eldest son with weird fish :)

my wife and son and myself having fun

Hello

Welcome to My Store

All of my items are new unless stated in descriptions.

Stock is very limited and once gone normally cannot be replenished.

I try very hard to get things shipped as soon as possible.

Occasionally i go on a hunting or fishing trip on the spur of the moment and dont get to the shipping until i get back. Its hard to plan for such trips when weather and conditions play an important role.

About Me

I love the outdoors and have recently gotten remarried.

I now have a lovely new wife and 2 great boys 18 and 13.

They all share my love for the outdoors.

Unfortunately i got laid off work in july and making the house payment has been a real struggle. Like most of you across the country we have seen our house go way down in value, Our home was purchased in 2006 at 391k and is now worth 219k according to recent sales across the street of the same model.

I cant believe the numbe of people who have told me or my wife to just let my house go to forclosure and walk away, Sorry but i am way to proud to do that.

Of course it actually makes sense to do that but i dont have any reserves left to purchase another home.   I just pray that my job comes back and we can get back on our feet.

Like i mentioned above i know a lot of you are in the same boat and pray that you all make it .  I thought about pimping myself out on the corner but my wife says what are we gonna do with all those nickels (ha ha ). just kidding.

Before i got married i had no idea how much it costs to support to growing boys. They are eathing machines. Trying to keep them in sports to keep them off the streets and out of trouble is a real task. I tried coaching little league here for 2 years and finally gave that up this year . Between players thinking they know it all and parents always complaining that their boys arent playing enough and then the politics of the board just got to be so out of control the game got somehow left behind. Tell me how can my boys have a home field advantage when we can never practice on our home field. Just one of the many quirks i came up against.

Anyways with little league out of the picture i finally have more time to get in my spring fishing which i am really looking forward to, Cant really afford to do any spring turkey hunting because i dont want to spend the money on the license so it will have to wait another year.

Thank god there is a lake nearby (Lake Oroville) which i can get to in about 30 minutes and that is my sanity check. The boys were used to trolling with their real father but i have been teaching them the art of worm and grub fishing for bass and they really have caught on. This year will be their first year going after prespawn fish and are we gonna have a blast. Hopefully gas will stay down and we can go to some of the bigger fish waters like the Delta and Clear Lake to try for some 10+ pound fish. Cant wait to see the look on their faces when somebody hooks into one of those monsters. My eldest son was fishing a pond last fall and hooked a 15 + pound bass and landed it, i will try to post a pic of it on here when i find it. He released it like we do most of our fish.

 We got to go to the rogue river this last december for thanksgiving to my sister and her husbands new place and had a blast. Their house is really quite beautifull and is right on the river, we fished nearly everyday all day we were there and caught several half pounders and 2 adults although not very big, maybe 3 pounds at the most but we all really enjoyed ourselves.

My boys have started also to fly fish and this christmas i got them a fly tying kit and gave them my old books that i used when i was a kid to tie flies. I am not sure which type of fishing they like more but i do know i am gonna have to start fly fishing again so we can fish together, its been ohh i would say 1982 was the last time i was fly fishing, so without saying i am a bit rusty. We fish the feather river quite a bit and this fall we kept catching i guess what is called a squaw fish or pike minnow fish , not really sure, but they are fun, the big one so far has been about 7 pounds, i will post of pic of it too so if anyone knows for sure what it is could you please email me.

I could go into the whole story of how we keep having to go back to court to deal with the boys real father who is a correctional officer and has threatened  repeatably to kill my wife and leave her in a ditch somewhere and how he has had a long history of alcohol abuse and physical abuse towards the boys and my new wife with multiple police reports being filed about the incidents. And how the boys want nothing to do with him and as he has claimed he was nothing but a sperm donar for the boys and that he will wreck us financially as well as emotionally. The youngest boy has nightmares constantly about his father coming to get him but those are getting less and less frequent now. The boys father has not given the boys a christmas or birthday present in 3 years now but is dragging us back to court because he says we (the parents) are keeping the boys from having a relationship with him.

I could go on and on about this and i think this story would make a great movie except for right now it has no ending,  I was a neighbor of my wife and her ex for over a decade and never knew any of these problems existed, i had become a freind of the oldest son before i ever really knew his mother or father,  myself and my brother who lived with me would take the eldest son fishing and hunting with us and grew fond of him. One day when the eldest was 14 he and his mom (my wife now) came over and both were very upset . they told me what had just happened. The father was physicaly abusing his wife and the eldest boy heard her screaming for help down the block, he came running thru the gate and saw him holding her by the throat against the back fence and the eldest shoved him away from her and said i am tired of you doing this to my mom, if you want to fight someone fight me, the father being quite drunk laughed at him and said go ahead and hit me i will give you the first shot. the eldest said no why dont you take the first shot if you think your man enough. the father took a swing at the eldest boy and he being quite versed in karate blocked the swing and connected with a upper cut to the jaw dropping him to the ground, the mother rushed in and seperated the eldest boy from the situation and started to walk him out of the backyard when the father came back at him with multiple insults about him and his mother and took another swing at the eldest, the eldest then stepped back and avoided the blow and did a leg sweep taking out his leg and dropping him to his knees and then followed with another blow to his head knocking him out, when they came over and told me this i just couldnt beleive it. how could a father and son ever come to that but as the history of the family was told to me over the next several months it was apparent what was going on over there. Its funny how you can live so close to someone (across the street and one house over) and not know what is really going on,

I started out by just being a freind to the boys and the mother but after about 3 months and the divorce papers being served i started dating her. There have been a lot of rough moments and i sold my house and she sold hers and we had to move away from the fathers residence to try and keep the fathers ability to just show up to a minimum. We actually moved about 65 miles away but the boys have still seen the fathers truck sitting outside our home on a couple occasions late at night, now i have not personally seen it there but they say they have. My wife will be representing herself at the end of this month in court because we cant afford an attorny anymore so i will post a comment on this soap opera after the court date.

We have a mediation to go to for determining the wishes of the boys about wanting to see their father.  We had already gone to one before the original settlement which was set up by the boys father, the mediator was a law enforcement specialist and his report stated that the father was a ticking time bomb, not to hard to determine when the father trys to come across the table and attack my wife, wish i had been there. the mediator had to keep the father in the office as she was escorted to her vehicle for safety.

I better stop rambling about this or i will end up writing 10 pages on this easy.

I want to wish everyone a great hunting and fishing season this year and as always please take a kid with you when you go, our passion for the outdoors needs to live on with the next generation. Thank you and god bless

Ps. i just looked at how long this is and i apolagize for that.