Cabin Fever

This time last year, I remember, I was already into plenty of fishing.  We'd had a warm spell in southwestern PA, and snow wouldn't be seen lying on the ground in any serious quantity until spring, summer, and fall had run their course.  In a particularly sharp memory, I recall a day where I'd landed bass and bluegill, lots of them, fishing a drowned elk hair caddis and wearing just a t-shirt and jeans.  Granted, that was unseasonably warm weather for a Pennsylvania February, but the feet of snow we've seen this month just make me remember it that much more.

I took some time out earlier this week, bound and determined to do some fishing somewhere...anywhere.

I drove to 6-8 of my normal fishing areas, and while the water is clear of ice, fast, and just a touch high, the color is great, and I'm sure bugs (and by extension, fish) are active.  Unfortunately, while the water is great, the land...well...not so much.  February 2010, for most of the area, dropped truly disgusting amounts of snow everywhere.  Now, much of it is beginning to melt, but from all the plowing, the snow on the roadsides is higher, and denser, than most other places.  This means that there is literally nowhere to park in order to go fishing.

Naturally, you might think that another 2 weeks decent weather would solve it all, but that's going to melt the snow...right into the already high streams.

I dont know what I'm going to do yet...but I've sat inside and tied for far too long to get screwed out of fishing by a lack of parking...I'll think up something...

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The First Steps

Hello, and welcome to my new blog. In the coming days, I'll be bringing in a template, and adding my first few entries, but in the mean time, I'll let you know what it is that this blog will deal with. In short, it's a blog of my life...but taking that a step further, it means that we'll be concentrating on my most engaging pastime: fly fishing and fly tying. I'll specifically be focusing on the tying end of things, but the main thrust of many of my entries will be concerning fish, flies, and all that goes into attaching the former to the latter.

Mixed in with that, there will be samplings of photos I take, posts about my dog, the great coffee I had that afternoon, my exploration of the Buddhist philosophy, the latest webcomic that has attracted my attention, or my take on some sort of current event. It will be a varied and hopefully interesting mix, but the path will eventually bring you back down a bank to a trout stream.

So add Dharma of the Drift to your feed reader and comment often!

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