The Cottage Chronicles: Episode 12 - First Anniversary

Intro

Welcome to episode 12 of the Cottage Chronicles. I'm your host, Neil Colicchio, the founder of New Dawn Tackle Co. This is a very special episode because I'm marking one year in business as of February.

This is the 12th episode of the podcast as well. I didn't know if I'd make it past a couple of episodes, and I thought this might just be a fun pet project. It's actually turned out to be something pretty cool, and it's really forced me to focus on telling my stories and improving my communication skills. Plus, it's been cool to revisit some of the interesting things from the past year or from earlier parts of my life.

This episode's coming out a little bit late. I've been pretty much locked up inside all winter. I thought I'd be doing a lot more off-season activities, maybe making some lures or doing some fly tying, reading some fishing books. That hasn't totally come to fruition, but I'll have more on that in a minute.

Shop Updates

You might remember from the last couple of episodes that I talked about a big trade show back in December. I've got an order that I'm waiting on for the springtime. It's supposed to ship out in March. I'm excited to bring in some new lures and a whole bunch of new plastics and really expand what I'm offering this year.

In addition, I've been trying to produce some more stuff on my own. I've talked about my efforts to create a small spinner before. It's still kind of ongoing. I'm having some trouble figuring out how to weigh the thing appropriately without using lead.

Here in Massachusetts, we have a law that you can only use lead over a certain weight in inland waters, which basically is all freshwater in the state. So, I'm trying to be mindful about the materials that I'm using and do things in a way that's legal and ethical. I've got a solution that might work, but I've got to put a little more research into it.

In the meantime, I've also been working on my soft plastics. I'm working on perfecting my technique. I think I've got to wait 'til it gets a little bit warmer, until I can pour in my garage without things setting up too quickly. But I've done a couple of practice runs, and I'm pretty happy with my initial results. I tried to pour this craw in motor oil, and then I tried to pour a more greenish-tinted version.

So, here's the original motor oil one. If you're watching the video version of the show, you can see this guy is kind of a dark red-orange. It's got a red flake in it. It turned out okay, but it doesn't really have much of a motor oil effect, and the mold didn't fill all the way, so I didn't get the antenna the way that I wanted to. But the body and the claws turned out okay. The legs are filled in all the way, and the general shape will work. I'm going to throw it on a Ned Rig when I get back out on the water and see how it fishes.

The other variant was the same base formula. I added a little bit of a green powdered tint to it. So this guy came out a little more yellowy. It doesn't have that much of the motor oil shift going on still. You can't really see the shift between the base color and the green. The red flake disappears a little behind the mica powder that I added. But again, I've got a couple of these. I think I saved three of them out of a batch of six.

So, I'll throw these on a Ned head, too, and see how they fish. This will just be for my personal collection and some research—some product development—as I continue to refine my recipe. I've been getting different glitters and I want to try to create five core recipes that I can iterate from.

I'd like to get a couple more molds. I'd like to do maybe a swim bait and probably some kind of Ned bait in addition to the craw. The recipes that I want to work on are mainly based on forage in my area, but I think they're pretty broadly applicable to most fishing scenarios.

One I want to create is a bluegill. I already have a recipe in mind that I want to play with. I want to modify it to also create a pumpkin seed recipe. The areas where I've had the best success with pickerel and bass have been loaded with pumpkin seeds and I've seen some really cool recipes online, but I'd like to make one that's my own.

I also fish areas that have a lot of yellow perch, so I want to play with different greens, yellows, and oranges to get a cool yellow perch recipe together.

Of course, I'm starting with the craw mold. I had a lot of success last season fishing fire craw as a color. I want to develop my own fire craw recipe and put that through the mold.

I've also had a lot of success fishing green colors. I don't know if it's like baby bass or frogs that the fish are keying in on when they hit those. I've noticed that the biggest bass that I've caught and the most consistent bite that I've found tends to be around areas where there are a lot of frogs and lily pads. So, I want to develop a green frog recipe.

I'll probably pour the frog recipe as a stick bait or a swim bait even. I wouldn't mind getting into frogs in the future, but it's not something I've fished a lot. Maybe as I get more into it and as I become more confident fishing frogs, then my feelings will change on that.

Returning to Fly Fishing

I'm excited to get back into fly fishing this year, too. I've had a fly rod for about 10 years. When I first got back into fishing, I went to this big swap, and an older guy there sold me a glass fly and one of his older reels.

I restored the reel this past. I'll show it on the video version of the show. I disassembled it. I put new backing, new line, new tippet on, so I'm hoping to take it out later this afternoon.

I do want learn how to fly fish. I do want to practice more regularly. It's a little bit different discipline. I don't know if it's better or worse for trout, but it certainly expands the number of locations that I can fish nearby.

I think it'll make me a lot better at casting and a lot more mindful about what kinds of prey items I'm trying to match. It'll just be something to break up the monotony.

I tend to fish the same river very frequently. I fish different sections of it, but basically, there are a handful of wildlife management areas up and down the river. So, I tend to just hop between them and fish the same baits and sections of rivers quite a lot.

That served me really well last season. It's something I'll continue to do while I refine my technique with specific lures, but I do want to add some variety, especially if I'm going to be filming.

I don't think that I need to be everything to everyone. I don't need to be the most well-rounded angler. I don't need to master every single skill. But I think fly fishing is something that's within reach.

So, it'll be cool to look at things from a different perspective, refine my approach, and fish in waders rather than going from a kayak or from the bank all the time.

It'll be nice to get into some different waters and some different species. I'm thinking especially about brook trout. I've never specifically targeted them. So, I'm pretty excited about opening up that possibility.

Channel Update

Now that the weather's warming up a little bit, I'm also really looking forward to filming some more outside of the podcast. Especially as I develop my own skills—my own confidence with different lures—it'll be cool to be a little more transparent about that.

I've always said on this show and in my blog that I'm not a great angler. I'm not remarkably capable; I just spend a lot of time on the water. I really do try to put products out there that I believe in and products that I use—or products that I'm excited about using. I want to show some of that in action.

I'd love to do some kayak fishing videos, maybe some camping videos, and definitely put my money where my mouth is and show some of these lures in action. I talk about them all the time in the podcast. I've written different blog posts about them over the past year.

I want to show you what kind of fish you can catch with these lures and what techniques are working for me, even what techniques are not working for me. I'd love to do some underwater shots and shots of the baits in action as well.

I'll probably start with just general fishing videos. Like, come along with me while I go fly fishing or while I take the kayak out, stuff like that.

All of this, of course, hinges on my schedule, and those aren't the only things that have kept me from producing the show. I mean genuinely, I just thought it would be a boring episode. I haven't been out fishing in two months. I really haven't had much new to say.

All the same, my kid's now walking. It's really cool seeing him dance to different music now, seeing him recognize characters in his books or on TV shows.

This is my first child. My wife and I haven't done this before.

I'm so proud of the mother that my wife has become. It's really cool seeing other friends who've had kids since our son was born now turning to us for advice. It's amazing, and that's not a brag at all. It's amazing, but it's different.

I really don't know what this season of my life will bring. I don't know if I'm going to be out every weekend. I don't know if I'm going to have a babysitter all the time. I'm kind of playing it by ear.

The Year Ahead

So, I'm excited for things to come. I'm really excited for another year in business, a new time with my son as he enters toddlerhood, a new time for myself as I embrace these challenges of this part of parenthood, and new and exciting opportunities as an angler, whether that's fly fishing, whether that's producing more products, or just targeting the species that I love and improving the skills that I've been working on already.

I want to do a lot more writing; I want to produce some videos, but I've taken a little bit of a pause. I want to make sure that I'm putting stuff out there that is more meaningful and more useful. I kind of rushed into some of my blog posts and continue to struggle with that with my social media posts, too. I'm trying to balance this need to be a content creator and a business person with the desire to be a teacher and someone who embraces people into this sport or this hobby.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't use AI to help me organize my thoughts and do some of my I don't really feel bad about that, but it's not a crutch that I want to lean on either. I really initially thought it was important to build up this kind of body of people to my site and bring people to my podcast. I'm not sure that was the wrong approach, but it wasn't the best-case scenario either.

So I'm excited. I want to keep pushing myself to be a better angler, put better stuff out into the world, and, as much as possible, put the best effort I can into things.

And in the early days, you know, I was doing what I could to balance fatherhood, having a new dog, starting a new business, and all these different parts of my life. I think at this point, there are a lot of routines and a lot of things I've settled into. I think I'm in a lot better spot than I was last year, and I only see things moving in a more positive direction.

I hope that the people who've come along with me from the beginning can appreciate where I'm coming from. I hope that those of you who are anglers have learned a lot in the past season that you can apply this year. Selfishly, I hope people will begin to embrace my business and start buying stuff from me, even if it's just simple lines, hooks, and stuff that you need to refresh at the beginning of the season.

I am ready to embrace what comes next. I've accepted certain parts of the person that I am and the business that I want to be. I'm not necessarily planning to be a huge content creator. That wasn't the aim of my business from the start. So, you might still see podcast episodes that are kind of raw. You might see YouTube videos that are not the most exciting thing in the world.

I'm not going to create clickbait and ragebait. I'm not really eager to create videos with hacks to find a fish.

I really want to share my experience, share the things that have worked for me, and talk more from the heart and more from my personal experience with fishing. And that might mean exposing myself as a bit of a dummy. Simple things like using fishing vocabulary, calling a fallen tree a "laydown," or understanding what a riffle is or a backwater in fly fishing.

I'm trying to share what I know in the way that I know it. Sometimes, I don't have a word for something. Sometimes, I don't know that there is a commonly accepted term or a word for something. I'm learning as an angler as a business person.

I'm trying to bring the experience that I have to make beginners feel comfortable and confident that they can do this too—and anglers even more skillful than me share the sport with the people they love—and to bring in the next generation.

I want to eliminate any kind of fear or hesitation that people might have about trying new lures or about even fishing with lures rather than live bait.

Outtro

Thank you for sticking with me. If you haven't already, please like, subscribe, and comment. Any engagement helps.

I know some of you are just watching the show because you're my friends and my family, and you want to support me. This is one way you can do it.

I'm on YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. Everything is under New Dawn Tackle Co. I've also got the blog at newdawntackleco.shop.

Any way that you can share with your friends, any way that you can participate in the conversation with me, I really appreciate it.

That's it for this episode. I'm going to get ready for a fly fishing trip. The weather's warming; it's 51 degrees today as I'm recording.

It's gonna be a little while before I fully get into the swing of things with the pre-spawn and the spring trout stocking season, but there's a lot of good stuff ahead. I think it's gonna be an awesome year.

Until next time, tight lines and happy fishing.