That is called a narrative hook, sometimes asking an interesting question or introducing a word which sounds sort of neat - in other words a method of getting your attention.
Mullygrubs is Smoky Mountain English. It means being depressed or down in the dumps, or just another word for cabin fever or the shack nasty?s.*
“There, that?s about enough to qualify as an article and it may have kept your thought processes busy for a few minutes. Works for me. ~LadyFisher”
“Mullygrubbing” works for me also!
That is the time when I hold the annual “Beginner’s Only Fly Swap”, get busy burning “FAOL Fly Patterns” CD’s, get busy in my Fly Fishing Room (furnace room), dressing fly patterns, and clearing out material I have not used in the past 3 years.
Minnesota has vehicle license plates that state, “Land of 10,000 Lakes” (we actually have 15,453 Lakes). Better motto for our license plates would be “Winter Coming, Winter Here”
Well versed in Mullygrubs, just hoping that "Summer falls on a weekend, in 2011, and it does not rain! ~Parnelli 
Operation sling shot is in full effect!
Way back when I was a kid getting through the short nights of summer or the long nights of a North Dakota winter meant listening to radio serials and looking through the Sears, Montgomery Wards and JC Penny catalogs for dreaming of toys that we’d never have but looked so good in the catalogs. The catalogs eventually made their way to the little house on the prairie (outhouse) for the ultimate paper recycling. It seemed there was always something going on to keep us occupied, usually that something was of our own making and imagining. It’s a lot easier to sit down in front of a TV set or video game and get lost in mindless programming than it is to use the gray matter between your ears to actually come up with something to entertain yourself. Maybe that’s why our kids score so low on exams, the gray matter is underused in the evenings and weekends. If ya don’t use it ya loose it.
Now if ya’ll will excuse me, I just spotted a perfect “Y” in the chokecherry tree and I do have that flat tire on my bike, plus the dog (Ghillie) needs to have a frisbee thrown about. Gotta keep the mullygrubs at bay.
REE