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Author Topic: Prepping for winter...  (Read 2940 times)

plord

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Prepping for winter...
« on: Dec 08, 2016, 03:05 PM »
Packed up all the warm-weather gear last weekend and started sorting and organizing for winter.  Which in this house means endless rod and lure making sessions.  Over the past few months, sadly and far too soon, I've inherited a two separate stashes of parts: a rod-building mother-lode from my own father whose senile dementia has closed the door on any future builds, and my deceased father-in-law's entire stash of trolling gear and lure making parts.  I'm working on a blog post about Harry, my FiL, which I will link here if I can finish it to my satisfaction; he died about 2 years before I even met my wife, but after going through all of his rods, reels, lures, lure making parts, I feel a strange kinship.  You can tell an angler by what he keeps a dozen spares of, right?

Anyway.  Late in the season I got a pike-on-the-fly bug *bad*, and that's refocused a lot of what is on tap for the crafting season.  The goal is to get most or all of this done by April Fool's day:
* Two Lamiglas "Bug Slinger" fly rods, one for me and one for a buddy who guides.  This is a, 8'11" one piece rod, 10wt, pitched as a tarpon/bonefish rig, but it is plenty stiff enough to chuck pike flies.  I'm going to pimp mine out to the nines, Titanium/SiC guides all the way up, unobtanium 6A cork from the 70s, the works.
* A separate 9'10wt one piece on a generic Mudhole blank, specifically for a sinking line.
* A Lamiglas S-glass spinning rod, 7', for 1/4-3/8th oz. lures and 10lb test line.  My dad had 5 of these blanks left from the stash he bought in 1985; it is without close equal the finest medium weight spinning rod I have ever used.  Feather-light, strong, gorgeous transparent honey color, will throw a #3 Mepps or spinnerbait a country mile with a half-assed flick of the wrist.
* Three lightweight spinning rods for the kids; we had about 2 dozen no-name, burnt orange, rough/unfinished 5' spinning blanks back in the day and the one I built for myself is my all time leader in # of fish caught.  We built one for every extended family member who asked, and there are only 6 left now; the next 3 stay at home.  Ms. 11 definitely wants to help build hers; Mr. 13 maybe not.
* I'm already halfway through building a brookie killer, a 2wt fly rod using a 7'3" TFO Finesse blank.  Ultralight everything on this one.
* and a mystery rod.  My dad kept dozens of blanks for which all identifying information is looooooong gone. Nothing in print, in his files, on his laptop, anywhere google can see...mysteries. Shakespeare/Pflueger graphite medium spinning blanks, some unlabeled super-stiff lightweight baitcasting blanks, and a quiver of unlabeled graphite fly blanks of all sizes.  I pulled out a skinny 8' graphite blank with a lovely slower action and AFAIK the only way to figure out what it is for sure is to build it and take it out back with a bunch of different reels/line weights.  So that one is in the queue also.

On top of that, we have the usual:
* French blade spinner re-supply; we left about a dozen on the bottom of various spots this year, mostly #1 silver and #3 brass.
* Fly tying mania:
      * For pike I'm all over the Bruce Bowen Hang Time minnow in white/red, white/grizzly, black/purple, and fire tiger.  I'm working on a perch pattern using Farrar Flash Blend but the Hang Time worked so well I don't know if I'll throw anything else!
      * For trout I spent the whole year throwing 6 flies: foam hoppers, prince nymphs, 88s, royal stimulators, and wooly buggers in black and pearl.  So I'll be making a bunch of those for sure.
      * For Bass, oversized muddlers and frog-looking deer hair bugs all day.

and finally, some maintenance.  My Father in Law preferred Garcia/Mitchell spinning reels, which are bombproof but did suffer from a decade plus in storage.  A good cleaning, a new bailspring or two and some grease and they should all be good to go.  My dad, on the other hand, was a Penn 720z/722z and Shakespeare Sigma fan, and boy, parts for those are a lot harder to track down these days.  Bailsprings, I think I have covered, but Penn drag knobs?  Shakespeare E-Z Cast mechanisms?  Tough hunting.  At the end of the day there are about 7 fantastic reels here that each needs a little help to be back in fighting trim.

How do y'all spend the colder months?  I've never been an ice-fisher, so if you do, more power to ya.

rgfixit

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Re: Prepping for winter...
« Reply #1 on: Dec 08, 2016, 06:46 PM »
You sir....have the sickness. I've had it for better than 40 years now. There is no cure but the final breath. By the time you reach my age, you'll have a burgeoning collection of rods, reels, flies, hobbies and followers.

I say more power to you.

I ice fish some. Not as much as I used to. Warm streams and rising hatches are far more comfortable.

I like to spend time with my woodworking and fly tying. I've sold my rod lathe realizing that I already have enough fly and spinning rods to make it difficult to choose the day's weaponry. Hobbies are the stuff of life. Never give them up....always look to add more.

I have no problem finding something to do.

Rg
If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

 



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