Author Archives: KBarton10

If it’s a Cadillac, then we’re fishing Blue Ribbon chemicals

I thought I was on to something but all I’ve proven is that I’m a slow learner. Fiddling with textures and colors is fine, but revealing that brownline fish have an unnatural obsession with “oil slick” colored glass beads – is about as revolutionary as Mr. Wonderbread eating a Twinkie.

Manhattan_Leech_victim Ernie Schweibert could have told me in an instant; “Match the Hatch” is based on representing common insects with flies – to lull fish into eating.

Folded into the brown water paradigm, I’m looking at abandoning natural insects and attractors patterns in favor of the common food groups available to fish in the stink water.

Kicking over rocks and straining the result is normal entomology, which has proven antiquated and useless, what’s needed is to regroup and see the bigger picture.

Chrome and rust dominate the watershed, and I’m leaning on at least one of the essential food groups while pondering. It also explains the fascination with “oil slick” flies; like the Arizona, most of the best “holding water” was driven into the creek, and has been leaking for years.

Agricultural chemicals and methyl Mercury are more of an aura than a food group, it’s a basting agent like Soy sauce or Olive oil. I can easily counter with pure DEET, call it brownline dipping sauce.

Further investigation is warranted, as we’re thinking outside the streambed – the source of most of the crap we’re wading through …

The feathers are strictly a “don’t ask, don’t tell” – suffice it to say the effluent has grown long legs on our pigeons. It’s a significant faux pas to wear four white feathers, that’ll identify you as a trout fisherman.

Hell yes, we can build a better one, maybe a couple dozen flavors

You design it, but don't shoot the messenger I’ve mentioned the topic before, but am reminded anew by today’s story on the FDA’s genetically modified animal approval process.

A great deal of emphasis has been placed on the fly fishing “boutique” experience, complete with ponderous grain fed trout lolling in hygienic currents – for rich patrons and their entourage. It’s been folded into the sport, compliments of the “grip and grin” photo – where “slabs” are awe inspiring, despite being fed Fruit Loops by the shovel full – with a leavening of Human Growth Hormone as chaser…

There’s only a couple million of us – but that’s enough to have Sage or Orvis commission the “perfect trout” – grows four times faster than normal, eats sewage without ill effects, and can reproduce in a rain puddle without stress.

Declining water quality and the loss of critical watershed to development could be countered with genetics – although we’d fist fight over whether to put an asterisk next to any IGFA record book.

We could switch genetics as often as fashion, introducing Brown Trout capable of 60 MPH speeds underwater, prefers Mud Snails to Mayflies, and glows in the dark – allowing all the conundrums of fishing to be laid bare.

In a neighboring watershed we could feature Eastern Brook Trout with teeth as big as sharks, whose impoundments are fenced with Concertina wire – and all the guides carry sidearms … adding risk and fear, something we’ve never had before.

Throw some original DNA in a freezer so’s we could always return to the “Old Timey” flavor, and toss a bunch of dissimilar stem cells in a blender to see what else we could catch…

You know it’s coming, the consumer angle will be first due to it’s broader market, but the boutique experience will surface in some indoor cement pond in lower Manhattan, featuring piped chamber music, Bling water, and complimentary Sushi.

River frontage in the crap water is still cheap – you may want to think outside the streambed …

Their water is icy and their gals are chaste

I had my three days of Grace, wherein we tiptoed through the clean water, drank coffee with our pinkie extended, showered regular, and didn’t wipe our nose on our sleeve.

It wasn’t enough to weaken us measurably – complying with all those societal norms, but once our feet hit the brown water, we were back to Schlock and Chaw, throwing off the yolk of the Oppressor.

We’re in the Jungle – eating rat meat, growing stronger ..

I missed the party; Popov Vodka, Basic Cigarettes, and some lass minus all her clothes – it’s one of the tribulations of fishing brown water – all them young impressionable dames throwing up themselves at portly, balding fly fishermen.

Blueliners don’t enjoy such luxury as their water is icy and their gals is chaste.

I discarded the Marquis of Queensbury rulebook on my arrival, none of this dry-fly-upstream, respect your fellow angler stuff, when last here we’d discovered the Little Stinking Olive – and the watershed was recoiling in terror. 

Verify and refine – the pattern is absolute death on Smallmouth, and is typical of fly fishing; you start out looking for a Carp fly and wind up with something Bass can’t resist.

The creek is on the mend and the water has risen about six inches, mighty welcome to get some flow back, but it means the fish will be repositioning themselves and I’ll have to find them again.

I’d managed to tie four of these Crayfish patterns – without modification other than more lead, boosting the “keel” to 15 turns of 1 Amp fuse wire – looking to increase the sinkrate enough to be effective in 4 feet of water.

Old Nondescript’s Hole beckoned as I trudged past – and I stopped to take the maiden pull off my Hydration Pack, finding it tasting like someone had strained water through Pampers. Yecch. It was cold and wet – and not much else you could say in polite company. Waist deep in heavy metal and selenium, and suckling off Poly-Vinyl Chloride.

I’m a poster child for industrial solvents, likely to earn a brass plaque over some Porta-Potty …

 

The first fish was four inches, he’d clamped down on the fly and tangled up with the Boa fiber – the next was eight inches, the third cast yielded the above pound-and-a-half fish, and the fourth cast broke off clean in the mouth of Old Nondescript hisself..

… either that or a relative, a swirl the size of a bath-tub and he catches me using 5X. Mea Culpa.

The Togen Scud hooks work fabulous – weighted at the crest of the bend to flop the hook over so the fly rides point-up, avoiding the algae and bramble of the bottom.

This weekend I’ll fiddle with alternate colors – as the Mallard is no longer made – and I’ve split what I found with my Brownline brethren at Roughfisherman’s Journal. It’s a weighty responsibility, as it appears the complete eradication of Smallmouth Bass is within reason, and I don’t want the South to rise again in anger..

Them fellows take their bass seriously, and guns is always close to hand.

On rare occasion we adopt Blueliner ritual without modification

I have to blame Tamanawis for my dilemma. I keep reading Mike’s Scottish fly fishing stories featuring grey skies, fish, and a variety of single malts. Their names sound harsh, with multiple “och” and “agh” syllables – and only a Scotsman can pronounce them so they sound buttery and delightful. 

My hydration pack debuts tomorrow, and while water sounds good – a quart of 15 year old Dalwhinnie sounds a hell of a lot better.

Nope, I’m not suddenly putting on airs – it’s the only bottle of good hooch my older bro hasn’t found and drankled yet, it’s tiring to check the liquor cabinet and finding my choice of aged Sterno or dusty Vanilla extract …

Besides ships are christened, and while new that plasticine bladder has to be unsanitary – requiring a liberal dose of medicinal spirits. At least that’s what I’ll claim when I wake up.

I saw a triple-filtered water bottle with handy squeeze action this weekend, used with the comment, “… it has an Iodine filter, kinda tastes like Scotch.” While it may filter living stuff down to 3 microns – the heavy metals and Metam Sodium, coupled with every other farm chemical has me a bit skeptical.

Tastes like Scotch has merit, and there’s less risk in insisting my new water system tastes like good scotch instead, no?

Slàinte mhòr agad!

You look quickly for a wide spot and hold the rod behind you

Trains are part of the fabric of the Upper Sacramento, a mixture of positive and negative that keeps you mindful of their presence and noise.

I’m sure locals have a more realistic vantage, having endured the extinction of the river in the Cantara Loop derailment many years ago.

I remember resenting their intrusion on my initial visit, but enjoy the spectacle in the years since then.

It’s an odd mixture of gaily “tagged” boxcars, horrendous vibration, deafening noise, and the wail of the horn; drowning your peaceful reverie in a cacophony of industry. It’s so out of place as to startle you no matter how often you witnessed their passing.

The watershed is a steep notch bisecting mountainous terrain where movement is never simple. Deep pocket water forces you onto the slope to move around boulders, and felt soles don’t offer much purchase. The level grade of the railroad tracks follow the river throughout, offering easy navigation and the vantage of elevation to scan likely water.

But you have to keep an eye on your surroundings, as blind corners can vomit a million tons of steel at a moment’s notice.

Squealing metal takes on an eerie component in the quiet of evening, with the draws and canyons alternately baffling and enhancing sound. Tromping the tracks back to the car after a full day of fishing and a sudden squeal lends wings to tired feet – especially when there’s so little clearance between you and all that freight.

Especially if you’re on the outside of the turn – in the river, you can’t help but expect some tank car to come over the lip and head for the streambed.

I was watching all those tank cars and remembering the Metam Sodium spill – wondering how much “soil fumigant” enters the Little Stinking on a daily basis, and how only the PPM (parts per million) makes one a stream enhancement and the other a stream killer. 2005 statistics suggest it is #5 in the list of chemicals applied to Yolo County, likely all 83,000 pounds used came through this same narrow canyon.

I still like trains – but now “eat a tomato, kill a trout” is running through my head – and maybe Vegans are bad for the environment …

I figure most of the caddis are addle-pated from the vibration of train traffic. Nothing like getting bounced around inside a stone casing to make an “October Caddis” emerge in November instead.

Fishing was good, but dinner was better

August and early September are the “boxing” months, not enough bug activity to make any imitation conclusive – and what little is available are the “bar fly” insects, out just before closing time hoping to hook up with something of loose morals and lower standards.

It’s the cause of much head scratching and contemplation, where you dig into the deepest recesses of your fly box for experimentals, bright ideas, and the ugly duckling – something you conceived out of dim light, feather duff, and a hunch.

Boxing makes me think “stick and move” – covering a lot of water and fly patterns hoping something proves consistent. It’s low water and aggressive wading – where a misstep is part calamity and part refreshing – as you’ll dry as quickly as you dampen.

I think SMJ and I pulled out all the stops this weekend – hitting upper, middle, and lower river, and poring through countless flies and pounding the heavy water – fearing little other than a misstep and “the other guy’s” camera..

Friday my fish were on dry flies, Saturday it was all nymphs and Sunday was a blank, neither style proving effective. There was no consensus, as both Joe and I caught fish on a large array of bugs; little Black AP nymphs and black midges for the lower river, Creamy-Orange Parachutes in the middle river, Caddis Variant’s and Brownline Czech-style caddis for the Upper river.

Joe opted for a couple flavors of rubberlegged “stonefly” nymphs, midges, and landed his largest fish on the Brownline Manhattan Leech. We couldn’t agree on much other than dinner was overdue, cigars are good, two splitshot minimum, and that pillow was going to feel really good tonight…

This will galvinate the crowds shortly It’s too early for the fall reawakening, mornings are starting to chill a bit, but that burns off much too quickly. October Caddis always seems to energize the crowds – and there were plenty of the underwater flavor in evidence.

Call it the “Trout Underground Influence” – but the fishing rapidly took second fiddle to SMJ’s sumptuous dinners.

The Upper Sacramento drainage, like most backwoods venues, offers its heroes a choice between cold pizza and velvet-Elvis hamburgers. The first course is a napkin and the last is the bill, with charred bovine somewhere betwixt the two.

SMJ's dinners were multi-course gutbusters

SMJ’s dinners were multi-course gutbusters, pre-cooked for minimal effort – and accompanied by the prerequisite “hearty red” served in plastic ice cream cups. Coupled with the daytime exertion, it was an effort not to fall asleep during the cigars and brandy chaser.

Us “Old Guys” watch our priorities change – where cold ground and cold cuts morph into creature comforts and warm soup.

As Poppa says, “.. any damn fool can be uncomfortable..”

Me and Joe went fishing – a forced introduction to Organo-Radiant cookery

I was hoping for some portly fellow, about 40 pounds past lean, maybe a decade older than me – and with eyesight that died about 4:30 in the afternoon, unable to tie on anything other than a hot toddy.

That way I could dance about striking heroic poses while rescuing him from the fast water, show the same fish six or seven times (claiming they was different), and validate the theory Internet writers are all lean, hard, supermen – able to leap an algae covered boulder in a single bound.

That was my fantasy, anyways…

Instead, I’m staring at some lean predatory fellow in the pre-dawn darkness, he’s got twice as many rods as me, is in better shape, and is still breathing through his nose after loading the truck.

I figure I can shake him in the first riffle, using my superior flab mass to hold bottom while he floats helplessly past, that didn’t work, and as I’m straining to sheath my hindquarters in neoprene, he’s already finished the first two riffles, and patiently waiting for me to catch up.

 

Pure hardcore, the kind of angler where hatches are a luxury, the raw heat of midday is countered with a second split shot, and is waste deep in fast water while the crowd roars out of the parking lot to the cold bosom of air conditioning and heroic storytelling.

Singlebarbed reader San Mateo Joe (SMJ) and I brought the Brownline fervor to the blue water this weekend, leaving cleat marks on rocks, brush, and bear scat with equal aplomb; fishing was difficult with few hatches and little activity, but we were able to counter by covering a lot of water – finding the occasional unwary fish in the areas less traveled.

Down and dirty fishing, perched precariously midcurrent slinging nymphs and shot – “high-sticking” pockets with promise, dawn till dusk with scavenged Blackberries and creek water to hold us between gourmet meals – featuring SMJ’s “organo-Radiant” cookery.

I forgot the fishing after Joe debuted the evening meal, spending the rest of the weekend following him around asking, “..is it lunchtime yet?”

It’s “Organo-Radiant” cookery, eco-friendly and “double green” – bake the lunch in a car interior for seven hours and enjoy cheese melted to perfection, water warmed to near boiling, and Cadbury chocolate reconstituted into a semi-solid by stomping it into the cold creek bottom.

Double Green, compliments of Mayonnaise Then you turn green again when you realize there was mayonnaise on that sumbitch.

Pure heaven after leaning into fast water for most of the day. Precious life-renewing calories that let you shrug off the heat and exertion and settle scores with all the fish you missed earlier.

We made the pilgrimage to visit Darth Chandler and inquire as to the fishing – but he confessed the Maine/Montana exotic venue was more to his liking, and mentioned the astrologist and shaman in nearby Mount Shasta was a wealth of information on local conditions.

He did offer up Wally the Wonderdog as a guide, but only if we dropped him at the masseuse upon our return.

The shaman was a bust, requiring “the beating heart of an eagle, and the adipose fin of those you seek” – and the astrologist was ill mannered, “.. it’s a full moon, dummy – you no catch crap.”

Joe and I gutted it out old school, and did just fine. Details to follow.

Cocoa Channel – Consumer Alert

An astute Singlebarbed reader checks in with this consumer warning:

“I saw your piece on the Chanel Rod, and it was most fortunate, as I was approached on Market Street by a shady vendor, selling ‘Cocoa Channel’ outfits – billed as Brownline couture.”

“I immediately went ‘Fist City’ on the perpetrator, confiscated the tackle, and ran like hell.”

That’s the public spirit I like to see, hardy pioneer resolve – no issue too big, no threat too intimidating that you can’t settle with a good hemp rope and an old oak tree.

Then again, the local constabulary likely doesn’t recognize our jurisdiction, what with “Roving Editor of Law Enforcement and Swift Justice” being out of fashion of late …

SMJ included photographs of the illicit goods – after wiping off most of the blood : 

Uh, wait a minute...

 Cocoa Channel Fly Box and flies …

... SMJ, I think there's been a mistake ..

Cocoa Channel Couture Reel case and matching reel

... That's the real thing!

 … Joe, that’s the real article, only the “Brownliner Limited Edition” came with the brown carrying case, whose serial number is the expiration date on the bleu cheese carton.

If it looks like Christmas outside and someone knocks on your door … don’t answer it …

Wolves identified as root cause of West Coast Salmon decline

Part Hollywood and part factual The Kern County Water agencies refiled their lawsuit against the California Department of Fish and Game over the Striped Bass depredation of Delta Smelt, and coupled with recent findings that wolves prefer salmon over deer, can another suit be far behind?

“Salmon is a safe resource in contrast to deer that could kick back and break your ribs or skull – which happens quite often with wolves. The fish is highly nutritious. Salmon offers a bit more protein but the real bonus is that it offers more fat. It has four times more calories bite for bite than deer.

We’re a silly and litigious bunch and anyone that filed the former writ and kept a straight face, should have no problem suing Idaho, Montana, and Canada.

Election year logic is always part Hollywood and part factual, I see the complaint as follows:

Since we haven’t yet agreed on the whole “human versus embryo” issue, it’s fair to say that the water evaporating off the rivers of California makes up storm clouds that rain on Idaho and Montana…

OK, sometimes they do that ..

Some innocent salmon Stem Cell in the throes of mitosis has to be sucked up in the water going skyward, what with all the estrogen and birth control residue saturating the watershed, feminizing everything – might spur a she-male to unleash something early.

As both Idaho and Montana, have propagated both wolves and habitat, wolves preferring salmon over every other furry critter – and the zygote being too small to see, it’s likely they kilt several dozen just by walking around – the rest they ate.

Still with me?

So the decline in Pacific Salmon is the wolves fault.

Wolves lack tangible assets, so we’ll sue snot out of anyone that every threw the mangy SOB a cookie…

She gave you that stern look and you put the candy bar back on the shelf

It’s not much of a glance – but it’s the best we’ve been offered to date. The fabled Chanel flyrod, priced at a paltry $18,000 dollars – is carbon fibre, and comes with matching reel and a box of flies.

Hell, that’s enough for half of you to ask Mommy can you … She’ll say no, and rightly so – everytime she’s mentioned Chanel to you – you rolled your eyes and forbade everything.

 

The case bears the all important logo, and a canny fellow would take a bandsaw betwixt the flaps, creating two purses – one for the missus, and one to auction off on eBay, defraying the cost of your purchase.

The fly box, with fetching chain adornment, will match nicely with the debutante-micro-dog crowd – all they ever carry is Poppa’s credit card and a condom…

 

We never use this stuff anyways, and likely the reel case would be a dramatic gift to Grandma – as a couture denture holder. A canny lad could come out ahead on the purchase – if good feeling has a dollar value.

I confess to being disappointed, all I can see is a synthetic grip, a full metal reel seat, a couple bugs in a box – and some nameless reel that doesn’t appear to be anything special.

As the real Coco Chanel was an ardent angler – I half expected them to come up with some form of tribute with both style and function. Instead, we get a warranty invalidated if the rod gets damp.

Technorati Tags: , , ,