WOW,WOW, WOW

I hope you are all saying WOW with me as you look at the fish caught by our friend Gary Silverman on the left and held with Ted Kramer who is also our friend and a fishing guide. Many of you have fished the Hex Hatch with us and heard the stories of the somewhat mythical LARGE trout in this river. Gary caught this below the CCC bridge about a week ago at night on a Hex emerger fly. It was about 29 inches long. Amazing and it could not have happened to a nicer guy who has had a rough year and needed a big fish catch. Congrads to Gary!

We had a great weekend with family..Patrick, Heather, Deb(Heathers Mom) and her husband Duane here along with our friends Pam and Dennis Carney. We fished the hex, ate great meals, socialized with other fisherpeople and told tall fish tales...does it get any better?? In typical nolan fashion we had our share of disasters..leaking pipes, broken garbage disposal, non functioning dishwasher and a dog with hot spots. Good thing we have good friends and neighbors...the plumbing is fixed, the garbage disposal replace,the dishwasher working and the dog bathed and medicated. Mike is taking a nap and I am enjoying the sparkly sunny view from the deck as I type this message and wait for the laundry to finish. One more night of fishing ahead as we look for the big spinner fall of hex flies. Wish us luck and tight lines.

Kathy and Mike

What did I catch????

So what does this picture mean??? I was fishing Michael Jackson style with a blue glove. The story is shown in pictures below...We were fishing last night for the hex and I went out at 9:30 to my usual spot. The fish were rising all around me and I was very excited to get my Hex emerger fly in the water...so excited that I hooked the fly in the palm of my hand. I could not get it out and it really really hurt! So I called on my daughter in law Heather from the campfire to help.
Her friend and coworker Shawn, who is a physician, and Heather did some minor surgery at our kitchen table, in our waders and used my embroidery scissors to cut out the hook...it was too far in to back out and was caught on a tendon or nerve in my palm which is why it was so painful. A little shot of Port to fortify me and they persisted and got it out!!! Yea for Heather and Shawn. You can see that bad boy in my palm below. So after much antiseptic and a bandage I put on the blue glove to protect it from all the fish I was going to catch and was good to go.
We then went back to fishing...why not...but had mixed luck with the fish since there were not many hex flies out and about. The group last night pre fly in the hand was ready for a spinner drop that did not happen. Too much of cool down is the theory. But we had a great time with pie and port at the campfire afterwards. Never a dull moment at the Nolans Cabin.

Kathy and Mike

80 Blocks with the Hex Hatch

The Hex continues with a different group flogging the water with large ugly flies each night. This was last nights group. We were lucky to have Patrick for his first night of hex fishing and Dave Purvis (who works in Nigeria for Shell,3 weeks on/3 weeks off). The bugs were light last night...a few fish were caught but it was not a banner night. The heat has moved on to the east and it is 72 and cloudy today...what a relief! The hope is that we have lots of spinners and thus lots of fish tonight..but as many of you know it is not an exact science!!

We power washed the deck today...in a rain shower..and it looks so much better. Still that pesky paint that will not come off but it is clean and there is less paint than before. We will keep working on it.

We had a plumbing leak yesterday in our bathroom tub area. Water leaking onto the floor was the clue. It was quite a process to figure it out...I will not bore you all with it here..but next door neighbor Dana came to the rescue and Patrick called with the question "is there anything I can bring". Lucky timing and iphone pictures made it so he could get the part, bring it out for Dana to install. Yea we are with no leaks! Mike and I went for a swim yesterday as we had the water off and it was very very hot and humid. The river was wonderfully refreshing1

I have been sewing up a storm. I finished all 80 log cabin blocks for my quilt!! Yeh!! I will take a break from them and do another project for the next few days. We have friends and family coming for this weekend so we look forward to some fun times and lots of fish catchin!

Kathy and Mike

Hex and Fathers Day

 Greetings from the Manistee River.  Today was a beautiful day on the Manistee River with rain this morning and sunshine from noon on and a great breeze that was a break from the humidity and 90 degree temps of the last few days.  Mike made a great egg and potatoe breakfast...he call it "a mess" .  Patrick and Heather came out in the afternoon in their yellow jeep so we had a great time catching up with them..Patrick has been away for work and Heather updated us on how she is feeling....I assume most of you know that they are expecting a baby at the end of August.  Very exciting for everyone to anticipate!! She sure looks beautiful doesn't she!!  A great Fathers day to be able to share some time with them.  We had a call from Timothy in Vermont and he is enjoying his summer time off from his first year of teaching...time to recharge his batteries.  We had our third dinner with the Smith and Purvis's but on our deck this time...kabobs on the grill!!  yum

 The jeep only goes about 45 miles an hour and it took them  a couple of hours to get out to us...Patrick now has a can of gas in the back as he does not have a working gas gauge.  He and I ran out of gas last summer when we were geocaching!!  He is now prepared for that emergency.  It is fun to ride in...very breezy.

It is now hex hatch time...the time of year that the big mayflies hatch and all the big fish come out of their hiding places to gorge themselves on the BIG hex flies.  This is one that has been on our deck table leg all day...they hatch at night...10pmish and fly into the trees and mate with each other.  Then a few nights later they fall to the river and lay the eggs also  after dark. The fish go crazy and you can catch some big big fish.  Last night I caught an 18 inch fish and Thursday night I caught a 14 inch fish....the Big Boys are in the 20 inch range.  I will have to do another blog on the fish Mike has caught...inches to be determined.  A 25 inch fish was caught upstream last night. So the hunt is on for the big hogs!!  Time to fish...love and hugs to all. 

Kathy and Mike

Mistakes will drive you crazy

 I have been working on Casey and Timothy's quilt this last week.  I have a design wall that I put up in the front bedroom to lay the quilt pieces out to "audition" the colors next to each other and to keep the rows in the right order.  The picture above shows that before I sewed each row together to make the hexagons.The picture below shows a mistake that I caught because I laid it out this way...I sewed them in the wrong order!!

 So I had to rip out several seams and resew them to make it right.  Sometimes mistakes don't get caught till you are further along and then it is very very hard to fix.  This was easy and would of been a glaring mistake if i had not fixed it.

 This shows how I sewed the pieces together to make the long strips.  It is coming along very well.

 We spent the weekend at the cabin and it was very warm...in the high 80 to 90's.  Lots of humidity but lucky for us there was lots of wind to cool it off .  We had a great time kayaking on Sunday with the Smiths and Purvis gang and did about 3 hours from upriver down to our place.  There were a few spills into the water which felt great since it was so hot and the water is still cold.  I will not name names but one spectacular fall was by someone who is tall and lives in Africa and in the south of this country...must be that is why he was off balance!!  Mike had a great nap on Saturday along with the dogs.  We are dog sitting for our grand dog Jackson.  He is resting up for the Hex Hatch which is coming up in the next few weeks.  I hope I can include some big fish pictures.

The Construction of a Quilt

 I have started a new quilt and decided to chronicle it in my blog.  It was a rainy weekend at the cabin so I got lots of sewing done.  The quilt will be for Casey and Timothy as a Christmas present.  When we were just in Vermont Casey and I went to a fabric store in Keens NH to pick out a pattern and the fabric.  Sounds easy right?  Wrong...it is the hardest part.  She had made several trips there and picked out some fabric she liked so we took off from there.  The pattern she finally picked out is called Hexagon Hip Hop and the fabric is vintage style fabric with subtle colors and smaller prints.  The crazy thing is we had to pick out 40 different fabrics!!  We did not need much of each fabric but I feel like we trashed the fabric store doing it.  The owner...a retired teacher...was great and very helpful.

 Next I ironed the fabric and then cut it into 5inch by 10 inch rectangles and then cut each end at a 60degree angle.  The small triangles will be the border and the middle piece will be half of the hexagon.  I have never made this pattern before so it is always a challenge...measure twice and cut once is always in the front of my mind at this point.  I will start putting it together tomorrow!!
Saturday night we traveled up the water soggy and pot hole infested road in the rain  to the beautiful home of Karen and Dave Purvis   to have dinner with them and the Smiths.  Great time and lots of laughs.  Today(Sunday) is beautiful and sunny with temps in the 60's!!!  Wonderful after all that rain.   Kathy and Michael