Capt. Al's Jig Factory ~ And Some Odds And Ends

I'm going to do the odds and ends first. I rarely get comments on my posts except as emails, and then mostly from people that I already know. This morning I had four comments. One was from Bill Clark wanting to know why I wasn't posting anymore on the photo.net Leica forum. Bill, I got kicked off. It seems that some of the friends of the forum's "owners" though that I was becoming too popular. A guy named Brad Evans was my biggest detractor and I think a lot of the forum regulars figured that out. He's a friend of the management over there.

Another comment saying that he enjoyed my photos and reading my unpredictable little essays came from Rob Hall in Munich, Germany. The other two were signed "anonymous". One gentleman said how much he enjoyed the blog while the second related how he used to go to that YMCA on N.W. 17th Ave. back in the 1970's, and it brought back some pleasant memories. That's the post with the map of North Miami. Thanks, guys, for your comments!

I love fishing with bucktail jigs and a few months ago I wrote about it here: http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com/2006/10/bounty-of-fish-in-north-biscayne-bay.html If you do a google search for "bucktail jig" "al kaplan" you'll get some other links. In this photo I'm actually tying some pink and white hair on a 1/4 ounce lead jig head. I made the lap desk a bunch of years ago so I could sit outside while I'm doing it. That way all the little bits of hair can just be swept off the porch into the grass where it'll decompose. It's supposedly rich in nitrogen and makes good fertilizer. I usually just do this first thing in the morning when it's still cool out, but a few folks I know from my fishing club all called within days of one another desperate for jigs "yesterday". This included well known fishing guide Dave Kostyo who runs charters for tarpon, sailfish, and a bunch of other species aboard his boat Knot Nancy, and a couple who are avid amateurs and the wife decided that I should make up a dozen of a special color combination that she wanted to try, a chartreuse back with a white belly. I need to give her a call and find out how well they worked. Then my old friend Parks Masterson from Hopkins-Carter Marine down by the Miami River wanted a dozen in all black. For a week I was out there every morning making jigs, drinking my morning coffee, and smoking cigarettes until the sun got too hot. Now they all have their jigs and I made up a bunch of extras while I was doing it.