tomandzoe.com - live from the northside

For xmas, Zoe bought me a fly tying vice. Since then, I’ve been practicing tying both fresh and saltwater flies. Now the ladies who work at Spotlight are my best buds. Last night I tied this bad-ass shrimp, which is a variation on a theme

I’m going to try it out this weekend, as Zoe and I are heading over to Maggie to take advantage of our free accomodation. In fact, I’m going to nominate this fly as the one individual fly that I’m going to use all weekend. This is the theme of the NQ Flyfishers Inc. monthly trip. Basically, the rules are you can fish all weekend with one, single fly. You have to nominate which fly you’re going to use and then record what you catch (assuming you catch anything - there were several jokes about this at last night’s meeting). You then go the ‘weigh-in’ on Sunday at the club barbeque (I wonder if the shrimp pattern will work on sausages - or if the butcher will let me cast in the shop for that matter…).

The guys at the club are pretty funny. They’re exactly what you would expect from any club of ‘geeks’ or aficionados or whatever. They’re mostly middle-aged to old with a wealth of knowledge and a desire to pass it on to those who need help - which I obviously do. The club secretary has the logo of the club tattooed on his arm! The logo is a big fly used to catch Barra etc. He’s got it so the hook looks as though it’s hooked through his skin.

Faye, who works in the freshwater lab, told me yesterday that she, “would talk to, but wouldn’t get to know someone really well if they had a tattoo”. When I questioned her further, with an incredulous look upon my face, she told me that, “a little butterfly or a dolphin is ok”. So I asked, “but a skull with a snake coming out of the eye sockets isn’t?”. “No” she replied, “I’m just conservative”. “No you’re not” I said.

Although the sarcasm was potent, she didn’t pick up on it. She continued, “It’s like when you meet someone and become friends with them and find out that they’re racist”. Yeah, or they don’t like people with tattoos for no good reason apart from that can’t help stereotyping people! I said, did you know that Colton (the guy who does my electrofishing, and who is ‘ironically’ pictured with a t-shirt which reads ‘Mitakuye Oyasin - which is Lakota Sioux for ‘we are all related’) has tattoos covering his entire back, short sleeves, and bum?”. She was so shocked she nearly fell off her chair. I can only assume she went straight home and deleted his number from her address book.

I figure that it’s these sort of attitudes which are causing problems for the world, not the bikers - or the people “associating themselves with bikers” as Faye would say. I’d rather hang out with a biker any day. I told her that, “man, I’m going to go out and get a fucking big tattoo now!”. Maybe an epoxy shrimp with a knife through it?

If that was all a bit too much for you, take a look at some soothing sexyloops. It’ll make you want to go fishing - or at the very least to the park to practice your loops.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 25th, 2005 at 9:38 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.