The fishing has been a little slow...

With winter finally arriving in North Texas I have had to come in from the cold. Besides a couple trout and pickerel trips planned for the next month, I probably won't be wetting my line regularly until early March. Lately I have been pre-occupied with work, watching Rise & Drift, hunting and reading. Lots of reading. My mind also turns to food. For some reason during the winter I love food more. My favorite foods (other than sushi) are winter foods: Pot Pie, Summer Sausage, Cheeses, Rosemary and Olive Oil Tender Loins......sorry......I think I blacked out for a moment.

Anyway. I thought I would make a post about my favorite beers today. As I have nothing to post at the moment in the fish department!

Enjoy:

[b]St. Peters English Ale.[/b]

I really enjoy this beer. Its very hoppy and dry and has a kind of a...hay taste(?) I know that may not sound pleasent but it works.

[b]Orval[/b]

This is a trappist beer, and now that I am passed my beer neophyte stage, I find that this is one of the few I really enjoy. It has a nice citrus bite and is very carbonated. Plus I like trout.

[b]Imperial[/b]

This is Costa Rica's defacto national beer. The first thing you see when arriving in San Jose is a giant Imperial bill board in the airport. I have been deep in the rivers along the southern coast and have literally seen a village with no running water, no stores, but cases of imperial everywhere. Its a typical Central American lager and has a nice clean taste.

[b]Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA.[/b]

I consider this my go-to beer. When I think of beer this is what pops in my head first. Its good. Its strong. The hop is awsome but not a gimmick.

[b]Sapporo Premium[/b]

As I said befor I like sushi. Sushi goes well with Sapporo.

[b]Dogfish[/b]

ok ok...some of their more extreme beers may taste a bit like alkie dimatap, but in general Dogfish Head has an awsome line up. I like most of their beers.

Rockwood Texas Pt. 1

Last weekend my father and I were at our lease in Rockwood Texas, If you don't know where that is, it is about 50 miles north of Mason, a little south of Coleman.

This is a deer lease of 840 acres with a 20 acre lake stocked with Bass, Catfish, Crappie, Perch and other things. The property has a large population of hogs, bobcats and a few mountain lions. Non of the deer are what I would consider "trophy", but the does I have seena re pretty fat. The other morning I even caught the gobble of a turkey in the distance. Quail, lots of dove and some ducks round out the animal population.

This is a year round lease that I will be able to enjoy for a while I think.

Here are some pics from last weekend:

Small hog

Harvested this female bobcat, I have already delivered it to the taxadermist!


Heading back out to the lease this afternoon, plan to stay until sunday. Hopefully I will leave with some venison!

Athens, Purtis Creek and Mckinny

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving, we sure did!

Emalie and I went to Athens on friday and had a pretty good time at the freshwater fisheries center. The cold water made many of the fish reluctant to bite, but we each caught a quite a few fish.

My first cat on the fly!


Nice green sunfish


Athens is a blast..the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center is like a playground!

On Friday afternoon we scoped out Lake Tyler East and West but came to the determination that we would wait to fish there...

Saturday morning I woke up and mad my way to Tyler State Park. The park is beautiful and reminds me of Daingerfield in its basic shape, size of lake and facilities. The only thing missing was the fish, so I left empty handed.

Later in the day we stopped at Purtis Creek State Park and saw a number of fish crashing the surface, probably a few Bass here and there engulfing some unfortunate thing. Emalie managed 3 fish, of which she reminded me repeatedly on the way home...


Sunday I woke up and went to my spot in Mckinny and....I TORE IT UP!!!
Managed to land 26 fish and lost another 5 or so...
The fish were all really light bluegills and nice redears:









Not bad for a couple hours in rainy 40 degree weather!

tied a few flies

I'll do this post a little out of order. ..

On saturday evening I was watchign some movies with Em and I decided to break out the vise. I wanted to tie a few variations on the Humbug sol by breambugs.com.

The ones they sell are a little fat for me, alot of material...I wanted to tie some heavier ones that were at the same time a little leaner.

I will post my creations tommaro, but for now I leave you with a picture of the one that caught the fish. Its amazing something this ugly look edible.



The bream fishing has slowed down. I noticed quite a few bass this weekend but they were so tuned into the glass minnows that it has been difficult to get their attention.

Circle 10 Charity Shoot

Spent the morning at a charity shoot for the Circle 10 Council.

The glorious team 11B!

l 2 R:
Me, Ross, Joan, Bedford, and Nathan

Mckinny Gills and Lots of Bass

I went out to Mckinny early on saturday and caugth a few nice gills. On Sunday me and Sterling went back and got into a few fish again.









Sterling (the best man at my wedding) with a Crappie: "Hey dude I caught a bass!"


Going to try to fish somemore this week...sometime?
Drake Films tour on Wed
Got a Sporting clay event on Thursday
Mabye going deer hunting this weekend with pops.

Busy bee.

This is Fly

http://www.thisisfly.com/

I don't usually go in for the whole "online magazine" but this is awsome.

Spooktacular Fishing

On friday I had to head out to Arlington to pick Emalie up from her moms house, prior to that I stopped at a new place I found in Flowermound. I managed to hook 25+ sunfish of various pedigree and had a good time doing it.


On sunday morning I took advantage of the great weather and hit up my normal spot in Mckinny. I was able to land two really nice bass, and saw about a dozen others. The water is very clear and the fish are predominantly feeding on glass minnows. I had luck watching them crash the bait fish and then throwing my popper right into the frenzy.




I took Emalie back to Flowermound on sunday evening and she caught a mess of panfish. Then we got Panda Express!

Bear Creek, Daingerfield, Bob Sandlin and Monticello

WHEW!

This weekend was stuffed to the gills (had to) with fishing and fun.

On saturday Emalie and I took our baby, Pepsi, to the annual Chi-esta in Keller. Our lil pumkin had alot of fun..


While there we broke out Emalie's 4wt and walked along bear creek trying to catch a few small sunfish. I managed to hook a really nice bass but the small popper dislodged from its mouth, I was frustrated and Emalie poked fun at me.




Definetly a place we are going to go back to...

Sunday morning we woke up around 6, got in the car and started driving east to Mt. Pleasant and Daingerfield. The state park is really nice. The lake is a few hundred acres at the most and is a very old impoundment, dating from the 1930s. The water is usually a tea color, though this weeks rain had washed alot of the red clay in, reducing visibility quite a bit. We had alot better luck this weekend than last, no pickerel but a few nice bass.

Caught this fat boy near the paddle boats




The only thing we caught at Bob Sandlin was this turtle, HECK YEA!


We faired much better at lake Monticello. This is a really cool lake with very warm water. It is a cooling lake for a coal fired power plant, Luminate. Monticello is the lake I will be bringing my kayak to this winter! It is stocked with large mouth and coppernose Blue gill. We fished for a couple hours and caught 40+ bluegills on hoppers and poppers.




Nothing like breathing in those heavy metals while catchin gills!

It Begins!

I recently found something new to be obsessed about, as my wife so fondly reminds me.....


I recently purchased a cheap vise and a few tying tools from bass pro and I experimented with tying my own Bully's Blue Gill Spiders and Hum Bugs. The results looked like someone had a seizure playing "cats cradle".

But I still caught fish!


Last night there was a terrible misquito hatch taking off from my favorite pond and the Gills were all surface feeding. I managed to land a few by casting my franken-flies into the feeding frenzy.