Hi Honey, I'm home...An introduction to the casual vacation shore fly fisher.

Its cliche, so what? Fuck off.

Well, the yearly family vacation to the great wilds of South New Jersey has come and gone, again. Its a nice time, every year we rent some dude's house in Ocean City and relax for a week. The kids have grown up with it, and enjoy it, and I've begun to make an attempt to fish it every year.

Not very successfully, mind you, but whatever. Its the thought that counts or some sort of bullshit, right?

A few years back, right when I started to fly fish, I was sitting on the beach thinking about how fucking boring it is to sit on a beach and looking at the crashing surf. I decided next year, I'd buy one of those massive spinning rods and fish the family vacation away. It was mildly successful, if you're into little fish. I was awash in croaker like you couldn't believe and all I could think of was, "man, I bet these'd be a blast on a fly rod."

And that was the start of my surf fly fishing adventure.

Goddamned tricos.

Who cares if its pretty, I'm tired.

There are few things that make me get up at the asscrack of dawn, and one of them is tricos, the tricorythodes genus of mayfly. For what its worth, they're so annoyingly stupid, they only get me to do it about once or twice a year.

Oh, sure, its a big deal hatch 'round here, coz we got the blighted little fucks in spades. Shit, the Little Lehigh is well known for its big spinner falls of the things, and I am a big fan of ultralight rods and dry fly action, so you'd think that being able to have a legit use for a 1wt rod in the form of tossing size stupid fucking stupid (26?! Fuck. You!) flies to happily feeding trouts up top would be like a wet dream for me.

You're wrong. I loathe it. I don't know why, probably because it means I'm supposed to be up on stream at 7am and shit.

However, I'm willing to acknowledge its The Thing To Do in the Lehigh Valley, so, well, I do it. Once. Maybe twice. OK, definatly twice, but highly doubtful as to do it three times.

Gifts that aren't payola, The Summer of Shit becomes the Fall of For Fuck's Sake, and the Further Adventures of a Medalist Junky (ie, actual fishin' crap!)

See that video o'er there? That's the first thing I ever got for this nonsense I've been writing.

Well, sort of. It wasn't like in the payola sense (I'm looking your way, Thinkfish!), but, needless to say, it was sent to me and in a turn-about-is-fairplay way, I feel compelled to tell you about it.

You know, PAFlyFish.com does that spring get together, and this year, while observing the greybeards under the pavillion, I was next to a well bearded young lad. And he and I were talking, and it turns out he reads this nonsense, and went on to talk about Minor Threat (IIRC) because I made a random post about Ian Mackaye, and we started talking music. So, this gentle mannered, well bearded lad, he sez to me, "I'm in a band, if you want I'll send you some CDs" and I just sort of figured he was being nice, so I said, yeah and... that was that. He gets my address and then one day in the mail, bam! Free records! Not only that, but free good records! Fuckin' eh, I won't argue with that one bit. Turns out the soft spoken guy with the massive beard and an affection for slow rods and brookie fishing also happens to be the guitarist for a really tight metal hardcore metalcore (is that what the kids call it?) act. So you know what,  I'm gonna turn around and offer up the littlest thing I can, which is web traffic back to Hero Destroyed's FB page and Myspace page, respectively. Now, go buy Throes or the self-titled album. Or both. They'd like that, I bet.

Seriously, though. If you like the metal hardcore metalcore thing, try it out. Would I lie to you? No, the proof is in the damned video up there. Its hard, and incase that lingo no longer applies, that's good, not bad. Kind of like bad was good, or sick was even better than bad, I guess, and now, now the kids say "savvy." Which seems highly stupid when some teenager walks up to and says, "you're the savviest looking dude" (I think he said dude, who the fuck knows?) "I've seen." All because you're wearin' an eyepatch and smoking a pipe. No, seriously. Explain that shit. You can't! Just like you can't explain your sudden desire to listen to more Hero Destroyed. Go ahead, asshole, make with the click.

Now then, shall we continue to actual fishing things?  'Bout time, eh?

(I apologize for shitty photos ahead of time, i wanted to just actually make a post about the topic of note, and not my whining for once, not that I didn't whine like a bitch at the end, anyways.. its what I do)

Even more whiney bullshit.

Look ma, no track marks!

See that thing over there to the right?

Its called a PICC line. That's a Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter if you want to be through about it. Its so the medical folks can give you IV medications without constantly jamming a needle into your arm.

You may not recognize the pale, flabby flesh of that arm but I can assure you, it is mine.

So, no doubt if you've read any of the sad saga of my summer, you know what this means... My love affair with Lyme Borreliosis, that's Lyme Diesease to those of you who haven't been intimate with a deer tick, is deepening.

Practical advice for those of you with Bell's Palsy or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Search Engine

Let's take a break for something a little different, eh?

Actual, usuable advice for the intrepid Interwebs browsers who wander to this blog looking for something entirely off the usual (for what its worth) topic via the Google, or whatever.

Look, weird shit appears in my logs, guys looking for information on Ian MacKaye, information on the Lehigh Valley's best doughnuts (fwiw, El Greco's rocks the best pizza, doughnuts are doughnuts), and the repeated (!!!) searches for alligator dicks.

I'm still baffled 'bout that.

So, God knows I searched lots of junk when I was diagnosed with Bell's Palsy, and well, I'm sure someone will here, too. Let me give that guy, or girl, some useful practical advice.

Oh, and a teaser: There's a better alternative than that bullshit about taping your eye closed. We'll get to that, though...