Who Doesn't Like a Nice Pic?

Every once in a while a picture actually turns out nicely. It feels good and is a nice token to remind me of a good week out fishing.

Yes, it was pretty cold the first couple days.


More to come soon.

How Do You Do It?

I've wondered for a while which is the better way to mount a hook in a vise. It seems most people do it like this:

 or this:

In fact every single one of the images I encountered in a Google search were some variation of the above. But I have always felt it works better this way, with the hook point slightly recessed behind the vise tip:

Why my preference for this (apparently incorrect) mode? Because this way you don't have to worry about accidentally cutting your thread with the point of the hook. The only reason I can think of to mount the other way is to maximize the available space to wrap...except you aren't actually gaining anything here. If you mount the hook in the vise so that the point of the hook is just inside the tip of the vise you still have the same available space to wrap. By sticking the hook point out of the vise you only lose the ability to be careless while thread-wrapping. Unless I am missing something.

How do you do it? And why?


P.S. - This is a bit of a ghost post (scheduled ahead of time) while I am living it up fishing in Montana. Be jealous. Be very jealous.

Dreams and rivers

Either in the river or in our dreams, fun will be had.

And I'm Off...

I'm off to the Bighorn River in Montana for a week. Maybe I'll manage an in situ post, or maybe you'll have to wait until I get back in early April.  We'll have to wait and see.

Here's what I'm looking forward to:

Sadly our esteemed boat rower and wind fighter will not be there this year.  :(  We'll miss you Chadly.

And if you're bored at work on a Friday, you can do what I'm doing and put a fun vid on in the background:

Nightmares and Dreamscapes

I don't always dream, but when I do I prefer Dos Equis.

Wait, no, that's not right.

I don't always dream, but when I do it's often about fishing.

That's more like it. And every year during the run up to an annual Montana fishing outing, I am blessed with interesting and fun fishing dreams. Last night, however, was a bit different from the norm. Typically my MT fishing dreams involve me floating down the river in a boat with friends, surrounded by zillions of huge colorful fish easily visible in the water. Oddly I don't usually dream about catching anything but that's beside the point.

As I was saying, last night was a bit different. This one was a bit less of a dream and a bit more of a nightmare. Fortunately in my old age I tend to know I'm dreaming, so even when it's bad stuff it's not too disturbing. Last night was disturbing though. Everything was somewhat normal out on the river, except we hadn't made it out to the water yet. People were piddling around taking their sweet time, and I was trying to not let it bother me.

Aside: I am usually the first one ready to go every morning on these trips in real life.

As I was trying to herd up cats to get people ready to hit the water, I suddenly noticed that the sun was setting. The day was over already! No! Ok, it's not the end of the world. We're there for a few days so we'll get more fishing in the next day. And that's when I looked at my watch (I haven't worn a watch in years) and saw that it was 2:37 (why exactly 2:37 I don't know, but I do remember it). That would be pm, not am, and that was the disturbing part. It left me thinking/whining/crying that if the sun goes down that early I'm not going to get much time on the water! It's not fair!

Then I woke up screaming in a cold sweat and realized it was just a dream, thank god!

With all that said I'm really looking forward to all the fishing/beer/whiskey and good times next week. And it should bring some more life to this blog. I know you are looking forward to that.

In the morrow

Can anyone guess what I'll be doing tomorrow? Fishing of course, but for what? Pretty obvious to me...