Monday, February 6, 2012

Building a Better Trout Trap?

Well folks, this is difficult.

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of a way to introduce this topic in a way that doesn't completely destroy my dignity and leave me looking like the world's biggest milquetoast.   I can't seem to come up with any way, other than to tell the truth and hope you won't hold it against me too much.

I don't like mice.

It's a little embarrassing for me to admit it, but it's undeniably true. For as long as I can remember, mice have given me the creeps.  Two things truly and consistently frightened me as a young child.  One was Lurch from the Adams Family.  The other was the sight of a mouse darting across the floor in the immediate vicinity of my feet.  We always seemed to have a few of them lurking around the house, fresh from the fields that stretched for miles outside the confines of our backyard fence. Ever since one of them managed to sneak into my bed at night and run across my scrawny childhood torso, the sight of a mouse jumping out from behind a heating vent or scurrying out from under the stove instinctively causes my heart to race. Were it not for a clinging sense of pride and the realization that I outweigh them by approximately 225 pounds, I'd have no trouble picking my feet off the floor and onto the couch the way I did as a young boy whenever one surfaces. My fondest memory of a mouse to date was waking up to my dearly departed cat Samantha (God bless her) and seeing a mouse tail dangling out of her mouth. In short, I hate the darn things. Snakes? No problem. Racoons? No fear. Mice? In the words of thousands of teenage girls worldwide: “EEEWWW.”

Imagine my joy to suddenly learn that I could exact a measure of revenge for the years of mouse-driven fear by slinging artificial replications to big trout and bass!  I'd never considered that the little varmints could serve such a useful purpose!  I decided to try my hand at tying a few, and can't wait to actually sling one of the ugly little buggers out into the current.  















 
As if tying artificial mice and revealing more of the inner workings of my internal neuroses than any of you wanted to hear weren't evidence enough of a clear case of cabin fever at its worst, I finished up a woodworking/arts and crafts project for my grandfather.  Gramps is a lifelong woodworking aficianado, and certainly got a good laugh when I dropped a size .01 prince nymph on his workbench. 


I don't know about you guys, but I need some stream time, and fast!

From the therapist's couch...
The Flywriter