Another eZine entrant, this time from Germany (available in English), entitled Scale – and covering both fly and spin fishing.

They’ve got the best logo I’ve seen – considering the topic matter, and I’m a sucker for reading about someone that catches fish – instead of whining about how woeful their season has become like … uhm … me.

No whiners in Germany. Thank Heavens.

Six or seven marriages later, you’re handing over everything that wasn’t spent on backing and fly reels, and asking your buddies to help move your fly tying desk, as it’s perched prominently on the lawn, along with your comic book collection.

The advent of social media makes the missus all that more visible, and long distance friends will eventually want corroboration of them tales of daring do …

Consider the Perfect Girlfriend, synonymous with the Perfect Crime. You make her, refine her until she’s everyone else’s dream fisherperson, and benefit from “I was there and seen it” for even the most egregious fishing fantasy.

She tweets, she facebooks, she’s lithe, witty and stunning … she’s your Cloud Girlfriend.

She knows what to say and when, since you control her every move, she knows how to make your buddies wives bland in the comparison, and she’ll never mention the skid mark after your bear encounter, never give up your secret fishing hole, nor correct your 14” estimate, to the 6” inches it really was …

Consider that embellishment is part of your base nature, and for believability’s sake – you may want to go light on the manacles and automatic weapons, the nun’s habit is already over the top.

She claims her earlier sales were cancelled due to a violation of eBay’s sales policy, and now that she’s read the fine print she’s back on the Internet with even more to sell …

… which, given her immaculate feedback rating is liable to drive squinch-faced Meg Whitman into a tirade of four letter words unparalleled in today’s modern boardroom.

I’ll tip the hat to the innate display of creativity. Next time I’ve got some broken 10-speed or extra lawn furniture I’ll be sure to frame them nicely between Miss June 2001’s … er … obvious talents.

Like everything else on the Internet, if it looks soft and smells sweet, it’s a pipedream obscuring some unshaven truck driver from Des Moines.

Lord help us all if she’s got rods to sell … you be sure to alert me.

I can just imagine that old guide

Sorry. In addition to seeing through off colored water and threading a #20 dry fly onto tippet, you may want to brush up on them precious keyboard skills …

The California Department of Fish & Game has embarked on a new process for getting your fishing license, and naturally they claim it’s easier, faster, and largely computerized. The downside being that either you or the store clerk will have to enter all that data somehow.

I opted for an online transaction via their web site, with a menu of charges that resemble a fast food drive thru.

Rumor has it that it’s a three inch wide strip of paper that can grow in excess of 64” long (depending on the options chosen) which will add a couple inches to your wallet when folded. The basic license is 3” x 7” and once you start adding ocean privileges, second rod, and all the other flavors it’s been said the license can reach five feet in length.

My license is 3 inches wide and 7 inches long. The basic license cost was $43.46 and the second rod stamp was $13.53. As it was last year a Bay Delta Enhancement Stamp is not needed to fish the waters of the Sacramento/San Joaquin River or the Bay Systems.

I also decided to purchase a Steelhead Report and Restoration Card, which cost $6.48. Again the printer produced another light blue thermal copy, actually two separate pieces of paper both of which were 14.5 inches long. One was the report card itself again printed with my personal information on it, the other copy with instructions, examples and fishing location codes to report the water on which the steelhead were caught.

Needless to say if you also secured a salmon punch card, a sturgeon punch card or any other report card, you are talking about quite a bit of paper to be folded into a wallet.

- via MyOutdoorBuddy.com

… which was confirmed by an incredulous angler holding a handful of tickertape, along with all the new rigor associated with its purchase. If purchased as a gift, you’ll need to provide all the data on the license to the counterperson, including their height, weight, eye color, driver’s license number, and full address.

If purchased online at the Department of Fish & Game’s website, you’ll have to navigate a bit of poorly written HTML to purchase via credit card. At the final screen will be a downloadable PDF as a temporary license that will work for two weeks while you wait for the full license to be mailed you.

At issue is all the menu options and sub-licenses and how they all must be attached to the main license. It could be that they’re meant to be separated  but that would be asking to forget one or more of them.

What’s likely behind the new format is cost. Thermal paper is cheaper to produce than adhesive backed stamps on Tyvek, and printing it on a roll of toilet paper allows inexpensive Point-Of-Sale printers to be used. Governor Schwarzenegger hasn’t been terribly friendly to Fish & Game and continues to ravage their budget, what you’d expect from a fellow that did all his recreating in a gym.

The new system requires vendors to purchase a DSL line to the Internet (which may not be possible in those out of the way locales) and while the DF&G are providing the touch screen console and printer, a number of shops have decided to stop selling fishing licenses entirely, as it’s simply too much bother.

Remember that the temporary licenses (PDF’s) printed on normal paper with ink or laser are not permanent – and standard 20lb bond will dissolve in water, so I’d suggest enclosing it in a license holder to keep it dry.

… then again, 60″ of folded 3 inch wide paper could prove indispensable in the woods …

The trout season runs from early April until early October each year. The main salmon run is predominantly June/July and then a later run of fish in September. Sea trout also tend to run at these times of the year. Hitherto the beat has been classified by PSFFA as an upstream dry fly water but later in the season upstream nymphing is also permitted. Over recent years there has been an outstanding mayfly hatch and this has often extended through until mid or late June.

500 fish stocked per year, of which only half are caught and presumed killed, and only a single angler fishing about two-thirds of the available fishing days.

It’s plain that European private fisheries are managed for a different experience than those in the US. Our planted private water (ala Donny Beaver style) feature planting large sized fish in quantity, and dues paying sporting gentlemen discuss over a toddy, whether that sloppy fat six pound pellet eating monster was a natural or planted fish.

Hard to imagine some well heeled colonist paying in excess of $400,000 in order to catch two fish per day, in the hopes of landing a 20” fish as a seasonal record.

Although originally constructed in the late 17th century to carry chalk, aggregates, coal and timber, between Winchester and ultimately Southampton port, there remains no right to navigate along the Beat.

… and with this stretch of the river man-made as well, whose antiquity is half again as old as the continental United States, we’ll not quibble much about its authenticity.

Us colonials are horribly spoiled with so much public water, most of which is managed to the angler landing a limit or more, compliments of our respective departments of Fish & Game, and what they imagine we like most.

The Fisheries4Sale.com website lists quite a few easements for sale, with many of the most expensive being coarse fisheries; man-made ponds and stillwater impoundments featuring our pal the common carp.

All descriptions, dimensions, areas, reference to condition and if necessary permissions for use and occupation and their details are given in good faith and believed to be correct.  Any intending purchaser/s should not rely on them as statements or representations of fact but must satisfy themselves by inspection or otherwise as to the correctness of each of them.

Which I’ll assume to be an open invitation to bring along a nine foot fast action graphite to assist me in measuring all those undercut banks, shaded by the local willows …

… all measurements will be done upstream, of course.

I always enjoy paging through all the old gear, and am always fascinated by the fish decoys used back East for ice fishing, which has no parallel out West . We’re scared to go out when the thermometer drops below 85° and the Warden doesn’t think kindly of our efforts to reopen trout season once it closes in November.

The catalog for the November 6th auction features rods, reels, and flies, and November 7th is books, wicker creels, fish (and duck) decoys, and all manner of old catalogs and similar errata.

There’s a great deal of contemporary tackle in a Lang’s auction – it’s not just antiques. I saw a couple Z-Axis Spey rods, and quite a few Tibor reels, and bidding isn’t limited to something destined to hang in the den and never used …

Although some of the many framed flies by Paul Schmookler and Charles DeFeo might wind up hanging somewhere above them empty beer cans.

They’re on the warpath, and with the death of the UK’s famous “Two Tone” carp, PETA erected a billboard to chastise local anglers …

I’ve often wondered whether dry fly purists weren’t compensating for something, but I hadn’t trod the masculinity route. I’d left it at thinking these were the kids whose Ma cut the crusts off their PB & J, and they still had a chip on their shoulders.

PETA delights in bearding the prophet, nearly as much as we like laughing over their latest protest. This episode is no exception, featuring the debut of DoAnglersHaveSmallRods.com – which hosts a test to determine whether the water is both … cold … and deep.

Finding out about my shortcomings doesn’t redden my cheeks a bit. What’s really going to be funny is when “Casper Milquetoast” knocks at my door to borrow a power tool, and he gets an abacus and a scratch awl to repair his roof.

“Yo, Casper, looking a little damp there, Sweetheart. Is that madam’s chamber pot you’re emptying – Wow, I bet she is pissed, huh?”

Then again, it may be a world wide angling issue and like all asexual invasives, it just takes a little time to gain a foothold in more rarified venues.

Instead it may be the colonial thing, what with New Zealand entering the fray with an e-zine featuring horribly colorful and obese trout whose obscene lust for feathers will make you shield your child’s vision, lest they be tainted forever …

We missed the first issue, but it’s available online.

Flyfishers Inc. is in the stunning photography coffee table mode, where you quickly leaf through the pictures in awe, yet there’s little text to accompany the work. Each issue features a reader poll, which is a hint of interactivity, something not yet seen in the US versions.

Something to consume with your lunchtime sandwich.

… and it’s not the traditional venue, with prizes for biggest – the other categories are smallest, most unique, most, and a random prize.

… which may be for the kid with the biggest smile …

If you’re getting sick from bobbing in other’s wake, and if that tawny nubile at the end of the ski rope just flipped you off, then it’s munchy time! 

… able to submerge for thirty seconds, leap from submerged mode into midair, 50 mph on surface and 20 mph submerged – well, payback is going to be a watery bitch…

-via the Daily Mail Online

You can toy with the “fresh meat” screaming on the tow rope while the rest of the gals abandon their sodden beau and antiquated watercraft. insisting they share the really cramped two seat environment with you …

They’ll bring the beer. It’ll be cold.

‘This isn’t a submarine  -  you’re not going to visit the Titanic in it,’ Rob warns. ‘It’s more of a cross between a plane and a boat, and we’ve been improving the models constantly so they can do more and more tricks.’

Insist on the Great White paint scheme, it’s worth every penny of the $93,500.

Marker – Seabreacher, Great White shark, submersible, big boys toys, nubiles, tow rope trollops, free beer, stillwater vengeance, fly fishing humor