Mark Knapp

Yeah, and new glasses so that I can see them better. Time for me to go to the optometrist. Funny story, one day I was fishing with a friend on the beach. He noted that the girl sunbathing down the beach was topless. I told him it was just a white bikini. As we worked our way down, he was proved right. I got new glasses later in the week. Wait, which beach?

James, please try not to get offended when people share differing thoughts. As I told you in the PM earlier, My "best jig ever" caught 126 trout, char and salmon in one day in my fish house, but some days, another jig or ice fly works better. Have an open mind, listen to people, be absorbent, be courteous and be sure to thank them when they try to help you.

Earlier this month I was tying flies for an eight day trip Sitka. Well as it turns out, our 8 day trip turned into 2 1/2 days of fly fishing, 1 1/2 days of conventional fishing, three days of waiting out the weather in the cabin and returning to Sitka early due to forecasted gale force winds. The trip wasn't a total loss for us, in many respects it was our best trip ever resulting in my buddies first halibut on a fly and our best one since we started fly fishing for them. On our first day we landed a 92 halibut and a limit of rock fish. A limit of black rocks, a vermilion, a quill back, a yellow tail and a copper rock fish with the 92 pound halibut all caught on fly fishing tackle and a 20 pound tippet. We harpooned the halibut after it's forth trip to the boat which would have disqualified the fish for IGFA records if it had been a record fish. The current IGFA record halibut in the 20 pound tippet class (the heaviest) is 139 pounds. The 57 inch, 92 pound halibut after we got it in the boat. It was hooked in 65 feet of water and made four runs into the backing before we landed it. The fight lasted 25 minutes. The fly is a cone head variation of my "Non-pelagic Squid", my most productive fly. Lings, rock fish and halibut bit on all the flies I tied for the trip, however, the Non-Pelagic Squid out produced all of them as it has done for the six years since we started fishing this way. For fun, I put on one of the jigs I bought from Capt. Bob (I added the eyes). The rock fish ate them up. This one a quill back. I only used the jigs for a half hour cuz, in the strictest sense, it's not really fly fishing, but the rocks really loved them. This ones a black rock. Here's a yellow eye. The second days limit of rocks and lings. We brought home 200 pounds of frozen, vacuum packed fillets for the winter. All in all, a pretty good trip. I've got lots of video to edit, but it takes me a while to edit these things.

I'm not an expert but i just did a google search of "young lingcod" and your fish doesn't look quite right, especially because the upper and lower fins are continuous on your fish, not so on the lingcod.

I'm getting the itch too. I'm trying to keep all my week ends clear for ice fishing. The nights are dipping down into freezing temps so we might be able to start in a couple of weeks. Good luck.

It can be a little intimidating for a newer tier to post in this thread. I always figured this was the place for people to post that didn't need to work on their' tying. That's why I started the thread "what are you working on?" Now that that thread is moved to "The Lodge" I guess I will post my flies here.

Yep, looks like a good time. Good for you!!

Here's a pike ice fishing video I did. It covers winter pike fishing in three ways, spearing, angling and tip-up fishing. I hope you like it.

A guides work never ends. I officially retired from big game and fish guiding this fall. I enjoyed 35 years of it but I gotta say that my float trip this fall, when the only person I had to worry about was me, was the best one I've had in a long time.

This part of Russia is just like interior Alaska isn't it?

Crazy!

Yes, it answers my question. it seem to be more about what he, the man tied and not so much characteristics of the flies themselves.

I've been refining my Argus Baitfish Streamer. This is the one I like the most. I'll tie a few more to work on proportions and the details like prettier heads. Later this week I'll get to see how they swim, cast and catch fish.

Great looking flies Norm, It looks like the cossebooms can vary greatly in colors and materials. Is there a feature that makes them all a cosseboom? For instance, we could tell that all of your Rats were rats because of the wing and the hackle.

Your place is going to be pretty spiffy when you get all done. My thought would be you could cover the beams with a 1/2 or 3/4 thick fascia board to hide the weathering, then bolt or screw the railings on through the new fascia board. I think that would be a lot easier and more effective than sanding.

Very nice ties, welcome to the site.

I'm, sorry, I'm all done shipping this stuff out for a while. I've got it all put away for the winter.

Thanks guys, I'm excited to try them out.

A week or so ago I got some really neat feathers, some Argus pheasant feathers. I bought them for eye balls on big streamers for ling cod and halibut. I've been playing with some designs with died mt. goat and Lady Amherst's Pheasant feathers. These are all about 8 inches long and tied with 6/0, 7/0 and 9/0 hooks. I'm leaving for an eight day fly fishing trip in about a week to try them out and here they are. I'll let you know how they do. Now I've got to tie up a bunch of leaders.

The secretary desk looks like it would make a very fine fly tying desk.

I had the same problem until I discovered that it was the weight of the tool box I put on top of the drawer unit that caused the whole unit to flex a bit and misalign the drawers. Solution was a piece of plywood under the tool box. Yes, I'm sure it was something like that. I suspect that it was my floor that was a little less flat than needed and the weight of the objects in and on the unit.

My wife Angel always asks me "How come we always have boat troubles" I tell her " Cuz we have a boat"

Those look nice, I tied some up and tried them for ice fishing but I had no luck. I'm not giving up on them though.

In my case, I had a perfectly good running boat but, being a Ford 460 inboard jet, it had horrible fuel economy (30 gals. an hour at WOT) My boat/auto mechanic suggested I put in Multi-port EFI to remedy the economy problem so I ordered the parts and had him install them. It hasn't run well since. I've got a crew of smart people to help me fix it but right now I'm waiting for moose season to get over with so that they can all get home and we can get back to work on it. Around here, when moose season comes, everything else comes to a screeching halt. I don't blame them though I went moose hunting too.

Thank you Mark. So far they don't stick "at all"--almost the opposite, if you tilt the cabinet they will slide out. The drawers slide on rails like in a filing cabinet. If a drawer was overfull, then that might push the drawer down on the rails, so I could envision a problem. As I wrote in my first post, I was impressed with the design. I will provide an update here if my point of view, or "review", changes for any reason. Bill Yes, please do, it seem like after a while the plastic started to warp and it got sticky. Best of luck.