Swamp Fly

Hi all, I'm looking for a "free" image hosting site and am hoping you folks may have some suggestions. It would be nice to be able to share some images with the board again. I had pisca years ago but it shut down. There are some things that are just non starters for me. Mostly because of privacy and legal. Here is what I am trying to avoid: Cost, as in no monetary input, I realize that I may well be marketed to while using the site which is a form of payment. I would prefer to not to need an "account" but that might not be a deal breaker. Absolutely no auto uploading of images from my equipment. I don't want some other computer rooting through mine. I sometimes have proprietary work data/images on my systems, the kind that you can get sued by a whole platoon of corporate lawyers. I don't trust companies that give you a choice "today" because that may change to a must opt out system down the road. I want a service that doesn't offer it at all. Time limited hosting. It seem like a bunch of services will delete your images if they have not been accessed after a while (as little as 90 days for some). It's rather frustrating when you do a web search and find an old post or article somewhere and the images are gone because they expired. Of course the image host can go belly up but that can't be controlled. I don't like AI systems that try to "help" you by organizing your stuff for you. I'd rather not have to download an app but that might not be avoidable. So far I'm looking at two sites, Free Image Hosting and Post Image. Kind of a big ask on my part so thanks in advance. Swamp P.S. Yes I know that real web privacy is an illusion unless you go to extremes, but there's not reason to not keep it down to a mild roar.

Tjm, Thanks! I was unaware that you could do that. I never use the closed captioning function so I would never have found that translate menu. Again, thanks! Swamp

I'm thinking that they must be found mostly in the upper end of the state. I moved to Melbourne, which is just south of Cape Canaveral, in '89 and have never lived north of that latitude since. I haven't had an incident since moving away from VA and I've spent a whole bunch of time running around in the bushes that I think I would have. I remember specifically thinking about not getting chiggers down here a few times over the years. If I never get chiggers again... Swamp

They'll be there when you get back I'm sure. With this cold..er...cooler weather I doubt it will get good again till Saturday or Sunday anyway. Enjoy the snow! LOL Swamp

Nice Mike! Specs are moving into spawning areas down here too. Caught a dozen in one of the small (80' diameter) neighborhood ponds I have permission to fish. All of them were along the edges instead of in the middle, most had noticeable roe bulges. Owner of the pond didn't even know he had specks in there. Swamp

So I was having some issues with my outboard. With the boat on plane the motor would start to die at random intervals. Hitting the choke momentary would bring the RPM back up, lather/rinse/repeat until it went away. It idled just fine. Sounded like a classic fuel delivery issue. I figured it was one of a limited number of things including bad fuel/collapsed line, clogged filter, bad fuel pump, or the carb needed cleaning. I've found it's best to start at one end or the other rather than the middle so I went for the low hanging fruit and began with the fuel line. When I got to the primer bulb I noticed it did not feel right and there were some kinks in the line around it. Why is it that they just can't seem to make a primer bulb that lasts more than a couple of years? So I bought a new one. Fast forward more than a month and I finally get a chance to install it. I went ahead and cut the kinks out and changed the configuration of the line so that the bulb is closer to the motor and the line won't kink as easily because I need to get to the bulb. Started right up and idled better than before. Great! I patted myself on the back but decided to test run the boat to make sure. So yesterday I dropped the boat in and after a slight hick up (air in the line maybe) she ran great. After about 7-8 miles it was like someone slammed on the brakes. The choke didn't do anything but over fuel the motor just like expected when everything is correct fuel wise. The motor was lugging. I thought I had dropped a cylinder but I managed to get back on plane. From past experience I knew that the motor was incapable of getting the boat on plane with one cylinder down. I could get 90% throttle or so but it took several minutes to get there. To add to the fun it wouldn't drop all the back down to an idle which was a whole lot of fun in the 3/4 mile idle/no wake zone. Needless to say I was pretty grouchy by the time I got back to the ramp. This morning I messed with it some more. After adjusting my carb to no effect I resigned myself to having to tear it apart. I pulled off the oil tank (kind of a pain) and pulled off the baffle in preparation for pulling the carb. I of course I go to toggle the butterfly (like that ever does anything but well you know...) and looked down the throat of the carb. What the heck is that? It looked like a blob of silicone or melted plastic was stuck in there. So I pull out precision my pokey thingy also known as a screw driver, and proceed to pull out a very dead tree frog. Well there's your problem! Reinstalled the baffle and fired it up. Since I screwed with the carb settings earlier I needed to readjust but Boom, good to go! So the lesson of the day: Having a tree frog get sucked into your carb does nothing for the performance of your outboard...or for the frog! That was a new one for me, never had that happen in the 35 years of owning boats. So much for going green! No more bio fuel. Swamp P.S. And now you know my screen name is appropriate.

LOL, putting it the clothes dryer might be less of a workout. Actually throw all of the ingredients in and you might end up with completed flys in the lint trap. Swamp

I year ya Mark, you leave your margarita on it's own while on the beach it'll be gone in a flash! We do actually have a problem with gators and pythons eating the family pooch down here and you can be in the middle of town.

Thanks Kimo! Between what you, Scott, and Nick, have been tying I've seriously got the twitches. Mike, Shush! Got enough people down here! LOL If we had a cold water fishery withing a couple hours drive you wouldn't able to pry me out of here for just about anything. I had actually planned no fishing today but the parental unit is making a really nice dinner so the dog and I will just have to go visit instead. Oh the horror... I'll just go early next week to put my new 3wt through it's paces. We are supposed to have more of the same most of next week, padon me gonna be cooler for a day at 74*.

Dang, everyone is just on fire this month! It's like watching a masters class. Kimo that damsel is wicked. It's a very nice blend of realism and practicality. What are you using to tie down the gills? I can't tell if it's a cream thread or mono. Whatever it is it blends in to the point that it took more than just a glance to see it at all. Swamp

Tier, Sounds like a plan, but I warn you the fishing always seems better someplace other than where you happen to live. Having said that I do love it here in SW Florida. Consider looking a colleges in places you'd like to live. That would give you a chance to explore that place and you get an education so you can do whatever you want afterwards. If you look at the recipe that Scott gives there is usually a dye recipe as well if something needed dying. In other words dye your own. Btw A.K Best has a great book on dying materials. Swamp

Nick I can't begin to express my feelings about your nephew and niece. What a terrible situation. I hope for the best possible outcome for them and your family. As you and many many others are so sadly aware of it's not just the victim that is affected if something happens. So you can stand on a soap box as long as you want. Before I was born my father used to race rally. One time he rolled his car, it went over three times before it came to rest. He walked away with some minor bruises and scratches. When I was growing up wearing a seat belt was one of those rules that just wasn't broken, period, the implication was that if I didn't wear one then I wouldn't need to wait for an accident to come to an untimely end. While my father can be rather difficult he is not particularly strict nor did he hit, but that was the one of the few things that would get him as serious as it gets. When my father taught me to drive and he insisted that I learn to drive at speed, corner, and brake hard etc.. He thinks kids (of all ages) are going to do that anyway and they might as well learn to do it right. Those kinds of things he doesn't have an issue with (within reason). But not wear a seat belt, well... So when I started driving in High School it never even dawned on me to not continue wearing a seat belt and I even insisted that anyone riding in my car would wear one too. Once I was a hairs breath away from making my best friend at the time get out and walk home. Cell phones were few and far in between and they were also the size of a cement block back them so he would have been walking for real. He was pissed (so was I by then), but I figure better pissed off than dead. To this day I feel really uncomfortable without a seat belt on, even after ten years of creeping down my own driveway to open the gate without a belt on it still feels weird so I often put the thing on anyway. Once I get back in from closing the gate behind the truck on it goes even if I'm just crossing my dead end dirt road to visit the neighbors. The neighbors think I'm nuts, I tell them there are much more valid reasons to think that. Funny, I'm one of the very few people that live out here that hasn't put a car in the ditch yet they wonder why I want to wear a seat belt while still "in the neighborhood". Swamp

Silver: You may be correct about that, but I don't know one way or another. I guess it just depends on how much energy there is involved and if it can still be considered audible sound or not. Throw enough energy at something and even the best insulators fail. Yeah, that heavy bass is something that really triggers me. I can't begin to describe how unpleasant I find it to be, it gets to the point that I wonder if there is something "wrong" with me physiologically. If I'm stopped at a traffic light I just want to get out of my car and walk away. Tjm: Yes I agree. If you strip hard I wonder if the fly will anchor the line enough to let it conduct till it slackens. Are you talking about wiggling the rod to impart action on the fly? Swamp

Same here. At least it' getting better. Does this have anything to anything with the spam attack? I could see that if all of the sites hosted by that provider are getting hit and the server bandwidth is just getting overwhelmed. Steve and all of the administrators: Thank you so much for dealing with this kind of !@#$. My hat is off to you!

Mike, While I generally don't use rattles simply because I don't fish much in situations where they might be warranted, But I hear what you are saying. I do think that rattles can help especially when imitating crustaceans. I remember back when I would SCUBA dive over a reef it would sound like someone was tap dancing on rice crispies when you hit the water. That said I guess it all depends on if the sound is a "natural" one or at least close enough for the fish. Ever hear a Rattle Trap under water? Yikes! Boy do they catch fish though. So I agree it all depends on how the fish interpret the subject noise. We catch fish so I suppose it can't be that bad. You are darned right about the barrage of noise these days from the parade of boats and water cockroaches (jet skis). While I hate all the people, the good thing is if I do make a bunch of boat noise on accident the fish settle down pretty quick. All those boats is why I have a tendency to get as far into the back waters as I can. Unfortunately it's getting harder and harder to find water that is "back" far enough. Bob, I have a love hate relationship with my boats for many reasons. One of them is that it reminds me just how clumsy of an idiot I can be. If I thought it would help I'd slam every hatch, dump the contents of my tackle bag, and jump up and down on the deck a few times before I ever left the dock just to get it out of the way. I wouldn't even worry too much about the looks I would get from the other people at the ramp. Those Sharkskin lines were horrible and exactly what I was thinking. They were the reason I started wearing stripping guards. More than one lady fish got it's revenge on me when it grabbed the fly. I think you are dead right about companies not listening to the guides and fishermen. Arguably that was about the time that marketing truly took over not just fly fishing but fishing in general (Basscar anyone?), I mean you just can't catch bream on anything less that a $2k setup. Right? Swamp

Thanks for weighing in. Agreed, normal sound traveling just through the air is not likely to transfer enough energy past the water surface to be "heard". I say normal because some energy waves are powerful enough to be both heard and "felt" through the air itself, an example would be thunder or an explosion (not on the ground) can have enough energy for a transfer. I've personally heard thunder underwater in a pool, so no boat or other object to transfer the sound. Never been in a pool and had fireworks in the vicinity lol. But that is not what we are talking about. As I stated I have always discounted noise generated by casting for exactly the reasons you cite. I suppose technically if the noise generation was intense enough (as in it had enough energy) it could travel through the body and into the water. I would also expect the energy levels involved would just about cause physical harm to the angler or at the very least be so unpleasant that they would want to stop fishing. I obviously don't have any numbers to back that up one way or another, but again not so much what we are talking about. What I am mostly wondering about is when a line is tight to the fly such as when aggressively stripping. Not only should the tension in the line be able to conduct the wave, it is actually part of the generation mechanism itself. As soon as the line tension is lost the wave it should be dampened (again with the energy levels we are talking about). Try plucking a guitar string that isn't strung. Once a fish is hooked it doesn't matter if it can hear anything, at least not that individual fish since it has more pressing issues at hand. Swamp P.S. I'm mostly just poking at this because I never really considered it before. The fact of the matter is we should all be more worried about that set of pliers we tend to drop into the bottom of a boat. At some point in every trip I always berate myself and think it would just be so much more efficient to run a jack hammer if the goal is to scare every fish in the county. Grin!

Mark, I thought the line was attached and there was direct sound transmission just as you say, like a can intercom (aka Cambell's telephone). Ido think if you had a microphone anywhere in that pool you would have picked it up though. Yes once the fish is hooked who cares if the line makes noise. The textured lines make quite a bit of racket even when not under tension. In a quiet water way I'd wager it pretty loud. If I'm fishing a bulky fly and stripping line hard I wonder how much noise even a smoother line makes. I just wonder if it's factor or not. Again I catch fish but I'm just curious if it makes a difference when the fish aren't real hot on the bite. Swamp

Just like SilverCreek mentioned, I've noticed that the duns tend to be oriented according whatever way the breeze is blowing. A drifting boat will do the same. I kind of doubt it makes too much of a difference since the fish see naturals facing in just about every direction at one point or another. I've seen duns spin like a top because of the currents. Besides sometimes it's better for fly to stick out amoungst the naturals anyway. That's not to say orientaion couldn't be a problem on extremely pressured and/or selective fish. Those kinds of fish are a different animal altogether as it were. Swamp

Mark Knapp posted this Video in the fishing reports section. In the video there are a couple of scenes where there is a camera attached to the leader of the fly line. You can very clearly hear the line being stripped in. It is a bit startling as to how loud it is, it sounds like growling. I've always discounted the concerns some people have about fly line noise, firstly because we catch plenty of fish but also because I always approached the issue from a casting point of view (which in retrospect may have been a bit short sighted). Has anyone noticed a problem with the noises associated from stripping in a streamer etc.? I'd say that it would be less of an issue with a dead drift but we do strip in line at times when doing that too don't we? Again, we catch plenty of fish but It does make one wonder about some textured fly lines (remember the shark skin lines?). Swamp

Wow, what a great trip! I might just have to put that on my bucket list. I had to laugh at the underwater footage footage. I was trying to figure out what was growling, I thought it was the fish before I figured it out. That really makes me wonder about fly line noise... I'll start a new post. Here's the Florida version: Link Probably one of my all time favorite videos. Swamp

Your skill has really come long way! What material are those scales made of? Stabilized burl? Regardless your decision on how to place them is very appealing. The background is a bit unfortunate for them in that photo but you can still see that the colors just work well. Often the colored resins just look a bit gaudy to me and overpower the wood, well chosen. I have a question about the first image, what is the purpose of the partially drilled holes (not the three pin holes)? Swamp

Sorry for the delay. Between getting busy and the Forum server being a pain in the fundament, it's been tough to get back. Sound advice all around. Looks like you will be in my general area, I like to fish the Charlotte Harbor area. Fly wise the bottom line is that the most consistent inshore food source in the area is bay anchovies. Smallish patterns in chart over white will catch anything that eats other fish for a living. Granted there are days that fish will prefer something else but that is my bread and butter. I'll either fish a clouser or a Marabou Estaz. I tie these clousers on an EC413 60* jig hook. That hook will ride point up even with small eyes. I use a #2 as the hook is a little longer with the 60* shank. If you don't have any then no worries, use what you have. Look into them though, as they are a servicable hook and are around $10 per 100. You will probably straighten a #2 on bigger tarpon. The Marabou Estaz was shown to me by an angler who originally developed it in the Connecticut area but in all white for the blues and stripers up there. Here he ties it with a chart over white marabou tail topped with some silver flashabou and then palmered pearl estaz "grande" to the head. He uses red thread head to represent gills, personally I use black (for an eye). They both work. If you coat your thread wrapped hook shank with supper glue gel before palmering the estaz it helps with durability. You'll only glue your fingers together once or twice a session. I use a cheap plated Mustad live bait hook that can be found at walmart, usually size 1/0-3/0. The hook acts as weight, it's chunky (and strong). For top water I use crease flies and gurglers in all white, olive over white, or grey over white. In truth with topwater it doesn't seem to make much of a difference most days so if you like to make pretty flies then add the color, eye spot, and gill slash. I use makers for that. Throw in some tan based flies for if you get up into the mangrove creeks. Interestingly the Marabou Estaz and the Schminnow (all white with black plastic dumbbell eyes) are very close but seem to have been developed independently. I know that the Marabou Estaz is a derivative of Lefty's Bloom Fly, I assume the Schminnow is as well. Best of luck! Bet you buy a boat....Bwahahaha! Swamp

Bass Master, As Tier mentioned, you might want to indicate what kind of saltwater fly fishing you plan to do (inshore, offshore, bigger or smaller game etc). Where you will be fishing can make a huge difference, fishing stripers in in the NE vs sea trout in the SE/Gulf vs surf perch on the West Coast call for different flys and sizes. Given your forum name, I'd bet you won't have to change much of anything at all except to upgrade to stronger hooks. I'm not going to weigh in on whether to use corrigible hooks of not, that can be as touchy a subject as barbed vs barbless. You might not even have to add more than a couple of materials if you really do tie for bass. As far as making the transition to the brine you might want to pick up a copy of Lefty's Fly Fishing in Salt Waters. IMO it is still as relevant today as the day the 1st edition rolled off the presses. I cut my teeth with that book so I'm rather biased towards it, but there are many other excellent treatises on the subject out there. Take a hard look at your rods and reels, particularly the reels. While it is true you are much more likely to need a good drag than you need with bass, the real issue is corrosion resistance. Rinse, rinse, rinse, and then rinse some more! Most folks like a faster rod for trying to punch most of a flyline into a gale force "breeze". Rod components these days are pretty bulletproof if you rinse them off and also work the reel seat every once in a while to keep it from seizing (my personal worst form of neglect). If you were hit the salt once a year on vacation no need to buy stuff, but if like you said you will be doing this regularly it may require some upgrades. Swamp

Bought a 5 wt glass rod from Steve a while back. It has spent hundreds of hours on the water, used it yesterday to catch a bunch of tilapia. I have othing but good things to say about the rod and more importantly the service that he provides. He is an honorable man, he did everything exactly as and when he said he would. How he offers rods at the prices he does is beyond me, I can barely buy components for what he charges for an expertly built rod. Swamp

Depends on the situation for me. If I'm trout fishing under a canopy then amber, the lighter the better. Since I don't do much cold water fishing I just own a pair of cheapos in light amber/yellow. On the flats or out from under the trees it's going to be copper or brown, I usually only have one or the other but copper on overcast days and brown on bright days if i have the choice. I have been told that grey w/mirror is better for blue water but I have no experience with that. As others have said stay away from mirrored lenses though I doubt most fish will notice but I did an informal comparison many years ago and the mirroring just darkened the lenses a bit more potentially making it harder to spot fish. Swamp