I had another great striper trip. I even stuck one myself.
Size 12 tiemco Pt tail Red thread body with diver rib Peach ice dub ball thorax 2 turns of partridge for hackle Neat thread head Yup this will work 1x long 2 x heavy tiemco hooks ozer 10 Pt tail Rainbow dubbed thorax Copper rib Olive hares ear mixed with black ice dub abdomine Pt and pearl tinsle wing case Partridge legs Black bead Getting ready for the weekend 1x long 1x heavy tiemco size 16 Pt tail Red thread body Silver wire rib Rainbow dub body Pt and pearl tinsle wing case Partridge legs Gold bead It was a great night on my favorite water with great friends. I am very happy to catch my first striper on my new Winston BIII X TH 11 footer. I used a 400gr Skagit Max short, an itermediate tip and 20 lb flouro. I used a large but sparse flat wing on a 4/0. I love this set up. It is light and powerful and I can make any cast I need. I remember getting chicken corn chowder there when I was s little kid. Read the story to see all the messy, stinky details. http://www.chestercounty.com/2015/05/05/70713/historic-store-closes-in-landenberg The Landenberg Store, a veritable institution that dates back to 1872 and known to thousands of locals as the unofficial town center of Landenberg, officially closed its doors last Wednesday, April 29. Bill Skalish of Landenberg Village, LLC – the owner of the store – said that he and his wife, Beth, are currently interviewing parties who have expressed interest in taking over the business. Skalish said that he and his wife have been surprised at the number of people who have approached them about the store. "Based on our conversations, they all seem to want to make modifications in order to make the store more representative of a traditional country store," he said. "One couple suggested incorporating gourmet foods and dry goods as part of the business. It will be up to them what their business model will or won't be." Skalish did not discuss the financial terms of the new lease, which he said will be drafted and finalized when the new tenant turns the key on the re-opening of the store. Mary O'Connor, the Landenberg Store's previous tenant, had run the business with her husband, Tom, since January 2005. Over the course of the next decade, the business became the subject of intense, legal wrangling between O'Connor, the Landenberg Village, LLC, New Garden Township and other agencies. The problems began even before O'Connor turned the key to the store for the first time. Three days before she was to open the store, O'Connor received a site visit from the Chester County Board of Health. A pre-operating inspection revealed that the septic system was overflowing and had to be pumped immediately, and on Jan. 6, 2,000 gallons of raw sewage were removed. The septic system is located directly behind the Landenberg Store and is shared by the store and the occupants of the hotel. By 2011, the sewage violations at Landenberg Village reached as high as the Chester County Health Department, who threatened to close the store. On April 19, 2011, Landenberg Village, LLC received a letter from the Chester County Health Department stating that a sewage enforcement officer from the department conducted an inspection of the property, and found "what appears to be raw or partially treated sewage effluent being discharged onto the surface of the ground. "This condition represents a serious health hazard," the letter read, and was in violation of five subsections of the Health Department's rules and regulations. Landenberg Village, LLC received a similar letter from the Health Department on Aug. 26, 2011. O'Connor argued that a long-term sewage system that tied the current system into a stream discharge system to a nearby sewage treatment plant located across Penn Green Road from the store and hotel would be a more viable and healthier option. Rather, the choice of sewage removal chosen by Landenberg Village, LLC was been a pump-and-haul system. On Oct. 5, 2011, a sanitation establishment inspection form provided for the store by the Chester County Health Department observed nine sewage overflows on the Landenberg Village property. The letter cited Chapter 46 of the Pa. Food Code Subsection 46.83, which states that sewage shall be disposed through an approved facility - an individual sewage disposal system that is sized, constructed, maintained and operated according to section 7 of the Pa. Sewage Facilities Act. In a letter from the Chester County Health Department dated Oct. 7, 2011, Landenberg Village, LLC was cited for violating Chapter 500, Subsection 502.3.1.2 of County Code, which states that "no individual sewage disposal system, community sewage system, privy, cesspool, urinal, or other receptacle for sewage shall be constructed, maintained, or used which directly or indirectly drains or discharges over or upon the surface of the ground or into the Waters of the Commonwealth." In a Nov. 2, 2011 letter to Landenberg Village, LLC from township Zoning Hearing Board member Winifred Moran Sebastian, the business was asked to have their sewage system fully compliant "with all applicable laws, rules, regulations, ordinances and policies of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, the Chester County Health Department and New Garden Township," in addition to being given 90 days to modify its sewer/septic system, internal and external plumbing; and 90 days to install a grease interceptor in the Landenberg Store. For the past several years, O'Connor expressed her displeasure to New Garden Township for granting Landenberg Village, LLC several extensions in order to meet these compliances, and particularly after the New Garden Board of Supervisors granted Landenberg Village, LLC the right to use a pump-and-haul sewage disposal system. The supervisors gave approval to restate an existing ordinance to establish regulations for retaining tanks for sewage in the township. Ordinance No.199, passed by a 5-0 vote, authorizes that the township, the Chester County Health Department or the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) permit the use of holding tanks within the township as "necessary to abate a nuisance or public health hazard," and is applied to any institutional, residential or commercial establishment, providing that the daily flow of sewage does not exceed 800 gallons. Under the guidelines of the amended ordinance, Landenberg Village, LLC is permitted to use the pump-and-haul form of sewage extraction, indefinitely. Skalish said that he does not believe that the pump-and-haul system in place near the Landenberg Store will serve as a deterrent to someone interested in taking over the store, and said the he has no plans to modify the septic system or its current form of septic removal. "It's operating efficiently, serving its purpose and doing well," he said. "It's also approved by the Chester County health Department." Although Skalish chose not to comment on the specifics of his legal issues with O'Connor, he said that he was looking forward to having a new tenant in the store. He gave no timeline for when that transfer will happen. To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, e-mail rgaw@chestercounty.com. Chris and I had a great time at one of my favorite places to fish, the Indian River Inlet. The water was rough and we were the only Jetty Jocks to stick fish as far as we can tell. Chris is a beautiful caster and ties some of the best striper flies I have ever seen. I may make a circle hook convert out of him yet! We had the full delaware experience with a stop for Brew Ha Ha coffe and Capriotti's subs on a picnic table overlooking all the beautiful boats in the marina. It is always a pleasure to fish with such great people. If you would like to explore new water or expand your game contact me and we can set something up. Check out this concerning article on one of my favorite places to fish in the Tampa Bay SHELL KEY — A few decades ago this uninhabited island at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico was little more than a small crescent of sand and mangroves with a tiny spit of land to its south. Today the south Pinellas County barrier island known as Shell Key Preserve stretches 2.6 miles and occupies 1,800 acres of beach, mangroves, sea grass beds and sand flats. After years of storms, tides and even dredging to keep Shell Key separated from the community of Tierra Verde, a small channel on the island’s north side appears finally to have closed off, creating a sandy wall that seals the estuary on its back side from the Gulf. This sort of thing can happen when man doesn’t interfere with the natural shifting of sands on these ever-changing coastal islands. But the speed with which Shell Key has transformed worries one of the area’s leading environmental groups, Tampa Bay Watch. “This used to be a major pass, hundreds of yards across,” said Peter Clark, president of the organization headquartered nearby in Tierra Verde. Now that the pass has closed, there’s no water washing back and forth from the Gulf into the shallow, sensitive habitat to the south — let alone access for boaters. “It’s kind of like the bathtub effect: Water will slosh up and down the northern side of the preserve, but it can’t be exchanged with water from the Gulf or Tampa Bay. That water becomes stagnant; it becomes superheated, which can kill sea grass beds. It may also allow for larger algae blooms,” Clark said. While county officials have yet to perform a comprehensive study of what’s happening at Shell Key, Clark has a theory about what has caused the particularly rapid accumulation of sand here: hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of sand pumped every few years onto the eroding beach just north of the preserve at Pass-A-Grille. Beach nourishment has been rebuilding Pass-A-Grille Beach, at the southern end of St. Pete Beach, since the 1980s, a critical measure to protect the historic beach community from Gulf storm surge. “A lot of the sand is probably moving its way south and that’s what’s been accumulating on Shell Key, making the barrier island much, much bigger and eventually clogging the pass and filling it in,” Clark said. Near the mouth of Bunces Pass, a channel that separates Shell Key’s south end from Fort De Soto Park’s north beach, another large deposit of sand has formed in recent years, creating a huge offshore sandbar even as sections of the park itself have eroded severely. Sand along Central Florida’s Gulf coast tends to shift over time from north to south, but Pinellas officials can’t say for sure whether all the sand that has ended up on Shell Key or off Fort De Soto’s shores has come from Pass-A-Grille. When funding is available, the county’s Natural Resources Division plans to study both the Bunces Pass inlet and Pass-A-Grille Channel, which is just north of Shell Key, between Pass-A-Grille and Tierra Verde. The goal is to assess the effect of these two channels on the long-term movement of sand in the immediate area and also to gauge why Shell Key has grown so much while parts of Fort De Soto have shrunk. “That might give us some idea why that’s filling in and what might be the future of it,” said Andy Squires, the county’s manager of coastal and freshwater resources. The county also has alerted the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, which manages beach nourishment projects, about people’s concerns about the Shell Key pass closure. For the time being, though, it is unclear whether the change at Shell Key is simply a natural phenomenon. Several efforts have been made in the past to keep a channel open between northern Clearwater Beach and undeveloped Caladesi Island State Park, an island about the same size as Shell Key, but natural forces keep closing it back up. “That’s what these barrier islands do, they migrate. Shell Key was barely anything. That whole island in the last two decades has changed significantly and grown,” Squires said. “There’s an evolution of these barrier islands.” Local recreational boaters have seen that evolution happening from one year to the next along Pinellas County’s southern coastline. “It ebbs and flows. A couple years ago there was a sandbar out in front of Shell Key. Now there’s a big sand bar to the west of Fort De Soto. It is constantly changing,” said Bill Knepper, a boater and resident of the nearby Vina Del Mar community. He has seen large boats navigate Shell Key passage but, at other times, a jet ski hardly could squeeze through it. While much of the change may be natural, Knepper said he does have concerns about the pass being stopped up. “Once that water gets stagnant, then everything back there dies,” he said. Tampa Bay Watch plans to ask the Pinellas County Commission to begin monitoring water quality in the Shell Key estuary to determine how detrimental the closure is to the environment there, Clark said. In addition to stagnating water that could kill off sea grass beds, Clark also worries about raccoons, coyotes and other predators gaining access to the island to prey on nesting birds and their eggs. The next time the Army Corps is scheduled to nourish Pass-A-Grille, Clark’s group will urge it to consider dredging sand from the north end of Shell Key and redistributing it at the beach. A smaller-scale effort a few years ago to dredge the channel by private developers in Tierra Verde did little to deter the flow of sand. Pinellas officials would have to seriously consider how much good dredging would do in the long run, says Paul Cozzie, director of the county’s parks and conservation resources department. “The real question is how successful would any dredging be or is this something that’s going to have to be continually done and, in that case, who should be paying for it?” Cozzie said. Dredging for beach nourishment projects is funded primarily with federal dollars combined with matching state and local money, but the Army Corps and contractors determine where sand will be collected. The larger solution may prove complicated, especially on a natural preserve that is meant to remain untouched by human intervention, he said. “Sand is going to go where it wants to go and it is a preserve, so we’re not going to use really any artificial means,” Cozzie said. jboatwright@tampatrib.com (727) 215-1277 Twitter: @JBoatwright jboatwright@tampatrib.com Well it's been a month or so since my first Shad of the season. It sure was nice to get out and get into the thick of them tonight. They were on the chartuese and punk slut fly. I also had the great pleasure of taking s new fly fisherman out in the water tonight. These things are just damn fun. |
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