Like you, I have been busy getting ready for the holidays. Either you celebrated this years early Hannukah, or have been caught up in Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or are doing last minute shopping for Christmas. In a way todays kids make it easy for us, it used to be the latest or hot gift that we had to search or wait for, but this year and for the last few years, it's been some kind of electronic something or other, and there's plenty available, if you want to pony up for it. Let me set the stage, my five year old has an ipad on her wish list. Funny, huh. So shopping has been easy, just a little expensive. So amongst my craziness with kids and the season, I spent a little time going through some of my fishing gear that was still in the bed of my pick-up. I pulled out my fly wallet and took a look inside. I found a collection of new and unused flies, and mixed in were several flies that have done some hard duty this fall. The ones that took that hardest beating were the barbell eye flies. Most of the ugliest ones had no barbels at all, the only thing left was some bucktail and flash. Or their eyes were mishapen from the endless battery against the rocks and sand. It was kind of sad this collection, bound for the garbage or recycle pile that I keep near my vice. Some of them caught fish. Some fell apart before they could. I tried to think which ones made it into a stripers mouth or graced the pages of one of the several magazines I contribute to.
As I sat and went through the flies, I realized how much I missed the daily striper beat, and missed the daily updates on this blog. Believe it or not, the hit counts have only gone down a few per day, so anglers like you still visit. Most of us will be busy through the new year, maybe attending a holiday party for one of the several fishing clubs that are out there, and then gear up for the Fly Fishing Show that travels to the east coast in January. Between it all some will tie some flies and go through our gear, but for most of us our used and beat up flies will spend the winter in a ball at the bottom of our gear bags, waiting till next spring with the hope to be tied to a tippet one more time.