Muskoka Outdoors

“The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.”  ~John Buchan

Spring fishing is coming people. Can’t you feel it? Forget the recession for a day and go fishing.

How about something from Field Dressed? If you were to design a slogan or ‘tag line’ for your hunting or fishing clothing what would it be? For those of you who can come up with some catchy phrases and have the artistic capabilities to match – you might have the makings of a new online clothing company.

I recently connected with, Chad, on Twitter who has done just that. His website is: www.fielddressed.com and his design work is fantastic. It is the kind of clothing you could almost wear to a wedding and not second guess the appropriateness of the hunting slogan on your shirt. An example of his work is to the right.

In a direct message from Chad, a portion of his message stood out about his design and slogan ideas. He said,

“(I am) really trying to put out designs that can show a little respect to the sports beside the typical ‘bubba” wear.”

Chad, I agree with you.

Don’t get me wrong. I can appreciate the humour in traditional ‘bubba’ wear designs, but believe it or not, many of us represent our shooting and fishing passions to many different types of people. Many of the shirts I see out there, when taken out of context, mis-represent many of the excellent characteristics found in hunting and fishing. We see these images in the ‘kids’ cartoons anytime a hunter or angler is used as a character. What does your hunting or fishing clothing broadcast to the world around you today?

This matters to Chad when designing his shirts. I also asked Chad if I could suggest to our visitors to comment (see below post) about any tag lines or slogans that he might use for any of his upcoming shirt designs. Although, I told him he did not have to use any of our ideas he did say the following,

“I think that it would be interesting to see what the outdoor community thinks…just as long as it stays relatively classy.”

Without further discussion, here are a couple of my suggestions to start this little brainstorming session:

1. Lord of the Flies (I may have seen this before)
2. Tame the fly. Catch fish.
3. “An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting around on the muddy banks of rivers doing nothing because his wife won’t let him do it at home.” – Author Unknown
4. Lair of the Swamp King (title of an old blog post I wrote)
5. Follow the Code

This is harder than I thought! Chad and I look forward to your comments.

Simple.

I think the greatest fishing and hunting tips can come from from an overused saying,

“Keep it Simple.”

You want to catch more fish? Get your ‘back-end’ outside and get a line in the water.

Simple.

Do you want to shoot a trophy buck? Find a spot where where a ‘bruiser‘ frequents and wait.

Simple.

Keeping it simple won’t sell huge amounts of hunting and fishing products, but it may just give you the edge in a world of complex fishing and hunting equipment options. I found that lesson out 2 years ago on spring walleye fishing trip up North…

As per tradition, we were about to wrap-up a ‘braggers rights’ tournament up at Inga’s Fishing Lodge. This tourney is basic. We keep track of all the fish caught by each Triple L Fish Club angler and give out awards based on the results.

This particular year, the battle for second place was between Dave and myself. It was the last day of our fishing week and after a solid morning fish, I managed to put a few fish between myself and Dave. I was feeling confident of a possible second place finish.

Then, the evening fish came.

I caught several fish soon after we reached our evening fishing hole. We liked to troll in front of a creek mouth that held some good weed cover. The fish finder showed a trough in the lake bed where the creek would empty. The walleye seemed to always strike there.

Anyway, I bragged about my catch to Dave via radio and I was delighted to find out that he had not been successful.

Second place was virtually mine!

Then, as the sun began to set, the radio cackled to life and Dave shared about the fish he started to catch. Every couple of minutes, he would update me of his status and my lead began to fall apart. The fish stopped biting in my section of the bay.

Helplessness began to set-in and I opened up my tackle box and began to tie-on everything I had. I put white jigglers with green wigglers and black wigglers with brown jigglers. I used spoons, crankbaits, and no bait.

Finally, I could not stand it anymore and we raised the anchor and zipped over to where Dave was putting on the fishing clinic. As followed his boat’s path, he would catch fish and I would not.

I continued to change my lures and presentations in desperation. Then, Dave announced we were now tied. With literally a minute left on the official camp clock, I watched Dave catch the winner 50 yards in front of me.

In disbelief I watched Dave approach us in his boat and that’s when dad said something like,

You changed your lures so much, your hardly had a hook in the water.”

Dave confirmed it when we docked. He said that he caught the winner with simply a bare hook and a few feet of line over the side of the boat.

I should have kept it simple. Either that, or the fish gods must be crazy…

To remind ME to keep things simple, I created a desktop background for my computer. It’s the photo at the top of this post. If you would like it for your computer’s desktop you download it in the following sizes:

800 x 458 simple_800_458.jpg

1024 x 586 simple_1024_586.jpg

As posted previously on my fly fishing blog, Trout Waders.

I was thinking about fly fishing the other the night. Here is what I came up with.

“I think the learned fly fisherman (or woman) who can cast well is half magician and half physicist. They can take a length of flexible mono-filament tubing and change it to a fluid state with a simple movement of their arm.

As for me, I am part rookie and magician. How my fly gets from behind me to the water’s surface is a magical feat of ‘awkwardness’ and luck.

Yet, the physicist could be right around the next river bend…”

“I still don’t know why I fish or why other men fish, except we like it and it makes us think and feel.”

Author: Roderick L. Haig-Brown
Source: A River Never Sleeps

How about you? Why do you fish? Comment below!

If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles.” -Doug Larsen