Ah Grasshopper…

     In the middle of August the grasshoppers appear, droves of them. When I mow the lawn a wave of the critters flees ahead of me. Some appear as large as humming birds. Even our bird dogs sit and watch the hoppers fly about.

     During a late afternoon break I trekked down to my favorite brook below the house. A couple of hundred yards downstream a field is on the opposite side. Over this bend in the water grasshoppers flit about and occasionally land in the water. It was pretty obvious which fly to tie on, but all my hopper patterns were back at the house.

     The closest imitation in my boxes was a big alder fly I’d tied a couple of weeks before. The body was dubbed a light gray on a number ten hook and the wing was just deer hair tied sort of muddler style. The colors on the real insect went from gray to yellow on the abdomen, but this one would have to do. Bigger would have been better.

     The fly landed with a splat, much like a real hopper falling into the stream. It didn’t drift a foot when it was inhaled. During the next hour I caught and released over three dozen trout all on the same fly.

      A few days later I went back with an imitation tied with a yellow body and the same seen repeated. A week after that I couldn’t catch a trout on any fly I floated.

     That’s fishing, isn’t it?

Blueberries

     It’s August. The weather is too hot. The humidity is high. All of the trout seem to have disappeared from their favorite haunts. The foliage is so thick in the woods that it swallows up any breeze and makes for steamy hiking. What’s a New Hampshire person to do?

     Blueberrying.

     Blueberrying is best to do during the cooler parts of the day, either morning or late afternoon. Find abandoned fields and you will probably find blueberries. They often grow in small patches sometimes no bigger than a dinner table. In a good year the decent patch will appear mostly blue and you can roll them off the vine a dozen at a time. In leaner times you’ll be picking singles, but hopefully they’ll be lots of big fat singles.

     It takes about six cups to make a pie, and that translates into something like an hour and a half of one person picking. Of course that varies with density of crop and how many the picker eats. Pancakes and muffins use far less. Even a handful improves breakfast cereal immensely. I try not to eat while picking, self-control is an issue.

     This year we’ve picked about a dozen quarts from low bush blueberry vines growing in our own fields. It is something of a record for us. There’s still a few berries ripening, so maybe close to another quart will be picked. By then I’ll really be ready for some cooler weather.

     As I pick I find myself dreaming about throwing flies for landlocked salmon or a big old male brook trout in his fall colors. And then there’s the ruffed grouse season coming on fast, which the dogs are looking forward to even more than I am. Life is grand when you let it be.

     Blueberrying is a great way to pass the time.

Those picking buckets are a lot older than I am.

Tying Flies

Red Tag Coachman.

     There are few things you can do indoors that tie you as closely to the outdoors as tying flies. You can be tying flies to imitate the insects that hatched last week or the ones that are prophesied for next week, it doesn’t matter. Fly tying can get you through the cold of winter or a rainy stretch any time of the year. The flies can be for trout, the bonefish down on that flat down in the Florida Keys, or striped bass up in the rip outside of Boston Harbor.

     Right now it is August. Most of the time it is on the warm side for trout fishing. The hot sticky temperatures take the fun out of it and catching to release in heated streams stresses the trout. Small back country creeks, where the water is still cold, provide about the only real trout fishing around. The big river is fickle, depending on the weather.

     Outside it is pouring. A front is moving through to wipe away the hot sticky weather of the last few days. If we get two or three chilly nights in a row and the river will fish well.

     So it’s a prefect night to tie up some hopper patterns. A few of the live ones are huge, almost as big as a grown man’s pinky finger. We’ll hope for a cool stretch and then flop some of those enormous flies in the water. Maybe a few of those giant old brown trout will wake up hungry.

Tomah Jo

     Last winter an urge to tie the old classic wet flies hit me. There’s a whole box full in my vest now. Sometimes I fish them and they seem to catch as many fish as anything else I toss. I love history and those flies are history

     For much of February I tied Clouser minnows, dozens of them. No, dozens of dozens of them. I haven’t fished them much and I’ve given away many. Then I finished out the winter tying my favorite dry fly patterns. You can’t have too many, not the way I catch tree limbs.

     Down in the basement is a Wheatley fly box full of salmon flies, just in case someone invites me along. They are all nearly thirty years old and never have been wet. I can dream, can’t I? There’s boxes of saltwater flies too. Some of those have been fished. Did I ever tell you about the day where I caught six striped bass over thirty inches long? I'm allowed to dream about doing it again, aren't I?

     Maybe that is what tying flies is all about. Dreaming. I think both hunters and fisherman spend a lot of time dreaming.

Dreams.

Puppy Health

Here’s more on puppy health and the effects of neutering.

https://www.dailydogdiscoveries.com/puppy-growth-plates/