Author Archives: KBarton10

I’d certainly make enough to keep me in rods and Whiting hackle

Fear may be outselling sex of late, what with elections so close and a significant block of voters needing to be scared into voting. We’ve covered the Red Menace, the Yellow Horde, the Scourge of the Sahara, and what’s needed to galvinate public opinion is a good old threat close to home.

Bar the door and pass the ammo

When they finish eating all the baby salmon, it’s house pets and your angelic daughter that’s next – not to mention they pee indiscriminately in your drinking water.

I’d like to think of myself as a modern day Willard – King of the Pest fish with legions of ravenous piscine torpedoes willing to do my bidding, but I can’t even get them to eat my flies regular, much less attack fellow anglers and devour them upon command.

The Pied Piper of Pikeminnow’s is one Nikolay Zaremskiy whose currently in the top spot for bounty claimed in Oregon’s ongoing war with the Pikeminnow.

In the first five months of the season, he hauled in 6,453 pikeminnows, earning a bounty of more than $52,292 — far outpacing his closest competitor, David Vasilchuk of Vancouver, Wash.

If I lived in the area, retired or otherwise I’d be all over this – $10,000 per month to fish all day with Madam’s blessing, she’d likely pack me a lunch and buss me on the cheek – provided I showered.

With all the Pentagon’s wunder-toys you’d think they’d have a Predator Submarine with a line of 11 year olds itching to fry a Pikeminnow with a particle beam. It doesn’t necessarily promote the finest elements of fishing – but if you charged a quarter for a couple minutes at the controls it’d pay for the R&D program in a weekend.

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If your Mom’s throw rug was made of Golden Bird of Paradise would you steal it?

The mailman is starting to back away so I should cool my ardor a bit. Little padded envelopes keep showing up at my doorstep from Bernice, Julie, Deborah, Nancy, and Janice – and while I was hoping he’d think I was part of a Columbian cartel – the gals keep perfuming the packages.

One look at my gut precludes there being a romantic angle, and I’m afraid the last perfumed kilo gave me away.

It’s knitting yarn.

The shrinks would have a field day dealing with fly tiers, there’s 240 crayfish in a single skein of Bernat boa, but how many skeins will be needed over a lifetime?

… and is that just my lifetime, or do I need to include my brother, his buddy, my fly-less fishing buddies and their friends as well?

Hoarding is the equivalent of gathering up a mound of sand on the beach and if anyone looks perplexed, just point and exclaim, “this is infinite sand grains, exactly.”

It’s why your math teacher didn’t give you credit if you didn’t show your work – as both math aficionados and psychiatrists love to pore over your hoard-reasoning, similar to siphoning a trout’s gut to see what he ate – only mental.

Each of us has a imprecise system of amassing feather dander, because we’ve been caught short multiple times on common-turned-rare materials. These being the halcyon days of fly tying – with real materials from real animals, and as each one is pressured into oblivion based on its fur, taste, habitat, or simply steel belted radials – we wish we’d had the foresight to stock up.

Yea, you’re right – it’s never going to happen to you.

What funny is we’re still in the 80-20 phase, 80% of the materials we use for flies are natural, 20% are synthetic – and a couple generations from now that may be drastically changed. Will subsequent tyers hoard synthetics as we do vanishing species? I think so, partly due to the packrat nature of the hobby, and partly due to the lure of “better” – as originals are always better than substitutes.

For every tyer that used Swan for his Royal Coachman, there was an old guy looking askance at some younger tyer’s work, exclaiming, “.. close, but it won’t work as good as Swan, too stiff…”

Now I’m salting away skeins of synthetics – snapping up colors that says “crayfish” to me – while the rest of you shake your head in wonderment. Flamingo, Phoenix, Cardinal, or Hawk, may yield a better fly and none of these colors are currently being made. That’s no surprise as what’s fashionable is over in the blink of an eye, then it’s “last year’s” model – like bell bottoms or double knits.

Synthetics, especially those from the fashion industry, may have a shorter production life than natural materials, and we may have to purchase them accordingly to ensure a steady supply.

Better yet, do I hoard what I can find, then sell pinches for exorbitant amounts, akin to Polar Bear, Baby Seal, or Golden Bird of Paradise? You never thought “Aunt Lydia’s Rug Yarn” would be on par with Blue Chatterer – and will you be man enough to abscond with your parent’s bathroom throw rug when you discover its value?

Old guys learn to accumulate, young learn the hard way by missing the boat and wishing it were otherwise. Genius can lie in pawing through some box of forgotten treasure, searching for Puce rabbit and finding a pound of something no longer available – sparking the creative process.

Somewhere between the moths getting it all and your kids tossing it after your demise, these flights of fancy will yield umpteen flies any of which could be the next Light Cahill, Adams, or Pheasant Tail nymph.

It's a fast tie - is it the next Tup's Indispensable?

Amassing all this is just one of many excessive habits, justifying the drawer space consumed requires imagination and immersion, ferreting out the obvious and unexpected uses in an orgy of creativity.

With 500 yards of Dark Olive Ultra chenille, and 1000 yards of perfumed Mallard Bernat Boa, something that fish eat should result. It may not be the next Zug Bug, but it’s the fastest stonefly nymph I’ve tied. A couple of whacks of the scissor to shorten the top fibers into wingcases, a couple cuts to clean the bottom of fiber and you’re done…

It’s knitting yarn, a synthetic hackle, a Matuka streamer wing, a rabbit strip imitation, and a nymph style … so far … and it’s in short supply.

It’s more expensive than a Gym membership, that’s my guess

It’s the other number I’m afraid to compute – the number of miles hiked versus pounds of fish caught, only this metric doesn’t require you to blush and stare at the ground when asked.

Between Saturday and Sunday I added another 10 miles to the boots, which are starting to look mighty worn. Every other usage winds up with one leg or the other full of water – it’s like a car that’s starting to show the cumulative wear and tear.

Saturday I fished with Singlebarbed reader, Scott V – who braved the Little Stinking bare-arsed without ill effect. The small fish remain aggressive and the larger fish are without the urge to cooperate, something we’ve all seen before.

Sunday I moved higher on the river and fiddled with a spey line and third phase trials of the crayfish fly. Olive is the go-to color, but I tied additional in brown, flamingo, black, purple, and orange – I’m still waiting for the shipment of Cardinal (red/black) to arrive.

Based on the below, “cardinal” may well prove to be as popular as the olive, it’s the other color combination I’ve seen in abundance in the native crayfish, bright red and black. This fellow was about 6 inches long, so I may increase the fly accordingly.

Red and Black may prove as productive as olive

I managed a half dozen nice fish on the brown fly Sunday, and got some half-hearted grabs on all the other colors, there’s no question the fish are suddenly aloof – content to watch the fly pass, rather than chase.

Pikeminnow continue to inhale the pattern with great relish, why they take it so much deeper than the bass is still a mystery. The brute below inhaled the entire fly, with only one leg visible in his gob.

Only the tip of one leg is visible in his mouth

The river continues to deepen – adding about 4 more inches since the week prior, and all the surrounding irrigation ditches were dry. Quail hunters are out in force – most are the older wiser types with dogs, I don’t mind sharing – but “the Young Guns” that roar up, dismount, and blow hell out of everything have to be watched carefully. Adrenaline is a heady drug, and most are uncaring about where their shot pattern is headed.

There’s little finer than watching a talented dog work a drainage, and I stopped to chat with a couple of old timers as I was leaving. They wanted to know how I’d done, and I was interested in their morning – so I jawboned while sneaking both dogs chunks of “hooter” bar.

I asked the fellow seated under the sign, “that sign says one meal a month for fish, so how’s them Quail taste?”

His buddy immediately chimes in, “yea, Bob – they’re all drinking the same crap, how do they taste?”

Apparently I’d uncovered a hunter’s metric, one where he blushes profusely and stares earthward, not sure which one it was though – it could be that he was quietly tossing Nature’s Bounty – hoping his buddy didn’t know.

Try Brownlining, your neighbors will like you more

It's quite the hatch, for some folks He certainly shows an enterprising bent, but I think he needs to get out more often. Trapped in an urban setting, there’s always some fishing venue that’ll draw less attention to yourself.

It’s unclear what the daily bag limit is – but being arrested by the authorities with 500 in possession is just a trifle much. It’s guaranteed to incur the wrath of us law-abiding anglers as wasteful is about the only sin that focuses our collective ire.

What trips poachers up is returning to the scene for another round of angling debauch, unfortunately with that many pairs of missing women’s underwear, the authorities are bound to be lying in wait.

I figure he fishes cane, as those fellows always were a bit “twitchy.”

Stalking the elusive Ultra Chenille, it’s Vernille in the Wild

I figure it’s a cross between Euell Gibbons and Basil Rathbone, a mixture of natural curiosity and dogged determinism; a personal quest, my ongoing War Against Six Dollar Items, where I delight in finding products “in the wild” – unfettered by middlemen, fly shops, and their obligatory markup..

I’ve been chasing down Ultra Chenille (Vernille, Velvet Chenille, Suede chenille) for almost a year. I thought I had it when I discovered a manufacturer in Turkey,  instead it was an interesting crop of fibers and yarns, all cheap as dirt and as yet undiscovered.

The good stuff, and it's cheap as dirt

Ultra chenille is a great material, tough as nails, low buildup, and has a variety of uses from traditional chenille flies to the nouveau dressings unique to the product.

At $2 for 9 feet, it’s also pricey.

I’d toss the old rayon stuff if the price was low enough to replace it – mainly because ultra chenille wears better and doesn’t come apart in your fingers if spun in the wrong direction. The fibers being so much shorter – it doesn’t mat or bleed, especially after the flies have been fished.

Tie is the blue strand, fly shop stuff is the flesh colored strand This fiber is made by a manufacturer called “Silk City Fibers” located back East, and is marketed under the “Tie” name, to distinguish it from the myriad of other yarns they make. It’s neither suede, rayon, or cotton, rather a synthetic nylon called “Polyamide.”

Acid dyes will dye nylon just fine – allowing the possibility of scoring a 2000 yard cone of white and making whatever color you fancy.

Chenille and yarn follow a number of sizing conventions and the “YPP” convention is commonplace. “YPP” is Yards Per Pound, and the higher the number the smaller the diameter of the material.

“Tie” is a 3800 YPP fiber which is about 15% smaller than the size sold in the fly shop. Also good, because we can use it on smaller hooks without making the fly too bulky – and it’s likely available in a variety of sizes – something else that’s missing from the fly shop selection.

100 yards in a neat little bundle for only five bucks A cone of ultra chenille is $90 from a reseller – and while only a commercial tyer will get excited – searching on eBay yields a vendor with 14 of the 16 colors available from the factory.

50g skeins for $5 is a steal, and she has plenty.

The top picture is her color selection, and contacting the vendor directly will score you enough of “the good stuff” to make it worth your while.

The smaller size is especially useful, as it’s diameter is small enough to make trout flies – expanding your use beyond  traditional steelhead flies and streamers.

The War Against Six Dollars Items continues, with you folks the beneficiary.

The Brownline ABEL

Fishing the brown water has always had a “Budweiser” mystique about it; the luxury of knowing you’re never going to meet someone, therefore bathing is optional, coupled with the social stigma – no clique, no secret handshakes, and the knowledge that Fly Fisherman magazine will never reveal your secret spot.

Abel Carp finish Now Abel reels has ruined it for us odiferous stalwarts – making a “Carp” finish on their latest line of reels.

I don’t mind too terrible much, but I know that reel and me have a date with destiny. I’ll never have the coin or moxie to buy one, I just know that the screaming angler I rescue from a couple feet of toxic sludge will have it – and I’ll come face to face with the knowledge that the “last odiferous frontier” has been tamed…

Then again, in one last paroxysm of outlaw – I could stake him out on an anthill or take his shoes and reel – then chase him through the flaming gravel beds of Death.

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Internet Outage, Part Deux

Once again I’m without Internet access at my home and unable to post or check email. It’s one of those special moments for a computer geek – calling Technical Support and listening to some gum-chewing SOB with skills much less than your own…

“Yes, Bob – it was working this morning, and then the light on the modem blinked off, and it hasn’t worked since. I can ping your modem, but can’t see anything past that – and I’m noticing the the DHCP service on your router isn’t issuing me an address.”

“Reboot your computer.”

“Done Bob, a “trace route” yields nothing past your modem, I still don’t have an IP address, and I’m getting kind of really pissed, Bob..”

“Did you try rebooting your computer?”

“Yes, Sweetpea – I kicked it several times, and when you get off shift tonight, it’s you and me in the parking lot doing the Tire Iron Dance, Moron… Now Bob, can I talk to your supervisor?”

“Uh, no. He’s rebooting his computer.”

Would Salmon lose their appeal if they were overweight?

That's a Big'Un, alright Will Salmon retain it’s place of nobility among fishermen if they all have big guts, too much cholesterol, and arses to match?

Science is many things, and some aren’t terribly pretty. Fish scientists have labored to find food to feed farmed fish that grows more “fish protein” than it takes to raise the feed..

It’s the same battle they’re facing with alternative energy.

Doctor’s have been warning us of the perils of McDonald’s fries for years, yet suddenly it’s a surprise to learn that feeding vegetable oil to penned fish grows more flab?

This is the first time we can refer to large-scale trials on fish over an entire generation, where we gain more fish protein in the form of salmon than we use to produce the fish feed.

Next time my girlfriend starts to scold me about my ample midsection she’ll get a scientific earful – “that’s human protein, dammit – now fork over more pie.”

They’re pen-raised but seals will ensure plenty escape, and with big guts, I’d like to see a female scape pea gravel into a nest – considering she hasn’t seen her tail in years.

… and you can forget jumping, sure – they’ll porpoise a few times when they’re rested, and the fast water will give them an assist – but is this still the same fishery when you have to wade out to unhook them?

I’ve handled plenty of unsavory fish, but can’t say I’d reach for some sweating silvery blimp that’d founder unless I held him upright.

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Big Water, Big fish, sore butt

Roughfisher and I have been jawing over the use of spey casts and switch rods for chasing prey through the dirty water, and both of us have decided to give it a shot.

That’s the easy part, now it’s gear evaluation and assimilation, and the begging that goes with the budget that has significant other’s demanding chores, feats of carpentry, electrical work, and sweat – something foreign to the both of us.

I was hoping I could remain the “Paris Hilton” of angling dilettantes, but with a three to four hundred dollar purchase pending, it ain’t going to happen.

Yesterday I found the “big water” where this kind of tackle would be useful, and the big bass that inhabit deep slots shielded by overhang, culminating in me swearing loudly after getting busted off on 4X tippet. The fish broke water afterwards to give me the finger, so we’re past dating and into the matrimony portion – he’s wearing one of my flies, and I’m wearing the sting of defeat.

No, I don’t consider it undermining the foundations of traditional marriage, but I’m still feeling rather cheap..

Today I’m doctoring the hook holes in body and waders, as yesterday’s bravado and adrenalin have been replaced by “old guy” mortality. I’m replacing the dozen flies lost yesterday, while groaning for sympathy. It never gets us out of the lawn responsibility, but it is good practice for later – when stuff really hurts, or an NFL championship game is close to airing.

I’ve got a bunch of oddities coming out of the vise, and I’ll share as soon as I rewire the kitchen.

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He was thinking it was Christmas until the other Crawdad bit back

I’m sure that fish was thinking, “Sweet, there’s two of them.”  – at least he was thinking that right up until I wadded the hook point through his gob..

I’m afraid he’s going to hold it against me, as he “arpy-chucked” half the meal when I grabbed him. On the one hand I could take this as the ultimate confirmation of “matching the hatch” – but it could just be a random happenstance.

Older Brother with a typical smallmouth Igneous Rock showed on the doorstep yesterday, ignoring the wind and blowing topsoil, insisting we stomp creekbed. I’d just finished another batch of LSO’s (Little Stinking Olives) and some other mid-sized nymphs and instead of all those empty compartments staring back at me, I had something visible in the flybox.

With wind-induced right angles, I would’ve been pleased with a tailing loop, it was classic “chuck and duck” weather, where the fly has about a fifty percent chance of hooking you as hitting the water.

We hiked down river to the stretch we’d sampled last week, a long slow bend that had carved the far bank, leaving an overhanging bank with enough height to break the wind slightly, although it was still difficult casting.

Hearing the crack of fly impacting fishing vest, I glanced at older brother’s hydration pack expecting to see a leak; it’s another layer of armor between sharp hook and tender flesh, a feature I hadn’t anticipated – but there’s some comfort in knowing you’ve got extra layers of protection.

A well munched crayfish, barfed up by a greedy smallmouth We started hitting Bass almost immediately, both of us are flinging LSO’s hoping we’re not the next victim, there’s a nice boil where my fly landed and I’ve got a smallmouth on – an 11″ fish that wished he was somewhere’s else.

I get him up close and reach down and he “yaks” a big reddish object out of his gob. I pull my crayfish out of his jaw and release the fish, lean down to inspect what he barfed up, and it’s what’s left of a real crayfish.

I’d love to think I’d “Cloned the Crawdad” – but it could be just an aggressive, greedy, fish with eyes as big as his stomach..