Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Elia has a real affinity for language. She loves to talk, and loves to look at books and have them read to her. She has most of her books memorized after one or two sessions, and recites them to herself all the time. Kelly has been checking books out of the library that we read to her each night, one or two chapters a night. I'm amazed that a regular book can hold her interest without pictures, but she is fascinated by the words. She's always recognized words quickly but tonight she actually read me several Dick and Jane stories, sounding out the difficult words (something, funny, etc) a letter at a time. It was an amazing moment watching all of that come together for her, and then she read my shirt, by sounding out the letters and putting them togeher (my "superdad" tshirt).

She amazes me every day.

Sunday, March 09, 2008

The dry spell is over! JJ and I lucked into spotting a few fish today. I only had the chance to put the fly in front of one, but it was a big fish. The first two casts seemed to wake the fish up and he started moving around more, looking for something. On the third cast it came together and the fly sank about 1 ft in front and 1 ft to the left of the big carp. JJ was standing holding onto my leg patiently when the carp eased over and down out of sight in the murky water. I counted to three in my head, figured he either had it, spit it, or wasn't going to eat it and I set the hook! Fish on! I dropped to my knees and held the rod in front of JJ. He grabbed it with both hands and tugged back as hard as he could. It was pretty funny...when the fish took off and the reel started screaming I had to keep JJ's hands out of the way, but in between runs JJ would grab the knob and reel as fast as his little 18 month old hands would allow. In due time we brought the fish in together. The biggest problem was that I didn't have a net, or scale with me. In fact, on leaving the car I left everything inside except rod, reel and one fly that I stuck in my hat. I really hadn't epxected to see any fish. I hauled the big fish into the shallows, reached down and the barbless fly slid out with no effort. I'm guessing the carp was between 18-21 lbs. Hard to tell without actually hefting the fish, but I've caught enough that size to make a pretty good guess.

JJ was a trooper...I had to pry the flyrod from his hands to finally land the fish. More to come...it is almost time out here in OR! The fly that worked was the recently tied rubber legged walking hare's ear pictured below.

Saturday, March 01, 2008


I finished tying the flies for the CAG fly swap last week, but still haven't dropped them in the mail! Just haven't had time to get to the post office. Whipping up those patterns got me back to the vice, and I had missed it. I tied about a half dozen today...a variation of Nick's Walking Hares Ear. Basically I dropped his turkey quill legs and added rubber legs. Two years ago, this fly was money out here for carp, last year, they wouldn't look at it. I tied these in size 12, with basically one purpose in mind. Watch out Buffalo! If J and I hit the Buffalo days correctly during the spring MN trip, these babies should do the trick. All the blind nymphing we've done in MN over the last couple of years have proved how effective Rubber Legged Hares Ears can be.

Looking forward to that trip.