Bryon Anderson

Yet another point in favor of de-barbed or barbless hooks! 😄

I think you're right Capt. Bob -- I'm thinking of going back to tying my own bass leaders, which I make 6' long, consisting of 2' each of 30lb/20lb/15lb. If the 15' tippet proves too visible, I can always add on a foot of 12 or 10 lb.

Went back to the same spot tonight and got right back into them. The first two both broke my 2x tippet. The first one was kind enough to shake loose my Booglebug, so I tied it back on and, a few casts later, had the exact same thing happen! This one kept my bug, though. 😕 (It's barbless, so I'm sure he'll be free of it quickly.) Now I'm off to order more Booglebugs 😊

This is the primary reason why I tie almost all my dry flies parachute style (with the hackle wound around an upright "wing post" of either calf tail hair, deer hair, or synthetic yarn so that the hackle fibers radiate out from the wing post and lie parallel to the hook shank). Collar-hackled (or Catskill style, as they're sometimes called) dry flies are things of beauty, but I always had a terrible time getting them to alight on the water correctly. Like you said, they seemed to always want to list to one side, or sometimes even alight completely upside-down. Very frustrating. Parachute dries land correctly for me about 99% of the time. I also believe that they more accurately represent the profile of a mayfly when viewed from below -- at least to my eye, they do. The few dry flies that I do still tie with the Catskill style collar hackle are mainly patterns like the Humpy, "Wulff" patterns with divided hair wings, and a couple of caddis patterns; on these, I trim the hackle tips flush with the hook point. This helps significantly with getting them to land and float correctly, and the fish don't seem to mind.

Truth!

Impressive work all around! You are a man of many talents for sure.

Wow! Those are some whopper Smallies! Nice - looks like a great day

Every once in a great while I'll find a Largemouth in the Grand or Muskegon - but yeah, they are mostly in lakes over here too. I would love to find a lake with Smallmouth in it that I can fish in my kayak. Only ones I've found that have Smallies are big ones like Pere Marquette Lake or Muskegon Lake, and those have lots of "big-boy boat" traffic. Props and big wakes make me nervous...

Went out yesterday to a nearby lake that I'd been meaning to hit all summer. My expectations were low - I thought I might find a few Bluegills at best, so I just rigged my 5 wt. and took some small poppers. Ended up having a better evening of Largemouth fishing than I previously knew it was possible to have with a fly rod in Michigan. My camera setup on the kayak never lets me do the fish justice size-wise, so you'll have to take a fisherman's word 😉 that these range from 13-18+". All on a #6 yellow Booglebug. Just an absolute blast.

Beautiful little jewels 😊

It is getting to be swappin' time again for me, but...I think I'm going to sit this one out, too. I don't really fish nymphs, so I'd just end up with a box full of flies that won't get used. I am looking forward to getting into the swaps this fall and winter though.

Beautiful spot! John Gierach once said that the measure of a good fisherman was not how big a fish they could catch, but how small a fish they could catch without being disappointed--and without losing faith that there could be bigger ones in there. Something to that effect...I tend to agree.

Right after I posted yesterday, our agent sent us a text saying that he was, in so many words, "on it". We'll see, I guess. DFoster, your experience sounds like it was truly awful; I'm sorry you had to go through all that. Poopdeck, I hear what you're saying, too -- it might be time for us to take our business to a company that will actually do what we pay them to do going forward.

Thanks - to say insurance is dragging its feet is an understatement. After we finally got a reputable contractor out here to do an estimate (the first outfit sent someone out to take photos, measurements, etc., then proceeded to refuse to send us the estimate or to even return our calls or texts), the insurance company (Liberty Mutual) took a good week to let us know they thought that estimate was too high, and they wanted one of "their" contractors to do the estimate. We're still in the process of trying to make that happen. Very frustrating to say the least.