Stuffs and Thangs

Well, it's been a busy week. We finally welcomed our daughter, Alice, into the world last Friday morning at 11:43AM. After watching my wife go through two loooong natural labors I am sure that she could kick my ass any day of the week and my admiration and respect grows for her even more every day. Everybody is happy and healthy and home. We're settling into new routines and re-arranging furniture.


I somehow managed to make it to the tie-one-on-athon Sunday. I have no idea how that happened, but I'm grateful it did. I had a blast and got to sit at the time out table with the trouble makers. I took almost no photos, so I've been stealin' 'em when I see 'em. Please and thank you.


I somehow managed to pull off winning the big fly contest. I have no idea how that happened either, although the jar of strawberry preserves may have had something to do with it. I won a really nice raft/drift boat anchor and promptly traded it to Brad for a lovely handful of dinosaur feathers and some swag.



Tying time has been minimal for me the last few days, but I will be posting some more of those feathers tied on hooks directly. Gotta go. Doodie calls!

OM; The Chronicles of Peeber, Part 3

There’s something about a new boat that chemically changes the way my brain works. Since I’ve never had anything close to an actual ‘new’ boat, I’m forced to immediately assess repairs, and fumble my way through most of them since a new boat represents new problems…..new challenges….new additions to the scrap metal pile. I rush through basic repairs. It needs to float. It needs to run. It needs to get there. NOW. There’s no real long view or manifest destiny at this point. It’s all necessity. It’s all primal. I work fast. I neglect responsibilities. I neglect sleep. I neglect food. I neglect my wife and child. All I can do is fix. Chain smoking. Beer guzzling. Midnight. 2 AM. Fall into bed. 7 AM. Fix…..fix, fix, fix.

After a few days or weeks, I emerge into the spring/winter/fall/summer midday sunlight and yawn, stretch, and change my underpants. I can breathe for a few minutes. Time to re-group. Time to patch things up with my wife and son, and reflect on why the hell I was such a crazed lunatic the last little bit. It’s a short break, inevitably, and the lunatic returns promptly. He shows up after the family has gone to bed. He gives me refuge during work, dinner, and bath times. He is exhausted, but rests only a short while before regaining his strength. He begins his paced return in the form of Google. There’s a funny thing about having access to millions, or billions, or trillions of images via the internet……you can have the damndest time finding a single one that represents what you’re actually looking for. I know for a fact that I am not that original of a human being. Everything I’ve ever thought or manifested from thought has likely been thought and/or manifested hundreds, no thousands, no millions, billions of times before. It all comes down to knowing what to look for, and allowing yourself to see what is right in front of your face. Out comes the designer lunatic. He’s silent. Can’t afford to waste energy on moving his mouth to make sounds. He can’t afford to waste the energy to get off the couch to go to bed. So there he sits….still….silent….and absolutely mad. If I were to apply the same focus and dedication to any other part of my life that I do to fixing up a 400 dollar jon boat…..well, things would be pretty different.

Before I’ve even procured this particular boat I’ve been furiously formulating its existence in daydreams full of clear summer day secret flats pulsing with bait, waterfowl, and giant goldfish. The boat races smoothly through the upper reaches of some river chain lake, far from the ski boat wake and the bass fisherman’s trespasses(they’re always up earlier than me). I and it are free to zip around blind curves as the lake narrows and begins to appear as it once did…as it always did. Herons grawk and lumber into disgruntled flight as we temporarily break the silence and solitude of the ever-narrowing river inch by inch, foot by foot, mile by mile, entering deeper and deeper into wilderness, deeper and deeper into solitude. Standing on the bank listening to a 30-year-old outboard humming, then roaring, then screaming past in the wilderness is an awful experience. It’s trespassing at its core. It robs all other sounds and sensory awareness for the few seconds or minutes that it’s present. It leaves a wake behind that feels imminently destructive, as though it will forever alter the untouched banks of the wild river, and send all aquatic life fleeing in despair. Being in the boat has an unequivocally opposite sense of that same experience. That humming, now roaring, now screaming 30-year-old outboard is all OHhhhhooooooooMmmmmmm……… It wipes out all possibility of thought. You’re left with visual and tactile knowledge only. The brain’s only function is to admire and react. There is no thought about steering or navigation as your arm, the tiller, the boat, and the river feel as one, guiding the vessel upstream as effortlessly as a leaf glides down. There is no reading the river. The river is reading you.

That is why the furious, feverish, nuthouse of a mechanic and designer exist. They will work tirelessly to the brink of physical and mental exhaustion, push wives and clients and bosses and friends and children to the brink of total frustration, loneliness, desperation, anger. They will leave everything else in life behind for the possibility of startling a heron and a nice breeze on their face.

Chuck....Vice Chuck......DIY

Back in December I took a tying class with Brad Bohen, and one of the many things that I left needing to have was a granite vice base. I remember thinking, why the hell didn't I think of that? When I was back in Charlotte during the boom days I could have bought a truckload of granite scraps for what it cost me to get the truck there. The thing that's kept me from doing it since the class is the base to vise connection. There's a machined brass part available that's really nice, but a little pricey, and the fabricated bases are really nice, but I'm broke, so even though 70 bucks is reasonable for something of that quality, it's just not an option. And, I absolutely hate spending money on stuff that I know I can do myself for pennies and minutes. I just don't usually get around to actually doing it. This time I did. I stopped by a surplus place in Asheville for work related things that I somehow didn't manage to procure....Anyway, they have mountains of granite scraps, so I picked one up. 5 bucks is kinda getting robbed for an otherwise worthless piece of rock, but it was the only money I spent on the project, so I guess I'm ok with it. I had in mind a somewhat complicated assortment of tubing and plumbing parts and thumbscrews and taps, and so on.....until I had a rare moment of clarity. Old drill chucks. I have many! Epoxy the thing to the rock and boom, done! So, that's what I did, and so far....it's awesome!

I need to cut the standrod down a few inches since it's a clamp vice, but that's easy enough. Here's a very simple and helpful video that explains how to remove a chuck from a drill. I took a slightly different approach....although equally effective

Happy Birthday Bob!

Zen and the Art of Outboard Resuscitation: The Chronicles of Peeber, Part 2

My first boat was a 1980something Sears Gamefisher 14' V hull tin can with a matching 15 horse outboard. I bought it for 800 bucks on a trailer and I still got screwed. I didn't really know anything about boats when I got that Gamefisher, but I knew I wanted(needed) a boat. We were living in Charlotte. I had quit the band. Major renovations were complete(bullshit) on the house, and the job was stable and steady. I was bored to death and just about a year into fly fishing, so I was full throttle excited about catching 10" stocker trout....and genuinely believed it couldn't be any better. I used to be intimidated by fly shops back then(it wasn't that long ago, and they weren't even real fly shops), so I would walk in, grab a rod or two and wiggle them to death with a 100% serious scrutinizing squinty eye. I didn't tie yet but I was interested, so I would check out the materials from the far corners of my non squinty eye and hope that no one noticed.....I wasn't ready to even have a conversation about it. Far too intimidating, it was. So, I'd wiggle rods and look at stuff that I pretended not to look at, do my best not to talk to anyone, and I'd walk out with 40 dollars in magazine's tucked under my arm. In one of those stacks I must have read an article about fly fishing for bass on lakes because I had a major revelation, and began my fly fishing world anew. The frantic search for watercraft followed immediately. I was distracted at work. I was distant at home. My brain was swollen with nonstop banter ping-ponging, rattling, smashing and bashing, whizzing around at ludicrous speed....canoe? That's a lot of paddling, but there's no motor or gas. But what if I want to take someone with me, or get one of those cool dogs like in the fly fishing mags? And there's the paddling. So, it's a jon boat. Flat bottom? V hull? But jon boats cost more...and the trailer...and the motor...and the gas. So, it's a kayak. On, and on, and on....for weeks, or maybe days(possibly hours) until...I picked one. I ultimately knew nothing about fishing boats, or the water I would be fishing, or anything useful at all to help me make an informed decision. I knew I wanted a boat so I got a boat. It sucked. Everything about it sucked. The v hull made it waaaaay too tippy. That motor was a 1.5 horse with a 15 sticker factory applied. Soooo damn slow. It never planed once. It would feel like it was going to, but then I'd either run out of lake or run out of gas. It was a pull start, but at some point, for some reason, the starter had been removed. So, you had to pull off the cowl, wrap a rope on the flywheel and give her a spin. It wasn't that big of a deal, and I didn't know any better. There are also NO starter assemblies available for a 1980something Sears Gamefisher 15hp POS. Anywhere. In the world. It took me a month and a half to actually get that motor running before I could get the boat on the water. The guy cranked it up(dry) in the driveway(front yard) before I handed over my 8 bills. Ok!! I'll take it. It was fucked. And so was I. Totally clueless. But I fixed that damn motor. I rebuilt the carb. I replaced the impeller and changed the oil in the lower unit. Changed the plugs. Still nothing. Fuel pump. Gaskets. Fuel lines. More gaskets. More gaskets. I'd order a part, wait a week for it to show up, and realize that wasn't the problem(or all of it anyway). That is not the most efficient way to perform simple maintenance and repairs on a 20 year old outboard motor that was originally sold in a place where they also sell loads and loads and loads of women's pants. I didn't know any of that. I just knew that I had 800 bucks sitting in my driveway(front yard) and I wanted to go catch a feature articles worth of trophy largemouth on a 8' 4 weight with 5 times tippet and a #12 wooly booger. I learned a lot in that boat. A lot about boats and motors. A lot about fly fishing. A lot about fish. I learned how to pole a boat in that boat. I learned how to cast farther than twenty feet. I learned how to cast twenty feet accurately. I learned that aluminum boats are loud and spook spooky fish. I learned that I was able to peer into the previously unfathomable world of simple(incredibly simple) 2 stroke combustion engine repair, and solve problems with intuition and common sense(trial and error). That boat was an education in what it sometimes means to be a man, and it boosted my confidence to unreasonable levels. Karmically, I must have needed an ego check. I needed to be reminded that although I was able to get one small, simple outboard motor running predictably and reliably(mmmmm..mostly), that I was not ready to go to work as a custom motorcycle builder....or even a neighborhood lawn mower repairman for that matter. I had/have inadequate tools. I'm a total slob. I can tend to be a gorilla, and I am severely patience challenged. It's a thing. It was determined that the boat/motor partnership would be broken up. The little 1.5 horse was being replaced by bigger and sexier horses. When I found the replacement, I was so confident in my outboard mechanic's skills that I didn't even crank it up. I could tell just by looking that this was fine vintage. Well maintained. It's gonna start right up. And it did. Just like the Sears 1.5 did the first time. And that was it. It didn't turn over again for six years. I was doing some 'tuning' when the idle speed adjustment screw broke off in my gorilla hand. My karma broke it. I needed to be humbled. I looked for a replacement for a while. Never found one and finally gave in and sent it to the neighborhood 2 stroke repairman. He was checking the compression and the starter rope went limp. That was the end of his diagnostic testing and his professional opinion was that it was a worthless piece of shit. Humbled, emasculated, deflated, I cleared a spot for it in the back corner of the shed. It haunted me and taunted me. I tried to forget it and covered it in other failed projects. I was offered a fifth of what I paid for it one time(Guess who that was). No dice. I knew I wasn't beat yet. She was just waiting for the right boat. Karma wins again.

Friendly Reminder

click me

What a Piece of Craft, The Chronicles of Peeber, Part 1

Last summer I sold a boat. It was a 15' side console jon boat that I had set up for carp fishing in lakes. It had a poling platform, dual batteries with an inboard charger, a custom floor and front deck that I built, etc, etc. It was sweet, but with a toddler and a mountain relocation I really didn't have time to go, or a place to take that boat. I traded down for a raft with a fishing frame and since that suits my water here....I expected it would be my one and only. Then came the carp cup......where we fished out of Ryan's IPB flats boat on some crazy fishy water just absolutely filled with carp. Unfortunately that water is 2 hours away, so I stopped by some potential nearby carp habitat on the way home, and then dove into craigslist head first. Being poor-ish is hard sometimes, but it forces you to be creative and resourceful. I had an old('66-ish) Johnson 20 horse buried in the barn that I had earlier presumed dead, or at least not able to live without a feeding tube(and what kind of life is that, anyway?). Turns out that being poor-ish also has honed my mechanical skills(or possibly just my motivation), because she now runs like a '70s 15 horse..... Motor fixed, I went into serious craigslist mode. Found some real gems, but the universe just wasn't cooperating. So I waited. And I was restrained. I think I looked for a month before I found 'the one'. That's 2 lifetimes in patience challenged years(months/days/minutes), and I am severely patience challenged. It's a thing. The challenge with buying cheap(really cheap) jon boats is that they are bought and sold in a matter of hours. There are so many dream chasers out there who have always had an imaginary boat parked in the garage(who am I kidding - the front yard) right next to that badass 1984 Trans-Am, and mountain of Busch Lite cans(ie, the retirement fund). What that means for successfully obtaining one of those dream snatchers is precise timing and decision making. You find it, you go. You'll know it when you see it. As you haul ass down the highway, dropping responsibilities like my mom drops f-bombs(seriously), the anticipation builds. You are convinced that this is an incredibly good deal, and you're sure this guy has no idea what he's giving away. He must be more broke than me... Poor fella. Hard times. Too bad, so sad! It's mine now sucka! 100 miles of road eaten alive, and a last minute scramble to find an ATM in a trailer park of a town(or a town that's just a trailer park), you pull into the driveway(the front yard), and there it is right behind the retirement fund. It's your NEW bote! You have to remind yourself to remove the shit eating grin and pull back on the excitement reins, because this guy is hard times. He's experiencing a profound loss. He's giving up on a dream. Also, you need your game face. You're fully prepared to hand over the benjamins you're clutching in your pocket, but he doesn't need to know that just yet. Time to have a look see. Point out all the faults. Make sure he knows that he's asking too much. I don't know why, that's just how it goes. The problem with this scenario is that you now see all of the faults, and that shit eating grin has started to slump. Hmmmm. He explains away the dents and the holes, and offers to include the 40 crappie rod holders for another 50 bucks. I got unother battrie, too. This un werks just fine, but ye have ta clamp this wire to this'n, and wiggle this'n just a......Oh shit. What have you done? This boat is a near worthless, hole ridden, broken, dented, illegal hunk of scrap metal, and the trailer isn't likely to get you home. The shoe's on the other foot. Who's wearing the shit eating grin now? The ride home is a little different. It's slow. Real slow....cause the trailer is violently swinging side to side while at the same time bouncing, bouncing, bouncing. Welcome to reality, dumbass. You just bought a boat.

3rd Annual Scof Tie One On A-thon

I'm very excited to be tying(and eating, and drinking, and socializing) at the Third Annual Southern Culture on the Fly tie-one-on-a-thon. I had a great time last year...No, really. I had a great time. There are some heavy hitters on the roster, so I'm humbled and honored to waste a space at the table. Big fun for the taking. Come have some. It's all for a good cause.

SCOF #6

Fresh new issue.....http://southerncultureonthefly.com/

musky school

I was very lucky to be able to go to a day long workshop with Brad Bohen(Afton Angler) of Musky Country Outfitters in Knoxville, hosted by 3 Rivers Angler. It's the first time I've actually been instructed on how to tie a fly. Actually, that's not true. Kyle taught me how to tie wiggle minnows a few weeks ago. So, it was the first time a sober person instructed me on how to tie a fly. His patterns are pretty simple, and all utilize the same process, and mostly the same materials(which are sickeningly awesome). He literally dumped garbage bags of Primo Tail, and foot long, or was it 18", or maybe 2 feet....anyway, very, very long, beautiful hackle feathers onto the floor and table. We all dove in(literally) and started wrapping thread on hooks. I don't usually tie with pink, which is the most likely reason I was drawn to it first. The pink one is a 'hangtime', the orange/redhorse/cree is a 'hangtime optic minnow', and the green bushy one is a 'buford'.