Ugh. Looking around me all I can see in every corner of my house is fishing something. Anyone who seriously fly fishes, knows you need a lot of "stuff". It's like a game of "whoever has the most stuff, wins", I swear. Especially if you tie flies. You end up with so much stuff you don't even use. Our house is filled with "stuff". Whether it be the fly tying materials all over our dining room table and area, to the front entrance, where you can't even see the stairs going down anymore to the nook because fishing tackle has just been "thrown" on the floor, to flies in my carpet, it's everywhere I look. A constant reminder that I'm not even fishing, or tying right now that often for that matter, so I KNOW it's not all MY mess. And because I am feeling kind of like a "fishing widow" these days, it's probably bugging me more. It will be spring sometime before my casting shoulder is good enough to fish with again and my back is good enough to hike. Where do I start? How about with the fact that a mere couple of months ago, Randy organized all of our fishing "stuff", and as we don't have a fishing room, we have been making do with our front entrance area and the dining room. Here's what it looked like before:
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| what the front entrance should look like |
Now Randy has been fishing like a madman since and suddenly, my house doesn't quite look like that anymore. It's an unbelievable mess.
Fly tying materials. I can't threaten to get rid of the fly tying materials taking up space in my dining room. Because I own half of the stuff. Just because my shoulder is sore right now and I'm not doing as much tying, doesn't mean I won't be in a month or so after my next treatment on it, I go in "jags" right now of tying. Randy, however, is a machine. He's been consistently pumping out at least six flies a day for the past month. So he doesn't want to clean his mess up every night, especially when the boys only stay with us half the time and half the time at their dad's place. Besides, with all the other junk in the dining room, it really isn't the most pleasant room in the house to eat anyways. So unless it's Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas or someone's birthday, I guess this is what I'm stuck with for the next couple of years while we reside here or however long we reside here, in a 3 bedroom with no room for a fishing room.
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| Newest pile of fishing "stuff" invading the dining room |
Flies. Where do I start. I could fill a few fly boxes with just what I've found in the many areas of my house the past couple of years in the oddest of spots. The fly right now that's stuck in the living room carpet by the bookcase (an epoxy minnow) has been there for over a month.
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| Epoxy Minnow |
Before that, one of Randy's ball caps was stuck to the bedroom carpet for two months until I finally got sick of vacuuming around it and got him to take it out. Sheesh. There's been flies in the laundry, stuck in socks, underwear, and other pieces of clothing. Flies in our bed. Flies on the coffee table and in the bathroom on the vanity. Flies in the catbox. (What?! I hope it didn't "come out" and simply got dragged in somehow?) Flies in the car, truck and Randy's work van. Flies everywhere. Surprised I haven't found one in the food yet. We have these Styrofoam pieces that get the extra flies stuck in them when they are found:
And this has been stolen from many times by both me, Randy and the occasional friend that comes over to visit, and it's still full of flies. This morning I saw a bare hook in my carpet, by my couch, no where even near the tying area. See, they are everywhere.
Fishing rods. Every couple of months the rods all get put away nicely in their rod cases and put down at the bottom of the stairs where they belong, everything gets hung up nicely and put on the shelves in an orderly fashion. Then "Hurricane floonster" goes fishing for 8 weekends in a row and this is what happens to our "fishing" area.
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| Yes, these are stairs |
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| front entrance |
Absolute chaos and destruction. I can't believe a rod hasn't been smashed in the door (yet). I long for the day when we get a some sort of rod holder for the wall. He keeps promising to build one every time I say I'm buying one. I swear one day I'll crack and just buy one, for my rods only.
Miscellaneous tackle. It's everywhere in our house. Open any drawer, in any room in the house, and you will find something fishing related in it, whether it's some Phil Rowley indicators, a giant cast-a-bubble from 20 years ago, a hook with some thread hanging off of it, or even the clothes we wear, with various fishing logos and such.
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| Kitchen drawer |
Even the car looks like a tackle shop. Stickers on it galore (including an old "Anglers West" one I refuse to take off), the car is recognizable by a few people if we take it fishing. When we got the Pathfinder we decided to refrain from much advertising on it, except to put a cutout sticker of the Loop fish on the back. The inside, however, is the same as the car, maybe worse. You can fill a fly box with what you would find on the roof of the Pathy. Everything from Sturgeon feast in there to my dad's old orange fish bonker. (You never know when you might need that, especially when driving through Surrey).
When we first moved in the house, we had 3 bedrooms and 3 kids, so the two boys shared the master bedroom, and our daughter had the middle room and we have the slightly bigger middle bedroom. Now our daughter has moved out, and the one son took her room. He's never had his own room so we decided that it was fair, because his brother has autism and quite frankly, likes his own space. We have a very peaceful household now, but no fishing room. I keep waiting for one of the boys to mess up really bad so I can threaten to move them back in together. Is that wrong? But no, they have to be angels, and so I am stuck with my dining room being our fly tying area for now, and the downstairs pile keeps growing and growing.
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| Dining room table, I know, you wish it was yours |
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| Fly tying madness |
The landlord is building a new shed in the spring so I still have hope that some of this stuff will migrate out of my house, like the life jackets. Until then, it's me against Randy and the "mess".
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| dining room not a china cabinet |
I don't know how non-fishing wives do it! It must drive them batty. I fish and it's pushing me over the edge. The thing is, he just cleaned and organized this place at Christmas!
I've been to other people's houses and seen the same thing, so I know I'm not the only one. Between that, and suddenly becoming a fishing widow, I never thought I would feel this way! I thought I would be more understanding. Especially since if it were me in Randy's shoes, I would be out there doing the exact same thing. It's not like he's out chasing the "big ones" (ie. BC winter steelhead) either; most days, he's just out for 8-10 hours, in the cold, rainy weather, hunting for cutthroat, where anything over 15 inches is considered a fabulous size, and if you are really lucky, as I have been a few times, and Randy more than that, you will catch one over 20 inches - a trophy of cutthroat trout around these waters.
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| cutthroat from a local estuary |
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| cutthroat from a slough by Vancouver |
He's lucky I understand the thrill of catching these beautiful fish. Some days you can travel all over to your favorite spots and not find a single one. Other days, you can't keep them off your line.
Well, I'd best go pick that bare hook out of my carpet, before I forget about it and get impaled in the toe or something.
Tight lines, Deb.
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