Monthly Archives: March 2015

Another day at Clearwater

Two days of fishing in the last three?  Wow! Sam and I met at Camp Clearwater today to try for winter-stocked trout (too warm here in the NC piedmont for a natural population). This is such civilized fishing.  Leisurely morning at home, walk the dogs, breakfast with the wife, newspaper, coffee, and then drive less than 15 minutes to get there. Since the gate opens at 9AM and there were only 6 rods scheduled, no need to rush 🙂 .

I met Sam in the parking lot at ~9:20 and compared notes on flies to try. The last time we’d ben out, the key was small midges (#18 or #20) as droppers below a dry as an indicator, primarily. We decided we’d stick with that, and the telemetry from the Lake Master was that this would be effective. It worked, but was slow, technical fishing. Trout were madly jumping all over the lake, sometimes hitting the dry indicator, most times nudging the dropper, but were devilishly hard to hook, especially on long casts, and then hard to keep on the hook. I managed to land several over the course of the day, most hitting a “Sweet Thang” tied by Sam, a tiny #20 bead head with a brown wire-wrapped body. Hell, I can hardly see ’em much less tie ’em!

clearwater201503-1

Clearwater Rainbow

At one point, Sam and I were casting from a long dock, with another angler between us. We were both catching fish, and he was getting skunked.  Sam passed him a Sweet Thang and he got two in short order. Keeping with the osprey theme from my post last Friday, as we stood on the dock, we watched an osprey grab a trout from lake and head to a nearby tree. It hit the water with a giant splash and I first thought a mondo trout had jumped until I saw the osprey.

I caught a few on my dry indicator, a #16 CDC emerger, but mostly, they’d clobber it but miss the hookup.

It was a nice day, pleasantly warm, in contrast to our recent chilly weather.  Nice fellowship with our fellow fishermen and the Lake Master. A good way to spend the day.

 

Shad, ospreys, and eagles

Osprey eating a shad

Osprey eating a shad

 

St. Patrick’s Day, this past Tuesday, was beautiful with blue skies and temperatures in the upper 70’s. Was that the day that I made my annual trek to Weldon for the shad run?  Nope! Sam and I waited until Friday the 20th, with temps starting in the 30’s and topping out about 50, with some drizzle and thick clouds. However, it was the best day for the two of us to get together so we loaded up the canoe on the old red truck for the 2 hour trip.

We didn’t rush due to the cold and rain…rain which was pulling out to the northeast. We timed our drive well, and the rain was finished by the time we arrived. We paddled across the river to our usual spot, but things didn’t look too promising, as we were virtually the only folks at the landing — never a good sign with something like the shad run, where people fishing means the fish are in. However, onward! We beached the canoe and clambered over the rocks to the top of the “Little River,” where the flow splits 90/10, with the small flow being the “Little River.” The water was quite chilly (49F) as I wet-waded through crotch-deep water to our favorite fishing rocks 🙂 . Invigorating!

Well, to say fishing was slow was an understatement.  However, I did manage a half dozen Hickory Shad, and besides, the camaraderie made the trip worthwhile, regardless of what we caught.

Hickory Shad

Hickory Shad

All the fish I caught were on a single orange fly…orange chenille body, orange bucktail wing, with some gold crystal flash added for good measure. This particular fly had bead chain eyes rather than the weighted eyes I usually use, and that may have made a difference but I think it really was more just putting the fly in front of a fish, and I had a better day of that than Sam.

We saw a number of ospreys during the day, mostly as fishless as us 🙂 but one did catch a fish just a bit down the river from us, and it flew into a nearby tree to eat the shad while we fished. We also saw a bald eagle, also clutching a shad, on the far side of the river. In the past, we’ve seen wild turkeys fly by, but none today.

All in all, a great day of fishing, so-so catching, good bird watching, and great fellowship.

I still like ChromeOS but I also like my new MacBook Air

MBA

Those who happen by this blog know that I like Google’s ChromeOS. I’ve got two Chromebooks, and have written a number of posts about ChromeOS. However, there are a handful of things that I need to do that I just can’t do well on a Chromebook. One of the main things is the ability to run Cisco’s WebEx software. Support for ChromeOS has been “coming” for a long time and given that I spend a lot of my day in WebEx meetings, this has been an annoyance. My employer (N2N Services) uses this as its standard, and I found myself sitting with a Chromebook and connected to the WebEx on my iPhone. Also, while Google Docs is great, roundtrip fidelity with Microsoft Office docs is still an issue. Microsoft’s online offerings are getting much better, but are not there yet.  I use KeePass for passwords, and there’s not a version that works with ChromeOS. FTP/SFTP are possible with web-based tools like NetFTP, but kludgy. SSH works with an app, but is kludgy. The Chrome shell is OK for a few things, but want to run cURL? Nope. Can’t run Skype. But, I love the quick boot & online or SSD storage, and the small light form factor. So, I decided to get a MacBook Air.

I’ve got an iMac at home so I’m quite conversant with OS X. But which Air to buy. Yes, I know that refresh time is coming up, but you can drive yourself crazy with that. I decided to get the entry level 11.6″ 4GB RAM/128GB SSD model. I was a bit concerned about the RAM, but after 24 hours of using this, I can say that this is one sweet laptop. The screen size is like my Chromebooks, so no issue there. Boot is very fast, but then again, I don’t boot my Macs often anyway, and return from sleep is instantaneous. Very nice build quality and keyboard. Beautiful screen, even if it’s not as hires as the 13″ MBA. I wondered if I’d regret not going with the 256GB SSD, but after loading everything I want, I still have 85GB or so free. I’ve not had any issues with the RAM, and honestly, I guess swapping to SSD is going to be pretty fast. The weight at 2.38 pounds is nice. The difference between 2.38 and 2.96 on the MBA 13″ is one of the main reasons I went with the MBA 11″.  I’m going to work hard to keep most stuff in the cloud and not on the MBA, and to not try to overload it with things like Xcode 😉 . There’s a sweet spot here with the MBA!

So, yes, I still like ChromeOS and think it’s a great solution for many things…but it’s just not quite flexible enough…yet…