This blog has changed a lot over time. I was a serious cyclist who got diagnosed with early stage lung cancer, and when I went looking for other serious cyclists trying to come back after such a diagnosis, I found nothing. I decided that if my situation was that rare, I should start a blog about it. So I gathered up all the online posts I’d made to cycling forums and a lung cancer support forum, and posted copies of them here to, in effect, start this blog retroactively, going back to a few months before my diagnosis and surgery. Like blogs tend to do, it changed a lot over time. The blog’s early years were filled with cycling and lung cancer posts. That was the unique combination I brought to it. But as I remained cancer free, progressed to the point where all follow-up care had ended, and even moved on from the lung cancer advocacy work I did, cycling took center stage. In those days, a lot of my rides were real adventures. I did pay rides, club rides, long distance randonneuring rides, and even commuted to work by bike. I was riding over 6,000 or 7,000 miles a year, and there was lots to write about. But after a change of jobs and my move to Gun Barrel City in 2013, the organized rides shrunk to just one or two a year, with the rest just being short solo rides near my home. They soon seemed not worthy of blog posts, and so the blog mostly just became health and riding mileage updates.
When I cut down my working hours and added another hobby, fossil hunting, I did quite a few blog posts about that. But new things to find within a reasonable distance of home seem to have dwindled, and my knees have become less and less tolerant of long treks down creek beds, so after last year’s surgery on my left knee, fossil hunting trips have become very infrequent, and what I’ve found on those trips even less worthy of a blog post. In my last post, I wrote about my lifelong love of fishing. There have been a few fishing posts in the blog in the past, mostly detailing my lure making, and my return to bass fishing, after deciding that my arthritic hands, elbows, and shoulders might tolerate it better by just using finesse fishing techniques with lighter tackle. And, as I wrote about in that last post, I’m experiencing a lot of excitement about a new bait I’ve tried out, called a Ned rig, that has really been successful for me, and allows me to use lighter tackle for bass fishing than I ever have before. So, I’m thinking that I’ll start posting more about my fishing, and let that take center stage in my blog, at least for a while. In my research of the Ned rig, I ran across some blogs on it that I enjoyed quite a bit. I doubt that I’ll get nearly as detailed about it as they do (posting about barometric pressure, solunar fishing table, and such is more detail than I even pay attention to), and we’ll see how it goes.
I’ll also mix in health and cycling mileage reports as I go. Here is the next of those: As I just posted on Facebook on the 20th, that date is my cancerversary, and I am now a 17 year lung cancer survivor. I’m very happy and thankful to have remained cancer free for another year. And as I sit here, just seven days before the end of 2024, it occurs to me that, if I can just manage to stay out of the hospital another seven days (knocking on wood as I type that), 2024 will become the first year since 2019 that I have made it through an entire calendar year without being admitted to the hospital. That sentence itself makes a big statement on the state of my health, I think. COVID felled me in October of 2020, and it had been just one thing after another that put me in the hospital since then. Going an entire calendar year without being admitted to a hospital seems like a big deal to me now.
And a cycling update: As I sit here with my first cold in 11 months, I have decided to shut down my riding for at least this week, and see if rest and recovery will help with the cold. So, with my riding in 2024 done, I added things up. I did 9 rides in December for a total of 295 miles. Unlike November, when I was able to do most of my riding outdoors, all of December’s rides were inside, on the trainer. I did 140 bike rides totaling 4,350 miles this year. At 73 years of age, in my current physical condition, I’m thinking that’s a good riding year. I’m still considerably slower than in my riding years before COVID, and carrying around a few more pounds these days than I probably should, but I still feel like I’m in a good stage of fitness, and will carry on without further complaint here.
Considering this cold and my commitments this week, it seems likely that I’ve made my last fishing trip of the year too, so I’ll post now about yesterday’s outing. The morning low temperature was in the upper 40’s. It was mostly cloudy, and only got into the upper 60’s in the afternoon, so it was a fairly mild day. An 11 mph south wind was forecast, so I made the decision to drive to the Caney City boat ramp on the lower lake, and launch there, rather than fishing mid lake, where I’ve been doing well lately. That south end of the lake is better for dealing with a south wind. That proved to be a wise decision, as the wind blew much harder than predicted, gusting at over 25 mph at times. It definitely limited where I could fish. Our Sunday evening fried crappie dinner had reminded me that the freezer stock of crappie could use another meal. And with the lake almost 4 feet low right now, the winter crappie bite might be tougher than usual on Cedar Creek this year, so I decided to spend at least part of the day crappie fishing, rather than just fishing the Ned rig for bass. I don’t have as many bass fishing spots on the lower lake anyway, and with the lake this low, most of those aren’t fishable, so a pause in the Ned rig fishing seemed logical. That plan changed in pretty short order, though. The crappie bite proved to be surprisingly tough. The first couple of spots yielded nothing, and at the next spot, a favorite dock, I caught a single very nice crappie shooting a jig under that dock in 8 feet of water. Almost an hour later, I caught another very nice crappie in 17 feet of water beside a bridge piling, and caught no other crappie at all. Those two large crappie though, are enough for a nice meal for Bobbi and I, so I just decided to abandon the crappie fishing, and go find some spots out of the wind to try out the Ned rig.
The first of two really nice crappie that ended up in my freezer yesterday.
After those first two impressive trips fishing the Ned rig, this day would prove much tougher for it, too. I spent around 4 hours fishing it and managed to catch just 7 bass. And unlike the other Ned rig trips, I caught no other species of fish. But the second of those 7 fish weighed 6.03 pounds. That’s my first 6 pounder in a while, and it put up quite a fight on the medium light action rod I was using. A 6 pounder on only my third trip fishing the Ned rig! When you add in the large drum, hybrids, and buffalofish, it’s been truly surprising how many larger fish that little finesse rig has caught. It was a tough fishing day, but after bringing home a nice crappie dinner, and catching a 6 pound bass, I’m not going to complain.
Yesterday’s 6.03 pound bass caught on a Ned rig.
I seem to be mostly settled on the tackle I’m using for my Ned rig fishing, but I still haven’t really figured out what hook I want to use for the jigs. My first day, I used the same size 2 Mustad 32746 hook I use for my larger crappie jigs. These are thin wire hooks, but stronger and heavier than most thin wire hooks, with a chemically sharpened needle point. They are stronger than most hooks that size, but definitely bend as you hang up on rocks with them. The second fishing trip, I used new Owner size 1 hooks on the two Ned rigs I fished. These are really too heavy to be considered a thin wire hook, but still fit the mold I’m using to make the jigs. The size 1 Owners have a .037″ diameter, as opposed the the .034″ diameter of the Mustad size 1 hooks. On yesterday’s trip, I used the Owner hook on one rig, and a size 1 Mustad hook on the other. There are good points and bad points with all three hooks. The larger hooks give you more confidence when hooking larger fish, but hang up more than the size 2 Mustad, and the points seems to get dulled more by the rocks you hit. The Mustad hooks do get bent more easily by the rocks you hang up on, but the broader point on the heavier Owner hook gets more blunt than I like pretty quickly as I have to keep resharpening it. It seems like I’ll need to retire whichever hooks I use fairly often, either from the bending or from the limits of resharpening the point. That’s assuming I don’t lose the jig first. With its exposed hook, that’s also a problem with a Ned rig. But in three trips, I’ve only lost one jig, so maybe it won’t be as big a problem as I imagined. But retiring hooks is really no big deal; I melt to reclaim the alloy the jig is made of, and just make more jigs, but I do need to figure out which hooks I prefer. Of course, there is still much more learning for me to do about this new technique, as yesterday’s tough outing reminded me.
Happy Holidays, everyone. Let’s see what 2025 has in store for us.
