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Showing posts from June, 2009

Bed Bugs & Ballyhoo

I suppose there really is not a mutual understanding between critters when it comes to rural life in North America. It still is everything goes, as it should, and like anywhere else location means nothing when it comes to making sense of our own mortality let alone other creatures. While walking on somebody else’s farmland to get to a favorite piece of water I often rubberneck every few hundred yards.  It never ceases to amaze me the likelihood of finding something interesting poking out of the freshly tilled soil. Early this season while tromping along in a half dazed sleep deprived state wearing baggy waders I came across a big leg. It was severed from the socket in the hip and partially eaten mid-thigh, hoof still attached. I stopped abruptly and just stared at it for a few minutes. I was both mortified and curious. “Where’s the rest of the body?”, I said to myself. I imagined David Caruso showing up on the scene with aviator glasses and a sidling bra-less wonder toting an expensiv

Epoxy Talk

            Recently I had a old client complement me on the durability of my bamboo fly rods so I thought I would take the time to write a little on polyepoxides. If you are interested in the stuff that actually holds bamboo fly rods together for a very very long time you may find this compelling. My old work colleagues who were employed by GE Polymer Solutions, use to call me “Chemical Joey” (Joseph is my middle name) because my obsessive interest in epoxies. In my past life I was fortunate enough to live side by side with chemical engineers that could give me some very hard and detailed facts about epoxies also known as polyepoxides. Epoxy is a copolymer that is formed by the mixing of two parts. Unlike many traditional glues and water based glues epoxy has a very high tolerance to temperature variables, can be virtually unaffected by moisture or water, and can be subjected to such abuses as extreme flexural strength, impact strength, shear strengths, and peel strengths. Epoxy

Little Rods & Lessons From Jack

                 24" Brown caught on a “Little Mecoche” 6'9" 4wt. 2pc.                        fly used~ #18 Parachute Ant seen in upper jaw At age thirteen I was a diehard ultralight fanatic armed with a wee Abu Garcia spinning reel spooled with four pound Maxima mono and a cork handled 5’6” fiberglass Shakespeare rod. Growing up on the South Shore of Oahu was an incredible classroom for playing very aggressive saltwater fish on light tackle. I caught my first Marlin at age eleven which dwarfed my smallish frame as well as the 9/0 reel that I caught it on. When I caught my first Mahi Mahi at age eleven on very light tackle I got the fever for life. The O’io, or bonefish was not the fiercest or most popular of quarry’s, the Papio, or Juvenile Jack Trevalle and the Ulua, or adult Jack Trevalle are really the signature sporting fish of the islands. Open any “Hawaii Fishing News” publication ( www.hawaiifishingnews.com) and you will realize the fanatical clubs that revolve ar