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3. A serious suggestion for Spence

OK, Spence, since I suffer from the same obsessive compulsions you do, here's one solution I have for some of my flies. That is, if you are serious about reform and have some discipline.

Following Don Holbrook's suggestion in his book Midge Magic, I made fly boxes from the pill containers that have a frame and removable inserts for four time points in each day. They only work for relatively small flies and nymphs, but I rotate in bugs I'll need for a specific stream and time of year and rotate out things that aren't needed. It does help me simplify a bit, though I do wonder at times, for example, about that missing tiny ant imitation that just might work in March when they are refusing my olives. And, inevitably, from time to time something does get left out that is needed. But it at least helps me cut down some. Each insert has four compartments with lids, saving the little flies on windy days, and the packaging can be cut into a large lid for the whole thing (I make a tape hinge on one side) to keep the little lids from getting popped open by a zipper etc. when removing the box from my vest. The new spray paint for plastics allows you to knock off some of the glare from the cover and mute the color if you wish. I label each compartment lid with a fine point marker, and have found acetone useful as an eraser if I make a mistake or decide to change up the flies.

If Lloyd doesn't get free next season to play fly caddy, I'll take the job if I can, and I'll demonstrate how the system works if this doesn't make any sense here. Holbrook's book has photos.

Louis,

I'll have to check it out. I got some really good advice from Mark's post and Lloyd sent me a very thoughtful PM explaining his system and I'm serious about working it out.

I think where I may have gone off course has something to do with the little amount of fishing I get to do over all. In the 90's I peaked on amount of on-stream time. My wife and I are now working together and we own an insurance agency. She's been doing the Auto/Home side for 30+ years and I do the financial side of things...Life, annuities, mutual funds etc...In a word we are busy.

I have mentioned that I fish the week before Memorial Day weekend and have done that same week for 20+ years. Even though I would like to fish more I have been forced to focus on this week and end up tying primarily for the hatches I know I'll see then...Well after 20+ years of tying that's a lot of flies...

I started out years ago, probably like most on this site, with "Match the Hatch" and "Selective Trout". My fishing buddy fished with Swisher/Richards in the 70's and therefore that book was my primary focus and guide. If one were to divide up the season as they do in that book and as guys have mentioned here you probably would have everything under control.

I don't carry flies that won't be around when I'm up fishing. I joke around alot on this site, but I'm really a serious angler and especially know my Au Sable. I guess we poke fun at the things we love. I have never writen anything on any other web blog and am rather surprised at myself sometimes at the amount and length of my blogs...I'm trying to figure this out :)...I spend a great deal of time, again like probably most of us, alone. Angling has a solitary side to it and this aloneness in nature is more than likely what attracted me to the sport in the first place...

Anyway! I am thinking that this over attention to the end of May has caused me some problems. I'm extremely over prepared for it and could no doubt, with a little organizing,(or maybe agonising), get it together. I have over thought the problem. I have many friends who are guides and they are minimalists and think I'm absolutely nuts and dismiss it simply as a side effect of my friend Bill's influence on me...Bill thinks I'm nuts as well though...He, he!

I float the Saturday of the Memorial Day weekend with a friend named Jim...I'm an old hippie (though he doesn't believe me and I do not look the part), and he's an old "Deadhead" now settled down with wife & kids...These floats, if filmed, would make Jim and I millionaires...You think my posts are funny?! Go fishing with us! He has mentioned the weight of my vest every year, especially when I was bent 30 degrees to the left, for many years...The last float a couple weeks back I heard, from the back of the boat, "Ok Spence. Maybe you should toss some of those experimental flies of yours...Might as well at least get them wet once. Won't know if they will work otherwise."

One year we had day time Brown Drakes hatching along with my little dorothea and Spence was tossing around a loop-winged emerger to cover the little fly and I heard about it all day as we headed downstream until we stopped for lunch...At one point he asked me to try one of his experiments and tied something on that looked like a wasp to me...When we stopped at a small dock for lunch we had Brown Drakes under the dock stuck in their shucks...Jim reached down and grabbed a handful and tossed them in to the current...They all disappeared to eager trout.

He then walked me up the path to a cottage where we found all over it's wall Brown Drakes and these huge carpenter ants with wings...Hmmm! I turned to him and promised never to doubt him ever again, "O' Obi-Wan of the Au Sable"! His lesson to me was clear...Those are wonderful flies you have in those boxes mister, but they are on only one fly and it's not that perfectly tied size 18 looped-winged thing it's the steak they are after here!

I later lost two fish that shook my fly and both of them probably would of been my personal best on the upper Au Sable. One dove under some wood in the stream and left me hooked to it after ripping up the pool and the other went under some man-made structure and behind it made two incredible leaps in the still water there before leaving me hooked way under the structure! Jim swore at me both times and told me he was going to forbid me from bending down my barbs if I lost another one like those two...I was grinning ear-to-ear my man and will never forget them. An aside here: Considering what happened here in Detroit the other day with that bad call at the Tigers game...I guess I pitched a near perfect game except I never touched the trout.

Bottom line...I could of made that float basically with one good copy of something to cover the Drakes and I was carrying two trillion what ifs.

Take care & thanks for your prayers & condolences!

Spence

Spence,

I very much enjoy your posts, so keep them coming. Any advice Lloyd gives is certainly worth consideration. I should ask him to tell me more about his system. I believe he typically just takes what will be needed, but I don't know how he determines that. Years of practice, I suppose.

--Louis

Roger and Lloyd are the bug whisperers! He, he! :) It sure is fun having other nerds to harrass...My wife calls me her Nerder Birder...When she's going easy on me.

Spence

which one of u are spence

Vinnie,

Our good buddy Spence (the Master of the Au Sable or "Mr. Lore") is the one with the overloaded vest. You'll know him on the stream by the depth of his footprints in the streambank or the dangerous lack of freeboard he creates in a driftboat. Here, he can usually be recognized by his wonderful self-effacing humor, the length of his posts (often exceeding even my own), and the frequent use of postscripts.

ohh ok im new i used to be flyguy212 but i forgot my password ok ill look
for him

ill recoginize his tracks just kidding

Me too.

wheres bear camp this summer im going up to sinimahoning to fish the Susquehanna and other rives and ykoff

Mr. G,

You told me how I humored you wife until she fell off the couch with one of my posts...You just paid me back...No shit! I have a big grin on my face and have to wipe my eyes...

Spence

PS Naw! I'm just kidding here...

haha

Vinnie said: "which one of u are spence?"

This may give you a bit of a clue...When he was younger and it mattered more he was the guy seen, rod & vest on bank, chasing after some emerging insect in the middle of the river with a small aquarium net...He was in full flail when he would turn around only to see two of the cutest coeds he had ever seen coming down the river in a canoe in bikini's...They were wondering aloud whether or not he was harmless or they should just mace him now and put him out of his misery...

Spence