Headed Out

Carl over at Fly Fishing Benefactors has some new stuff going on over on their site. They’ve got a new logo, they’re having a ridiculously awesome sale, and word has it some new gear is coming soon.

Check it…

Last week my buddy, Evan, and I went backpacking on Mt. Rogers – the highest point in VA.

Here are some pictures…

Open Fields

More

Home for the night.

Morning hike to the summit.

The highest point in VA surrounded by trees.

Wild ponies roam on the mountain.

And finally, some of the biggest blue berry bushes I’ve ever seen!  We came out of there with about a half-nalgene full of blue berries and black berries.  We ate our fair share too as we hiked.

Had an awesome time!  I’m looking forward to going there again sometime, only taking a different route.

The Mrs. and I are on vacation in Charlotte, NC.  While here we’re doing the shopping thing, the Carowinds thing, and the eating thing.

This post is about the eating thing.  Last night we went to the Blackfinn American Saloon in Downtown Charlotte.  The Mrs. had a Prime Rib and I ordered a sandwich(?).  I had planned to not have a sandwich since we were planning on having something more sophisticated.  Once I saw this burger on the menu, I made my petition.  Since we’re on vacation, it’s totally cool to order something deserving of the name “Porkopolis.”

Here’s the menu’s description…

No room for lettuce on this burger! A BlackFinn Burger topped with sweet and tangy BBQ sauce, pulled BBQ pork, honey cured ham, sliced sweet pickles, coleslaw and applewood smoked bacon on a grilled bulky roll.

I forgot to bring along any sort of camera, but that description should be enough.  It was awesome (leaving the witness full of awe).

That’s all for now.

Ugh…  I’ve totally not written anything at all on here in one month from today.  Dang – that’s a long time.

I’ve definitely been fishing, though it’s not as much as I would have liked it to be in the last month.  The Mrs. and I went camping/fishing at Hungry Mother State park last week.  Had a good time too.  The fishing wasn’t great for us, but in all honesty, we were probably doing it wrong.  We still had a blast.  Here are some pictures…

It happened to rain on us while we were there, both after dinner and while packing up.  No fun when tent camping!

Food is always important when camping.  We munched on 3-egg omelets with all the fixins.  Also, there’s something special about peculator coffee on a Coleman stove.

Showing some sticker love.

And last, and probably least, a pretty bad shot of the lake.  I do wish I had taken more/better pictures, but I was too busy enjoying the company of good friends and the outdoors.

In other fishing news, and buddy of mine and myself, hit up the New River for some fishing.  Didn’t even bust out my fly rod (1st time in a year and a half!).  We caught a few rock bass, a smallmouth and a bluegill.  As my friend said,it was good just to be out on the water.

I decided today, after the last motor debacle, that I’d take the carburetor off of the motor and see what was wrong with the motor.  I had a sense that it was an air/gas mix issue that was causing it to stop running.

Something you should know – I don’t really know much about small engines.  I can kinda/sorta make my way around a car engine, but when it comes to smaller ones, like tillers or outboards, I just don’t know that much.  But I’m learning.

So I got the carburetor off and there’s a small plate between it and the engine intake called a reed plate.  I noticed something looking out at me and at first I thought it was the top part of an acorn.  I poked at it with a screw driver and it got lodged in the plate.  I took the plate off and shook it out.  Here’s what I found…

As it turns out, it was the abdomen of a stink bug.  This motor was kept in my dad’s barn and when I brought it home, 20 must have crawled out of it.  When I first attempted to start it up, probably another 10 came out – not too happy I might add.

Somehow, this little guy made his way into the carburetor and met his fate.  I have no idea how he got in there, but it was because of him that the engine wouldn’t keep running.  I put the engine back together and after about 3 cranks, it started right up.  I’m gonna see if the Mrs. would want to go fishing again sometime this weekend.  Maybe this time, I’ll catch some fish.

Back in the day, this boat and motor were new, shiny, and functioned perfectly.  40-some year later (2010), things are a little different.

They definitely look like a matched pair and in all fairness, they are.  My grandfather bought this boat and motor to go together (I think from Montgomery Wards).  They boat still floats, but it has, what my dad calls, a shallow livewell in the rear.  By the end of a couple hours of fishing, there’s just enough water in the back where you could let a fish flop around and it might make it for a little while.  (Note:  This is not a standard feature.)

This motor hadn’t been run since 1998, back when I was in high school (some really funny stories that go along with that time period and fishing, but that’s for another post!).  I think it ran okay back then.  Before that, it hadn’t been run since I was in middle school (I think).  Anyways, this motor has only been run a relatively small amount of time in the last couple of decades.  I shouldn’t expect so much from it.  After tinkering with it, multiple conversations about it with my dad over the phone, and my uncle even sending me a photo-copy of the manual (he has an identical motor that was also my grandfather’s), I finally got it running – in a trashcan full of water.  It was pretty exciting.  I would let it run for about 10-15 minutes, shut it off, come back 20 minutes later and it’d crank up again, and then I’d shut it off, yada yada yada.  It seemed to be ready for the river.

Well, yesterday the Mrs. and I, plus her sister, went fishing on the New River.  We put in at a small, but popular ramp, in Whitethorne.  The motor cranked right up.  It didn’t run as fast as I remembered, we did have 3 in the boat, but it got us up stream and I was pleased.  This motor is pretty loud (it’s a 2-cycle) so I felt like we were making our presence known.  Anyways, we got to where we wanted to stop and fish, I shut off the motor, and we dropped anchor.  The motor never started again… ugh.  It’s having some trouble idling.  I’m gonna have to smack it with a hammer tinker with it some more.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I didn’t catch any fish.  The Mrs. caught 2…

That’s her (yeah, I know, she has a spinning rod, I’m still workin’ on that) with the fish and her sister behind her.

We got back to the ramp just as it started to rain.  I think we’re gonna hit up the local pond in the next couple of days.

Now, where’s my hammer…

This happens more often than I’d like, but things have been so crazy (not necessarily bad, just a bit crazy) around here that I haven’t been able to write anything really meaningful, if anything at all.  Not sure how much of what I write is meaningful to begin with anyways, but I should probably throw something up here.  I’ve only been able to do some really-close-to-home fishing lately.  Here are a few pictures…

Caught this little guy on Tom’s Creek a week and a half ago.  I also caught a rainbow, but couldn’t get the camera in time.  These little guys were fun to watch nymphing.  Every few seconds I could spot some little flashes from the bottom of the creek.

Caught this  bluegill out of the vet school pond (aka, “My Summer Oasis”).  I love fishing for bluegills.  They’re a lot of fun.  The other day, I took my buddy Jordan out (taught him to fly fish for the 1st time and now he’s planning on buying a fly rod and reel – winning them over one at a time!).  We each only caught one bluegill, but I had some of the sweetest follows from a pretty big large-mouth bass.  I was using  a mouse pattern I had tied a while back.  The bass nipped at it a few times, but never really hit the mouse.  It was still pretty exciting.

I’m planning on taking out the old boat down to the New River soon to fish for some smallmouth.  I’m anticipating some sweet action on the water, but I’m gonna try and not get my hopes up too much.  I’ll be sure to have my camera in tow this time too.  Lookin’ forward to it!

While traveling on the road with friends, you often talk about things that would, “just be awesome.”  I was recently on a trip down to South Carolina and as we got close to our destination, we decided to stop for lunch.  We’d heard of the KFC Double down and figured there was no time like the present to try it.

I knew in my conscious that I could not eat it.  I had made the mistake of explaining of this amazing “sandwich” just released by KFC to the Mrs.  She made me promise I’d not eat it because it sounded way to bad for me and how I had already said I needed to start working out again.  She was right – like always.  So, I promised.

I explained said promise to my traveling companions and they were convinced that the subject should be reconsidered.  One of them actually called the Mrs. and explained our dilemma and that I needed to partake.  She agreed and said I’d be running 5 miles when I got home (which I still need to do).

We thought that something so horribly awesome looking would only taste awful.  We were wrong.  The Double Down is pretty good.  It came as a meal.  Some of us figured it’d be good to get it with the mashed potatoes and gravy for dippin’.  Even better.

I’ll probably not ever get to have it again, but it was good while it lasted.  Oh well, we’ll always have South Carolina…

This past weekend was the 10th annual VA Fly Fishing Festival in Waynesboro, VA.  I heard about it last year and was really bummed that I wasn’t able to go.  This year I decided I was going to definitely get there.

Carl from Fly Fishing Benefactors asked me if I wanted to come down and help out at his booth and I thought it’d be a lot of fun, so that’s what I did.  I got to walk around for a bit and then stepped behind the tables to help out.  Occasionally I stepped back out to take some pictures.  Here are some from the festival…

This first one is from the inside of the vendor’s tent.  There were fly shops from all over the east coast and guides/outfitters even from the eastern(?) mid-west.  There were also many artists and gear companies represented.

The festival offered both paid and free, walk-up casting lessons…

…and there was even a casting pond with some sweet, ugh… yard art (I can’t think of the technical term!).

Above is the Fly Fishing Benefactors table.  Carl had some sweet festival deals and he’s still carrying those deals on this week if you’re interested.  If you haven’t checked out FFB’s gear yet, you should.

Above is the FFB festival crew.  Left to right it’s Carl Craig, me, and Terry Jones.

Also at the FFB table was Steve Moore, aka Switch Fisher.  Steve has some new books out.  You can go here to see what they’re all about.

There were some famous peeps there too.  I met a goal and got my picture taken with Lefty Kreh!

Walt (Walt’s Poppers), a really cool guy, was there and had some hackle for sale.  I got each of these for $1.50 each!

The festival was a great time and I’ll definitely go back next year.  I had yet to ever be in one place with so many fly fishermen/people at one time.  I got to meet a lot of people and help some folks out when it came to picking out gear that was a good fit for them.  I really, really enjoyed that.

It’s an awesome festival.  I’d totally recommend anyone checking it out next year.  The only thing I feel like I missed out on was getting to hear some of the lecturers.  Other than that, I had a blast.

Now I’ve just got to get to tying some more flies and hit the water soon…

I’ve been fishing a few times this year and got skunked each time. But not today! I decided to hit the local pond and give it a shot.

It’s tough to tell, but there’s a beadhead nymph hiding under the scum in that fish’s mouth.  Caught a few panfish and had a blast.