Winter has basically set in, minus the freezing temps. and snow fall. However, with a busy schedule, holiday season and two jobs, my fishing opportunities have been few and far between. What to do, find another time consuming hobby! Home brewing!! Why not?!?!?!

After watching a few hundred youtube videos, reading up and researching the topic, I jumped in. I picked up an equipment kit & ingrident kit from our local home brew supply store. Ventured home, cleaned up the kitchen, put the kid to bed and rolled up the sleeves.

The brewing, fermenting and bottling process seems to be very interesting. Amazing that someone figured this all out along the way. Some very smart people in the World, me not being one of them. It all starts with boiling water and adding a few ingridents. I also had the malt extract in a pot of warm water. Helps make this stuff more fluid. Notice the clean stove top!

A nice rolling boil and the ingridents begin to mesh together. The odor and color would make you not want to drink this stuff. I highly recommend having an exhaust fan near by or your stink up the house. Once things progress further and the boiling is more complete (hops added) the aroma is much more pleasant.

Ingridents beginning to boil together

"Froth", which can lead to boilovers

(notice the messy stove top now)

Once you boil for the proper amount of time and add all ingridents...Time to cool the "wort". For whatever reason I didn't get a picture of this. Probably because its time to cool as quickly as possible. So your constantly watching temp. Adding ice to the sink, etc...Bottle into a fermenting jug, plug and install air lock.

Sorry can't get this rotated properly...

Begin watching the fermenting process. Its pretty cool to see so much going on without heat or cooling. Try to keep at a nice 60* temp (or as the recipe states). If your lucky, you'll get a messy situation in the airlock. This will require a blow off top setup. I have already invested in a larger fermenting jug, which hopefully helps prevent this type of situation.

Again sorry about the orientation

I'll again update once we bottle this batch. Fermenting takes roughly 3-4 weeks, if not longer. You can also set up into a secondary fermenting jug to further complete or season the beer. Most kits do not require this.

Intro to Sandy Hook

So the morning started out early, about 2:00 AM. The truck trip read:

Pay no attention to the check engine light, but a mild 37 degrees was a good start.

This would be my first trip to Sandy Hook. The drive is fairly simple, especially that early in the AM. Took roughly 2 hours, plus roughly 45 mins. extra for getting lost in the Sandy Hook park, looking for my certain parking lot. Turns out, I was still in the wrong area. Never the less, I rigged up and hit the beach. I ended up walking a good distance to meet up with the PA Fly Fish crew. Although, I was greeted by a wonderful sunrise.

Since I was a bit late arriving, I missed a nice morning blitz. I figured, it would just be another case of, "should have been here yesterday (earlier)". I began fishing right away. Found a nice spot near the point, which I liked. Had a nice school of bait right in front of me, with shad & blues working it. It was a mix of sand eels and rain bait. I was fishing a single sand eel pattern. Later I was schooled about a tandem rig & boy did it work to perfection. Learning that using knowledge in other areas of fishing and applying them to fly fishing is a good idea. 

The day was filled with CATCHING! Imagine that...fishing and catching fish. Everything from shad, blues and stripers. The bait moved around most of the day, but was close enough for fly casting. So we had a decent group & a perfect collection of fish being caught, photo'd and released. Overall it was a great first time trip to Sandy Hook. I should have spent more time exploring around the area, but I accomplished what I needed.

My fly selection was a straight forward clouser (yellow) on the front end of a tandem rig. Trailing fly was a half-n-half (clown). Worked very effectively.

Tandem rig leads to tandem hook ups!

Was a good day...

And I didn't realize how much I miss those single day road trips. We live in a good area for that. The immediate area has crappie fishing, but realistically, you can travel to some awesome fishing. Figure a days trip covers all NJ coast, northern area of Chesapeake, Susquehanna, central PA trout, etc...A long weekend can really set you up nicely.

Delaware & an October Nor'Easter

So this weekend was supposed to be a perfectly timed trip to Delaware for some striper action. Well Mother Nature had other plans for the Eastern seaboard. If you ever go fishing with me or plan a trip with me, please note the following:

1) Have excellent fowl weather gear & expect to use it while fishing. Trips are not cancelled due to weather!
2) Be flexible...Whatever can go wrong, usually does!
3) Always going to give it some sort of effort, regardless of how hopeless things look!

Back to the weekend. This Nor'Easter was suppose to huff, puff & blow SNOW all over! Thats right SNOW! Well at least back at home in PA, where they received about 4" of the white junk. In DE, nothing but cold rain and strong winds. We again gave it our best at the Seawitch festival, or what was left of it. We jumped from building to building with our one year old. It was an adventure, but we made the best of it. We ended the day with some light food and some Dogfish Head. We spent the evening visiting family for dinner & drinks.


Sunday morning brought about a whole different picture. Cold, not as windy, sunny & clear skies. Basically a picture perfect post-frontal condition. We all know post-frontal puts the lockjaw on fish! Oh well, we headed to IRI anyway. We where greeted with not so nice conditions.


My first cast landed me a 15" striper that hit my storm lure right at the rocks. Very nice young schoolie. I was hoping the sloppy conditions & drop in water temps. would have these fish on the feed bag. Wrong-o! That was it for the rest of our brief three hour trip. The tog fisherman were out in full force. I only saw two small tog caught. I just don't understand how some people can have the patience for that style of fishing. It just seems so random to me. Basically all luck, no skill or technique involved. Then again, rather be lucky then good.

My only photo opt came from a nice size starfish that I snagged off a rock. Biggest starfish I have ever caught.

Rite Bobbin Review

So for a little of 6 months I have been tying using the Rite, standard bobbin. First time I have ever used a bobbin with a thread tension device. Other than the compression style of a normal bobbin. So here is my "down n dirty" review. First time really writing a review.

Plan and simple. 4 out of 5 stars. The adjustable tension, AWESOME. If you tie with smaller diameter threads 8/0 or less, you'll love this. I always have a tough time with mono tying thread. Works great, I've yet to break off. The style of the bobbin, its single arm forced me to keep my hands off the spool. It definitely took some time getting used to the feel of a new bobbin. The con of that single arm is sometimes I found the bobbin slipping out of my hand. Most likely due to my past experience of a 'normal' bobbin.

Another down fall, changing spools is a bit more time consuming. Not a huge issue for the recreational tier, more of an inconvenience. And at $20/each, alittle pricey to have 5+ laying around. Although after I looked at it, my regular brand bobbin is $12.50, so whats another $7.50!

Overall, you owe it to yourself to try this out. If you don't like it after purchasing, let me know. I'll offer $15 for it!! LOL

RITE™ STANDARD BOBBIN
•	Ceramic Thread Tube
•	Small Diameter Barrel
•	Removable Vinyl Grip
•	Solid Brass Arm
•	"Click" Drag Adjustment
•	1-9 ounces of thread tension
•	The most versatile of all fly tying bobbins
•	Suggested retail price $19.99

New"ish" Boat

So this is the 'ocean vessel' we (actually my Dad) purchased. It was special though, since Dad made me feel very much part of the whole process. Which was very nice, at least for me. I can't wait to share all kind of experiences with my Dad & family on here.

We have discussed selling our river ob jet. Which is kind of sad to me. I love that boat and river smallie fishing. It just does not receive the use or care it needs or deserves. Selling that boat will help fund repairs, gas, maintenance, etc... for this boat.

Very much looking forward to the Fall migration in Delaware, thats for sure. I hope we get at least one keeper striper this fall. I honestly don't even care who catches it!

I am looking to order a few things for the boat in the near future, one being a larger tackle box. This would be something we could just leave on the boat for general terminal tackle. I have a nice Penn International 975 that is rod-less at the moment...Hopefully not for long!

9/29/11 --> A New Beginning

Ok...I've been inspired to write a blog. When I originally joined/created this blog, I had no clue its real intent or what content should be. Well I've been thinking about it more and more recently. I read several other blogs, mostly fishing related. Plus general social media now a days touches everyones life.

With all this being said, the majority of this blog will be fishing related in content, but not 100%. Since I am not a professional fisherman, boat captain, product representative, etc...I have a daily life, which consists of a 9-5 job, second job (bartender), husband, father, son and socialite. So often times my plate is busy, if not over flowing! Trust me, I have the feeling we'll touch on alot. Afterall, its not about the fishing.