Author Archives: KBarton10

Part 2: Spey Kung Fu: There’s two kinds of experts, them as can cast – and them as can’t

More danger to myself than to the fish After a week of practice I’m the second kind of expert; I have a theory or opinion on absolutely everything, I’m quick to point out the trifling defects in everyone else’s casting, in both tackle and form, but don’t ask me to show you, ’cause I still can’t cast for beans..

I got some assistance from the fellows at the Washington Fly Fishing forum whose site is blessed with a low “signal to noise” ratio. Lots of talented folks that fling these lines in anger, and readily share what they know with a clueless prospect.

I’d found a couple resources that listed grain weights and had deduced I needed a RIO Windcutter or Airflo Delta Spey, these are mid-belly lines markedly different than the Skagit head I already owned. The Echo website suggested the Airflo and the WFFer’s suggested The Red Shed, a small Idaho fly shop, whose proprietor, Poppy – was strong in the ways of the Force…

They weren’t kidding, some fellow answers the phone and as I stutter a greeting he says, “You seek Airflo, for your rod, the #7/8.”

Now that I’m armed with the proper line, I’m captive to the weather – which is alternating between icy fog and rain. The gleaming unsoiled rod is parked by the back door and in between squalls I’m in the backyard committing a multitude of casting sins.

The pop-crack-whizz flushes every cat and squirrel hidden in the underbrush, the fleeing felines get everyone’s dogs barking, and I’ve got Grandma looking over the fence sternly – assuming I’m harassing “Pootsie-Poo” her pampered and fat Persian.

Part of the noise is my use of a  “grass leader“; a knotted leader with barrel knots about every 3-4 inches and the tag ends left untrimmed. The friction of knots and tags in the grass offers additional resistance and assists in loading the rod akin to ripping the line off the water.

Despite my daily sessions I’m not able to get anything resembling what’s desired – my loop is open like a roll cast, and a completed stroke dies horribly in mid-air; no power or direction and I’m left scratching my head.

Saturday breaks with “bluebird” weather and I’m on the creek as soon as the sun is high enough to light my path. I figure an hour of practice and with my newfound “l33t” skills I’ll be rolling in fish. I figured the floating tip would be the easiest to fish with … and destroy.

Multi-tip spey lines include a floating, intermediate, 6″ per second, and 8″ per second sinking heads. They’re 15′ feet segments looped onto the line belly (both are equipped with welded loops) using a loop-loop connection which is unnoticed when casting. This is one of the areas of confusion for us beginners, some Spey lines are incomplete unless a tip is added – and are underweight because a tip is expected. The converse is also true, some lines are just tips – with no belly and it’s mighty important to understand the difference.

I’m focusing on two casts, the Snap-T and the Snake Roll, figuring I’d have them committed to memory quickly via numbing repetition rather than divide my time between a dozen different maneuvers.

There’s a wide pool a couple hundred yards below the duck blind, (far enough away from the watchful eyes of anyone inside), and I figure if a wounded mallard floats by I can grab a couple fistfuls of flank with none the wiser. Striking my best heroic pose I launch my first cast – watching it soar across the frothy water and land an astounding 20 feet distant.

That’s no mean feat with 54′ of belly, 15′ of floating tip, and attached 9 ‘ leader.

As an experienced one hand caster I know how to control the cast stroke to do my bidding, I thought I could translate the timing to the two hand rod and get some semblance of the correct cast.

I was dead wrong.

Water tension replaces the wait on the traditional rearward false cast, and the amount of time the line is on the water determines how much you’ve got to rip off the surface on the forward stroke.

Terms like “kiss and go” have meaning now, a peck on the cheek is what’s needed – and I keep swapping tongues..

The Snake roll was easier to learn and I was able to get distance even with an unguided and hideous open loop. The Snap T was a disaster – but I was able to get the snap portion operational. I think I managed about 40 feet with 70′ out of the guides.

The water is the backcast, therefore casting is entirely foreign – it’s neither intuitive or easy to understand the rod physics or the water load component.

My biggest problem is too much strength. Watching the videos on YouTube you see the rod cradled by the upper hand, and I’m “white knuckling” the cork with all the finesse of a baseball bat.

My hour passes and then some – and because I insisted on realism, I’m out a dozen flies. All of them cracked off by my baseball version of the Snap T. None entering my torso unbidden – so I’m succeeding at building the necessary self preservation skills.

I managed a little fishing, but the fish had all expired in laughter – I couldn’t see their carcasses as I’d put a nice “head” on the creek akin to bruising a good lager. 

I’ve confirmed what Spey is useful for and what it’s not. It’s a “big water” fling and swing style ill-suited for my little creek. Retrieving flies close means you have to shake all the line out of the tip before the next cast, and while the casts can be used in close quarters with traditional lines – it’s not a style requiring you to suddenly replace all your tackle in a mad rush to be first.

The extra handle below the reel does have issue with bulging front loaded vests. It’s used in lever-action mode, drawing it into your brisket with each cast.  Once I learn the proper cast – this may not be much of an issue, but I thumped my fly boxes routinely – something unnoticed in my backyard proving ground.

I’m going to transfer the line to my one-hander. This will eliminate the unknowns of the long rod and let me experiment with the timing and casts with known equipment. It’ll also aid in fishing, because I can fish through the run using traditional casts, then beat the water to death afterwards.

After wind milling a 13′ rod through 30 minutes of Snake Roll, I was feeling the exertion. It’s a great workout – it’s not supposed to be, but I’m grasping at any positives.

The last train from Gun Hill, the Little Stinking MilitiaThe wind started to pick up a bit, and I’m hearing the staccato reports of gunfire upstream – not duck hunters, someone’s unloading seven round clips of Eastern Bloc high powered stuff – which can go some distance.

I’m up and out of the streambed quickly so’s I can be seen, and stumble into the last convoy out of Sadr City. Four motorcycles, 2 ATV’s, 2 trucks, and a dozen pimple-faced hardcore types looking stern and scanning for FSW’s ..

FSW’s are more dangerous than IED’s and common to California watersheds .. it’s easier to yell “FSW” to alert your buddy to “Fleeing Startled Wildlife” – otherwise you’d fail to empty the entire clip into its carcass.

I gave them a wave and headed out of Baghdad, hoping to clear the watershed before the gunships rolled in…

More suffering to follow.

Mustad to discontinue the classic standard fly hooks

Hook Anatomy Mustad is discontinuing their line of classic fly tying hooks in favor of their Signature Series.

That means the classic 94840 (std. dry fly) , 94845 (Barbless Dry), 94833 (3x fine dry), 3906B (std. nymph 1X long), 9671 (2x long), 9672 (3X long), 79580 (4x Long), 3665A (6X long), 3399A (std wet) – are out of production as of January 1st, 2009.

Cabela’s web site seems to corroborate the news as they’re listing multiple standard Mustad hooks as, “Sold out Sorry, Cannot back order.”

J. Stockard’s catalog references the same issue:

Below are our best deals on some Mustad Standard hooks that are discontinued. Most of these hook styles are being replaced by equivalent hooks with chemically sharpened points in the Signature series.

Many tiers prefer the Tiemco, Gamakatsu, and Daiichi wire and  switched from the Norwegian iron many moons ago. Mustad is replacing the hooks with their “Signature series”, they’re twice the price of their standard hooks and compete directly with the Japanese product lines.

There’s no mention of the change on the Mustad web site.

Those of you still wedded to one or more of the above styles should perk up and inquire of your dealer, you may want to lay in a stash of them while they’re still available.

Then again, there’s always the “Bernie Madoff” option, slurp as many as you can and double your money on us old guys on ebay …

Thanks, Bernie..

Free Willy IV – Willy starves to death and becomes odiferous mass on Southern California beach

willy The Sacramento Bee reports the National Marine Fisheries Service has compiled a draft “biological opinion” that may compel the California Department of Water Resources and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to change reservoir operations, improve river habitat and divert less water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The 2004 version had a similar finding and was altered by the Bush administration to show fish would not be imperiled by existing operations, and were sued successfully by environmental groups.

The judge insisted that Interior department officials had violated the Endangered Species act by modifying the report.

Fishery biologists assert that the current system, whose emphasis is on water for people, does not provide enough cold water for spawning habitat in the Sacramento river. Climate change and increased population will magnify the effect.

It’s so bad that Killer whale’s are being added to the list of impacted species, due to the absence of Pacific salmon.

The report is scheduled for public release, March 2nd – with North-South fireworks to commence shortly thereafter.

It just doesn’t pay to be beloved of humans

Nobility ain't what it once was I’ve often heard the lament associated with the decline of the world’s rain forest, how the loss of countless unknown species of flora and fauna may be of enormous impact  – as some rare tree frog or rain forest lily may hold the cure for cancer.

It’s very possible, but even proof of the poor critter’s existence wouldn’t slow those bulldozers more than seven minutes.

It just doesn’t pay to be a plant or animal that humans hold in high regard, as it assures you a spot on the menu.

Salmon, widely considered the most noble of all fishes, is about to have a harder time of it now that Sea Run Holdings Inc. (funded by the Department of Defense) is about to go to clinical trials on their plasma drug.

Freeport-based Sea Run has been developing two major product platforms. One of them is Sea Stat CNS, a salmon fibrin product the company claims can minimize the damage caused by spinal cord and traumatic brain injury. The other is Sea Stat HS, which helps clot blood and can potentially seal torn or wounded tissue.

It appears a blood clotting agent can be made via draining salmon of theirs – which naturally deprives the fish of any future options.

They’re using farmed salmon, which is both a relief and a question mark. Farming fish is still in its infancy and shoveling Orange Dye #3 at a pool full of triploids may have ramifications in the finished product.

They might have to back off the shade a bit, that way when you’re wheeled out of the hospital – folks don’t mistake you for a traffic cone.

Glampers and the 201K, reborn as Crampers

Leave it to some canny fellow from California to come up with a solution for the entire housing crisis using just “budget dust” from the TARP funds.

On the road again

This ushers in the age of “Jingle Mail“, sending the keys of your massively leveraged home to the mortgage company – along with some carefully chosen prose describing what they can do with it.

The Big Three automakers specialize in large, roomy SUV’s with indoor television and all the comforts of home. Your credit rating remains intact while the letter’s enroute, score a couple and make for the open highway.

Become an economic patriot…

“Glamping” died with Bernie Madoff, welcome to “Cramping” and the airy lifestyle of the modern American nomad.

The schools in Idaho and Montana are pretty good …

It’s best from a boat, but a big rock would be a close second

iMu iPoD speaker, any flat surface transformed into an ImpalaI figure stream etiquette rightfully belongs to the Country and Western crowd, only because the million lines of anguished prose generated each season could be crooned into a double-platinum album for somebody, there’s more suffering, unrequited love, and boorish behavior than romance and breakup ever had…

It’s the only subject capable of turning fly fishermen into women, whose forums and magazines are replete with sobbing tales about, “I was low holed and wasn’t even kissed”, “he pretended I wasn’t even there” or “I called him a sumbitch and he never called back.”

Brownliners don’t have this problem because we expect the worst from our fellow man;  while other anglers are still a rarity, people aren’t  and etiquette is when the interloper relieves himself downstream of us, rather than above.

We’re “angling primitives” – quick to anger and react with handguns, clubbing weapons, or simple hand to hand, we don’t moan or leave in frustration, we just calculate how many rocks it’ll take to keep the corpse on the bottom..

One of our most productive tools for minor infractions is the iMu Vibrating speaker for the iPod:

The iMu vibrating speaker will transform any flat, hard surface into a top notch audio speaker.

Any hard surface is transformed into a vibration transmission device that’ll rival the sound of a chopped and lowered 1965 Impala.

Don’t get mad, get even.

Perch yourself on a rock shelf or large boulder that extends into the water, savor the selection of the appropriate Snoop Dog MP3, and crank the bass – watch aggressively feeding trout vanish, the waterline rise two inches, and the mannerless intruder leave in a huff.

[youtube width=”400″ height=”335″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz3Cc7wlfkI[/youtube]

Prolonged exposure will deafen smaller fish – which isn’t as bad as would seem, when they get bigger you can wade close without scaring many.

I’ve used Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyrie’s” on my pram for some time, we call it “announcing our presence with authority…”

Dangerous When Wet, where you can witness the madness

Monday’s rain wasn’t welcome, I’d covered for the folks at work during the holidays and elected to take some time off after they returned to work with sugar-orgy hangovers.

It’s a carefully planned strategy on my part, the combination of Christmas and New Year’s means everyone over-spends, over-drank, and over-ate, and the crowd filing through the door on Monday has resolved themselves to a life of chastity.

Not the chipper and upbeat crowd I choose to associate with ..

I was hoping the weather would hold but it didn’t – so I fiddled with flies and naps, not necessarily in that order. I’d been mulling an idea for a “Skunk-tail Caddis” type fly, destroying it’s two-material elegance with something more involved.

 The furry butted something-or-other

It’s more of my “furry chenille” work – an olive case  for use on the Little Stinking, a 4mm bead to make sure it’s rolling in the gravel, with a touch of “worm” color and dubbed ringneck pheasant to offer a hint of motion near the head.

I took it out this morning, and flung it at some fish. The water was plenty cold and higher than my last adventure – I figured they’d be lethargic and reluctant to chase anything, so I just let this roll down with the current to their waiting maw.

I stuck a half dozen fish in the first half hour using a dead drift, then tried it with a retrieve which yielded nothing.

 A similar variant when wet

It’s a neat little design, and completely bulletproof. I’ve got some additional tinkering to do with colors and materials, building a variety of colors for some of the trout streams up north.

Mayflies always get top billing with patterns representing every miniscule stage in their development, it’s a nice change to fiddle with something outside the norm.

In the past I’ve just tossed the fly onto the page with little explanation, I thought some additional fly tying coverage was warranted, so I’ve created simple step-by-step tying illustrations on a companion site to assist you in reproducing the fly.

I’ll put some of the patterns mentioned here on that site in case someone actually wants to reproduce them.

I’ll take Taxes for two hundred, Bob

Arnold_Troutstamp Politicians love to make distinctions that don’t exist in dictionaries. It’s part of the benefits of such a lofty post, caretaker of the public trust.

Miriam Webster doesn’t see it that way.

Main Entry:
user fee
Function:
noun
Date:
1967

: an excise tax often in the form of a license or supplemental charge levied to fund a public service —called also user’s fee

Main Entry:
tax
Function:
noun
Usage:
often attributive
Date:
14th century

1 a: a charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes b: a sum levied on members of an organization to defray expenses2: a heavy demand

During times of economic hardship fees can never be taxes, as increasing taxes play havoc with economic recovery, and increasing fees just means those that used to enjoy something – pay more for enjoying it.

With the collapse of the financial system states and business’s are struggling to find new sources of revenue to bolster massive shortfalls in traditional taxes. Bond markets remain in upheaval, and many states are prevented from using the traditional tools to secure operating revenue.

That’s where you come in.

Your house isn’t worth pizzle, your investments have been cut in half, you’re squirreling money away rather than spend it, in short – you’re not holding up your end of the economy.

You’re not patriotic.

We can expect most of the 50 state legislatures to start getting creative with the fee versus tax distinction, and those groups with little representation (anglers) will pay much more for “normal” stuff.

New York state is soliciting opinion on their new 2009 Salmon – Trout stamp, ten bucks on top of the normal license fee. Salmon anglers are likely a minority – toss “trout” on the label and you’ve got everybody having to pony up.

We’re not suggesting that wardens and natural resources aren’t deserved of protection, nor are we suggesting that state’s raise and plant trout for free.  We’re suggesting these dollars will be siphoned off into the General Fund, and spent on something wildly different than their original intent.

They can’t be that smart, they eat sticks and leaves

I’ve always struggled with fish vision and how it fits with my imitation of prey. Like most anglers I’m probably too quick to declare fly tying “success” and my brief victory may be for all the wrong reasons.

It’s hard enough to get into a fish’s head, but to look out their eye compounds the issue a hundredfold. The only adequate simulation is to chug a fifth in a single draught, erasing 160 IQ and yielding “fish eye” vision – but doesn’t give adequate time to tie enough flies before the remedy is expelled violently.

We’re left to guess at what fish see and think.

Prevailing theory has all manner of interesting wrinkles that most fishermen should be aware of:

An AP Black seen via binocular vision

Development of receptors for “blue” are among the last grown in human children, and it’s suspected that more primitive eyeballs (fish) lack these receptors – and view the color differently.

Fish eyes are tuned to their prey, and the movement of a fleeing baitfish is seen better by a Striped Bass, than a smelt.

The same fly via Fish Eye lens Fish vision is not binocular, they must integrate two separate images of the same scene when looking to the front. There is a gap of missing information between the two images – as fish have eyes mounted on their sides and cannot see what’s in front of their nose.

APBlack as two discrete images with gap Fish eyes have evolved over many millions of years in a pristine environment, now the Man has “muddied the waters” vision is limited by turbidity, and fish diets are changing – from what they’re attuned for, to what they can see.

While it’s a struggle to resolve the scientific detail, and our laymen’s understanding of vision, this has to be one of the reasons why a #16 Royal Wulff catches fish during a Pale Olive hatch.

While the Royal Wulff doesn’t resemble a Pale Morning Dun, if it enters the right focal plane it might be missing the entire red floss center section, or the skewed visual of hackles obscure enough to make it resemble what’s hatching.

It’s food for thought certainly, and when you stop to consider some of these theories, how many well known mayflies and caddis are blue?

Flowers are color coded so that the best pollinator responds to its bloom, I’m sure similar holds for the balance of nature – it’s why we gaze in rapture at the pictures on the restaurant menu, then gaze in wonderment at the lifeless turd that arrives on our plate.

I’d describe myself as an impressionistic fly tier, I rarely use exacting imitations with knotted legs and painstaking detail, those flies work best on fishermen. I like simulation and movement rather than detail, and the precise proportions we’re taught to use are skewed by water quality and the perceptive limitations of our quarry.

It’s akin to reincarnation, everyone is someone famous in a past life, and we accredit fish with all the “smart” traits because they outwit us. If that holds water, it’s likely they’re victimized by flatulence and bad breath as well.

I’d guess that trout eat as many twigs and stems as mayflies, like humans they can’t all have perfect vision, and the older the fish gets the bigger its prey. Not because it’s “big fish big meal” – rather it can see the big meal clearly, and little stuff could be food, but often as not it’s debris.

Could be I’ve stumbled upon the reason why there’s so many discrete streams of air bubbles in the Little Stinking, and how the residents earned the  “coarse fish” label.  We’re so concerned about the methane released by cows – and we’ve overlooked the real culprit.

It only took them two weeks and 17 pages, Geniuses all of them

Secretary Chrisman likes to double down It’s the latest trend among those in power –  circumventing the normal political process with urgency replacing the painstaking scientific work, and when called to task for the crime,  blame the other fellow for not thinking for you.

The financial crisis in Washington has emboldening every political hack with a year or less on his term to “fast track” legislation, but there’s still no surrogate for careful planning and research, especially when it comes to Mother Nature.

Now them idiot cabinet secretaries appointed by Schwarznegger insist they can build the peripheral canal without asking the legislature or voters. For those out of state, the peripheral canal is California’s answer to keeping the desert in full bloom, tapping the Sacramento River in Northern California and swinging the water around the Delta to fill the faucets of Los Angeles.

It was soundly defeated by voters in 1982.

The bad news is that the move will continue the orderly destruction of the Sacramento river delta, and what little remains of the Chinook salmon run.

It’s only 15 Billion dollars, and since Schwarzenegger is already in Washington with hat in hand, and his state controller issuing proclamations of the state running out of money in 45 days, might as well “double down” on the handout. How else can they fund the project without asking voters?

I assume they figure no one will ask what was done with the cash, so what’s the worry.

I can’t make the case that urgency warrants bad legislation. The fact that “everyone else is doing it” sets a precedent, but it’s a shameful one. We’d hoped we were electing our best and brightest, instead we got another set of clowns that copied someone else’s homework.