Introduction

Bugbinder

New member
Joined
Feb 21, 2026
Messages
1
City
West Allis (Milwaukee) Wisconsin
Hi, Folks! How's Everybody? I was conceived in an apartment over an Italian restaurant in Upper Darby 83 years ago, but that's my only and closest association with Pennsylvania. I have been a Wisconsin Badger since 1971, member of Southeast Wisconsin TU until arthritic knees took me off the water, and have taught dozens of kids, teens ("apprentice grown-ups") and adults fly-fishing and fly tying. Arthritis has so far spared my hands, so I still tie.
I am also an aspiring author, and just finished a 63,000 -word novel, "MAMBA - VENGEANCE AND LIBERATION", that traces the Black American experience through the four stages from 1807 to 2009: Slavery, Resistance, Liberation and Peerage. Now I am taking a sabbatical and returning to my vise to start a Spring Creek Selection" series of flies. My tying protocol follows how I fished unless a visible hatch was on.
Starting at the bottom of the water column, I tied on, and now tie, a Zebra midge nymph. Had my only 20 - fish day on that puppy on a trib of the West Fork of the Kickapoo, my home water. I then go to soft-hackle emergers, my friend Hans Weilenmann's CDC & Elk caddis cripple, and then to a traditional EHC. The caddis is the more prominent hatch here. We do, of course, also have mayflies and stoneflies in abundance, but they are more chronologically limited. My boxes will also have Little Black Stones, BWO, March Browns, PMD's, Adams for the "Whathehellwasthat?" hatch, Yellow Sallies and the Hex. Terries are the traditional cricket, hopper, ant and beetle quartet, and for the night-fishing bullriders, the deerhair Miss Mousey, for the field mice that inhabit our streamside cow-pastures and occasionally wander too close to the bank, where the grass hangs over the deadly water, and fall in. Cue the theme music from "Jaws". As I know you have experienced on your small spring creeks, the size of the water has nothing to do with the size of a predator Brown out hunting a meal. Poor Miss Mousey.

I finish this with a question re flytying: will SCOTUS' recent scrapping of the tariff's cause a reduction of the price of Japanese steel and thus a reduction in the price of hooks made therefrom? Tight lines, all.
 
Welcome aboard.GG
I agree: browns can hide in plain sight.
 
Hi, Folks! How's Everybody? I was conceived in an apartment over an Italian restaurant in Upper Darby 83 years ago...

Which Italian restaurant???

I was conceived in Upper Darby too, but I assume in my parents home and I lived there until my early 20's...

Other coincidences; I've also had Wisconsin cheese a few times and I know Hans Weilenmann casually and have his book "365 Trout Flies" in my library.

Welcome!!
 
Hi, Folks! How's Everybody? I was conceived in an apartment over an Italian restaurant in Upper Darby 83 years ago, but that's my only and closest association with Pennsylvania. I have been a Wisconsin Badger since 1971, member of Southeast Wisconsin TU until arthritic knees took me off the water, and have taught dozens of kids, teens ("apprentice grown-ups") and adults fly-fishing and fly tying. Arthritis has so far spared my hands, so I still tie.
I am also an aspiring author, and just finished a 63,000 -word novel, "MAMBA - VENGEANCE AND LIBERATION", that traces the Black American experience through the four stages from 1807 to 2009: Slavery, Resistance, Liberation and Peerage. Now I am taking a sabbatical and returning to my vise to start a Spring Creek Selection" series of flies. My tying protocol follows how I fished unless a visible hatch was on.
Starting at the bottom of the water column, I tied on, and now tie, a Zebra midge nymph. Had my only 20 - fish day on that puppy on a trib of the West Fork of the Kickapoo, my home water. I then go to soft-hackle emergers, my friend Hans Weilenmann's CDC & Elk caddis cripple, and then to a traditional EHC. The caddis is the more prominent hatch here. We do, of course, also have mayflies and stoneflies in abundance, but they are more chronologically limited. My boxes will also have Little Black Stones, BWO, March Browns, PMD's, Adams for the "Whathehellwasthat?" hatch, Yellow Sallies and the Hex. Terries are the traditional cricket, hopper, ant and beetle quartet, and for the night-fishing bullriders, the deerhair Miss Mousey, for the field mice that inhabit our streamside cow-pastures and occasionally wander too close to the bank, where the grass hangs over the deadly water, and fall in. Cue the theme music from "Jaws". As I know you have experienced on your small spring creeks, the size of the water has nothing to do with the size of a predator Brown out hunting a meal. Poor Miss Mousey.

I finish this with a question re flytying: will SCOTUS' recent scrapping of the tariff's cause a reduction of the price of Japanese steel and thus a reduction in the price of hooks made therefrom? Tight lines, all.
I'm late to the gathering, but as you know by now, hook prices are not going down. Welcome to the board. That is quite a resume. It's a good board, stick around. There's some decent fishing in PA as well. My only experience in Wisconsin involved a car breakdown in Menomonie in 1966 when I was 18. And if I have it remembered correctly, I was probably conceived at 4800 Tacony St. in the section where Bridesburg and Frankford neighborhoods collide. Working class, as they say, from a family of four generations of plumbers. Grateful that the gene skipped past me. Go Owls! Go Birds!
 
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