Okay, this trip had nothing to do with fishing, although I did take a rod in the futile hope that I’d find time for some fishing. Last weekend, several of us pooled our resources and rented a cabin near Gatlinburg. Yes, that Gatlinburg. That mother of all tourist traps. We even had to drive through Pigeon Forge to get there, a town I intensely dislike (no offense meant to the good citizens of that town) and that if anything is even more garish than Gatlinburg. I do hold some fondness for Gatlinburg despite its more grotesque aspects. I like that the town is easily walked rather than having to drive from place to place, and there are some nice joints to grab a bite to eat, enjoy a drink or sample excellent pipe tobaccos (the Gatlinburlier in the Mountain Mall is a great pipe and cigar shop). And the town did serve as the base for my first few fly fishing trips to the mountains. We took a look at a few trout streams, and they all looked pretty darn cold, especially up high where some streams were completely frozen over. Maybe they’ll warm up a bit before my first planned fly fishing trip in April. Here’s a quick photo essay:

I'm usually not much on cabins, being more of a camper and cheapskate, but this one had the goods - not to mention it was cheap in the off-season. Here's the game room where Dewayne completely destroyed me at foosball.

And here's the movie theater room, complete with nice chairs and an 11 ft. projection screen.

Most of the group at the Hofbrauhaus Restaurant, an excellent little sandwich shop in Gatlinburg. Get the Reuben or the Hoagie - both fantastic with a cold Beck's.

A stream along the Alum Cave Bluff Trail. We hiked to Arch Rock.

Another shot of the creek along the trail.

Here's Jacqulyn and her sister Gina near the beginning of the trail. We hiked in fairly deep but compacted snow all the way to Arch Rock.

Jacqulyn and yours truly at Arch Rock. The top steps were solid chunks of ice, so we turned back lacking any gear for handling that much slippiness as Bear Grylls would say.

Icicles near Newfound Gap.

Newfound Gap had lots of snow, and it was brutally cold with a strong wind. We didn't stay long.

No, this has nothing to do with fishing. But it’s something I needed to write. My Dad, Ronald Walker, was born January 28, 1947 and passed away two years ago this February. My brother placed this memorial on his gravesite not long after the game. God bless you, Dad. Roll Tide.

Ronald Walker's tombstone.

Memories – especially those clouded by years and circumstances past – eventually fade, leaving more of a feeling in their place than the specifics of the event. But there are a few, a precious few, that stick with you as if they happened yesterday.

One of my earliest, and clearest, memories is of flying through the air…

It was 1970-something, and Alabama was in the middle of one of the greatest decade-long displays of brilliance ever displayed on the college field. It was a time when all fans just knew Bama was going to win every game – the only question was by how much.

The details of that particular game on that particular Saturday afternoon have long faded. I have no idea who we were playing, nor what the score eventually was. I do know it was post Johnny ‘Italian Stallion’ Musso and before the Goal Line Stand against Penn State in 1979, but a lot of the rest of it is gone.

What’s crystal clear to me, though, is my dad.

We were watching the game in the small living room of our 3 bedroom home in Theodore, Alabama – tacky 70’s wood paneling covering half the wall, and carpet that looked like an epileptic nightmare of tan, brown and black. Something big had happened and my Uncle Sonny – who may as well have been a second father to me, as much time as our two families spent with each other – picked me up in his exuberance, kissed me square on the face, and launched me across the room.

I remember that celebratory feeling that something really good had just happened. I remember us all erupting in joy…how loud my Uncle Sonny’s ROLL TIDE yell was…the whoops and hollers I could hear from the kitchen…how happy I was, surrounded by everyone there.

But the clearest vision I have, the one that stands out as if it were happening right now, this very instant, is my Dad catching me.

Two arms that seemed, to me, as big as tree trunks, snatching me out of the air with hands strong and hard as steel. Before I ever felt even the tug of gravity pulling me back to Earth, he lifted me up toward the ceiling, hands just under my arms, and looked up. Right at me.

He had on a Bama T-shirt – white, with a crimson A on it… an elephant coming through the opening – and his mustached face had just a little grizzle on it from not shaving that morning. His face shined with happiness. His smile big as I’d ever seen it. And his eyes practically GLOWED.

My Dad’s eyes sparkled all the time. I don’t know if I’ve ever told anyone that, but they did.

It couldn’t have happened for more than a moment, a brief couple of seconds in the middle of mayhem all around me, but it seemed like forever. There was nothing else. For this moment, anyway, it was just me and him.

I don’t remember being put down from that embrace, probably because I don’t ever want to. I’ll always remember my father just like that. Strong… good lord, he was strong. Steady. 10 feet tall and bulletproof. And smiling, with those sparkling eyes shining on me.

On January 7th of this year, Alabama laid claim to its 13th National Championship. I watched the game with my own family, and celebrated long after the clock read zeroes and the scoreboard told the tale. I called friends and relatives, and jabbered back and forth with people at work. I put the stickers on the truck and stayed up long past the end of the game, taping every Sportscenter and news outlet I could find on the season.

Then, late that evening, I found a quiet place and remembered a game a long time ago. One where I wasn’t alone with the hero of my life, but one where we shared a moment together. And I thought, even though it’s not high on the priority list up there, this one is for you, Dad.

I love you, Dad. I miss you. Roll Tide….

PS Maybe it’s corny to you – dedicating a silly football game to someone past. But for our family, Bama football has always been a big part of life. Dad was the biggest Bama fan I’ve ever known, and we spent almost every fall Saturday together, watching and listening to Bama play. He loved it, and I loved being a part of it with him.

Matt

Dutchess and Me

We lost a good dog this weekend. Dutchess was nineteen years old (yes, we know her name is a misspelling, and we don’t care). She was a chow mix mutt. Jacqulyn and her were friends long before Jacqulyn and I even met, so it was always understood that, while I might be a human member of the clan, Dutchess nonetheless held a somewhat higher position in the hierarchy.

I did come into the picture early enough that I got to meet Dutch during her mature but still highly active years. There was nothing she liked so much as to chase a cat away from its dinner, and then help herself to it. Dutch had the pickiest eating habits I’ve ever seen in a canine, leaving us to sometimes practically beg her to eat, but the one sure way to make her eat was to try to give her food away to one of the cats.

Dutch didn’t know many tricks, apparently considering them below her dignity. Well, she was a Duchess, you know. Still, she had a few eccentricities that could be exploited for the benefit of all who enjoy good play. You could angrily bark “Get ‘em Dutch!” and she’d immediately switch into guard dog mode, attacking any invisible villains in the area. If you clapped your hands and yelled “Get Dutch!” repeatedly like a hyperactive child high on sugar, she would run circles around you as quickly as she could.

That was my favorite game with her. I’d get her going and then try to tackle her. She picked up on it, and a raucous game of tag would ensue with Dutchess almost always coming out the winner. One particular time she flat out tackled me. Dutch was blind in her left eye, the unfortunate result of a shooting accident when she was a pup. I made the mistake of chasing her on that left side where, of course, she couldn’t see me. She turned and cut my feet right out from under me like an NFL cornerback, sending me tumbling down a hill. When I managed to sit myself upright, Dutchess pounced on me with what appeared to be a big grin on her face, apparently not sorry in the least for nearly crippling me. Anyone who says a dog can’t smile obviously never knew Dutch, or most any other dog for that matter. Or maybe they’ve only known sad dogs, which Dutchess most certainly was not.

Dutchess and I shared a healthy fear of lightening, however we reacted to it differently. I tend to seek shelter, feeling most comfortable with something over my head. Dutchess, assuming we didn’t let her in the house, would run frantically around, back and forth, right out in the rain. I assumed she was trying to keep moving so as to give the lightening a moving target. On occasion we’d let her in the house to lie peacefully on a rug until the storm passed, but generally she was an outdoor dog.

Dutch was quite a devout dog. She could be found faithfully sitting on the steps of the neighborhood church every Sunday morning for many years until we deemed her health too poor to let her make the walk. She wasn’t happy about that and sulked for some time despite our best efforts to explain our reasoning. How that dog knew it was Sunday morning, I’ll never know.

In her later years Dutchess grew quite deaf and blind and was plagued with arthritis. Even then you could easily see her excitement when we arrived for a weekend visit (Dutchess lived with Jacqulyn’s parents). Her whole body wagged when she came to greet us even though she could hardly walk, and that twinkle was still there in her one good eye when she’d hobble over to chase a cat from her food.

We held on to her as long as we could, until the pain she lived with daily was too much for both her and us to bear. We buried her Saturday up on the hill behind the house in a pretty spot overlooking the woods. It wasn’t much, but when we finished covering the grave with stones from the forest and planting a couple flowers, her final resting place looked pretty and peaceful.

Good bye, Dutch. We love you and miss you. You were the best. I hope we meet up again some day in a better place without pain or blindness. Rest well, girl.

Nathan

Just in case you haven’t checked his blog in awhile, my friend Reed Curry over at the Contemplative Angler is releasing a book this fall. The book is entitled The New Scientific Angling: Trout and Ultraviolet Vision. Reed posted a couple of articles on his blog awhile back that first explored this idea. Personally, I think it has the potential to really change the way people think about tying flies. In fact, I think it’s the coolest idea in fly tying that I’ve seen since taking up the sport. If nothing else it’ll provide me with just one more excuse on a tough day: “Well, I probably would have caught several nice trout, but I haven’t been able to locate those Bolivian scarlet titmouse feathers with the proper UV characteristics, either that or the weather’s got ‘em holed up somewhere.”

A new online fishing magazine was released recently which I’ve enjoyed: Fish Can’t Read. The folks over at Chiwulff and Singlebarbed have all been involved. I highly recommend you take a look. These online magazines with the flipbook format seem to really be catching on lately. There are two others that I’m aware of: Catch and This is Fly. Of the three, Fish Can’t Read and Catch are more along what I like. This is Fly is pretty cool, and I probably would have liked it if I’d been into fly fishing as a teenager, but the style is just a bit over the top for me now. I don’t know how long the flipbook format will persist, but something like this is likely the future of fly fishing periodicals. I’m surprised the paper magazines haven’t caught on. Also, this is just my opinion mind you, but I think making the magazines freely accessible is the way to go as well. People will probably cease paying for magazines whether online or not just due to the fact that so much information is out there freely available. I know I have. I’ve got a single straggling subscription left that I’m strongly considering doing away with. It’s really just a waste of money and a waste of storage space to store the old magazines (which I never can bring myself to throw away). If you publish good work, you can probably get enough revenue to support it through advertising.

I’m still working on my Glacier photos. The truth is I’ve really struggled finding time to work on the website here or work on photography or go fishing or even take a walk in the woods. I can’t even put my finger on the problem. “Things” just seem busy lately. I know the job’s been more stressful. Heck, I don’t know. But I do know this: something’s got to give. It has become abundantly clear to everyone around me that I need to be in the outdoors. If I’m not, things get rather ugly rather quickly. Still, I have played around with my photos a bit. Lately I’ve become interested in black and white and “sort of” black and white photos. One thing I discovered about myself on the Glacier trip: I really enjoy working with photography. I still need lots of work to be anywhere close to good, but I do honestly enjoy it. Anyone who reads the site knows I’ve sort of been into photography for awhile, but usually I’m too involved in the fishing to concentrate on it. Glacier offered a chance to focus. I got up at daylight nearly every day of the trip for photos, and several evenings found me waiting for just the right light at some photogenic spot. I’ve GOT to start updating the photoblog more often. Here’s another of my better shots:

Swiftcurrent Lake and Many Glacier Valley in the early morning.

I recently read a wonderful little book of essays on fine art photography by Brooks Jensen entitled Letting Go of the Camera. Jensen publishes the magazine LensWork, one of the best out there. Check out the book if you’re the least interested in fine art photography or even just the life of a fine art photographer.

Take care,
Nathan

Roughly five years ago, Insane and I were young professionals fresh out of college, and we had it bad for fly fishing. We’d been making regular trips for trout in any even remotely marginal trout water within our driving range. If we had a long weekend, we’d head up to East Tennessee to fish the mountains or the Hiwassee tailwater. During those days we virtually ignored the small local warmwater streams. You see, when the trout bug bites you, nothing else will do, not even the truly worthy smallmouth bass. Even today I find myself longing for abundant, clear, cool, accessible trout water. Something you won’t find in Alabama. Nowadays I try to fight the longing, be content with what we have here, explore remote local streams, etc. Back then I didn’t even try. I wanted trout and mountains and big, high, lonely wilderness. Reading every book I could find on fly fishing, most of which focused on the streams and mountains of the West, didn’t help much. John Gierach, I hate you.

A plan began to take shape. Neither of us had enough annual leave built up to take a long trip, but we could just manage a week. Counting the bookending weekends, that would be nine days. We couldn’t afford plane tickets, so we’d have to drive. Yes, if we left on a Friday evening after work, we could be in the Rockies by Sunday, Saturday night if we really pushed it! Thus was born the plan for the first Great TVangler Annual Road Trip. Originally, fishing was to be the highest priority. Personal hygeine, rest, food, shelter, reality TV, sight-seeing and any other of the minor concerns of life would be ignored. As long as we were back for the beginning of the Alabama football season. After much study, we decided on Yellowstone as the location for our first trip out West. No other place has that much great fishing in such a compact area. We wouldn’t have to backpack. We could drive right to several legendary rivers. We’d invite our brothers Justin and Drake since we could trust them to sacrifice themselves in the pursuit of trout. They’d been tested and proven worthy (Deep Creek death march…). It’d be great.

Then we made the mistake came up with the sweet idea of inviting significant others and friends. You know, heck, they might like seeing Old Faithful and a bison. They could find something to do while we were out fishing. What followed was the Yellowstone 2006 trip. I’ll never forget it. It truly was one of the greatest events in my life, and I’ll always remember it that way. But the fishing, as it turned out, took a somewhat lower priority than planned. Justin backed out. Personal hygiene, shopping, sight-seeing and dining all played greater roles than I’d hoped. Still, we did get in some fishing, I developed a lifelong love for the cutthroat trout, and it whetted our appetite for more. (more…)

and a smorgasbord of other stuff!

I taunt Insane with my first bass of the day! Yes, my friends, that is a tequila sunrise Culprit worm.

Yes, fishing in a muddy creek. That’s all the fishing I’ve gotten to do in the last couple weeks. Insane and I hit the little creek he features in his Lunchtime Angler series last Friday. I had stubbornly persisted in trying to fly fish this thing, but finally gave up. Bow and Arrow casting isn’t my specialty, and certainly not with gar flies and big bass poppers. That’s about all one has room for. The banks are heavily forested and steep. The creek is only about 15′ wide, and it’s full of downed brush. I pulled out the dusty spinning rod, found my stash of plastic worms, lizards and sinkers and rigged it up. It all came back to me surprisingly well. Fly fishing is my true love, but snaking a plastic worm through brush is still fun. And, on a hot day with a muddy creek in front of me, it felt, somehow, right.

I managed to catch four small bass and the hawg of the trip, a 7 lb bowfin. It was a handful on the light spinning rod. Sorry, no photos. The typical technique for actually getting your hands on a fish out of this creek is to “cane pole” the little beasts up to yourself. Not an option with a 7 lb bowfin. Insane manned the camera while I tried to ease the fish up the bank by pulling the line hand over hand. I somehow managed to wrap my right index finger in the line, nearly pinching it in two, and while trying to save that valuable appendage (read “while screaming and cursing at Insane to help”), the line finally broke. Too bad. I really wanted a photo of that fish, but I wanted the tip of my index finger even more.

Insane fishes the muddy creek in a photo I heavily altered just for the heck of it.

In other news, I heard from Andy Whitcomb last week. He got another article published on ESPN Outdoors. This time he talks about bait. So, I might have been reduced to plastic worm fishing, but at least I haven’t descended to the depths Andy has. Seriously though, Andy’s a good writer. In fact, I’d go so far as to say this particular article is, well, “cute.” Check out this one and his future articles on ESPN Outdoors.

I also recently heard from Matthew Crampton, our friend from Scotland who just loves taunting us with photos of huge brown trout. I found sadistic pleasure in Matthew’s latest note as it turns out he had a tough trip on his favorite island of South Uist. Just kidding, Matthew. If I can’t catch fish, I at least hope my friends can. Make sure to check out the book Matthew and his friends put together about their favorite fishing lodge on South Uist. I’m still reading the book, and it’s been great. (Note: I’ve been reading the book now for about two months, but as always my problem is that I have four or five books going at once and never seem to finish them…) You can pick up a copy of the book at www.muddlerbooks.com. Matthew sent the excellent photo below of the dog Bee who is apparently an excellent fishing companion – so long as you don’t miss any takes.

The fishing dog Bee on a recent South Uist fishing adventure.

David Knapp over at The Trout Zone has been posting articles about his adventures out West this summer. David’s blog is where you need to look if you want to read a fly fishing blog where people actually catch fish and, well, fly fish as opposed to dredging muddy creeks with plastic worms and whining about not getting to fish.

I finally got in my new tying desk! I’m trying to get the catastrophe that is my tying materials organized. As soon as that’s accomplished, I’ll post a photo. It’ll be the last time ever the desk will look that good.

I’m WAY behind the times here, but I finally saw the first Trout Bum Diaries DVD. Perhaps surprisingly, I actually enjoyed it. The narration was pretty cheesy, but a lot of the remainder was enjoyable. The filming was well done. If I was doing a similar movie, I’d do it a little differently, maybe with a little more structure, maybe toss in a few of the witty observances I’m famous for, etc. If you’d like to fund me in this effort, please email me right away. The DVD wasn’t bad at all. It made me really want to go to Patagonia.

I suppose that’s all I can ramble about. I apologize for neglecting the site so glaringly over the last month or so. Hopefully that’s about to change. Later in the week look for, finally, another TVangler classifieds item. Take care,

Nathan

I’m too darned tired to do much on the site tonight, so I’ll just point you to a cool blog that I added to the blogroll this week: Cutthroat Stalker. It’s run by Scott Carles and focuses on fly fishing for native trout (mostly cutthroat, obviously) in Utah and the surrounding areas. Scott features some wonderful photography, and I particularly enjoyed his recent post entitled “Micro-Creek Fishing”. That little creek looks like something Insane and I would tackle. In fact, we have tackled something of that size before. The little creek Jacqulyn and I fished up in Maine was about that size, but the little brookies we caught weren’t quite the size of those cutts Scott and Dan brought to hand. Check out Cutthroat Stalker. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Speaking of the blogroll, I probably need to check all the links and whatnot. It’s gotten so long that there’s no way I can keep up with all the sites listed, especially with my web-browsing time being curtailed so much lately. Ah well, a fly fishing blogger’s work is never done, and like I said, I’m awfully tired tonight…

Here’s a site I heard about from a lady at work. It’s the Eagle Cam run by an organization called the Biodiversity Research Institute. It features 24 hour a day live video footage of a pair of nesting bald eagles on the coast of Maine. These eagle cams have been around awhile, but I’d never stumbled across one. There are several set up all around the US and Canada. The lady who told me about it has a friend who keeps one up on her desktop all day. I’m sure the IT folks at work would love me for that one…

Take care,
Nathan

The Problem of Pain: No this isn’t another article about whether or not fish feel pain…

For a long time, I’ve thought the so-called Problem of Pain was the most persuasive argument against the existence of God. It’s certainly not the most rigorously logical argument, but it’s the one that strikes most deeply at whether or not I feel that God exists. In case you’re not familiar with the problem, it basically states that, given the amount of needless pain and suffering in the world, it’s highly unlikely that God exists, or at the very least, that an all-powerful, all-good, etc god exists. If He did exist, He would not allow these types of things to happen. I have found that I’m not alone in the assessment. I have heard from many that they could not believe in God solely because of all the evil and pain they’ve witnessed and experienced.

There are philosophical arguments, some of them very good ones, that attempt to explain why pain is necessary even if God does exist, but to some extent all these arguments feel “cold.” When we feel pain, we don’t want to hear an abstract argument. We want answers. We want to be comforted. We want to know that there is a reason, a point to all this. The problem of pain is such a difficult dilemma that, did the available evidence not lead me personally to the inescapable conclusion that God does in fact exist, I would probably have never become a Christian on the basis of the problem of pain alone. As it is, I have been forced, both by argument and personal experience, to accept that God exists and that the problem of pain is just something I am not allowed to understand in this life.

We all experience pain in this life. Some much more than others. I have not personally been subject to an abundance of tragedy. I have been very blessed. When most people talk about the problem of pain, they speak of overwhelming examples such as the Holocaust or severely abused children or terrible natural disasters. But when I think about the problem of pain, I see my uncle. My mother and her brother were raised in exceedingly tough conditions. I will not go into details, but it was not a good life. From what I knew of my uncle, he was a good man. He became a Baptist preacher. He was always jovial and loud and kind. He was a big man. That’s one reason why I was so struck when he developed liver cancer. For two long years, the cancer tore at him until he was only a shell of a man. My grandmother and mother were broken right along side him, and neither has fully recovered. This happened many years ago, and I still recall much of it. Even then, as a child, I questioned God angrily. How could He let this happen to someone like my uncle? But He did let it happen. And one day, my uncle died, like so many others.

Before he died, he wanted to go fishing one last time. He had his youngest son take him down to the lake, and he fished for awhile during the late evening. Somehow, perhaps miraculously, my uncle hooked and landed a four pound largemouth on a plastic worm. We have a photograph of him holding the fish with this enormous grin stretched across his face, his son standing beside him. For two years my uncle was in unspeakable pain, and I rarely saw that jovial side I had known all my life. But in that photograph, there he was again.

I don’t have all the answers. Anyone who tells you they do is lying. I don’t know why the world has so much pain. I don’t know why God allows terrible, nightmarish things to happen to innocent children. But I can tell you that I believe there is a God, and I believe he was there with my uncle that day at the edge of the lake. I thank Him for giving me so many good times on the water with my family and friends. I have seen Him in their faces, in the morning sky, in the storm clouds, in the trees as the wind whispers through them, in the beautiful colors on a trout’s side. He has blessed me so much through fishing and the places fishing has led me. All fishermen can be thankful that, despite all the pain we feel and witness in this life, fishing can do a bit to ease the pain for a time. For that reason alone, we can be confident that this sport we love holds at least some intrinsic value.

There are moments when God has granted me peace and a certainty that there is a reason to it all. Even if I can’t see the reason, I can see Him. For whatever reason, a hefty number of these moments have occurred in the outdoors.

My uncle never lost his faith. In fact, his faith was so strong that it carried many of us through his illness.

Take care,
Nathan

I’m going to say something that I had hoped and even promised myself that I’d never say. At least not and actually mean it. My job has owned my life for the last couple weeks. I have worked long hours, and the hours have been long and stressful enough that I haven’t even felt much like fishing or tying flies or rod-building or doing any other activity that I truly value. It’s basically this: get up at 5:45, be at work by 6:30, eat breakfast while checking email, work until lunch, eat quickly so I can be back for a meeting, work until 5:00 or later, do just enough chores to keep the house from being condemned, vegetate in front of a television for awhile, collapse for the night, get up and do it all again. Something is seriously wrong with that, but there’s not much I can do about it right now other than complain. Anyway, enough whining. I have a few things for you to waste your time on this Friday.

Bass popper made from a chunk of sandal foam.

A few weeks ago, I tried making a bass popper out of foam from a cheap pair of sandals purchased at the local retail store. It turned out well. This is now by far my favorite technique for building a foam popper. I found a really good tutorial on a California striper and bass website. There’s a similar tutorial on the Alabama River Fishing site that has other good tips, although he doesn’t get his foam from sandals. As you can see from my photo, I designed mine with a flat face. I like flat-faced poppers even more than the concave ones because they seem a little more versatile. You can get all sorts of different sounds from them. The popper that I built can make a really loud pop or a muted gurgle. It floats better than a cork and casts like a bullet. I based its design on Tapp’s Bugs. I used the Delta Ceramcoat sealer and varnish to help finish the popper. I hope to try it for some Lake Guntersville largemouth soon. (more…)

I was supposed to post the report from my backpacking trip today, but I’m having trouble retrieving some of my photos, so in its place I’ve got a couple quick notes. I hope to have the report ready for Wednesday.

We had a big crawfish boil this weekend, which is sort of an annual event for us assuming we can hit it right. If you live in North Alabama and know when and where to look, you can catch crawfish by the truck load. It’s a messy affair and nothing short of hard work, but the reward is delicious. Plus there’s something in my self-reliant nature that’s attracted to the idea of food that’s out there available for anyone willing to put in the work to get it. I’m not giving away our secret location for gathering these tasty little critters, but I have included some photos. We worked for about two hours with cast net and rakes. I’d guess we caught somewhere around 30 lbs worth. We boiled them up with plenty of strong spices. We used Old Bay seasoning and lots of it, a good handful of red pepper flakes and some lemon and lime juice. Most excellent…

This is a filthy Hawgdaddy after wrestling crawfish for a couple hours.

The fruit of our labor. I'd estimate this to be about 15 lbs of crawfish, and we had two coolers with this many.

This is the beginning of the purging process. You place the crawfish in salt water for a time to purge them of impurities.

Tying desk (well that's what I'm using it for) found at a bargain furniture store.

We’ve been looking for a sofa for our living room. With that in mind, we visited a few furniture stores this weekend. We didn’t find a sofa, but we did have some interesting experiences. The most eventful event was shaking hands with an honest-to-goodness real-live monkey at one furniture shop. But the second coolest thing was Jacqulyn buying me a new tying desk! We found a great deal on the desk pictured to the right. I have no idea why we bought it. We must have been overcome by shopper’s frenzy. I was perfectly content with my $20 converted retail store children’s computer desk as my tying station. Of course I have been known to lust after those really nice desks built specifically for fly tiers, but we could never afford one of those. The price on the desk pictured was just about too good to pass up. I decided not to buy it, but Jacqulyn said, “Well, if you’re not buying it, then I will.” And so she did. Even though we probably shouldn’t have spent the money, I’m absolutely thrilled to have it. Plus it’s giving me the motivation I need to clean up my tying materials and workspace. The desk is designed for a computer, but it looks to be ideal for tying flies. Really never thought I’d have something like this, and I plan to cherish it for the rest of my life.

Take care,
Nathan