www.grtu.org

I'd encourage all of you to find and frequent your local Half Price Books. I moved near one up here NE of Dallas and have found it to be a great source of fly fishing and tying books, many of which are now out of print or hard to find.

Today, I hit the Mother Lode. They'd filled the shelf with fly fishing and tying videos, all looking to be in unused condition, and had priced them at 98 cents apiece. I couldn't resist and bought all 45 they had in stock. Now I have a substantial video library for less than the cost of a premium fly line.

Can you imagine the customer service saying something like this.... "You should have been here yesterday. We had a whole shelf of that Flyfishing stuff and some guy came in and bought all of it!" You'd think you were in a used car lot and they were working on a "Bait and switch" strategy. Nope it was just Mick !!! Say when are you going to make it down in this neck of the woods again? Jimbo

Well, I was actually in Austin yesterday, but just long enough for the TPWD Freshwater Fisheries Advisory Board meeting at TPWD headquarters. I left our house up here about 4 AM and was back home by 6:15 PM (for kid duty), so I didn't have time to do anything but wave at Lady Bird Lake on the way by.

This fall has been a real struggle. Our teenager, Sam, has been getting daily migraines, at least every school day. We've had him to the neurologist, to the psychologist, etc, but still are seeing little progress. It's been my full time job to keep him medicated, encourage him to get up and get to school despite the pain, and then deal with his teachers and counselors if he doest miss school so we can help him keep up with his work.

So, my "retirement" has been very busy and very draining. I've tied a few flies, read a few books, and fished in our creek a few times, but travel has been out of the question.

I had noticed that there were some decent fly fishing books at our half price bookes store as well back last Spring, but nothing like the deal you found Mick! I checked again last night and picked up a copy of Dave Hughes' "Wet Flies" as it was on my list of desired books and I found it for 1/2 the price at $16.50 in new condition. Sorry to hear about your Son Sam's problems. I'll say some prayers for y'all and his healing.

Really sorry to hear your son is having migraines. Hopefully it will be something that will pass as he goes older. It is actually not that uncommon for teenagers to go through a phase as they mature to experience migraines, I did. Hopefully these to will pass. Jimbo

Well, my 20 year old gets migraines, my wife gets migraines, and my father-in-law gets them, too. So they can't blame it on my genes. But it's still no fun.

My sister gets them and though its taken some work, does mostly manage to keep them under control. I think she takes a daily pill to ward them off. The closest thing I know to a secret is to learn to recognize the warning signs, and slow down the progression early.