Just Another Spring Day & A Note of Thanks

Despite the overcast and drizzly morning, today was as good a day as any to get outside for an hour or two and get some fresh air and unwind from a busy and tiring week.  So I headed down to the pond for a chance at some bluegill and maybe an odd bass or two.  Sometimes the park surrounding the pond is so nice that I have think hard about whether to put down the rod and just take a load off and take it all in.  When spring arrives this is a great place to watch everything "burst" into bloom.

Dozens of flowers, native or otherwise, are erupting into various colors here and there.  The pond itself seems to explode with life.  Carp are making a ruckus with loud splashes all over the pond, turtles are crowding the floating logs, Great Blue Herons are patiently searching and waiting for a meal and the newly arrived Baltimore Orioles are are staking out territories and making their presence known.

Also making their presence known were the bluegills.  Today was one of those mornings when the fly barely has a chance to hit the water before one of them pounces on it. In less than an hour I had lost count after about two dozen.  At this point I decided to put something larger than a #12 C.S. Special on my line and went with a #10 olive woolly bugger to avoid so many of the little bluegills.  for a while I had a few largemouth bass (15-20" size) pursuing my bugger but the little bluegills were swarming in such numbers that the bigger bass would move away.  The bluegills acted as if they had never eaten before.

The one thing this place does for me besides helping me to "recharge" my battery is giving me some time to think a little.  Last night I received a very nice e-mail from someone who purchased some of my tenkara sakasa kebari style flies.  He included some pictures of some beautiful rainbow trout that he caught in the Smoky Mountains with flies I had tied.  This got me to thinking about all the places my flies have been fished in now by a number of other anglers.  I do not want the following to sound as if  I am "tooting my own horn" but I think what it means is pretty cool.  My flies have been used to catch fish in states as far as Utah, California and Colorado to New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.  I will most likely never to get to fish in many of those places during my life.  But my flies have.  A little part of me has been there on all of those streams and river helping others to enjoy their own outdoor experiences and I think that is one of the coolest things.  I thoroughly enjoy tying  flies and do it many nights during the week but I will be completely honest, I make a few dollars on the sale of my flies.  Mind you, I will not become independently wealthy doing this but the money helps to offset the cost of fly tying materials and have a little extra left over for more fishing equipment and some play money for family vacations.  However, receiving compliments such as those from last night, make me happier than the money I actually receive from the sales of those flies.  I would just like to say "THANK YOU!"  to all of those anglers out there who may have purchased (from me personally or through Chris Stewart's site) or swapped flies with me in the past.  I very much appreciate your kind words regarding something that already gives me great pleasure to do.