Without really intending to do so, this month’s issue came together with a bit of a theme to it—in the local section anyway. I always try in some way to time the articles that I select each month based on a variety of factors including time of year, seasonal openings and closures for different species, prime angling opportunities and so on. While there is no rule that says you can’t read about ice fishing in July for example, that’s best left for the winter months. Similarly, I am not too likely to run a “Fishing the Fall Surf” article in April. I’m not saying there is any sort of hard and fast rule here, just some general guidelines that I try to go by to give you, the reader, what I think you may want. Along those lines, feel free to shoot me an email any time at [email protected] if you have comments—positively or negatively—on what you see in print or what you’d like to see more or less of going forward.
So in this month’s local section you’ll see some pretty cool winter workbench pieces to help pass the winter like how to tie a fly or teaser, make a wooden fishing lure, tactically approach a fishing show and break down and tune a conventional reel like an Abu Garcia 7000 for use in the surf. I also have what I deemed a good winter read from John Silva that while it may not be the usual how-to you’re used to seeing here on the pages of The Fisherman, I enjoyed the read. Heck, maybe it will be the first one you flip to now and I hope that you enjoy it too!
Looking at the line-up of articles again, I have a habit when I read submissions to get pumped up for a given subject matter when it’s well-written, and this is often how I gage the potential appeal of an theme. Starting with the fly tying article, I found myself learning a few tricks that while so basic, I was overlooking when tying tail flags and teaser flies (I admittedly do not do much if any fly fishing these days.). I immediately put this to good use and hammered out a handful of teaser flags for some plugs that needed revamping after a heavy season of use.
Next up we have the modernized banana plug article. If you’re not aware of its history, this plug was featured some time ago in the original plug-building series written by Jack Frech. The banana was just one of several unique and original patterns that Jack Frech developed, and due to its somewhat difficult nature to build, remains a highly sought-after plug style to this day. I already forwarded these plans to two of my plug building friends and plan to add a few to my arsenal in 2017.
The conventional reel article was one I wasn’t originally sure about, but after speaking with the author, John Lee, on the subject several times over the phone I was sold. John and I used to fish together quite a bit, and the vast majority of the time we fished heavy conventional rods with reels like the Abu Garcia 7000 and PENN GS series. We fished a lot of heavy monofilament and the set-up was quite effective along the rocky shoreline of Narragansett and South County Rhode Island. Eventually as I found myself using the wetsuit more and more I also moved away from fishing conventional reels as sealed spinning reels like Van Staal and ZeeBaas just better suit this style of fishing. But, as I told John when he sent in the first draft of the article, I’ll be digging my old 7000s out of storage, spooling them up with 30-pound monofilament and dusting off the old Lami 1213m in the coming season.
