It's been a great start to 2014, albeit a relatively fishless one thanks to the deep freeze that we have been mired in here in the midwest. After having my family Christmas late up in Traverse City I settled in to the desk and have been cranking heavy ever since. The last two weekends were spent away from the house to do the Fly Fishing Show in Somerset NJ and then the Greater Cincinnati Fly Fishing Expo...outside Cincinnati.
The Somerset show was a whirlwind as it always is. It was great to catch up with many friends, some of which I will not see again until the Symposium there in November. The general consensus there this year was that Friday was amazing, infact the busiest Friday that I have experienced at that show, and then the rest of the weekend went to script with Sunday being slowest. If you are ever coming out to that show Sunday is a great day for the consumer as the crowds are less so you can get more facetime with pretty much anyone that you want to talk to. After having a great couple days seeing some new products that are soon to come out my weekend came to a very uncomfortable end...food poisoning. I can say with absolute certainty that getting food poisoning leading up to a 9 hour drive is not something that I would wish on anyone. I was lucky that it seemed to pass in a few hours and I made it home just being tired.
This weekend was the Greater Cincinnati Fly Fishing Expo put on by the Buckeye United Fly Fishers. Fourteen years ago this was the first show that asked me to come out to tie at my own table, so I make it a point to get back for this show every year. This was the second year at the new venue and it did not disappoint. I had been scheduled to do a streamer presentation for this show but then was also asked to do a wet fly presentation at the last minute, so it was a jam packed day. Both presentations had pretty solid attendance, especially since I was up against AK Best during the same presentation slots! Speaking of AK Best, getting to hang out and BS with him again for a bit on Friday night was the highlight of the weekend for me as he is one of my fly tying idols. What guys like Clouser and Galloup were to my streamer tying preference AK is to my office set up and production mindset. Many of the techniques that I use for my production work and the set up of my workshop are based on his books 'Production Fly Tying: A Colllection of Ideas, Notions, Hints, & Variations on the Techniques of Fly Tying ' and 'Fly Tying with A. K.: Patterns & Problem Solving with New Materials & Techniques'. There were a few unrepeatable stories told that had me laughing until I hurt. What a night!
Fly porn shot from the weekend...well, really Thursday night, Saturday night and Sunday. Needless to say I spent a fair amount of time knocking these out and looks like I will be on this pace for atleast a few more weeks. There is a combination of the White, northern Michigan, and general shack nasties that seems to bring the streamer guys out of the woodworks at this time of year. Can't say I am not constantly thinking about getting out myself...
-mike schmidt
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