We are close to surviving the dead off season period!!!

I just bought "new threads"... for tying fishing flies.  LOL, I have a place in town that sells sewing supplies and I think the old ladies there get a kick out of an old guy like me going crazy over the thread (I bought a lot).  

I know.  My flies look pretty rough, but they seem to catch fish.  I live in Central Illinois so around here I'm just fly fishing for bass and panfish.  A few weeks ago I was fishing with my brother in law for trout out east and caught a lot of rainbows, and nice sized ones too.  I do love to fish.

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It's weird.  I've caught a lot of different fish on flies and a fly rod.  Even a really big carp one day.  One year we were vacationing on Chesapeake Bay (salt water) and I caught a ton of fish on my fly rod there... I still have no clue as to what they were as far as what kind of fish.  But they were a blast to catch.  I have one fly that I tie that my great-aunt used to fish with.  She was quite the outdoors sports gal, even when she was elderly.  She and my great-uncle had a farm in Wisconsin that bordered on a large lake.  She taught me how to use a fly rod when I was a little boy.  And she had a white and pink thing she called a pinky.  I caught a zillion fish with that thing over the years.  When I began tying my own flies (40 or 50 years later) I tried to re-create that fly from memory.  And that is my #1 "go to" fly.  When nothing else will catch a fish, I get one of those pinky's out and often I do catch fish.  Anything will bite on it.  I think it probably looks like a wounded or injured minnow to game fish and that's why they go after it. 

We are on the last lap of the slow part of the Bears news year.  Soon we will have summer training camp to ignite some great new & fresh news.  In the meantime, please hang in there.  And if you can, please try to post a comment here or there - or even post an article that you come across, or just start a new thread with a Bears related idea for us to consider.

And thanks for sticking with us through this dead time.  Much appreciated!