Sun, 29 Apr 2007
Yesterday, I went fly fishing for the very first time. Here’s how it worked out.
On Friday, the day before my local river opened up, I took the dog for a hike along the Bear river. We played in the water and I swam out to a rock in the water and sat for a while. While I was there I saw a fish strike about 5 times in less than 5 minutes. I could see that he was striking right over a deep depression between two underwater rocks. “Well that makes sense” I thought. He has cover from predators and he doesn’t have to fight the current. As food floats over him he can just rise and get it. And this was around noon on an 80 degree day. If a fish was rising like that at mid day it must be great in the morning during a hatch.
So that was my spot. I knew I’d be coming back the next day.
Saturday morning dawns and I’m having a seriously tough time getting out of bed. As readers of this blog will know, I’m moving from one job that ended Friday to a new job on Monday. When I was a music teacher I lived “musician’s hours”. Getting up at 10 am and going to bed around midnight to 1 am was pretty normal. So when the alarm went off at 6:00 am I was completely groggy. (But now I have to do this every day so I might as well get use to it)
Somehow I dragged myself out of bed, had a quick breakfast and packed up the truck. I had my fly rod, a couple boxes of flies I’ve tied, my cheap waders, a few bottles of water and a folding chair. A quick drive of no more than 10 miles brought me to the trail head.
For the past 4 months I’ve never seen more than one other car in the parking area near this trail head. Today it was packed with trucks. Everyone was there. I found a parking spot and hiked in about half a mile to my pre-selected hotspot. I found a good place to enter the river downstream where I could approach the hot spot from behind some bushes. I set up my chair and suited up in some fleece pants for warmth and then my waders.
A buddy of mine told me that an Adams would work just about everywhere up here so I tied one on to a 6x tapered leader. I tried to be careful and quiet about entering the water and did my first ever on the water fly cast.
You know what? It’s a lot easier to cast when you’re standing outside on a big lawn than when your hip deep in cold water and surrounded by bushes. It took about 8 or ten tries to actually get my fly where I wanted it. And then it happened … .
Actually, nothing happened.
Not a rise, not a ripple. It was the most calm water you ever saw. I didn’t see any fish rise for anything. The only thing that bite my flies was the tree behind me. I donated an Adams and a Royal Wulff to a bush on the shore. I tried fanning my cast across that hole to cover the whole length of it and I never saw a single fish.
So I moved up river a bit and tried casting over dark spots down stream of underwater rocks. Nothing. I looked for seams between fast and slow moving water. Nothing happened. I started noticing that my left foot was getting really cold. My cheap single layer nylon waders were leaking and this was only their first day of use.
I gave it a good try for about an hour and a half. I tried a lead weighted pheasant tail nymph to see if I could get any response in deeper water. Not a thing. The whole time I never saw so much as a single fish rise.
So I went back to my chair, got out of my waders and squeezed the water out of my socks. As I let them dry in the sun I just sat back and watched the beauty of the river. There were lots of tiny white flies around as well as several large mayflies. I’ll have to tie some of those since that was what I was seeing. I watched a spider weave his web and watched some geese fly overhead using the river to navigate their path.
It was a darn good day anyway.
Back at the truck I met another fisherman and his young son.
“Any Luck?” I asked.
“Not a bite” he said. “It was just a long walk in the sun for nothing.”
I told him about the fish I saw yesterday and how I couldn’t find anything today. He said “It’s the same thing with the deer and the turkeys. When opening day comes they seem to know and they hide away. But the day before it’s like ‘OK kids, eat all you can. Tomorrow we have to hide’ ”
He told me they were going to go fish under the bridge. They can usually catch something there. I filed the that away in my memory for next time. Then he told me about a 25” trout he caught there once. I filed that one under “Fiction”.
I came home, had a sandwich and a beer. Let my leaky waders dry out and thought about my morning. I didn’t even come close to catching a fish today. But I was out there enjoying the process. I was in a beautiful spot playing with a nice fly rod on a beautiful river. For me, It was a good opening day and a good first attempt at fly fishing.
I had fun. I’m going to do this again.
This story is from the
[/ramblings] department
permanent link
Thu, 26 Apr 2007
Wanna see something brilliant?
- Time
- Money
There are so many amazingly smart people out there. I think part of why I’m looking forward to going back to work in software. I really like working with bright people to solve difficult problems.
This is just one of the amazing demonstrations given at TED.
Jeff Han and Multi touch Unser Interface Design
I love this kind of stuff.
This story is from the
[/geek] department
permanent link
Sun, 22 Apr 2007
Yesterday I played in a bluegrass jam with a bunch of old and new friends. It was held in a little white church out in the woods and rolling hills of Lincoln. Everyone brought a side dish and our host cooked up hotdogs and hamburgers.As I looked around the room at a bunch of families sharing a pot luck lunch in the community church building as others played bluegrass music I thought "This is America right here. Family, friends, food and music"
As the Beatles once said: "A splendid time was had by all"
The other thing that made me want to blog about it was that one of the guys brought a great old Gretsch guitar and a Fender Twin amp. He had that classic Chet Atkins tone. That made me want to look up Chet on Youtube to see what they had on him and wouldn’t you know it, I found a film of Chet playing one of the tunes that "The Sierra Swing Conspiracy" play. Here’s Chet playing "Dark Eyes"
Speaking of "The Sierra Swing Conspiracy", we had another rehearsal on Friday and we included a new bass player. Alana (A.K.A. "Charlie the girl" ) stopped by with her standup acoustic bass and it really added a lot to the sound of the trio.
The SSC will be playing at Music and More on May 20th at 4:00 pm. We’ll be part of a teacher’s concert that’s being put on by vocal teacher Chris Bello. It’s a free concert and it should be a lot of fun. There are some seriously good teachers at M & M and it will be nice to hear them play.
This story is from the
[/music] department
permanent link
Wed, 11 Apr 2007
It’s been a great year. I have some great students (and I’m not just saying that. I have some really good students) and I’ve really enjoyed teaching music. The business has grown quite well in the past year from 2 students to 35 students. But it’s become apparent that I need to bring in some more money to pay the bills so I’ve accepted a job at Vision Service Plan.VSP was voted the best company to work for in the Sacramento area and I’m very happy to be part of their team.
So what does that portend for my students and the slow jam?
Students
I’ll be starting the new job on April 30th. So the week of April 27th will be the last lesson for all of my students. Be sure to schedule any make up lessons before that date.
There is a possibility that starting in June I’ll be able to take a small set of 6 to 8 students. I’d like to teach a two hour set two nights a week. That would give me 8 available lesson slots. Talk to me at your lesson if you’d like to be one of those students.
Slow Jam
This Thursday, April 12, will be the standard slow jam at Music & More. However, it will very likely be the last slow jam. So if you want to play, come on by and let’s go out in style.
Lutherie
I’m not accepting any more commissions at the moment. I’ll be building for my own pleasure only for at least the next year. I’m going to finish off all those projects that I’ve been putting off for far too long. By the end of this year I want to be playing my own guitar and mandolin (at least). Any new instruments that I build for sale will go on Ebay. I’ll not be taking orders from customers for at least the next year.
I’m going to finish this guy first
The Sierra Swing Conspiracy
I absolutely want to keep playing with Sean and Ethan. We’re going to try to keep the gig at the Auburn Art Walk in May. It just depends on how long my commute from Rancho Cordova takes. But I really enjoy playing with those guys and I totally respect their talent. I would really like to stay connected to the music scene and the band is a great way to do that.
So keep in touch and keep watching this blog and I’ll keep letting you know about the music scene in Auburn.
P.S. I’m back to playing Go again. If you’d like to play a game sometime go to www.gokgs.com and set up a free account. I’m on KGS as "’DruLeePars" Because of a software change my rating went up to 14 kyu, but I’m actually playing at about 20 kyu. So I need to play a bunch of games ( and probably lose most of them ) to get my rating stabilized. If you want to play then just email me and we’ll set up a time.
Take care, have fun, and keep playing music.
This story is from the
[/ramblings] department
permanent link
Mon, 02 Apr 2007
Here’s a few photos of the copmpleted cocobolo duclimer.
This story is from the
[/music/lutherie] department
permanent link
