Monthly Archives: November 2011

Is good dental hygiene incompatible with dry fly fishing?

No flossing As Oregon evolves their fishing regulations to make salmon snagging less profitable, the unattended consequence could be shortening the fishing day, denying dry fly fishermen that last hour of twilight awesomeness.

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.

It is us spreading it, mostly it’s you doing the clicking

Deep down I couldn’t shake the feeling that with all its soiled nooks and crannies the Internet was somehow connected to the spread of plague …

How Didymo spreads You going to click the button?

It’s not the wading boots, Meathead, it’s the spread of broadband and the cell phone you can no longer do without that’s despoiling our watersheds …

Intent on looking up the correct spelling of “Paraleptophlebia” and that big “Download Now” button throbs fetchingly, and you get sucked in like a Carp for an Spicy Peanut boilie.

Naked women with big boxes of free flies simply don’t exist, even if the Internet claims otherwise …

It may be time for us old guys to face fly fishing’s new music

frenzied_sweetcorn I’m rethinking all the bustle and commotion over how we’re no longer practicing something our Poppa once did. How our doing without Twinkies and store-bought Latte makes today’s outdoors an expedition on par with Shackleton’s Voyage, extreme survival, mere fishing transformed into an adrenalin-fueled primeval.

Competition and adrenalin is what we truly crave, fishing is just a means of getting there …

Fishing lacks the broken bones and has no contact between anglers, no pads or face masks, and doesn’t look much better under the hot Klieg lights of television, with few saints and less demigods – and no one trading paint in the pit area…

But they may have a point.

My generation picked fishing so we could decompress from both family and work – preferring the solitude and silence the Great Outdoors offered to heal the soul so we could return to the Big City fit for another grueling tour.

Somehow the “Rest and Relaxation” became today’s competitive and arduous, compliments of youth-oriented marketing and a generation that measured their worth in how much they owe versus how much they bank.

But that’s merely sour grapes, given the ability to “unplug” is fast disappearing, complements of satellites and broadband, and “them as inherits” might have had the right idea about the woods all along…

Most of the Pristine is on its last legs and requires tackle that can ferret out those few remaining fish from super-deep or super-fast, neither of which fly fishing has been any good at …

… which may explain why 3/8 ounce jig heads are considered flies, given that this new fishing lets us bring guns to gun fights …

I think I’ll dispense with the closetful of high-tech fabrics, the illegal SWAT gear, and those hideously expensive fly rods, which will get us clear of the adrenalin junkies who insist matching the hatch involves base-jumping with Mayflies …

We can watch them plummet earthward while we rest easy in our lawn chair and reacquaint ourselves with inexpensive rods, cold beer, and the new bait fishing …

AintDaddiesBait

That ain’t anything your Daddy fished …

The new EXTREME bait fishing made so by enormous amounts of Soy and your propensity towards flatulence …

The only real difficulty will be humping that cooler down from the parking lot now that we’re done with all the deprivation and Mother Nature crap. Fabric-based solar panels will energize our civilized comforts that accompany us back to the creek. Cell phones and Microwaves, televised football blaring while we ignore the rod and reach for a double fistful of those Spicy Peanut numbers – followed by the White Chocolate.

Poppa never had it so good. Potted meat and soggy bread, branch water and a long hike upstream to get away from us truly comfortable and well-rested angling types …

Where we get all solemn and lay it on overly thick for the non-fisherman

Fishing being a more painful variant of masochism, whose practitioners lust for big fish knowing they’re accompanied by hardship; cold rain, poisonous snakes, blisters, and other trappings of kink, yet are still at a loss to explain its attraction to normal folks.

While traveling last week, I did have time to inhale a small salad while enjoying the banks of the mighty Eel River. In between bites I noticed a bit of motion in the water and am rendered vengeful and solemn by the sight of 200 large salmon milling in a circle only feet away …

Nothing like a fish that appears to be six inches wide at the back to give a fellow real trouble swallowing lettuce …

Eel River at Weott, California

My accomplice was oblivious to the spectacle as he was negotiating  three inches of rare roast beef and a monstrous hard roll, while giggling at my self-inflicted dietary choice. Suddenly one of the larger fish comes cleans out of the water and dampens us both …

“Dude, that was a salmon.”

I nodded the affirmative as he noticed all the other fish leisurely rolling in contentment, finning their way over to give me the finger, then swimming a lazy circle to repeat the insult.

He exclaimed, “ I can run us back to Fortuna and you can buy a rod and reel, and we could be back in an hour…”

I shook my head, “No, fishing is a karmic-Zen-Masochistic thing – and while I don’t expect a non-fisherman to understand; the reason the fish are here is because I lack my fishing gear. In physical terms, both fish and fishing tackle are positively charged ions – and can never occupy the same space – nor get close enough to one another to cause harm – as their natural state repels the other.

If I had brought the gear we’d be standing in a torrential downpour with a flat tire, fishless – or that prominent badge on your truck would cause Weott’s version of “Jimmy Olsen Cub Reporter” to stop and immortalize us for the six o’clock news and the both of us holding big dripping fish and a pink slip …

Driving to Fortuna is for godless amateurs – who’ve not fished enough to learn this truism …”

At this point he’s looking at me fixedly, jaw open and roast beef visible, “OMFG, that’s some serious hokey horseshit,” he says.

I’d tried to explain it and failed. Now I was content to wave as the fish swam past knowing it as a quasi-religious truth recognizable only by those that believe. Not the old-timey religious types – more like those that are fool enough to stand in cold water and have done so enough times to recognize this immutable Law of Nature.