Been awhile

Well it's been quite awhile since my last post. We were busy painting the baby room so it is ready for when he comes home. If he doesn't decide it's time by the 23rd their going to induce my wife, so by saturday we will have another little one running around. Between that, school, and working 16 hour days its been pretty hectic around here. I think I'm ging to take the summer semester off and enjoy myself and spend some extra time with the family. We've had exactly one nice day here so far and on that day I took my two year old out fishing. It was to windy for the fly rod, but he made me take it anyway because he likes it. The water is still really cold and the gills weren't reallly active, but he did manage to land one little sunfish on a silver jig that I recieved in a swap that is now put away for safe keeping. He was so excited, it was a ton of fun, and he really enjoyed himself.



It was so nice out he refused to keep his shoes on, I told him about hooks and eventually got him to put them back on.



I am supposed to pick up a small 15ft aluminum boat from my Dad this week, and am thinking of buying a melting pot and mold to make some jigs. We have a couple of nice inland lakes nearby that I would love to be able to crappie fish on, I just need to decide on the best sizes. I also have access to a ton of free lead, so this seems like it might be something fun to do this summer.

I finished up my swap flies fo the ant swap, as well as the bluegill invitational on FTF, unfortunately I didn't take any pics before sending them off. Hopefully someone will post pics so I can add them to the blog.

New popper

Did a couple this way. I have a couple of different color combos in mind for some of the remainder of the poppers I have already prepped. I am thinking of combining the two I have posted here to see how it would look with the blended colors and the dots on the same popper. For some reason the dots just seem to look right on the poppers, the one I did where I just blended the colors with the brush just seems so plain to me. Is it just me or is using dots where it's at? I'm starting to run low on the prepped bodies now, hope my shipment comes soon I'm having a blast experimenting with these. I did take advantage of the sale at the Fly Tyers Dungeon, and also ordered a ton of Congo hair to do some baitfish patterns with. We're supposed to get some good weather here soon so hopefully some of these new flies will see some time. Onto the pics!

Humbug's for the "bream" swap on FTF

So I was in the "bream" swap not to long ago on FTF and tied up some humbug's, and BigJ on FTF posted this pic up about a week ago with my Humbug sticking in the mouth of a big gill and thought it was pretty cool, so I figured I'd put it here since I can't get out fishing yet. I also took some pics of some poppers I did today but can't seem to find my cable to download them to the computer, so pretty soon I should have some new popper pics up. Anyway here's the pic, just makes me want to take these things out to the pond right now lol.

First Popper

I can't believe it's been two week since I last posted. I went on vacation to visit family in Virginia. It was pretty hard to come home and leave that weather behind. I did the first popper fairly simple, from white to yellow to green. After seeing some other popper pics I have a couple of ideas in mind for the next few to try. I can see why guy's love making these, their pretty fun to do. Let me know what you think of it and any improvements that could be made.

Marabou Miss, Marabou Damsels, V1.2 ants, and more Green Steroid Ants

Haven't posted in almost a week, with school taking up so much free time and work being overly busy I've had hardly any time for anything else. Who thought grad school would be so hard lol. I do make time to tie at least a couple bugs a day as it helps me unwind before bed. I ordered a ton of stuff from a couple of different places and I hope it shows up today. Ordered my first set of foam cutters so I'll be making a ton of hoppers here shortly. The chartruese marabou miss's are weighted, I should have transitioned them a little better but I just wanted to get some with weight on them to see how they act before making a ton of them. The green steroid ants I used a new dubbing I got from the Fly Tyers Dungeon, its a green peacock blend and matches the foam perfectly so I think I'll be ordering more of that as well. V1.2 of the ants is done, the only difference between this version and the last is that I used foam for the head instead of the floating yarn. It is definately a little less time consuming using the yarn because you don't have to use two seperate small pieces of foam, but I like how these turned out. Let me know what you guys think.

Gill Getter's and V.1 hot butt ant

I tied up a dozen gill getters last night after my son went to bed. They are a fairly easy tie and they went by quickly. I also messed around a bit wanting to make a floating version of the glass bead ants I posted earlier. I wanted to try something a little different and instead of using foam for the head I used a floating yarn. I think V 1.2 is going to have a foam head and I'll see which I like better. The rest of the ant is moose mane for the tail, red foam with red antron yarn wrapped underneath, floating yarn head, and hackle for the wing. I also considered mixing in a little of the white polypropylene floating yarn into the wing as well. What do you guys think? Leave it with and try a foam head, foam head and white yarn mixed in wing, or leave it the way it is?

I also found an awesome roll top desk on craigslist. It's oak and huge, definately big enough to fit all my tying supplies and would be big enough to build a rod on. I sent an email to the seller today so here's to hoping to hear back from them so I can pick up a new tying station.

Rubbber legged dragon, steroid ants, beetles, and peacock ticklers

Tied up a dozen of the dragons, half dozen of the ants and beetles, and 4 of the peacock tickler's trying to get read for the spring gill's. Been tough trying to find time to tie between school, and looking for a new "project" car. I decided I just don't have time to finish up the frame off resto on my malibu anytime soon. So I am looking for one that is nice enough to just put my motor/trans/rearend in and drive it around. I might even just try to find one that I can cruise for the summer and work on next winter. I think I found one, and we're negotiating now so we'll see. So betweeen that search and writing what seems like endless amounts of essays I haven't tied much the last week. Oh and did I mention trying to finish off the new baby room, for our new baby boy that's coming in May. Anyway back to the flies. I left the legs on the beetles a little long for now, gonna trim them down based on what works that day, the ticklers for some reason just weren't coming out up to par to me. Not sure what was going on that day. The ants, and dragons were done on Allen fly fishing hooks 3761 size 10's, the ticklers were done on Allen Fly fishing hooks 2488 size 10. The beetles were on Mustad 3366 size 10's. I have some popper bodies that need painted, I may start working on those tonight. On to the pics.