Monthly Archives: January 2011

Didymo may be more of an eyesore than despoiler of watersheds

didymo_poster The latest issue of the US Fish & Wildlife magazine, “Eddies” is devoted completely to aquatic invasives. Not just the standard fare we’re used to seeing, but many of the plants that are causing issues for the deep South and Texas.

Now that the fissures in rubber shoe soles are being blamed for seed travel, and once you’ve glimpsed the effect of Giant Salvinia or Water Chestnut on a waterway, you wonder how much longer they’re going to let us get in the water, period.

There was a hint of good news, however. Our old pal Didymo may not be as bad as first thought, given that the biosecurity professionals in New Zealand have not detected any benthic “dead zone” caused by the diatom smothering the river bottom;

In spite of widely held presumptions that didymo “smothers” invertebrate populations and therefore harms fisheries, research has proven the opposite. “That’s what the prediction was,” says Vieglais, “but our results proved otherwise and the fact that there has been no collapse of the New Zealand trout fishery since didymo arrived bears that out.”

Resembling despoiled toilet paper is still undesirable, certainly an eyesore for a heretofore pristine creek, but whether its periodic bloom is permanent or transient, it’s certainly a comfort to know that its impact on the fishery may be much less forbidding than first thought.

… welcome news, as Didymo is but the first in a long line of invasives that could result in our feet being banned entirely from the watershed.

They take a Green Caddis really well

I’ve seen it many times. Some buddy insists he needs a pound of saddle hackle in a hurry, resulting in a marathon dyeing session with the leftovers emptied into the drain in the street – the one with the fish silhouette that assures you “it leads directly to the river.”

Chartreuse being fickle and the first batch of saddles took the color fine, the bucktails had too much fat and greasy cornmeal so you emptied a couple extra ounces of dye into the mix to make sure it penetrated and the colors would match …

… and while you were intent on getting the flame just right, and oblivious to everything until your buddy tapped you on the shoulder and pointed…

At which point you started hiding everything and whistling innocent like.

We’ll call it Sarah Palin’s California suburbs

Put Rabbit back on the menu

As Sarah Palin has just been booted off The Learning Channel, and has confessed to gunning down anything that walks, crawls, or swims – and especially if it walked, crawled, or swam over our borders illegally, you may want to entertain the notion of a charismatic appointed to the inevitable Czarina of Invasive Diets position.

Relying on state and federal government intervention is a waste of time, and private funding for environmental issues has always been unreliable. What’s really needed is a couple of trendy eateries, coupled with an anemic New Age apostle proclaiming invasive Jihad, and all those Vegans will be dining on Rock Snot & Chickpeas, or Quinoa Snot, content in the knowledge they did what fishermen can’t -save a couple continents and thousands of sentient species from extermination.

“When human beings decide that something tastes good, we can take them down pretty quickly,” he said. Our taste for passenger pigeon wiped that species out, he said. What if we developed a similar taste for starlings? “

– via The New York Times

It’s plain that an unwanted plant or animal from another continent or planet, has only a single natural enemy, and that’s us. Those that make a good facsimile to a hamburger, or a tasty condiment on same are simply doomed, the rest we’ll get around to after the tasty stuff has all been vanished.

Like the “Victory Garden” of generations past, we only need to give the issue an attractive enough wrapper so that we’re fighting each other over who’s more so than the rest of the neighborhood, who thought of it first, and who’s not carrying their weight …

… and if science was something other than a bunch of aloof eggheads, they could remind us of the unusual reservoir of age-defying Omega-3’s contained in a single Zebra Mussel.

The New York Times suggests a diet based on purely invasives would make the practitioner an “invasivore”  – and has gathered an article on the like minded; everything from an “Invasive Diet” plan, to broadening scope to anything that shows up unwanted, including the neighbor’s cat.

Most of the stuff we stalk and eat already has serving suggestions, “no more than one meal per month, less if you’re pregnant.” I can’t imagine a steady diet of Purina can add anything worse to that mix.

It was a test of my loyalties

Mile39_Dawn

This was the scene from Mile 33 this morning, you were still showering and cursing the fact you had to go to work.

I was too, but being on vacation means I’m vacationing from the paying job, and still required to slave away on those that don’t pay.

… neatly describing the fly fishing industry in its entirety.

Part of my New Year’s resolve meant my forthcoming vacation could be spent on trimming my pear shaped frame back into something recognizable. The combination of foreswearing tobacco and holiday excess had allowed me to become soft and weak, and when looking down I could no longer see toes, or any other important anatomical feature.

It was Mile 36 that put me in a quandary, those invisible toes in proximity to discarded sharp objects. The beauty of “smart” technology allows me to quickly check whether the contents are uppers or downers, and whether I should stab the gluteus or merely lick the damn thing.

copaxoneAs I bent down to gather them up for proper disposal, a passing motorist smacked a mourning dove which rolled to a stop at my feet.

Too damn much coincidence for my tastes, so I glance skyward and mention to no one in particular, “Old Man, this is most certainly a test of some sort, and I’m not falling for it.”

Bravado mostly, I knew the bird would be there tomorrow, most likely with a lot less livestock than its current fresh flavor.

Copaxone is a drug for those that suffer from MS. Why they felt it necessary to share is beyond my comprehension, yet quite popular in both creek and roadbed.

Technorati Tags: ,

How to get top price for unwanted fly tackle on eBay

It’s certain to alter my eBay experience and while the bricks and mortar side of the tackle business will likely retaliate with skimpy dressed sandwich-board waving nubiles, Grandma and the local constabulary will make short shrift of a vendor that succumbs to temptation.

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 …

That's $33 per lure

… 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.

Your flies didn’t participate in all that holiday food, but they can stand a bit of reducing just the same

With a bit of sun poking through the weather, I’m reminded that fish exist and I’ve got holes aplenty in my fly box from last season. This time it’s the flymphs that took a beating – and it being the self pronounced Second Coming of the Attractors, I’m restocking not the dull and drab – but all the colorful patterns I hid from prying eyes while telling the crowd it was something I’d made from ocher sock yarn …

… which reminded me further of the hellish time I had learning how to reduce a dressing down to just enough to be ate consistently, but not smothering the pattern with too much material.

Starling & Green

The lower left fly is tied with an intact Starling hackle, while the rest of the flies are tied with one side of the feather removed. Four or five strands of starling will give plenty of motion, more just dampens the wiggle as a neighboring strand blocks movement.

prepped_starling_feather

Starling feathers being under two inches long and quite fragile, you’ll need to prepare the feather by removing all the gray fibers off both sides of the stem, before carefully removing all of the right side fibers (if wrapping clockwise, left side if counter-clock) and tying in the feather where the hackle is to be wound.

 

winding_starling

As we only have one side fibered, two turns is just enough to apply a single turn of hackle, perhaps five to seven strands.

The reduced dressings look simple, but often have subtleties that reveal themselves when you’ve got a handful of gossamer and are only partway through a mighty oath.

Both body and head use a bit more fancy threadwork than meets the eye. The bobbin is spun so the thread ties flat like a floss rather than round like thread. Us old guys set store by this quality in the Nymo days of the 70’s, and it still works with 6/0 and 8/0 threads that are not unifilament style. Simply let the bobbin dangle and it will spin flat to remove all twist you’ve added via previous turns. Once it stops spinning the thread will lay flat like floss, until you add more torque by wrapping. Flat thread has less bulk than round thread, so it spreads itself onto the hook like a film versus a tightly wound single strand of material.

It’s a nice effect, the body is uncommon smooth and the head is small and dainty.

Starling & Green

This is a Redditch scale #12 heavy wire hook. That would be a #14 in today’s longer shank hooks. The heavy wire adds enough weight to drag the reduced dressing down to fish in mid column – great for emerging bugs and pre-hatch feeding.

Christianity to blame for housing collapse?

farside It appears the real cause of the housing downturn may not have been all them paper derivatives no one understood, rather it  was all them Christians selling their homes and possessions knowing the fabled “End of Days” is nearly upon us.

Which in part explains the surge in emigration from those south of the border, they know all them nitwit Christians will be having some serious sales come April, and the Mayan calendar says they’ve got until September 2012 to enjoy those abandoned homes and the Norte Americano lifestyle, Holmes …

… after which the world cracks open and most of us will enjoy global warming, personally.

For the 37% of the US looking at everyone else as if they were nuts, largely the agnostics and atheists, it means to hell with the limit, and don’t limit your kill; right or wrong – no one’s watching.

… and if you’re only now worried about what Saint Peter is going to say, you’re fooked already. Skip purchasing the license entirely, what with only four weekends before the Big Cleansing, a couple more demerits aren’t going to hurt you much.

On the chance you’re sniggering about all this, perhaps you’ll explain the linkage between Brett Favre retiring and why 5000 red winged Blackbirds fell from the heavens. They claim it was a midair collision, but that was to buy time to get the President to Cheyenne Mountain …

2010: More uncertainty punctuated by one of the largest ecological disasters of the petroleum age.

Technicolor_YawnThere’s no candy left, or at least none without fingerprints, and you sucked down the Egg Nog without thought to waistline or ill effects.

You didn’t get the Sage switch rod you were hoping for, nor does it look like it’ll be in your future any time soon.

For most of us, 2010 appeared to be the culmination of all  maladies started in 2008. It’s still early to give an “all clear” that we’re out of the fiscal morass of the last couple of years, but that combined with one of the wettest years in memory, resulted in damn little fishing and a great deal more handwringing for all of us.

The Wall Street crowd was tiptoeing quietly hoping no one would notice now that the public’s wrath has moved from bonuses to fat civil servants and pension benefits as the root of the entire debacle. For the first time in decades lawyers weren’t the butt of insensitive jokes, what with Big Business and political partisanship ensuring nothing was done quickly other than worse decisions, and the legal community careful to stay out of the camera lens so the bankers, state workers, and hedge fund managers could dance alone…

On paper 2011 seems like more of the same. Predictions for a wetter than average Winter could make the fishing this year poor for us fishermen but a welcome respite for the fish. It may be unwelcome news today as it’ll make a lot of fish untouchable for most of the year, but should pay large returns in the future due to water enough to ensure successful spawn, yet limit our access and less fishing pressure.

Resolutions being a dime a dozen, and with little interest in holy oaths that lack real resolve, I’ll make no great plans for fishing, and be content with finding some rarified topic and learning it, trying some new cast and mastering it, and to hell with slimmer, nicer, more social, or heightened awareness of personal hygiene.

That I’ll leave to those that have inadequate water and too much money, which at last count was paltry few …

Welcome to 2011, emerge a better fisherman.