Author Archives: KBarton10

A green solution to Carp infestation billed as an infrastructure project?

It's the Green Solution Commissioner Gordon had the Bat Signal to summon reinforcements, and based on a roll up of recent headlines I’m not sure some type of Brownline Reaction Force isn’t needed to assist ailing cities, states, and foreign continents.

Australia is about to be eaten from the inside by invasive carp, and there’s a steady litany of similar stories worldwide. Naturally, us fellows that trod brown water gets ignored – as each municipality hatches some potent toxin to kill the underwater cockroach, and maims half their population in the doing.

“Delta Force” would be a handsome label – but it’s taken already, and even legions of fly fishing carp aficionados wouldn’t risk angering Chuck Norris. His carefully pressed black fatigues don’t do justice to the brownish toxins we wade through, although years of watery diversions to feed the voracious lawns of Southern California have reduced our Delta to a fetid porridge.

Sigourney Weaver had a great idea with, “… nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure” – but that was said before the housing crisis, and nobody wants to depreciate precious lakefront real estate further…

Taiwan is appealing for foreign fly fishermen to assist in depopulating a couple of carp infested creeks – and begs the question, “if we lent all those F-16’s and M1A1 Abrams to the Saudi’s and Iraqi’s to lift the yoke of the despot – can we spare a couple of C-47’s to get us and our tackle to Taiwan?”

With the Army Corp of Engineer’s drawing straws to see who licks his fingers and touches the carp barrier to the Great Lakes, and plodding local agencies fist fighting over who gets the biggest bailout if they make it past, maybe it’s time to unleash a brigade of oversexed, opinionated, foul smelling fishermen on the problem.

There’s an even chance they’d make a much bigger problem, but “kill your limit and don’t limit your kill” would likely trigger a mass migration to the afflicted region and since half are out of work, perhaps a small bounty (based on raw tonnage) would keep body and soul together for a couple more mortgage payments.

Call it an “infrastructure” buildout – as that crowd could assemble a couple extra bridges from their empty beercans and discarded monofilament.

You could start with an officer cadre of Roughfisher, 40 Rivers, Fat Guy’s Fly Fishing, Michael Gracie, Fishing Jones, and John Montana of Carp on the Fly – and let them pick a brigade or two of the deadliest potbellied killers, give them fancy camo, teach them a parade formation, and you’d have the makings of the better mousetrap – assisting in restoring relations with alienated dictators, tribal leaders, and the balance of NATO.

Now loan them to whichever city or state had seen enough civilian posterior tossing bread slices into brackish water, hide the cold beer and wimmenfolk and run for cover.

It’s a “Green” solution, and while the rest of us are busy expending normal energy at work, they’d be burning “alternative energy” draped across lawn furniture stroking a couple days growth of beard and sporting yesterday’s underwear. Boost the GDP with the addition of a couple Sushi chef’s, a refrigerated truck, and we could export flash frozen fillets to whomever developed a taste for watery bovines.

No smell except for them, no toxic backlash except for them, and a pristine riparian enclave the result. Isn’t this what was meant when the President suggested we were going to have to buckle down and do our share?

Backorder is out of the Question

With the government’s intent to pursue the assets of the Madoff clan, it would suggest that Abel Reels might be inching closer to receivership. News announced yesterday states the government’s intent to freeze the assets of both Ruth Madoff and her two sons, and their interest in “20 other entities.”

Could "Poppa Behind Bars" be the last in the line of fancy finishes?

That would suggest the Abel Reels might have their production curtailed, as both Andrew and Mark Madoff are co-owners of Abel Holdings LLC, the firm that owns the company. If you’ve considered owning some of their product, I’d think you’d move smartly.

Details are sketchy and rumors are flying, and forum chatter suggests a connection to the venerable Thomas & Thomas Rod Co, and Sharpe’s of Aberdeen.

Rumors should be taken with a large dose of salt, other than their ownership of Abel, nothing else has been confirmed. Abel Holdings LLC may have bid on other enterprises or expressed interest – I can find nothing that suggests either company is owned by Abel Holdings LLC.

From the Abel Press release (of November 2007):

Andrew Madoff, Abel Holdings LLC lead investor, said, “Abel’s 20-year legacy of unparalleled quality and performance makes it an attractive investment. As I’ve gotten to know the company through this process it has become clear that its most important assets are the people that create these excellent products. We’re thrilled to lend our expertise and join them in building this business and the Abel brand.

“We will work with existing management to help refine all operations of the business, reposition it for growth, and maintain the manufacturing processes that allows Abel to produce the finest fly reels in the world.”

Swanson, with Abel in various capacities since 1994, will continue to run the company day-to-day and assumes the title of president and chief operating officer. Representing Abel Holdings LLC, Madoff will be the CEO.

With the legacy of Poppa Madoff, backorder is out of the question.

Update: The tie in between Sharpe’s of Aberdeen and Thomas & Thomas rods does not involve the Madoff’s or Abel Holdings LLC. Sharpe’s attempted to purchase Thomas & Thomas in 2007, an agreement was reached for the sale of the company, but Sharpe’s became insolvent and was run by the Bank of Scotland.

While making the initial payment for T&T (in the amount of $100,000) Sharpe’s failed to make any other payments nor surrender 10% of their stock to the owners of T&T.

T&T sued them in Ohio courts, but the Articles of Incorporation show T&T’s president remains (as of 11/2008) John Metcalf, who was appointed by Sharpe’s, so the deal has apparently completed. Part of the court record is available including the terms of the purchase and subsequent suit.

It’s the Secret Spot known only to Google Earth

It’s part and parcel of the angling culture, you call up a buddy to invite him fishing, mention you’re taking someone else and he can’t go. The next thing you hear, ” … whatever you do don’t show him my spot!”

Fishing myth in Japan includes wading into the water where you see a spider web – proof that no one has fished there recently.

It’s the same whether you claw your way up a mountainside, or lose the tailing traffic in a Gordian Knot of dirt roads – you’re busy patting yourself on the back and glance down to see an arrowhead.

Face it, your spot is the best kept secret of a couple hundred fishermen, so when another dog nears your hydrant, there’s no need to show teeth.

 1000 Year old fishing trap

The Mother of all Red Faced-ness is the fellow that thought the above spot was known only to him. With the assistance of Google Earth, scientists have discovered the remnants of a thousand year old fishing trap off the coastline of Wales.

Stones stacked a meter wide with the overall dimension 835 feet, it’s the Stonehenge of Angling – with some fellow on the bank wondering why “his” spot is suddenly so popular.

They apparently don’t mind snorting Mayflies

They probably have an early retirement The survey says, “Hydroelectric workers exposed to massive amounts of Caddis hate ’em.” Without additional facts I can only conclude that they must be talking about caddis parts, rather than the flies themselves.

A cross sectional survey was conducted in a hydroelectric power plant in which the workforce was exposed to large numbers of caddis flies. About 50% of the participants reported work related eye, nose, and sinus symptoms and wheezing.

Most of us have been exposed to the intact bug, and other than an occasional wiggle caused by their disappearance down a butt crack or shirt front, I’ve never heard complaint.

Take a cloud of caddis, inhale it into a pipe headed towards the turbines, mash the resultant brew against concrete and spinning impellers, and inhale the result?

Added to the proof positive, Salmon incur brain damage if they smack the dam, fish ladder, impeller blades, and anything else more permanent than they are – and it’s unanimous.

Dams, nobody wants ’em.

We’re talking finance, not Fission

Better'n facing facts ourselves It’d be like finding out Hitler’s Mom lived next door … Can you imagine?

An unrelated factoid I stumbled across this weekend while doing some research on something entirely different. I call it “the Miracle that is the Internet”, if you can focus on one subject while searching, it’s a miracle.

With all of the debris and suffering of the financial system, with Wall Street demanding bonuses for shoddy work, and the hoopla of the media desperately attempting to assign blame, have you ever heard of David X. Li?

I figured as much.

The model Mr. Li devised helped estimate what return investors in certain credit derivatives should demand, how much they have at risk and what strategies they should employ to minimize that risk. Big investors started using the model to make trades that entailed giant bets with little or none of their money tied up. Now, hundreds of billions of dollars ride on variations of the model every day.

“David Li deserves recognition,” says Darrell Duffie, a Stanford University professor who consults for banks. He “brought that innovation into the markets [and] it has facilitated dramatic growth of the credit-derivatives markets.”

Wall Street took Mr. Li’s work (the Gaussian Copula) as gospel, it allowed them to value and bundle many kinds of derivatives, how to charge for the risk, and enabled the rating system under which they were sold.

Without his formula none of this would have happened.

A hundred years from now will the high school textbooks still list Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, and David Li – and will they be in that order?

Recently a review of the work might have found a teensy little error … he may have to return the Nobel prize, but he’ll still have the Edwin Teller Award for Money Fission.

Philoplumes and the shaft after

Lead gray skies offered little hope so I swung by the Little Stinking to see what a week’s changes had wrought. The water was clear enough to fish but still much too high to wade – many tons of gravel have changed the entire streambed and scoured every vestige of weed and bank foliage.

With the vegetation gone the creek looks like a construction site. Barring another downpour it’ll be fishable next week.

I took advantage and banged out all my lingering chores; removing lock plates swollen by the wet and removing enough metal so the bolts once again lined up with door jambs.

The water table is being replenished, which makes the entire Central Valley rise nearly four feet. Naturally you hope your slab foundation rises with it, and every year some small thing winds up needing coaxing.

philoplume With all the pressing chores finished I started working on the Caddis flies. I’d been sidetracked by an “old school” reference to Polly Rosborough – whose fur collared flies reminded me of Jack Gartside’s Sparrow nymph, which suggested Cal Bird’s woven bodies, and the drone of Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns hummed in the background while I rediscovered my attraction to Philoplumes.

Philoplumes (aftershaft feathers) are the little marabou feather attached to each pheasant body feather. They’re largely overlooked but Jack Gartside made great use of them on a lot of his flies, and were popular on the Gimp Nymph back in the 80’s.

 Jack Gartside's Sparrow Nymph (minus the tail)

The Gartside Sparrow uses the philoplume as the collar at the fly’s head. It’s quite delicate but offers considerable movement, and the fly is a tremendous caddis imitation. Tied in a variety of colors, using a similar shade of pheasant body as the hackle.

The original Sparrow has a tail of grizzly marabou which I omit on all but the largest sizes.

I thought I’d finished with the stoneflies, but the “Philo-urge” had me fiddling with a combination of Cal Bird’s techniques. Cal used a copper wire tail support on his steelhead flies which also added breadth to the body for woven materials.

I grabbed a hair collar from Polly, a philoplume from Gartside, and Cal’s tail and woven body to come up with flies destined for my box; it’s “tier’s prerogative” – untested intricate flies that only the creator gets to fish.

 Should we call it a Cal Poly?

It’s not that they’ll catch more fish than anything else – they’re twice as much work as the rest of the box, so in-laws and relatives can just keep their grabby mitts off…

That was when I realized I hadn’t tied any of the patented-death stonefly nymphs that actually work. The orange and black variegated chenille monsters, complete with black rubberlegs. It’s the pattern you pass over enroute to the sexy woven body flies – thinking “if I was a fish, I’d eat those multi-colored sumbitches first.”

Huge mistake.

 The Orange and Black Death

In the fly shop they look like Bluegill flies – when wet the orange turns brown and you’ve got mottled death on your hands.

I sure hope there’s a lot of stonefly activity this Spring, I’ve got an entire box full of shapes and colors and would be sorely put out if the fish wanted to eat the itty-bitty stuff instead.

I’m sure Carp would eat them too, so I’ll find something other than a tree branch to hang these on.

Meanwhile you’re pacing impatiently in the living room

It’s likely to confuse a beginning fly tier – what with our continued references to Hare’s Mask ..

I bet it takes more than an hour

… and deer hair.

OK doe, who's going to split hairs

I think it’d take a wee bit more than an hour to prep. I’d watch a movie so I don’t seem impatient.

I sure hope these gal’s wardrobe contains a lot of orange.

The start of a disturbing trend and it may be time to arm bears

That's a hefty insurance premium Anglers have always been an agile lot, any crack in the fence or slack in barbed wire quickly exploited for fishing purposes. We’ve scraped flesh, twisted ankles, and occasionally needed ambulances and the Coast Guard to return us to safety.

As the press of people grows, and mindful that the largest growth in outdoor use is wildlife watchers, are we suddenly at the mercy of large insurance companies and their stiff premiums?

My saltwater-youth was largely the San Francisco waterfront – which was a thriving commercial enterprise; freighters would dock and depart and were impervious to the 4 ounce pyramid sinkers we flung in their direction.

With the demise of the freighter traffic and the collapse of the freeway during the Loma Prieta earthquake, the waterfront was rebuilt and gentrified to make the area attractive for tourists, dog walker’s, and inevitable “40 is the new 20” jogging crowd.

So which group do we exclude?

However the local water board has banned fishing on the dam wall after a number of anglers sustained minor injuries slipping on the rocks. Anglers are also banned from most of the rest of the reservoir for fear back casting will snare a passer-by, although this has never happened in the forty years since the reservoir was built.

It’s merely a footnote about a UK impoundment – banning fishermen from fishing for fear they might hook a passersby, but this type of contention for a resource is liable to increase.

The urban waterfront is likely at risk, with voters pedestrians outnumbering anglers by many hundredfold, but with the press of humanity expanding outward, marching under the Political Correctness battle standard, will this be an issue for some of our freshwater venues as well?

It’s too early yet to tell, but it’s likely each of us knows of numerous spots close enough to a parking lot, or within the confines of a wildlife sanctuary, where anglers and non fishermen intermingle.

Soaring insurance premiums endured by the owning counties and cities are a compelling reason to side with the less agile pedestrian – as they’re not tempting fate by repelling down a cliff face, or being stranded at high tide as we are.

They’re still debating whether to bill the 134 ice fishermen rescued off Lake Erie this year. It could be we’re headed for a wakeup call.

It does beg the question of why that breakwater was created. The intent was to protect the boats and harbor – but if they’re no longer a factor, who has first dibs? Certainly, fishermen scampered over the greasy rocks first – but now that the city has installed a path and landscaped the aging edifice, and it’s used by a mix of folks – what now?

We’ve seen how lawns vote more frequently than fish, it’s not unexpected that pedestrians will vote more than fishermen.

Some well intentioned angling organization gains public access to a formerly private creek, installing parking lot and riparian protection – and in so doing denies us fishermen from ever using it due to more frequent use by birders?

Ouch.

Extreme Sports, fishing for animal activists

Remember, if you crack the shell you’re fishing an emerging peanut – which is within the rules – but lacks the nobility of the overhead dry goober.

 You can put Rabbit back on the menu

Squirrel fishing – perhaps the only venue left to us fly fishermen once the litany of ills dispatches the gamefish, carp, and pikeminnow. You’re required to use a rod – but it appears the IGRA (International Game-Rodent Association) has lax tippet standards.

That nice old lady is going to scream and unleash her poodle on you, the tear streaked faces of small children will bring the gendarme, and the quarry is no slouch, positively everything necessary for rich tales of adventure, frustration, and potential incarceration.

Urban setting, shadowy anglers flitting behind a screen of foliage, and the ragged bosom of wine bottles, candy wrappers, and yesterday’s paper?

It’s a “brownlawn” sport.

Considering the mounds of squirrel fur on my desk, Catch and Release is out of the question.  “Park Antelope” is first class dubbing – and I’ll gladly share the meat with my recession strapped neighbors.

Anyone can pull a nut from the hands of a squirrel, but the adept squirrel fisherman must tune his craft, maintaining balance between himself and the squirrel, and eventually rewarding the squirrel for his valiant competition by ceding the nut. Ideally, great care is taken not to overfeed squirrels, not to hit them with nuts, and not to treat them roughly (though verbal abuse is encouraged).

If it’s canny enough to overcome a kite twine tippet backed by disc drag, I’ll surrender my nut. If not, a couple pounds of playground sand in the rod tube will ensure a humane ending to the contest.

With the possibility of uniformed interference and protesters, I’d suggest limiting your outings to weekdays and full dark.

The “Bubonic Plague” thing? – that was rats living in the city, squirrels only carry rabies.

All those graphite rods have to wind up somewhere’s

An "old" tackle Juggernaut It’s jarring everytime I see it mentioned. I’m not sure whether to insist it’s a sign of the times, or Goodwill Industries is a new tackle juggernaut in the making.

My casual count shows eBay tackle sales on the rise, and if it didn’t sell there – is Momma winning, and we’re laying down our arms?

Apparently Goodwill and FLW Outdoors are fielding a team for the pro Bass circuit. Goodwill’s angle is to tap the festivities for clothing donations – but if Father Joe is funding orphanages with used cars, can Goodwill do similar with last year’s bass boat donation?

With the recession-assisted withdrawal of the high dollar sponsors, there’s plenty of room for charitable causes. Angling and charity are a natural fit; us fishermen have always been keen on donating tackle to tree limbs and stream debris –  we could wind up their richest catch yet.

You’re a soft touch and you know it …