Steve’s Popper Blog

My butt is out of shape.  OK, lets face it, it ain’t just my butt that’s out of shape, about 99% of the rest of me is out of shape too.  Lately, maybe, just maybe, I’ve found the inspiration to begin to do something about it and have fun while I’m at it.  Back in the day, say in the middle 1980s when I was a student at Young Harris College, I was in fairly decent shape and spent many hours hiking the various trails in the area.  But after I left Young Harris to go to Furman my time spent hiking and roaming the woods decreased significantly and then as I moved on to real life it pretty much came to a screeching halt.  A job and responsibilities took the place of boots and a backpack.

Fast forward twenty-something years.  Now Ashley is at Young Harris.  Last semester she took an Honors seminar at YH called ‘Writing the Appalachian Trail’ which, in addition to reading and classroom lectures, a few short hikes on the AT were required.  Somewhere along the way she got bit by the hiking bug herself.  This past year, as I began fiddling with hammocks and got into hammock camping, it finally occurred to me that hiking and backpacking and spending time in the woods was something that I’ve been missing…and I knew I had to do something about it.

When I asked ConnieLou for a new day pack for an anniversary present back in October she knew something was up.  I fessed up and told her I wanted to get back in the woods…but she didn’t realize I wanted to take the whole family with me.     Things were coming together…

Christmas was quite good this year on the hiking front, I got new boots and a pair of trekking poles and Ashley got boots and a new day pack (and has been making noise about wanting a backpack that can be used for overnight trips someday as well).  More pieces fell into place.

As I’ve said before, Jenna is my partner in crime.  Usually if I ask her if she wants to go caching she’s in the truck before I can get there myself.  We’ve been doing some short hikes while geocaching…hiking without saying we were hiking.  Last weekend I asked her if she wanted to go hiking and caching with me and, in her usual form, she was eager to go.  We spent a couple hours hiking and caching around Cochran Mill Park up in Palmetto.  By the time all was said and done we’d hiked a little over 2 1/2 miles, added a couple of caches to our totals and came home feeling quite pleased with ourselves.

Since Ashley heads back to Young Harris tomorrow to start spring semester, we wanted to have a ‘family day’ before she left.  We’ve also been wanting to go check out Chattahoochee Bend, Georgia’s newest State Park.  There just happens to be several miles of new hiking trails and a handful of caches in the park.  Care to guess what I had in mind?

This afternoon we loaded up the dogs, made a quick stop to grab some Chick-fil-a (Ashley needed a Chick-fil-a fix before heading back to YH since there isn’t one anywhere close) to take with us and headed out to ‘The Bend’.  We had a picnic lunch on the riverbank then headed up the trail.

The trail took us northward, first to an observation platform…

and then onward to three geocaches between a mile and a half and two miles from the trailhead.   New boots and trekking poles were no match for a slick mud bank at the last creek crossing on the approach to the third cache of the day.  Sneakers and jeans didn’t fare too well either…

We turned around after finding the third cache and headed back toward the truck.  We stopped for a for a water break and to take one more look around at the observation tower then headed to the trailhead, arriving at the truck just as daylight was starting to fade…

Not bad for a family day, huh?!

Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention…Jenna earned her trail name today…Caterpillar.  I’ll let her ’splain it…

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Every year we head up the highway a couple of miles to Connie’s niece’s place to celebrate Thanksgiving.  This year I was trying to find something to take that I could cook on the Egg.  I’m always tasked with making pecan pies but I wasn’t sure how it would do in the Egg.  It would probably be fine but I didn’t really have time for a test run and wasn’t too sure I wanted to take something that I hadn’t tried on the Egg first or at least had a pretty good idea about how it would turn out beforehand.  Late last week I remembered a post on Griffin’s Grub, a BGE blog that I follow about Swamp Balls.  Basically, a Swamp Ball is a variant of the standard Bisquick/sausage/shredded cheese ball that are common appetizers and/or party fare.  Swamp Balls are different in that they have a few extras mixed in…some Cajun or Creole seasoning, cayenne pepper, chili powder, minced garlic and some diced onion.  I haven’t made ‘em before but I know that Griffin (aka Jason) made them for an EggFest in Tejas a few weeks back and they went over quite well.  Sounded like they’d be something worth taking a chance on.

Thanksgiving morning found me up bright and early firing up the Egg.

Once the charcoal in the Egg was sparked up I had time to mix up the Swamp Ball fixin’s.

Some would try to use a dough hook on a stand mixer but the best way to mix sausage balls by far is to reach in, start squishin’ and kneadin’  and just get yer fingers and hands dirty.  Heck, they’ll wash…

This time around I made made the balls about an inch in diameter.

The Egg was set up for indirect cooking - plate setter legs up, grill grate on top of the legs, and a baking stone on top of the grate.  The Swamp Balls were simply cooked in a pan set on top of the baking stone.  Being it was kinda chilly this morning, it took a little while for the egg to warm up and stabilize at 375 but once it was there it held rock solid for the entire time I was cooking.  Because the balls were a bit bigger I ended up cooking them for about16 minutes rather than the 12 or so minutes Jason mentioned on his blog.

The finished Swamp Balls looked like this…

and were mighty tasty.

And now…I’m stuft…

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OK, Ashley is in her freshman year in college and Jenna is in 8th grade so I guess they’re not really rugrats anymore.  Oh, forget that, they’re always gonna be rugrats to me.

I’ve been hammock camping in the back yard once every other week or so lately to try to figure out the lower temperature limits of a top quilt an an underquilt that I made this year.  I knew Ashley was coming home for a visit this weekend so I texted her last week and told her to bring her bring her hammock gear and we’d hang out one night this weekend.  She liked the idea and I already knew that I wouldn’t have to ask Jenna twice.

I’ve had two hammocks up in the backyard before but had to clear a new space to hang three.  Fortunately we have four almost perfectly spaced threes almost in a line that we can hang three hammocks and tarps end to end to end.

We got our gear set up early Saturday afternoon so we wouldn’t have to set up in the dark later.  I put the girls on the ends and I took the newer space in between since it still has a few little stick-ups that need to be cut back to the ground.

LB supervised the process…

Alex seemed to like the arrangement.

The girls are sleeping on foam camping pads for bottom insulation for the time being until I can get underquilts made for them.  I put Ashley in my old mummy bag that somehow shrunk over the past 10 or 15 years (yes, it shrunk, that’s my story and I’m stickin to it) and I put Jenna, who is a walking space-heater like me, in a heavy Coleman rectangle bag that I’ve been down into the low 40s in several times before…I knew they’d stay warm even if I didn’t.

We slid into our hammocks about midnight and the temperatures were already in the mid 40s with the low predicted in the mid to low 30s.  Our gear was definitely going to get a good test!

I woke to nature’s call around 6:00 this morning.  Mother Nature can be rather insistent when there’s a cat sitting on your bladder.  I finally got Alex to move to another spot and managed to avoid getting up for another hour.  During that time I noticed my feet had gotten pretty chilly and there was a bit of cold creepin’ in around my shoulders…got to do something about that.

Around 7:00 I came on inside.  Turns out Ashley had come in around 3:30 because she couldn’t get comfortable on her pad.  Jenna remained zonked out until she got a personal wake-up call around 9:30.

While some would claim our camp out to be a bit of a disaster, I look at it a much different light because I learned few things.  First, the girls, Ashley especially, need underquilts.  Pads work well for insulation but just aren’t comfortable.  They can wiggle in and out of sleeping bags easily enough so top quilts can wait for now if need be.  Second, my top and underquilts did their job but my top quilt needs a modification.  I’ll add a little patch of fleece in the bottom in the near future as a draft stopper…or maybe not since the idea of set of warmer and lighter quilts made from 6 oz Climashield has been rollin’ around in my head for a couple of weeks now.  I also think I can reduce some of the temperature issues by wearing a pair of insulated booties and a fleece pull over…for now anyway…sounds to me like its time to make some more DIY camping gear!

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In case you haven’t noticed by now, my entries on this here blog aren’t just limited to my flyfishing adventures.  They can be about just about anything that has captured my interest on any given day.  Today the large green ceramic cooker called a Big Green Egg that’s now sitting on the corner of our deck is the object of my interest.  We brought it home from the Eggtoberfest Saturday but it was well after dark when we finally got it settled into its new home on the deck and, honestly, we were all still stuffed from all of the sampling and tasting we’d done at the Eggfest.  Sunday rolled around and because of other plans during the day and evening I was still unable to fire it up and cook something.  Anybody remember that super cool toy you got for Christmas one year when your were a kid and couldn’t play with it until somebody could go to the store and get the batteries that Santa forgot to leave?  Yeah, that was how I felt on Sunday.

I’ve been perusing recipes for weeks, trying to decide what I would cook first on my new Egg.  Steaks immediately came to mind but after dropping a bunch of coin on the Egg, I was looking for something a bit less spendy.  Pizza was a possibility but when I got right down to it, I was in the mood for some wings…but what kind of wings?  There are more wing variations than variations of shrimp according to Forrest Gump.  Connie had given me a Big Green Egg cookbook as part of my anniversary present a couple of weeks back and it had a recipe for Georgia Red Wings, a variation on the hot wings theme that folks raved about and it couldn’t have been simpler…Make up the marinade, marinate the wings, dust ‘em with your favorite BBQ rub and cook ‘em indirect at 350 for an hour, turning once half way through…it don’t get much simpler than that.

I made the marinade last night just to have that step out of the way.  No cooking involved, just mix the ingredients together…

Then dropped the wings in this morning for an all-day soak…

Getting the Egg going this evening was my next task.  Having never fired one up before, I approached it in my usual manner…read everything I can find, ask friends what they do, watch a few videos and then dive in head first.

First came the charcoal…

Lump charcoal is a different critter.  About the only similarity between lump and briquettes is the color and the name ‘charcoal’.  Lump charcoal is pieces of real wood that have been charred.  Briquettes are pieces and parts of charred wood and filler that have been pressed together.  Remember the phrase ‘parts is parts’ from the old Wendy’s chicken nuggets commercial which referred to McD’s nuggets…you get the picture.

One of Connie’s coworkers suggested that we get the electric starter rather than using charcoal starter squares or similar…

Good call on that one Margaret!  The electric starter had the charcoal going good within 7 or 8 minutes and it was up to temperature and ready to cook in less than 15…sure beat the 30 minutes Kingsford used to take in a charcoal chimney…

I choked the dampers down a bit when it hit 350 and once the wings were on it didn’t waver from 350 for the next hour except for when I lifted the lid to turn the wings.  Since I had some time to kill I found myself a tasty treat to toast my first cook on my new Egg…

After 30 minutes the wings were ready to turn…

and after another 30 they were ready for the table.

How did they turn out you ask…well, if they weren’t the best I’ve ever had, they were among the top three…and they were by far the best I’ve cooked myself.  Now my big problem is deciding what to cook next.  A nice problem to have, don’t ya think?

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Yeah, I know, cheezy title but it fits…just hang with me here…

What do you get when you combine a mile and a half long loop of asphalt, a couple hundred Big Green Eggs, lots of burning charcoal, copious amounts of food and beverages and a couple thousand hungry people?  You get the annual Eggtoberfest at the Atlanta Motor Speedway, that’s what.  After years of wishing and waiting I finally had the opportunity to pull the trigger and purchase an Egg.  Rather than pay full retail we decided it made more sense to purchase a once-used demo egg at the Eggtoberfest for a nice discount with some Eggcessories included in the package to sweeten the deal just a bit.

I actually purchased the Egg back in August and have been patiently counting down the days since.  Patiently?  Yeah, right…  With the Eggfest coming up this past Saturday, Friday night was about the equivalent of waiting for Santa Clause on Christmas Eve for me and I knew sleep wasn’t going to come easy…and it didn’t.

Since Ashley was going to be home from school this weekend for her birthday we decided to make a trip to the Eggtoberfest a family outing instead of me just flying solo.  Turns out that was a pretty good call.  We headed out bright and early Saturday morning and headed across Hwy 16 toward Griffin then on up 41 to Hampton.  We made a quick pit stop at the Senoia Coffee Company in Senoia, Georgia for some hot morning beverages, a small bite to eat and a pound of their fresh roasted coffee beans.

Once at the track we headed through the tunnel and into the parking area in the infield.  As soon as we opened the truck doors we were greeted with the roar of stock cars from the track’s racing school and the aromas of food and burning charcoal…pure sensory overload!

Once inside we found folks cooking a huge assortment of goodies on the Eggs…everything from jalopeno poppers to ribs to chicken to pizza to cookies to brunswick stew to….  Time to gnosh!  What to try first?!

While taking my new Egg home may have been the highlight of the day for me, I think getting a chance to take a ride around the track in one of the AMS pace cars was the highlight of the day for Ashley and Jenna.  Their driver took them for two laps around and topped out at about 116 down the back straight.  Next year I’ve gotta make sure I do that myself…only problem is they won’t let me drive…well, not for the $10 ride anyway.

There were beverages aplenty including Sweetwater 420, my favorite of the day, and we sampled the creations of the many different cooks until we were stuffed.  One thing that we noticed fairly quickly that really intrigued us was nobody cooked the same thing all day…they’d cook one dish for an hour or two then switch to something else and even switch another time or two until it was time to shut the eggs down to let them cool off and be cleaned up to go to their new homes.  We probably picked up 30 recipes for things to try out at home.

As the festivities started to wind down we headed out to move the truck into the pick-up line.  Connie and Jenna headed on out and left me and Ashley to sit and wait.

We had a while to wait but fortunately the racing school had started back up for an evening session and we could watch and listen to the cars as they turned laps around the track, which gave me an opportunity to explain some of the finer points of stock car racing to Ashley.

Once the line started moving it moved fairly quick and it wasn’t long before we were loaded up, strapped down and headed home.

With the Egg weighing in at a little over 100 pounds and not having too many parts to grab hold of, getting the beast from the back of the truck to the deck was a bit of a challenge…but with the help of our neighbor Pat and his buddy Andy, we managed to muscle it out of the truck, up the stairs, through the house and out onto the deck where it now lives.

Now I just need to fire that puppy up and cook something…who wants wings..or maybe s’more pizza?!

Need a few more photos…OK, check ‘em out…

Eggzilla…

A sweet Egg hauler…

Lined up and ready to go home

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The DIY bug strikes again.  I’ve been using a regular old rectangular sleeping bag for top insulation the past few months.  Zipping the zipper was an exercise in aerobic aggravation that I just didn’t need at bed time and when I zipping it part way down and using it like a top quilt I usually ended up pushing the zipper the rest of the way down.  Managed to stay warm just fine the first couple of times but not so much the last time out.  At that point I decided it was time to do something different.

I really didn’t want to mod that particular sleeping bag and I’m not quite brave enough (yet) to take scissors and thread to my Kelty mummy bag…so what to do?  I remembered someone mentioning last week or the week before that Wally World has some of their store brand sleeping bags for about $10 on-line with free shipping.  I looked at their bags at the store and found what I thought was the same bag.  Looked reasonably small and not too terribly heavy (for a synthetic rectangular bag anyway) but cost a bit more than twice as much as what I saw on their website.  I figured I could save a few bucks by ordering one.  Also figured if I ordered one and ended up screwing it up I was only out 10 bucks, so why not?!

When the bag arrived last week the first thing I noticed is that it wasn’t the same bag…the bag I received was definitely heavier and bulkier…but for $10, what the heck…if nothing else it would make a good car camping quilt.

As I was getting set to do the demo work and remove the zipper I noticed that the zipper was sewn to the exterior shell and not into one of the side seams…cool, zipper demo just became a bit more tedious but it left me with a clean side seam that i didn’t have to repair…

My intent was to taper the foot end and install a channel and drawstring to close up the foot.  With the zipper out of the way I marked off the tapers and sewed a line of stitching along each taper line to keep the guts together once the tapers were cut…

As I usually do when working on a project in the floor, I had some help…

After the tapers were cut I finished the edges and made the channel with 1.5-inch grossgrain ribbon.  Looking back, I should have used 2-inch as it would have covered the rough edges a bit better and would have been a bit easier to sew…so I mentally stored that tidbit away for for next time.  I decided not to sew the bottom side shut in case I ever decided I wanted to use the quilt as a blanket (May eventually change this)  so I added some 1/4-inch grossgrain ties to secure the footbox.

The drawstring in the channel was some utility cord that I had on hand.  All in all I was pretty pleased with the result…

And then I gave it a test drive in the den floor…

…and was quite pleased…now I need to give it a proper test drive outside in my ENO…

Hope this will help someone who doesn’t have a lot of sheckels to spend on a TQ but still would like to stay warm and comfortable in their hammock…

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I had to be at Young Harris College in northeast Georgia for a meeting at 11:00 Friday morning.  Rather than leave early on Friday and try to beat the Atlanta morning rush, I decided to take half a vacation day, head up a day early and camp for a night.  Also, since my older daughter Ashley is a freshman at YHC I thought it would be fun to take her and a couple of friends camping Friday night.

I bolted from the office at 1:00 Thursday after accomplishing what I needed to get done for the day and headed up GA 400 toward the mountains.  The Varsity, an Atlanta icon, recently opened a Varsity Jr off GA 400 near Dawsonville so a stop for a couple of chili steaks and an order of rings was mandatory.

With my appetite satisfied I headed on north.  I’d decided to camp at Unicoi State Park in order to take advantage of a hot shower before heading on to YHC for my meeting.  There were quite a few folks occupying the campsites designed for pop-ups, campers and motor homes but the walk-in tents sites were virtually empty.  Of about 40 sites only three, including mine, were occupied…

It didn’t take me long to get set up…

I had a bit of help.  This is LB.

Connie Lou gave LB to me about 25 years ago just before I headed off for a seven-week trip to South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana for geology field camp.  Afterward he traveled all over with me for with me for quite a few years until he disappeared when we moved to the house we’re in now about 11 years ago.  Fortunately for LB, I found him as I was digging through some of my boxes in the basement last week and I liberated him from his dark cardboard cell…after eleven years in solitary.  Now he’s my travelin’ buddy once again…and he already wants me to make him his own hammock.

Thursday evening was relatively uneventful.  I did a bit of geocaching around Helen, grabbed some supper and headed back to camp to build a fire and chillax (a word learned from my 13 year-old) for the evening…

I had the best nights sleep I’ve had in weeks.  I do need to work on replacing my sleeping bag with a top quilt some day but for the time being it works quite nicely.

Friday morning found me up early as usual and by 8:30 I was packed up, showered and ready to head on to Young Harris.  My 11:00 meeting went well and I even had a few opportunities to catch up with a couple of old friends while waiting for Ashley and her friends Jared and Hunter to get off work and/or finish classes.

By 5:30 we had made it to the Forest Service campground at Horse Trough Falls in the Chattahoochee National Forest near Unicoi Gap north of Helen.  I was a bit excited as this would be Ashley’s first overnight hammock camping trip and the second or third overnight trip for Jared.  Hunter, on the other hand, has spent a bit more time in the woods and in a hammock.  We started setting up and Ashley just couldn’t wait to get in (check out the orange ENO on the right)…

I didn’t take long for all of to get set up.  We found a near perfect campsite and had 4 hammocks attached to 5 trees…

I sent the kids off to round up some firewood while I got some supper going.  If I couldn’t say anything else good about car camping, I’d have to say we eat well.  A pot of chili hit the spot on a cool fall evening…

We spent the evening sitting around the fire and talking.  Its always interesting to listen to college kids and to compare how things are now to how they were back in the day (I’m a 1985 YHC grad myself).

The fire finally died down, eyelids began to droop and we decided to call it a night.  Our campsite, like most of the sites in the campground was beside a creek…

The creek sang us to sleep that night but the running water woke nearly all of us up to answer nature’s call before the sun came up.  Aside from waking up a bit earlier than everyone seemed to have a fairly good night.  Ashley has already asked me when I could make her an underquilt to replace her CCF pad.

Breakfast was breakfast casserole made in a dutch oven, a family favorite.  Unfortunately I got the cheese topping a little overdone…but it didn’t seem to slow anyone down…

After breakfast we finally made it up to the falls…

The drive back to campus, while uneventful, included a stop for ice cream and with the kids safely back on campus and their gear unloaded, it was time for what is always the worst part of any trip back up to YHC…leaving again.

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Jenna and I have been planning a Daddy/Daughter camping trip with one of Jenna’s buds and her dad for later this fall but Jenna has been chompin’ at the bit to camp out overnight in her hammock.  The weather has finally started to cool and we decided that last night would be a good night to give it a go in the backyard.

We set Jenna up in my normal spot in the edge of the woods behind our house and I cleared a new spot for myself a couple of trees over.

Being that its been anything but cold or even cool here until recently, I haven’t made her an underquilt yet so I picked her up a closed-cell foam pad from WallyWorld last week.  Combining the pad with a fairly decent sleeping bag, she was good to go.  As for me, I had my usual PLUQ/sleeping bag setup.

As evening fell, Connie, Jenna, the dogs and I all headed out back, built a fire in our fire pit and settled in to chill for a little while and toast a few marshmallows…

Around ten, Connie finally decided to call it a night and headed back inside with the dogs.  Jenna and I chilled a little longer by the fire and I took advantage of a bit of quiet time to enjoy a good cigar.  Before long Jenna began to doze off in her chair…

and the fire was burnin’ down so we decided it was time to turn in.  I got her settled then crawled in my own hammock for the night.

We woke to a beautiful morning…

Well, I did anyway…Jenna was apparently super comfy and stayed asleep for a little while longer.

I’m thinkin’ she liked this hammock camping thing…

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If you’re a flyfishing purist close your browser and reboot your computer, its already contaminated.  If the very thought of attaching something something other than feathers, fur, a hook and thread to the end of your fly line causes you to go into cardiac arrest then find another blog to read.  However, if doing something a bit unconventional with a flyrod that catches fish grabs your interest, read on…

A couple of weeks ago my buddy Randy ‘the Riverpirate’ Vinings posted an entry to his blog about using soft plastic bass lures on a flyrod.  While some would call it heresy, I call it a darn good idea!  Here’s a little fact about me…I’m no flyfishing purist…period.  I grew up using conventional tackle and picked up the flyrod in my early teens.  While I prefer to flyfish most of the time these days, I have absolutely no problem picking up a spinning rod, a casting rod or even a cane pole to fish with.  Heck, some days if someone handed me a stick of dynamite and a lighter and said ‘go for it’ I wouldn’t hesitate to light that puppy up and toss it in.

The weather prognisticators predicted that today would be a drop dead gorgeous early fall day and for once, they were right on the mark.  The day dawned clear and cool, perfect for those enjoying today as the first day of bow season here in Georgia and also perfect for those of us who had intentions of catching a fish or two.

I took advantage of an opportunity to sleep in a bit, but by 8:30 I was rigged up and ready to slide my  yak into the pond.  The water was down between a foot and a half and two feet thanks to this year’s late summer drought so getting in and out over a very soft bottom would prove to be a bit of an adventure.

Once on the water I made a few casts to get used to my new lure.  It didn’t take long to figure out that short casts with very open loops (can you say ‘Chuck & Duck’) would prove most effective.  Fortunately for me, my TFO Pro Series 9 ft 8 wt, with its mid-flex action, was just the ticket for that type of cast.

A dip of my toemometer into the water told me that the water cooled a bit in recent weeks.  I eased over to a now exposed rock pile…

and made a few casts.  On the third or fourth cast I hooked up with this nice little bass…

and then I found its cousin on the other side of the rock pile.  I spent the next couple of hours paddling the shoreline casting to strumps, blowdowns and weedbeds and for the most part I found fish right where I though they would be.  Once all was said and done I’d boated a dozen or so healthy bass.

Fortunately for for me, getting back out of the pond onto dry land wasn’t as much of an adventure as I thought it was going to be…I only sunk in up to my ankles.

By now some of you are asking ‘What are these soft plastics that you speak of and how do you keep from slinging ‘em off the hook when you cast?”  I was using a Zoom Fluke which is designed to imitate an injured baitfish or minnow.

According to my buddy Randy, the hook, a Gamakatsu Skip Gap is the secret to the whole rig.

This hook was designed for soft plastics with the intent of skipping the lure up under boat docks and overhanging brush with a spinning rod while holding the soft plastic lure in place.  Does it work…you better believe it.

So…if in your mind I’ve committed an act of heresy, I can only say one thing to you…calm down, get away from the computer, go fishing and most of all…GET OVER IT!

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So I’m in the kitchen fixing supper this evening when our youngest daughter, Jenna, comes in with her DN and straps and says “Daddy, can you help me set my hammock up?” Now ordinarily this would be a no brainer but I’m elbow deep in battering chicken to fry. I told her that I couldn’t right at the moment but would when I got through. Then she asks where she should hang, in the woods at the edge of our backyard or from a couple of trees between our house and our neighbors. To that I responded “Either would be fine.” As I was putting supper on the table I glanced out in the back yard only to see this…

It would appear she’s gettin’ the hang of it…

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