Rod building: a new way to throw away money. (updated 1/30)

Y'know, I meant to do this thing, like, where I rant about shit like dumb shit... I sort of alluded to it last time, and I had this awesome anger about line weights, tapers, the AFTMA and how stupid the modern fly fishing industry is...but, whatever. I shot my load on local forums. I've been thinking about throwing it together, but I've yet to do so. Its filled with ranting, vulgarity, and stupid hyperbole and I'm quite impressed with the run away train of thought but you may never see it, eh? Sucks for you. Or, well, maybe not.

Monocacy TU is back in action with their short run of presentations, and held their first presentation. I think we shot our expenditure load on getting a local Poconos guy, Don Baylor, to come down and do a presentation on the history of fly fishing in the Poconos, which mostly centered around the Brodhead. It was a good time. You should've gone. I did.

huh?

My neighbours don't get me.

I haven't done shit lately. Haven't felt like it. Cold. Sickly. Not right. Fucking holidays. I hate the fucking holidays. Man, do I hate the fucking holidays. They're over. It was like fitty degrees today. I felt I should go fishing.

And I did... I didn't want to. I wanted to stay home and blast Battlefield 3 nonsense on a reconstituted 5.1 system (scrounged an old receiver from a friend). But, like 55 degrees. No family. No holidays (fucking holidays!), and it turns out the water was flowing at a perfect 118cfs.

So, I gathered some crap and hit the water. It was nice to get out, enjoy it for the first time in what seems to have been years but had only been a couple months. Reminded me that nymphing is every bit as boring as I say it is, and also reminded me of why the modern fly fishing industry sucks ass, and we'll go into that next week.

What we did do is prove a theory I've heard before, and recently saw blogged at another site: Cheap screws work just fine for boot studs.

Combat fishing: Drainage ditches run in funny places.

Allentown's urban streams require speciality equipment.

And not neccessarily "ha ha" funny, either.

One might surmise I had to augment the usual equipment for this (extended!) weekend's jaunts, and you're right. I took in two new places I'd been thinking about in the past, and since one was in a not-so-good area (or so I'm told), I figured I'd have to add something with a little more punch than the usual 5wt.

With all the rain and my distinct distaste of high water, when I got my chance to go out this weekend I decided to take in a new place I"d driven over many times, but never bothered to look at. A friend told me a new park had opened in Catasauqua, and I figured since I tried something new on the first chance I got, I'd try something different on the second chance: A look at Trout Creek in the middle of Allentown's most upscale neighbourhood.

November?! Waaagh.

New activities for winter.

Damn, there she goes, too. Fuckin eh,  WH40K: Space Marine seems to have consumed my nights, and any free weekend time when I was able to go fishing, but it was just slightly too cold to want to go out when I could stay home and exterminate asshole 13 year old kids in online games.

Twilight ruined vampires.
I mean, sparkly vampires?
Fuck that noise. Fuck your
Mormon vampires. Anne
Rice sucks, too, btw.

Yep, shit's reached that point. However, if you haven't shouted and some jackhole kid who stabs you in the face repeatedly in some lame ass online game, I suggest giving it  go just once. Its oddly invigorating.

So, what's the deal? Monocacy Trout Unlimited is back in action for their winter sessions, and some new and invigorated participation leaves me hope that they'll start to pick up steam and go back to full time and pursing a complete agenda. Thousand miles, one step, zen bullshit. Et. Cetera. November 22nd is an open meeting and fly tying night, come out and don't be an asshole.

Hit and run topic: Online petions suck, but sign it anyways. Pennsylvania House Bill 1950 and Senate Bill 1100 to supercede local enviromental regs for lesser state regs on Marcellus shale drilling. Read more.

Fly of the whatever, because I meant to do it weeks ago but, y'know, lazy and shit. Lafontaine Emergent Sparkle Pupa. Y'know, read more and all that. You've done this, you understand. Read more is go!

meh.

Left the Valley. The goal was to fish Penn's Creek, of course it rained like a motherfucker up to that weekend resulting in a severely blown Penn's Creek.

A shame, really. It was a parting trip for a friend who was moving to Montana, and he has a special place for Penn's. Me? I don't leave home, so I've never been there. I spent a week prepping up my shit. I tied flies, first time since spring, really.

Didn't use any of them. Stupid October Caddis. WTF am I supposed to fucking do with a dozen size 10 sparkle caddis? Fortunately, I'm ill prepared for shit that's not in the Valley, so I couldn't tie bigger than 10, else I'd be lamenting a dozen size 8 2XL fuckin ESPs.

So, what else do I got? Nothing useful. Fuck it. October is over. Hope you enjoyed it.