole lot more attention these days, but I can always sneak out for a fix. Reading the book, “Empire of the Summer Moon … ,” by S.C. Gwynn, gave me a deeper appreciation for the San Angelo area’s historic value, and I would love to dig deeper into that as well.Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic week, and get out there and prove me wrong carp killers!
Category: Body-Mind-Soul, Culture on the Skids, Equipment, Fishing Reports, Fly Fishing For Carp, Fly Tying, North Texas, Technical Poling Skiffs, Technique
