At least I got to hold a fish in January. Went back to my favorite spot where I field test flies and gave the walleye a go. One guy was there and we talked for a bit. He was throwing a jerk bait and landed the above fish, plus another one, while we talked. He had no problem letting me grab a shot before releasing him, or her. I guess walleye season, well catching, starts in January, and heats up in February and March. So anglers will be out targeting them. It's like anything else when it comes to fishing. You have to be in the know, have to put youir time in, and then hopefully you'll catch on, and catch em' up. Kind of like I did this year with the snakeheads, we all know how that went, 0 for 100 times fishing for them.
Since my waders are still boxed up for their trip back to Bozeman I broke out my old Simms pair and gave them a shot. I couldn't remember why they were shot, buy I made it through without getting wet. I am contemplating maybe sending them back and paying for them to be redone, but I'll have to consider the $100 shipping cost, plus any repair cost, yada yada. I spent an hour or so in the water and in the above pic I see it's time to start with some sit-ups or crunches as that is not the designed angle of a stripping basket, at least you don't see that in the catalogues.
They say the best time for walleye is first or last light and a low and slow presentation. Temps in the river where I was were 40 degrees so I can't imagine fish will be up and chasing. I was using the
above fly and didn't bother to change as I thought it was good enough. Water was a tad off color and the levels bumped up since we had the pretty steady rain for the last day and half. Busy this week at work with me having to be on campus Tuesday to Friday so my "production" tying has been slow. I did manage to bang out the below fly which looks pretty good to me. It's a mix of my big three, bucktail, SF Blends, and Squimpish. I am working to eliminate giving my flies a haircut by working on my measuring and tapering. My challenge is those Squimpish white underbelly's, especially at
the head of the fly. The side I'm tying on looks way better than the other side. I wish Regal would send me a rotary Revolution to tie on, since I pimp them out enough on this site. That fly above comes in at 8 inches on a 5/0 Mustad SS hook. I took a peek at my fly line-up before the start of the season last year. Those flies seem to be "fuller" with more of a mix of feathers and hackle mixed in.
I'll have to reintroduce that into this years flies as well as tying bigger ones. Just about all of them are gone, but the memories of some good fish, and losing them on the bottom, stay with me.
And "I like big eyes (butts) and I cannot lie", like the song. After getting the 10mm I went and ordered the 12mm's. I waited for them to come and then checked the tracking. The label says they are shipped from Inwood, New York but like everything else in this world they orginate from China. They come from Donguan, Guangdong, which I think is a province in China. I went and
did some Google searches about fly fishing product manufacturers and China. I found a website, HERE, called Global Sources, which lists what products you can get, from who and how much. It's not just fishing, but everything that has been or will ever be made in the world. So while I'm writing about fly tying eyes, let's just look at something realted to fly fishing, like a fly rod case. You have all seen them, from companies like Orvis, or FishPond, and that's the Orvis one below, which lists for $229. A further search of fly rod cases from
over here in the USA shows a very similar one from the Allen Company in Colorado listed on the Global Sources website. On the Allen website they have a banner which says "Made in the USA". That's a little misleading becausee when you hit the ndropdown a list of products comes up, but not our fly rod case, so, misleading yes, a lie, I don't think so. I guess any products not listed there are imported, like the fly rod case, which they have their logo sewed
onto, with a nice markup price tag of $159. If a manufacturer or distributor hooks up with Quanzhou Erier Trading Company they can purchase them for as low as $15.80 a piece, for orders
greater than 5,000 pieces, but for an order of 5 to 99 pieces the price is $20, not bad for the bottom line, and, they'll even sew in your logo. Now if you don't want to pay Allen Company the $159, you can get them off Amazon for $118, but these still plenty of grease in there for everybody to get paid.
That's the thing about this blog sometimes, you never know what wormhole you're going to head down. But it's interesting, this "global" world we live in. China is out-manufacturing us by light years. When we purchase something, especially with a companies logo on it, we think there's a chance it may be made over here, but forget it, unless it says "Made in USA", it's made in "Our Factory", the below is a picture that goes with the Global Source website. Do you think those are the true working conditions in China? C'mon man.
So my eyes aren't made here in the USA, okay I got that. They must be manufactured into rolls a mile long and then cut and packaged. Below you can see the guillotine setting must be off a bit. But that's okay. I'll use that bottom row to glue on some smaller eyes for flies that don't call for 12mm eyes. After all of that I can see how and why the import/export business is so profitable. Of course
I'm in the wrong business, but really I wouldn't want to be. From fly tying eyes, to electronics, to clothes, to fake goods, to anything, we are sending billions of dollars overseas to satiate our needs. Everything is retagged or embroidered to think the company we are buying it from makes it, or even has a hand in, but they don't. Now I can see how and why a company has a 100% customer satisfaction guarantee, if they get one return for every 10 sales they are still making a bazillion dollars a year.