They must’ve assumed that lacking a face or political affiliation meant the Internet is fair game, yet in the face of recent public backlash, they’ve had to shelve SOPA and PIPA, the legislation meant to placate the RIAA, Hollywood, and every other media entity struggling with Internet-based change.

Senator Bob Corker (R-TEN) is proposing they do away with our beloved tax free online shopping, by introducing the Marketplace Fairness Act (S-1832) which will require any vendor whose sales are in excess of $500,000 to collect the taxes owed the state where the sale originated.

Meaning, I’ll be required to pay California sales tax at any and all “large” retailers.

SMALL SELLER EXCEPTION.—A State shall be
authorized to require a remote seller, or a single or consolidated provider acting on behalf of a remote seller, to collect sales or use tax under this Act if the remote seller has gross annual receipts in total remote sales in the United States in the preceding calendar year exceeding $500,000.

While this doesn’t seem horribly one-sided, Congress sure seems bent on eliminating any tiny perk us 99%’ers enjoy – and we’re supposed to agree with their vision under the guise of something heartwarming like “fairness.”

“Fairness” would be sending all those mortgage company execs to jail, or all the bank CEO’s, as most committed securities fraud by lying about the health of their institution while the Fed covered their hidden shortfall with our taxes. Fairness might even mean ensuring Senators and Congressmen go to jail for insider trading as I would, or giving me less jail time for downloading a pirated Michael Jackson song than you gave the Doctor that killed him …

In recent history, fairness is just bullshit word meaning “everybody but me” and doesn’t quite mean what it once did.

I’m sure the few large establishments our tiny industry has spawned will not welcome the requirements and paperwork, but it should put the “Big Box” retail names in a bit of a housekeeping disadvantage, compared to the smaller local shop.

… and it will spur some employment, given that each larger entity will have to increase the front office staff to handle the 8000 different tax rates and the quarterly filing of reams of triplicate paperwork owed each of those municipalities.

In these harsh economic times, and with our quaint little hobby still flirting with the thousand dollar fly rod, I can’t see it as a means to persuade me to  buy this year or even next. The nature of the Internet makes Europe and Asia just a UPS truck distant, and with the Euro plummeting earthward, I have a compelling argument for me to move more of my angling transactions offshore.

There is a vibrant line of fly fishing products outside the US and choices are surprisingly familiar; Rise and Echo rods are Korean or Chinese, Hardy & Greys, Loop, Mustad-Tiemco and the rest of the hook industry is offshore, Airflo lines and scads of other fly shop standbys are of non-US origin.

While understanding the intent of the legislation and acknowledging the idea was technically sound, my dim view of all this stems from the chaos that is the federal and state budgets – and how both may boost our tax rates to cover shortfalls or simply to service the national debt. Most states are already arguing over many tax increases as well as cuts in existing services to paper over the loss of property taxes, and the holes in their finances that’ll result once the federal government trims its spending.

Once all the dust settles many states could be facing a sales tax of 10% to 12%, and with the world vying for hard currency to lessen the blow to their respective economies, the dispossessed little guys may come to realize the Internet contains more than the US, just as I did.

“Our business and the sport of fly fishing depend on healthy specialty fly shops. They are critical to growth in revenue and jobs,” said K.C. Walsh, President of Simms. “This legislation will close a critical loophole that has given an unfair advantage to online retailers.”

-via Angling International, February 2012 (Issue 49)

On the surface the proposition is a noble one, but I can no longer trust my elected officials to have my best interest at heart, and therefore I trust nothing spawned of them at face value.

I kept faith with the dictionary’s version of “fairness” – continuing to pay my mortgage payments regardless of the value of my home, continuing to pay state and federal taxes no matter which Fortune 500 company was bailed out – and at no time did I succumb to the neo-fairness as espoused “within the Beltway” and the aging demigods that haunt those marble corridors.

With the fly fishing industry poised to follow Redington and go direct to the consumer, it’s certain that all the paperwork and staff needed to accommodate this new legislation is liable to cool their ardor somewhat.

Which may be why Simms joined with Amazon.com and Walmart as being in favor of the legislation. I find those entities strange bedfellows to cozy with given they’re the self-same retail giants we’re trying to keep from swallowing the local shops …

All municipalities woo the “Bricks and Mortar” companies to locate stores within their districts. Deal sweeteners like property tax forgiveness and other waivers can be agreed upon to convince retailers to erect stores and hire locally. Online vendors get no such breaks, yet will have to pay the same taxes as if they did.

Some pundits are convinced it’s the springboard for a national sales tax, others suggest it’s anything but fair, and the rest suggest Amazon and its ilk will cash in big …

I lack the answer, and outside of old fashioned suspicions will be the first to admit a lack of credibility. We’ve seen this so many times and been promised it was other than a wolf in sheep’s clothing, that I doubt the “enemy” would be in such a rush to back the bill if the legislation actually levels the playing field.

Like all religious zealots, the Monday after the last bleat of festive horn becomes so much more important, given you’ve sworn never to eat sweets again, promised most of your fishing weekends to ardent gym workouts, and are revitalized knowing neither processed white flour nor the Devil have a grip on your vitals …

I’m not going to belabor the point nor burst your sweaty bubble. Like every other attempt you’ll find out for yourself that Tofu and Seaweed tastes like gummy boat bottom, fresh fruit and veggies is a close second, and nothing you’ve found tasty or flavorful is on your permitted list, at least not without a couple hundred sit-ups.

While you’re tooling aimlessly through the city streets tempted by all the bright colors and considering breaking fast – knowing you love the paper hats, hot grease, and fries, perhaps you’d consider exercising a bit of will power and purchasing your new fishing license instead.

Yes, amid all that sugar and remorse you’ve overlooked the fact that you owe once again.

… and the completely certain thing is that if you chance even a single trip, despite being heeled with all the proper credentials for the last 35 years, a warden will show. You’ll be apprehended while protesting mightily, and after you display all those conservation memberships in your wallet and on your bumper, they’ll throw the book at you.

Given that bleak economic outlook, and if they’re not buying fishing tackle, where are “manly men” spending those precious dollars budgeted for recreation?

Plastic Surgery.

“Typically people think of celebrities and high profile men going under the knife,” said Stephen Baker, MD, an ASPS Member Surgeon based in Washington DC. “And while that may be true, the typical male cosmetic surgery patient that I see is an average guy who wants to look as good as he feels. Most of my patients are ‘men’s men,’ the kind of guy you might not think would have plastic surgery.”

-via American Society of Plastic Surgeons

Statistics released today suggest we’re about to jettison the whole woodsy thing in preference for looking woodsy. Actually “being outdoorsy” having all manner of discomforts including; no street lights, mosquitoes, and cold at night …

For us anglers it’s no longer appropriate to hoist the fish of a lifetime with outstretched arms. Instead, a Hero pose includes a Botox stiffened expression, ample cleavage, liposuction, and male breast reduction …

The list is comprised of the fastest-growing surgical and minimally-invasive procedures from 2009 to 2010. Criteria for inclusion: Procedure performed on at least 1,000 men in 2010. (Surgical procedures are listed in bold).

1. Facelift – 14% Increase
2. Ear Surgery (Otoplasty) – 11% Increase
3. Soft Tissue Fillers – 10% Increase
4. Botulinum Toxin Type A – 9% Increase
5. Liposuction – 7% Increase
6. Breast Reduction in Men – 6% Increase
7. Eyelid Surgery – 4% Increase
8. Dermabrasion – 4% Increase
9. Laser Hair Removal – 4% Increase
10. Laser Treatment of Leg Veins – 4% Increase

Once our angling media spots the trend, Fly Fisherman will regale us with an annual “Gutz & Buttz” Issue – rival to Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Spectacular – and we can jettison strike indicator articles in favor of Top 10 lists featuring; Best dressed, Best Unsmiling Pose, Most BreastMeat, Best Thousand Yard Stare, and Tightest Montana Guide Ass …

… which with obligatory centerfolds will sell millions of copies on both coasts (and none in the center)  … giggle …

I find it compelling drama but

SANA, the largest angling organization in Scotland is rocked with scandal because its board accepting money donated by the fish farming industry, whose very existence threatens the last wild stocks of Scottish salmon.

SANA’s own website confirms its Migratory Fish Committee is committed to “campaigning against certain activities of the Scotland’s west coast marine salmon farming industry in the belief that these are endangering wild migratory stocks and the environment.”

However, this did not prevent trustees of the national governing body for game angling from agreeing a three-year sponsorship deal, understood to be worth a total of £12,000, with SSC for SANA’s International Youth Fly Fishing Team.

- via the Scotsman.com

It certainly represents a pickle for any well meaning angling organization. On the one hand money is so rare that anything is gladly accepted – and on the other, we’ve never had the luxury of donor organizations that may be working at cross purposes to our own, and are ill equipped to define who’s on our side and who’s not.

It’s plain that somewhere in the States we’re going to be dealing with the self-same issue – and we’ll be as stunned by the offer of money as we will be to the carnage that ensues should we accept.

With half of all seafood already pen raised – and with the world’s population continuing to grow, this issue is going to get more tangled and complex rather than less so. Terrestrial pens or blue water facilities may prove part of the solution – but it’ll be decades and many lawsuits before we work the kinks from the system.

Of particular interest to me in the article are the comments from the public – and the argument made by the industry shill about us wanting to preserve the wild fish only to kill them ourselves.

Like the presidential candidates, I’m unsure how we’ll appear in the court of public opinion. I’ve got no answer to refute that “you’re killing them too” issue. We know we kill fish, even when it’s catch and release, and mortality rates have been well documented …

I can’t help think of that nice, retired, dentist fellow, who didn’t really want to be club president this year – and how the crowd shouted down his protests and elected him anyway … and the limo from Gorton’s has just squealed to a stop at the curb and the well dressed suits fix him with a greasy smile …

It seems humans and their reared salmon have finally managed to bridge the wide gulf between wild stocks and their pen raised cousins, by introducing a hatchery caused disease into the wild ..

.. Salmon Anemia, no known cure, and a yen to trod upon whatever we don’t gill net …

The virus that causes the disease originated in the mid- 1980s in Atlantic salmon fish farms in Norway and spread to Scotland, Canada and the U.S. Farms in Chile also were infected, probably via imported eggs.

- via Bloomberg

This time it’s Mother Nature’s turn to gasp, as our disease affects both Pacific and Atlantic salmon, and therefore is the perfect, and final solution to the “salmon menace.”

Finally, some fish farms, particularly in British Columbia, should be relocated away from the migratory corridors of wild fish, so that any anemia outbreak that might occur there would be less likely to spread.

… and while they’re pointing fingers and debating across international borders, the lesson to be learned was already known to us fish chasers, “scrub your boots and don’t crap where you eat.”

The

On Yellowstone Lake:

Nearly 550,000 lake trout have been removed from the lake
since 1994, including about 146,000 in 2010. The number
of lake trout caught per 100 meters of net has been rising
since 2002, suggesting that the lake trout population has
been increasing faster than the fish are being removed.

On the creepy crawly invasives:

First detected in the park in 1994, New Zealand mud snails
are now in all of the major watersheds, where they form dense colonies and compete with native species.

… and on us:

After exceeding 3 million for the first time in 1992, annual visitation at Yellowstone fluctuated between 2.8 and 3.1 million until new records were set in 2009 (3.3 million) and 2010 (3.6 million). About 70% of the visitation occurs from June through August. Although there are no day use quotas, lodging and campgrounds in the park can accommodate only about 14,300 visitors during the summer, while daily visitation during July 2010 averaged 30,900. Fall visitation has increased since the 1980s and now comprises about 21% of annual use; winter visitation has never been more than 6% of the annual total.

With all those vehicles and their sticky rubber tires, over 20000 acres of invasive plants were treated, many with herbicides, a first for Yellowstone. Campgrounds and trails are consistent sources for most of the vegetative invasives, suggesting it’s us at the root cause.

With little change from the 2000 plan, and a harsh economic environment, it suggests “fighting them to a draw” might be a valued outcome, given a Congress with little sympathy and no mandate other than steep cuts in spending.

Most of the angling media has been citing small upticks in angling as a resurgence in the sport and a sign of a stronger economy, yet most of the story remains unpleasant with more to come. Wishful thinking and small upticks in statistics aren’t likely to keep us out of another trough before all those ripples from the mortgage wreckage grows quiet.

Call it a gift from your neighbor and our pals in Europe, and take it along with the rest of the damn lies and statistics, with a generous leavening of salt …

The National Sporting Goods Assn. found that sport fishing in California dropped from 5 million people in 1985 to 3.1 million in 2004. That number took another dip this year, to 2.5 million.

The California Department of Fish and Game also shows that in 2008 it issued 2.8 million fishing licenses. Last year the number had dropped by 400,000 and through Aug. 30 of this year by 300,000 more.

- via the LA Times

Add all that up and you can see why the body politic plans to kick the environmental lobby to the curb, given that since 1985, half of California’s anglers no longer purchase licenses …

Yet in uncharacteristic upbeat style I’ll suggest us longtime Californio’s have merely opted to fish illegally, rather than donate all that license money to be pissed away on the Governor’s pet projects or civil servant pensions.

If the government can redirect the cash as it sees fit, we can decide to keep the cash and blow it on munchies or Starbux and simply take our chances. Due to the budget most of the wardens have been let go already, and with hatcheries spreading Whirling Disease and Didymo, what are they really going to do, take away our birthday?

In a short 25 years we’ve lost half the anglers and three quarters of the fish, yet based on those numbers we’re still winning!

(… and you were expecting another downbeat we’re-all-gonna-die post.)

I warned you often enough

Legions of taut and bronzed, out of work, single-parent, womenfolk tasked with raising both flavors of offspring, newly interested in the out-of-doors and wilderness adventure, and can vote – and because of a couple out of control fishing websites – and your instinctive leer, they’re lost to us forever …

I’m not so sure I buy into the rationale for the sudden trend as published, with the economy teetering on the brink most parents will insist that food on the table pales in comparison to all else, especially where children are concerned, and a shotgun and a couple cases of ammo might be a better investment then gold, given how much easier it is to train in weapons, purchase some, and than take someone else’s doubloons at gunpoint …

Hunting implies dusty trucks, battered coolers, sharp knives, and guts; a oneness with your surroundings that only death and the controlled napalm that an aging GM heater can provide.

“Ma’am, I’m pretty sure you were low and away on that last shot, I believe you vaporized both his nuts. Rather than chase that high-pitched keening Wildebeest, who’s in obvious pain – and liable to be really pissed into those brambles – why don’t you and I retire to the truck for some hot coffee, while he bleeds to death in them bushes?”

Meanwhile you’re urging her to wade a bit deeper into cold water – and if she’s really patient and attentive she’ll get to remove a barbed hook from her icy and slimy quarry, while imbedding it into her wrist when it leaps to freedom …

With the main event being a guide lunch that someone stepped on, whose condiments are ageless, and meat unidentifiable …

All fly fishing can really offer in comparison is some sweaty handshake with a well intentioned,  “if you catch it you’d better let it go” admonition – which doesn’t put much food on the table, and a “OoO, wash your shoes as they might track nasty into the creek “ – which is what she told her kids, but they didn’t listen.

Both are suited to a nasal, high-pitched delivery which can be hampered by the intentness of our stare at Miss Bronzed & Heaving’s upper torso, who is pretty tired of our admiration, and would love punctuating our fantasy by ratcheting a live round into her newly oiled sidearm.

… which warms nicely when fired repeatedly …

… and all them students clapping merrily as if they’d heard profound for the first time …

Democrats aren’t any smarter and it’s liable to be a tough couple of decades if the pursuit of jobs and deregulation meets the Son of Global Warming.

While us fishermen mill about in disarray, given all our hard-fought environmental protections suddenly under scrutiny, and most of our conservationist bodies still fighting over felt soles and “who stepped in what” we might have to form our own clandestine “Occupy The Esopus” movement – with what remains of angling’s lunatic fringe …

Which aren’t as plentiful as they once were. Caring for the fish was overtaken by “caring more about your rakish figure in outdoor duds” – how the thousand dollar fly rod and the Cafe Mocha neutered most of our real outdoorsy types, them that lacked a full set of teeth or most of their frontal lobe – and thought like fish do. The rest of us didn’t help as we gave them the cold shoulder thinking they gave the rest of us a bad name.

“Old Timey Conservation” meant if you found 12 sticks of dynamite on the creekbed we might’ve drawn short straw for which dam to make porous, or showed some real ingenuity by making the casting club pond manager decide to lengthen the club’s ponds (with a bit of Fourth of July pyrotechnics) to accommodate a Spey class…

… but to merely give it back to the law, that’s a waste.

The damn environmental element isn’t mad enough yet to understand that what you tracked onto the kitchen linoleum with your contagion-bearing felt soles could soon be the least of your environmental worries.

Here’s hoping you all listened closely.

As Oregon evolves their fishing

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is about to launch a public process aimed at revising state fishing regulations, something the agency does every four years. And ways to curtail flossing and other snagging techniques will dominate the discussion.

Every fly fisherman knows that last hour (actually that last couple of hours) after sunset is the best part of the angling day, when diminished light triggers the evening hatch, makes the angler less glaring as a predator, and shrinks 4X to the diameter of 6X, or so the fish think …

At issue is “flossing” a salmon; swinging a weight and hook through salmon holding water hoping to thread the leader through an open mouth and slamming the hook home on the outside of the jaw – rather than in the arse, stomach, or fin like traditional snagging.

That goes the same for flossers using monofilament, lead and hooks or the fly-fishing flossers stripping a fly line over the gums of open-mouthed salmon.

- via the Mail Tribune.com

Fish hooked in the inside of the mouth would be the legal caught, all other fish must be returned to the water.

Shortening the fishing day is one of many options being discussed at present, if successful it’ll require us visiting anglers to be doubly mindful of the time of day – given they resent us Californio’s for retiring there in the first place, for our importing high real estate prices and consumptive cultural rituals to our heretofore sleepy Northern neighbor.