It's a Girl

If you've been following my blog, then you're aware of the horrendous death of my favorite rod and the unexpected replacement of it with a new 2wt rod building kit from my wife. Well, it's been over a week and I finally found the time to finish her. Excitement is already building, I'm taking half the day off tomorrow to fish one of my favorite streams in the park.She's beautiful! A black 6'6" 2 piece 2 wt with silver accents on all the wrappings. I must say, even I am impressed with my first attempt at rod building. Although I was building it on an incredibly narrow budget, it was much easier to do than I thought it would be. Frankly, if I had known how easy it was going to be, I would have been building my own rods for years, and I didn't even have some items a lot of rod builders would consider crucial: a wrapping stand, a rod rotator, etc. The only money spent was on the rod kit ($55) and another $10 on misc. stuff like razorblades and denatured alcohol.

So, how did I do it? The first step was to find the spline of the blanks, I'm not really sure I found it right because of the rod being so small. There was a definitive spline, whether my guides were in the right side is another question. After that, I put on the grip along with the reel seat so I could mark them for mounting later. After these were marked, I then put the blanks together so I could begin marking for my guide placement. Now it was time to actually glue the cork to the blank. MUCH care was taken during this stage to make sure the end of the blank touches the reel seat cap when it's all put together. The base of the rod has to be glued to the reel seat to anchor it.

Since the cork was on, it was time to put the guides on. Initially, I taped them into place so that I could begin wrapping them. So, how did all this work without a rod wrapper? I used a cardboard box with notches cut into it to hold both blanks. To get tension on the wrapping thread, which is critical, I put the thread into a cup, ran it through 2-3 books, and then into the box through a hole in the bottom. Wrapping the guides was pretty easy despite using a box to hold everything. If time and patience is used, tight wraps can be had. I re-did at least 2 or 3 of the bindings because they looked crappy. 2 or 3 more popped loose during other stages of the build. After all the wraps were done, I began putting in the accent wraps.

The accent wraps almost made me crazy! When I would get one done, it would become unraveled while I would be working on another one. I truly thought I was going to loose my mind! After what seemed hours of putting on the accents, I finally finished them. At this point, I had to take a break from the project for a few days to do some other things and save my sanity. Once I had a night that not much was going on, I settled down to do the rod finish.

Without a rod wrapper, this required me to sit around for a couple of hours turning the rod a quarter turn every 5 or so minutes. I put on two moderately thin coats and I found that to be a sufficient buildup for such a small rod. I left the blanks with a matte finish, so I had to be very careful about were the finish went and to wipe it off immediately with denatured alcohol when it got somewhere it wasn't supposed to be. After all the wraps had dried and cured, the last thing that was left was to attach the reel seat. I used some epoxy I had lying around to glue it on with since I opted to put it on last to make the blanks easier to manipulate, and only one packet of rod glue came with the kit that was used days ago.

Once the seat was seated, I attached the seat base by gluing it to the end of the blank to anchor the whole rod. This part of it anchoring is REALLY important, I know this because mine was off just a bit. I eventually had to rig something together with a washer to lock the two pieces together. Lucky for me, it worked. I was actually looking at a small error that almost ruined the whole project, literally at the last stage. I could have died. As stated before, I was lucky enough to have a washer lying around that fit my need perfectly, so all is well.So what would I have done differently? For my next rod, I'll be building a rod wrapper. Now that I understand the concept and have seen them for sale, I think I can build one fairly easily. I would have put more time and effort into the area that I wrote on the rod, about the only thing I'm unhappy with at this point. Kinda looks crappy in my opinion. The final test will be tomorrow when I can get her on the water. I have high hopes for her, she feels very similar to the other 2wt that cost me $125 for the stick. I like that kind of math, I saved something like $60. SWEET!

On an uplifting side note, I think I was able to repair my broken 2 wt. I had said before, some of the rod still fit together reasonably well, so I sanded down the rough edges and wrapped a new joint. It's possible that she might snap while I'm casting her or playing a nice fish, but I think she might get by because it's such a small rod. Plus I figured out a SAFE way to strap my 3ft rod tube to the bike. Super SWEET! So hopefully tomorrows update will have photos of the new rod starring next to some fat trout!

West Fork

I fished from the motorcycle for the first time today. It took about 20 minutes to figure out how to get everything attached to the bike, but after that, off I went. Because of riding the bike today, my trusty sidekick Adicus would not be joining me this afternoon. I enjoyed a pleasant ride up above Canton for my destination for the day. After getting to my pull off, it took a bit longer than usual to get everything together and lock the bike up. After all that was done, down the road I went.After walking about a half mile, I found a fairly convenient place to drop to the water, I tied on a EHC and a PT dropper and got down to business. Fishing started out slow and pretty much continued that way all afternoon. I only made contact with 4-5 fish all day, not good. The good news was that the two fish I actually landed were rather chuncky, unfortunately, I lost another whale of a fish today. My first fish was caught out of the middle of a fast deep run. The brownie was sitting in the feeding lane right where he was supposed to be and slurped my caddis off of the surface as it passed over him. He put up a valiant fight, but was laid out for a photo in the end.

I continued to move upstream, slipping around large boulders and climbing up frothy cascades, casting to any likely spots with no luck. I climbed over a large rock and saw a beautiful run hidden in deep shade with moss covering the bottom of the chute. I made a gentle cast to the tongue of the pool, as it swept past a rock and around a bend, a very large brownie sipped the caddis of the surface as pretty as can be. I tentatively set the hook and all hell broke loose. The surface turned into a explosion of whitewater and the tethered beast shot straight up in the air, throwing my caddis back at me as a sign of his victory. It was over that quick. Two seconds, maybe. Man that was a big fish. I reckon he might have gone for 17-18" and was fat.

I moved on, a bit saddened at missing yet another large fish, I came to a run that was almost a duplicate of the one I had just lost Mr. Big to. Excited. I got into a position to make a good cast and did just that. A nice brownie slashed at the caddis in a violent way and the fight was on. This guy had a lot of fight in him. He kept tearing through the pool, trying to get under a rock to break me off or to pop loose. To my satisfaction, neither of these options came to be and I was taking photos of this beast within a minute.

After chllin for a few a bit after releasing another beautiful brown trout, I moved on upstream, acutely aware of not having my fishin buddy with me today. I probably fish with Adicus 75-80% of the time I spend on the water. I hadn't noticed until today how used to havin him with me I've gotten, and this was a stream I normally would have had him with me on. Unfortunately, I'm just not driving the truck much due to gas prices. The fishing pretty much died completely at this point. I don't think I even saw another fish for the next hour. Despite this, I continued to enjoy being out on the water.

It was a beautiful day to be on the water even if the fish didn't want to cooperate. I had a very nice ride home. I was nice and warm out, the sun was shining, and it was nice to just to be out and not doing yard work that should have been getting done.

Smallies on the Fly

Because of the rain this morning, I didn't get out to do any trout fishing. In light of limited time due to some other things going on today, I decided to take Adicus out to the river for some smallie action. To my dismay, there was someone already fishing my beat. Damn! Nobody but me fishes that section, I was sad to see someone there. I moved down the road a bit to hit my 2nd favorite section and was pleased to see no one was there.

After parking, I strung up my 5wt that I hadn't fished in ages. The setup for the day was a deerhair frog with a big olive bugger hanging underneath it. Adicus and I shuffled our way across shallow shoals and riffles to get to some of the larger pools and runs. The Pigeon is still running at less than half of its normal flows, so alot of my normal runs are too shallow to hold fish. The fishing started out slow missing some fish that took the bugger. Some time was also spent getting used to slinging something as big and heavy as a deer hair fly and bugger. On the plus side, I only hooked myself once today. A nice deep one in the elbow. Thankfully, the barb didn't get buried, but it still left a nice whole on my arm.

I finally started to catch a few smaller fish on the bugger, but nothing with any size yet. Moving upstream, I came across one of my favorite runs that usually holds a nice fish, if not 2 or 3. I cast near a large rock that swept the flies into a fairly deep run and the bugger was hammered by a respectable 14" smallie. Fight on! The dude put a nice bent into my noodley 5wt. After a few moments, he was brought to hand for a quick photo and release. I landed a few more fish, but nothing bigger than 11" inches.

We came up to another narrow deep run. After a cast that landed with a loud splat, the frog popper was destroyed by a very large bass. How big? I don't know, he popped off only seconds after taking the bug. GGrrrrr! Somewhat disappointed, we continued to fish on. After a few more small fish, another nice run was in front of me. I tossed the combo into the middle of the current and the bugger was immediately taken by a very nice 17" bass. This fish was NOT happy about being on the end of my line. He fought like a true champ. But alas, he ended up laying on the bank next to my rod getting his photo taken.

That was about the last fish that I tied into for the day. We weren't out that long, so I was pretty pleased with the 2 larger fish I caught. Quite a few fish were caught along with a few nice ones. The water is low, but the fish are active right now. Just a nice day to be on the water.

And Then There Was Light

So, as stated in earlier posts the headlamp on my Honda CM400T is like riding down the road with a flashlight, and not a good one at that. Something had to be done, so I finally went down to WallyWorld and bought a set of cheap halogen driving lights for a quick fix until I can come up with something better. Car lights are not the best option, they have a tendency to vibrate themselves to death on a motorcycle, but for $17, it was a doable option.

I had been trying to decide which way to wire them, either directly in the headlamp or directly to the charging system. Despite being more work, I decided to wire them to the charging system in hopes of avoiding overloading the fuse for the headlamp. The first order of the project was to drill holes onto the headlamp mount to mount the lamps to. Extreme caution had to be taken to avoid drilling into the brake lines or other electrical wires. With that done, I mounted the headlamps into the holes that had just been drilled. Holy Crap! I think this is going to work!

With the lights installed, it was time to start on the wiring. This was not that difficult either. I started with running the individual grounds to the to the screws used for mounting the lights on the bolt side. After that, I disconnected the battery and connected the power wire to the charging system and ran it to the handlebars. I ran the connectors from the lights to the toggle switch on the bars, and then ran a another ground from the toggle switch to the back of the other mount. Mounting the toggle switch was a little more interesting. I ended up getting creative with some zipties and came up with a solid solution.

At this time, everything was hooked up and it was time to give it a try. I turned the key and hesitantly flipped the toggle. VIOLA! LIGHT! 55 watts of clean halogen light spilled into the driveway, I leaned back in satisfaction. It was getting dark out so I decided I would finish it up in the morning since I was off. When I got around to finishing it the next morning, all that was left was splicing some wires to shorten them and then hide them, while locking the lights into position. This didn't take too long, so after a bit, it was time to take it for a test on the road.

I decided to run by and see Cat at work, a nice long trip on a beautiful day. It was a great ride and I felt more confident that I was much more visible to traffic. I'm excited about driving to work on Monday to see how well it does in the tunnels. Later that day, I decided to take her out for a night ride to see if the lights were vibrating or anything. Damn! These things are bright. My charging system is having a little difficulty keeping up with them. When I hit the brakes or a turn signal, they dim a little bit. Something to look into. Overall, I'm very happy with the outcome of this. Now I should be able to start fishing after work now that I feel moderately safe in the dark.

It only took about 3 hours to do this all together. The most difficult part was connecting everything between the forks and behind the headlight. I'm sure a hour could be shaved off if I had been a little more organized, lots of trips to the basement. So, if you got an old bike that doesn't give off much light and there are no real options to upgrade, try this out. How long will they work? Will it stress my battery? I have no idea the answers to these questions. I'm sure I will find the answers out though. All I do know is that I feel ALOT safer out on the road, and they even look pretty cool on hte bike. SWEET!

Oops!

Seems I screwed up pretty big recently. Cat has been making cookies for work (for like three days), struggling a bit. Last night she had school, so I made myself breakfast for dinner. Yumm, a favorite thing in our house. In my pursuit of French Toast and eggs, I used the last of the eggs in the house. Mistake #1. Then in total stupidity, I forgot to write it on the "grocery" board, something relatively new to our house. Mistake #2.

After dinner, Cat announced she was going to go at the cookies again. OK, go for it! I had a mistake Adicus left us while at work (once again lives up to the name "Mudbutt"!). While cleaning up poop that was not mine to clean (another story for another day), Cat opens the fridge, looks at me and asks "where are the eggs?". Stupid me says " I ate em all last night". A brief glance at the grocery board that doesn't have eggs on it, and she announces she's going to the store and leaves without another word to me. From experience, I can tell you that it's not a good thing when Cat doesn't even tell me I'm in it deep. Plus, since it's late, she'll have to drive all the way to Canton, so she'll have plenty of time to stew over it. Frankly, I'm scared of whats in store for me when she returns.

In other news, I decided to drive the truck to work today. Weird. Seemed like I was going 10mph when I was going 50. I plan on riding the bike tomorrow since it's supposed to be nice out. I was also the victim of a random act of kindness today. While fiddling with the Honda trying to figure out how I'm going to mount some driving lights to supplement the headlight, my neighbour Mike and his wife walked up with an arm full of leather. Seeing that I was riding a bike everyday, he gave me an old jacket and chaps that he didn't use anymore. I didn't know what to say, graciously I accepted them. Dumbfounded at his generosity. I'm excited about not freezing in the morning anymore, maybe even avoiding being stung by bees and such, although I do like to ride without a jacket on warm days. Thanks Mike!

Tomorrow I will embark upon mounting a set of driving lights to my headlight mount. My current headlight has about as much power as a candle, something has to change or I'm going to die in a tunnel on the Parkway. No aftermarket halogen bulbs for my ancient ride, so modification is in order. This will be a quick fix until I can come up with something more permanent. The hook up shouldn't take too long, hopefully I can just tie them into my highbeam wiring. Might end up blowing my fuse. I might just hook it up directly to the power source, but I was trying to avoid mounting a toggle switch to the bike. I plan on photo documenting the whole thing, so everyone will get to see their first piece of the bike.

I was able to finish up the accent wraps on the rod tonight. Holy Cripes! Those things almost made me crazy! They kept coming unraveled, sometimes immediately, sometimes 20 minutes later. Grrrrrrr! Alas, it is done. All that is left is putting some script on it, rod finish, and mounting the handle. I have a three day weekend this week, so I'm hopin to break her in by Sunday, need to get the finish on tomorrow so it has time to cure. I've already been thinking of where I want to take her, gotta be somewhere good.

Back to the leather. I tried it all on and it's a bit large on me, but not too bad, definitely wearable. Although, I feel kinda weird wearing leather chaps. Who knows, maybe it will look badass on the bike. In general, I feel like I'm going to a Village People concert or something. I'm sure the benefits will outway the way I think I look, but even Cat mentioned how odd it was to see me in that much leather. I think she likes the bad boy thing! Although she's told me to shut up about the bike, but she does that about all my new toys!

Life Goes On

And so it does. It's been a bit of a stressful, hectic, and tiring week. The motorcycle has been dominating most of my time and energy. I was able to start on the rod Cat bought me, but it will probably be this weekend before I'm able to put the finish on. I was able to get all the guides on and so far, only one wrap has come unraveled. Wasn't really that hard, definitely would have been easier than using something other than a box as a rod wrapper, hopefully that will come in the future sometime. All I have left to do is add the accent wraps, put finish on the wraps, glue in the seat, and she's set for a day on the water.

Some milestones have been bestowed upon me as far as the bike is concerned. My headlight burned out, so I've been in a maddening search for a part made for a motorcycle the same age as my wife. This was not the easiest thing to find, but alas, I was able to order one today. It's a shame that the light sucks so bad, now I'll be able to try and rig up a halogen light somehow. I had my first carb issue yesterday. Coming out of Wal-Mart, I saw a large pool of gas under the engine. A result of fuel pouring out of my overflow on my right carb. A condition caused by a float in the bowl of the carb getting stuck open somehow. Oh crap! I'm going to have to rebuild the carbs. I'm totally not prepared to do that yet. No manual, never worked on bike carbs, I was freakin!

I spent about 5 hours looking at alot of different things, trying to avoid the rebuild at all costs. I came across a few fixes that might unstick the float, so it would close again. The first was to start the engine and restrict the air flow to the carbs enough to almost stall it, and then let air return. This is supposed to increase the vacuum in the engine and pop free gunky valves and floats. Didn't work. Next solution was to start the engine with the petcock closed and run it until it almost stalls, and then turn on the fuel. The purpose of this was similar to the first fix and the results were similar ...... at first. Defeated, I went in to change for work and to run by Advanced Auto to get a can of Sea Foam. While riding, I decided to try fix #2 while the engine was under load. While riding, I shut off the petcock and ran her until she started to fade, then I switched the fuel back on. I did this two or three times, and wouldn't you know it, when I stopped at AA, the leaking had stopped, YEAH!!!! I still got a can of Sea Foam to run through the tank and the intake soon. This stuff is amazing, if you're having carb problems, try running this directly into the carbs while the engine is running. I used to do this all the time on my boats to keep the carbs from gumming up. I plan to do this as soon as I can. I planned on doing it tonight, but didn't get home til late tonight due to rain. These carbs will need to be rebuilt, but not today!

I had to ride home in the rain today. Not fun. On the plus side, I stopped at a hotel at Socco Gap, the first cover I could find, and ran into a nice guy from Kentucky that offered me a beer. We chatted for a while as it continued to rain, enjoying a refreshment and conversation. After a bit it quit raining, so I was on my way. I was moving at nice clip trying to avoid more rain I could see moving my way and had a friendly encounter with on of Maggie Valley's finest. Only a warning, thankfully. Along with all this, I almost got clipped by a turkey and I've been stung TWICE by something in the last 4 days that hurt like hell! Still, the bike rocks! So much fun, now that visions of death in every curve are easing.

Now if I can just get my ass back on the water! The garden hasn't been receiving the attention it deserves as of late either. Hopefully life will return to a normal rhythm sometime soon.

Blah,Blah,Blah

So life has been rolling along in our house like normal as of late. I've been too busy for a whole lot because the motorcycle has been sucking up alot of time. New toy, goes froom, froom, is fun! Fishing has definitely taken a back seat, that's OK, after the breaking of my 2wt, some luster was lost for a short period. Although, I do plan to get out and hit some smallies tomorrow if it doesn't rain. Gonna take the flyrod and commit to fishin it. I have a tendency to puss out and take a spin rod because it's easier in my opinion.

I've been having alot of fun on my new used motorcycle this week, and I've found that the stress of learning to ride it has taken alot out of me. It's alot of fun, but still requires ALOT of attention and concentration to make sure I don't die in some tourons home video of the Parkway. Some things I've learned this week: it's quite chilly here in the morning, I need chaps or something else windproof. Air temps have been around 50 in the morning and I hit 60 mph during one part of my drive, Brrrrrr! Full face helmets are the way to go. I probably wiped the carcasses of 40-50 bugs off of my helmet today, some of them large beetles. Uneven pavement SUCKS! I took hwy 19 home out of Cherokee yesterday and the road is covered with half ass patches that made the bike super unstable, scared the hell out of me. Get saddle bags, I have to figure out a way to strap crap to the bike. It sucks wearing a backpack all the time and I haven't even started fishin from it yet. Yet!

Most other things have been lost in the mix over the week. I got my rod on Monday, but haven't really even looked at it because of buying the bike on Tuesday. I have gotten most of the things I need and my hopes are to start on it tomorrow, if not finish it. Of course this will be mixed in with an afternoon nap, a little fishin, an maybe an afternoon ride, who knows? Whatever I do, it won't be alot of "productive" activity, but more of the leisure type. Sweet!!

So Cat and I are arguing about the use of the shower and bath in our household. Basically, I've been taking showers every morning for since she's known me. It's how I wake up and I look like someones been dragging me around by my hair in the morning. All of a sudden, she wants to start taking a bath every morning. The tub she uses drains the entire hot water heater, so I end up taking a warm to cool to cold shower on the days she takes baths in the morn. I'm a bit frustrated in the fact thast she won't COMPROMISE and take showers most mornings so it doesn't leave me in the cold. Her solution is for me to get up at 6 and take my shower so she can take a bath. I'm considering this, but.... I don't know. My problem is that I don't need to get up at 6, I usually get up at 6:45 or so. I go to bed around midnight, so that 45 minutes is pretty important to me. Who knows, I'm sure we'll argue about it and I'll end up getting up at six if I want a hot shower. That is of coarse if she gets up on time, which is another whole deminsion of the discussion.

Enough of that crap. More fishing and hiking posts to come soon. I'm gonna try to post some photos of the bike next week, if I can ever get off of it while it's light out. I'm gonna try to hike up to Chasteen Cascades off of Bradley Fork sometime this week and hopefully do some fishin after work this week too. Who knows what I'll actually end up doin.