A Monday

I've had a lot going on latley including classes for the MBA, web design, inventory management, and, of course, a little fishing. This in addition to making plans for my 2007 trip to NZ and taking care of the dogs with the wife is away. Whihc reminds me that I better clean the house on Thursday as she comes home Friday and I don't want a repeat of our last reunion! I'm not the cleanest person in the world and I''ll leave it at that!

I fished the Yellowstone yesterday for the first time this year. We've had a bunch of precip. over the last week, so the river has had some color to it. We still picked up some fish, but did best when we got out of the boat and poked around below the riffles. There were some Baetis coming off and fish rising in the foam lines and back-eddies but we didn't feel the need to mess with them...there'll be plenty of that soon enough. The river can fish very well when it's that greenish gray but we really didn't work too hard at it, instead soaked in the sun and enjoyed the views of Paradise Valley with half-hearted attempts at working the fish over. I used a balloon indicator and liked it, going to do that more as it is easy to cast (except in the wind), super sensitive, and can handle lots of weight.

This Monday, like last Monday, brought great frustration with it when I tried to order some reels from the big O. They are out of 5-6 weight reels in all of the popular models (Mid-Arbors, Barstocks, Battenkill Discs, and CFO's). This is the reuslt of a promotion they were running which included a free Wonderline with the purchase of any reel. What genius! I mean who needs to buy a new fly line when they buy a new reel! For a $300 million company, they have got to have one of the worst marketing departments money can buy. They consistently put together these stupid promos that do nothing other than reduce margin with no regard to their ability to fulfill demand at full price. It sounds like a good deal until you're the customer looking for a new reel for the next month and you are willing to buy one at full price, plus the fly line. Stupid stupid stupid! Furthermore, they ask me to give them exclusivity in my shop in exchange for a few points in margin. The least they could do is supply their products, hell I'll even pay for the damn things. They are amaizingly inefficient in planning, marketing, and distribution! Maybe they should be taking classes on supply-chain management, or better yet, maybe I should offer some consulting services to them instead!