Vices

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From Wikipedia :

Vice is a practice or a behavior or habit considered immoral, depraved, or degrading in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or merely a bad habit. Synonyms for vice include fault, depravity, sin, iniquity, wickedness, and corruption .

Let that sink in for a minute, a vice or in this case vise, can be thought of as a bad thing.

For me, my vise is the center of all my centering. I have really begun to embrace my time seated before it, some creative juices flow and some Wood Brother's strummin.

JLR once said to me during a conversation about not having enough time to fish,
 "Jasper, this ( sitting around tying flies with your buddies ) IS fishing."

That is how I have been thinking about tying lately, a way to continute that time on the water off the water.

So I bought a new vice, a Regal Revolution with the Big Game Jaws for anyone keeping track at home.
This thing is a hog and with it I am quite pleased.

It will handle a 7/0 and an 18 quite nicely

For what it's worth, the Regal is a nice piece.....

Celebrate your vices (vises) boys

"I fish all the time when I'm at home; so when I get a chance to go on vacation, I make sure I get in plenty of fishing."

-McGuane

The Thrilling Moment

Every moment of life, I suppose, is more or less of a turning-point.  Opportunities are swarming around us all the time, thicker than gnats at sundown.  We walk through a cloud of chances, and if we were always conscious of them they would worry us almost ot death.

But happily our sense of uncertainty is soothed and cushioned by habit, so that we can live comfortably with it.  Only now and then, by way of special excitement, it starts up wide awake.  We perceive how delicately our fortune is poised and balanced on the pivot of a single incident.  We get a peep at the oscillating needle, and, because we have happened to see it tremble, we call our experience a crisis.

The meditative angler is not exempt from these sensational periods.  There are times when all the uncertainty of his chosen pursuit seems to condense itself into one big chance, and stand out before him like a salmon on the top wave of a rapid.  He sees that his luck hangs by a single strand, and he cannot tell whether it will hold or break.  This is his thrilling moment, and he never forgets it.

-  Henry Van Dyke, in Fisherman's Luck, 1899

"You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don't want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something" -Mitch Hedberg

Its getting late in the season

My boss' old friend and legendary guide Rusty Vorous on retiring from guiding: "you can only yell 'strike' so many times before you get a brain aneurysm". True that Rusty. True that.

http://midcurrent.com/books/castwork-rusty-vorous/

Anglers!

Anglers! Look at your guides on their days off, unguidedly catching fish after fish! Look at your legs, your arms, your rod! Feel the heft and synaptic whir of your big cerebrum! You've got everything they've got! What the hell have you been thinking? GO FISHING YOURSELF! We are a nation plagued with self-annointed experts, pundits, middle-persons. Away with them! Dare to be the bumbling hero of your very own fish story! Chop your psyche in half, make a guru/disciple relationship out of it, seat your humble self at the feet of your sagacious self. Read like a fiend; practice like a fool; find the best possible river on the best possible map; read about it; explore it; stick your body in it; cast into it. If you fall in, get out. If you hook yourself, unhook yourself. Make mistakes! It doesn't matter! Make a half-drowned, half-thrashed rat of yourself. Forgive yourself. Regroup. Do it all over again. And at the end of your day, pay yourself. Charge an arm and a leg. Leave yourself huge tips. Remarkably painless, isn't it?

-From David James Duncan's In Praise of No Guide.

Piscator to Venator, in The Compleat Angler

O sir, doubt not that angling is an art. Is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? a trout! that is more sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold; and yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend's breakfast: doubt not, therefore, sir, but that angling is an art, and an art worth your learning. The question is rather, whether you be capable of learning it? for angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice: but he that hopes to be a good angler, must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be like virtue, a reward to itself.

Ancient Post Response Courtesy of Nick

Had to re-post this.

Nick's rebuttal to a remark Robbins made on an ice fishing post I made last January:

Nick said...
Did you just write a love letter to frozen water?

(Jesse later returned to the US, put on his cleanest shirt and drove out to Moosehead Lake—the site of so many memories.

After walking out beneath the blue moonlight, he stooped, kneeled, took out his portable drill and wooed his frozen princess.

After making love with much tears and passion, Jesse took his laptop from his truck,set out a blanket, and he and the lake stayed up, holding each other and watching The Notebook.)

What? It's a slow day at work.

January 15, 2010 3:21 PM

Segment from an email from a friend known as the Dr.

Fishing has a funny way of making things right for a man. I've started to realize that over time. Maybe you have too. When things in life don't seem to be going well, fishing seems to pick up and even things out. It's almost like Posiedon is trying to make things right... It's one of these amazing things that makes you feel like there is some sort of spiritually entity out there watching things and making sure those that seek the freedom are taken care of. I remember several years ago, my girlfriend broke up with me and I was really bumming. My fishing buddy Dave happened to call me and asked if I wanted to try and nab some bass from shore fishing around Boston. I thought to myself, "well this will at least get my mind off her" so I decided to fish. We elected to make a Sunday afternoon trip down to the cape instead, and take my boat out, and wouldn't you know it, we came upon a pile of bass on one of the rips, just off waquoit bay... and we crushed them. Every time we dropped down we had a bass between 20-35 pounds, this lasted until the wee hours of the morning, bass after bass, it became silly. It was the beginning of July, the water was warm, those bass has no business being where they were, but they were there... To this day I think it was Poseidon trying to throw a chip my way, telling me that not all was lost. It's weird, but fishing always seems to even things out.

A Series Of Unattributed Quotes From A Weekend On The Ice

"You need to understand that just because I'm getting in a relationship doesn't mean we're breaking up"

"Getting numbers while you're getting blown"

"I told her she was beautiful, and then I turned away"

"When you go down on her it's like kissing a baby"

"I wouldn't be the man I am today if I hadn't fucked a lot of chicks"

"God knows if the jamaicans can bobsled we can"

Unfounded Opinions

Returning to my topic: a trout fisherman can do it all with a nine foot for a six line. A nine foot for an eight-weight line will cover most of the rest, including bonefish and small tarpon. I've seen tarpon of more than 125 pounds landed on eight weights, also ideal for snook and redfish. For repetitive casting, as demanded in steelhead and salmon fishing, it's as much as most of us want to cast all day long, and plenty of people use their six-weight rods for steelhead.

...

Most reels are sold to the public by suggesting some unheard-of emergency involving a running fish and guaranteeing that this reel is the only available product capable of bringing the trophy to a stand-still before it changes area codes. Right now, a large variety of magnificent reels is available to choose from. Most have one thing in common: they're far better than they need to be. Reels evolve slowly: the ninety-year-old Vom Hofes are still among the best. I have a number of Pfleuger Medalists made in Ohio, and even in teh most awful conditions they have never failed me. There were Japanese knockoffs of these reels and they're great, too. Thought built to appalling tolerances, they keep on ticking.

...

As to flies, I asked the greatest trout fisherman of my era, who is himself an out-of-control proliferator of equipment and technical doo-dads, what percentage of his annual catch would remain if he were reduced to Adamses and Gold-Ribbed Hare's Ear nymphs. His answer: "Certainly over ninety percent." When pressed about the staggering variety of patterns available in his fly shop, he said, "I don't sell flies to fish."

- from Tom McGuane's chapter 'Unfounded Opinions' in The Longest Silence

"A couple of hundred dollars for a fishing pole!?¨ You'll hear that all the time if you don't keep your mouth shut in certain company. You can talk about the aesthetics and even mention a cane rod will appreciate in value while a new graphite rod will depreciate, but the best thing to do is turn around and say, ¨$9,000.00 for a car? I only paid $500.00 for mine." Gierach

"Ah! my beloved brother of the rod, do you know the taste of beer - of bitter beer - cooled in the flowing river? Take your bottle of beer, sink it deep, deep in the shady water, where the cooling springs and fishes are. Then, the day being very hot and bright, and the sun blazing on your devoted head, consider it a matter of duty to have to fish that long, wide stream. An hour or so of good hard hammering will bring you to the end of it, and then - let me ask you avec impressement - how about that beer? Is it cool? Is it refreshing? Does it gurgle, gurgle, and 'go down glug' as they say in Devonshire? Is it heavenly? Is it Paradise and all the Peris to boot? Ah! if you have never tasted beer under these or similar circumstances, you have, believe me, never tasted it at all." - Francis Francis, 1800s, as quoted in the current issue of The Drake

"There are as many reasons why and ways to fish as there are people who do it." Russell Chatham, Dark Waters

"Neek, all I want to do is feesh, feesh, feesh. Everywhere. All the time." ~ Pierre Affre, To Me

"There comes a time in every man's life when he is either going to go fishing or do something worse." ~ Haviliah Babcock, When A Lady Undresses

Return to Steele

"Your heart's beating quick, your hands are shaking, you can hardly... sometimes guys say, 'John, just... I gotta sit down for a minute. I just have to sit down for a minute before I, I go back out and make my next cast.' You know, I want them to make their next cast NOW, 'cause things are going on. But I realize... I've seen it before, you've gotta sit down sometimes and just take it all in." - Steelhead Guide John Hazel, as told in Drift

David Grisman & Tony Rice / Beastie Boys / Meat Puppets

"Is there a Mermaid in your creel? Fly fishing is such great fun, I have often felt, that it really ought to be done in bed. Not that high frolic is the only thing the pursuit of fish and the pursuit have in common; these ancient sports have more going for them than just that - as I'll now try to tell why. First off, just as both diversions are best conducted in decent privacy, away from distracting crowds, so too the most gratifying results are best obtained by subtlety rather than by force, by seduction rather than rape. Again, just as both pastimes quickly pass when the conquest is too easy, so too the lures used in the wooing, whether jewels or jassids, must be presented with the utmost skill and grace."

Robert Traver, Trout Magic

"This salt-water fly fishing, it is for men with hard stomachs - like sex after lunch." ~ Charles Ritz, To Me, At Lunch

"It mattered little what the weather was, and scarcely more as to the time of year, John Pike must have his fishing every day, and on Sundays he read about it and made flies. All the rest of the time he was thinking about it." ~ R.D. Blackmore, Crocker's Hole