My Inspired Project

I've been tying flies for almost 2 years now and have been using a rotary style vice bought off eBay for about £15. To be honest it has served me well and has helped produce many flies in that time, but there are one or two things that annoyed me with the design and the ergonomics of it.

Fly tying is a hobby that is destined to be a part of my life for the foreseeable future so I'd planned to use my visit to this years BFFI to have a close look at a couple of the vices I'd chosen to be potential candidates for replacing the old model.

To be honest I was impressed with what I saw and found it hard to walk away without a purchase but I think that looking at the vices gave me the realisation that for someone that has spent his whole working life involved in engineering then I should really try and come up with my own creation.

Its a thought I had considered before but the awareness of the amount of time that such a project would take had led me to the route of considering a purchase rather than making my own.

Anyway...after plenty of thought and scribbled sketches and a few weeks of working 'after hours' on the vice I came up with a prototype which was later tweaked to produce the finished product. I have given it some quite extensive testing over the last week and I am finding it a joy to use.

Regardless of how happy I am with the vice I have to report that the quality of my flies has unfortunately remained at the same standard, but I'm sure to enjoy the practising that little bit more.

                 A few of the recent flies tied on the new vice

The Dungeness crabbing slowed a little more but there were still quite a few caught, mostly by boaters. The pier is still kicking out about a limit of Dungeness a day, but most of the catching is done by a select few. The outer bay and Ten Mile are still the most consistent producers when the weather is good enough.

Even after all the effort of the last 12 days there are still a bunch of nice Dungeness crab in the bay. You've got to hit the right spot to get them, and there are a lot more wrong spots than there were, but you'll know the right spot when you check your gear. Two people in a boat this morning caught two limits of jumbos and threw back almost another two limits using four traps in about two hours. There are still some nice Dungeness coming from the pier as well.

There was a lot of effort for Dungeness this weekend. Some places on the bay had more crab pots than water. You could almost walk on the buoys near channel marker 5. Not everyone caught, but quite a few did, mostly by marker 5 and in the channels around Hog Island. Only a few boats were able to sneak across the bar but they were rewarded with limits of crab. The pier was full, with easily over a hundred nets and pots tied to it, and still a few experienced crabbers were able to catch limits. Most of the rest just watched it happen. With luck and some good weather, more Dungeness will come in the bay this week.

The crab numbers have dropped a bit but are still pretty good. The pier has been crowded but the guys that know how to work it are still doing well. For the rest it can be difficult. In the bay there are a few hot spots; you can find them by looking for all the crab pot floats. There are quite a few Dungeness around Hog Island in particular. In the ocean, the outer bay is still really good and Ten Mile has been excellent but, so far, kind of unnecessary to run so far. Commercial season starts on Monday so the numbers of jumbo crabs will likely start to drop. Too bad, since the average size this year has been pretty big. At least with the commercial season open, if you don't catch, there's always the market.

It was a bit wet yesterday but there were still quite a few crabbers. It was tough on the pier but one family still ended up with 14 Dungeness. The outer bay and Ten Mile kicked out limits for most of the boats that tried outside. For the guys who didn't catch good numbers of crab: check your gear more often and don't be afraid to move if you aren't catching. You can't catch what isn't there.

There was a halibut caught in the bay on Saturday, so it's no too late. So far today on the pier one group has caught 12 Dungeness and Kerry in the store has caught 4 in one pot after a one hour soak.

There were a few folks who did well on the pier and a lot more that didn't. Unfortunately, you're not just trying to attract a few crabs, you're also competing with everyone else's bait. One fisherman toward the end of the pier had 8 Dungeness that nearly filled his 5-gallon bucket by noon, but the people next to him had nothing. The folks with boats did much better with quite a few reporting limits, even in the bay. The trick to the bay is to tend your gear, try different spots until you find the crab, and watch that the current doesn't drag your gear away. The outer bay was better and Ten Mile had lots of crab, mostly shallow in 40 to 60 feet.

Tomorrow's the day for dungeness. Yesterday a crabber on the pier caught 8 red crabs and a legal-sized dungeness after a 25 minute soak during slack tide. 45 minutes later, after the tide was running a bit faster, a second pull of the pot had 11 legal-sized dungeness crabs and no reds. Two of the dungeness were 7.5" wide. The first pull tomorrow should be good. After that...? Word is that there's a lot of crab in the outer bay as well. The forecast still calls for some swell tomorrow but it should still be passable over the bar. No guarantees, though. If you are planning on heading out to sea tomorrow please use caution.

The forecast looks pretty good for the dungeness opener. Northwest wind 5 to 15 knots and 6 to 8 foot swell. The bay should be fine and the bar probably passable with caution. Outside, the crabs may be in deeper water than usual due to today's 16'+ swell. The water is warm enough for halibut to be a possible option while you are waiting for the crabs to fill your pots.