Author Archives: KBarton10

Fly Fishermen, there’s one born every minute

It should come as no surprise that despite my antisocial behavior – my fondness for bathroom humor, my shortcomings of hygiene and as an angler, I am a middle manager of little distinction.

While my peers are hiring sub-20 year olds that giggle a lot and show acres of leg, I’m the curmudgeonly sort that violates all the important federal statutes on hiring and discrimination by selecting anglers only …

…

Question 7) List the fourteen steps of the Software Development Lifecycle in alphabetical order, backwards and in Klingon, or the classic dressing for an Ausable Wulff.

Question 8) Where do you see yourself in five years, and if there are big fish there, would you tell me?

…

Mostly because world dominance starts with a steady job, and the only employees instinctively punctual are fishermen.

… because you don’t tell a fellow you’ll pick him up on some darkened street corner at 0530 and arrive late …

As with all my new hires there’s that rough patch where we get from angler to f-l-y  f-i-s-h-e-r-m-a-n. Not because I’m some kind of evangelical prick – so much as we can communicate fully. Both of us can use the same language, one of naked greed and accumulation.

So I’m delivering The Sermon, “… you won’t mind that rods cost a thousand dollars and waders are eight hundred … “ – when I’m brutally interrupted by a look of outright scorn and that 80’s standby, “…whatchoo talking bout, Willis!”

I realize that it’s not simply sticker shock, my new pal has already been introduced to the snooty form of fly fishing and been sorely used. Ascots, smoking jackets, and someone that insisted all other forms of fishing were unworthy.

To overcome this additional fear I’ll need to adopt that extra-soothing quality in my voice – that silky tone that has you checking your wallet and hindquarters for fear someone has his hand there …

“ … and flies are about the same as top-water plugs or swim baits, and all the really good bass fodder like Scented Flame-tailed Purple worms with the Gelatinous sparkly stuff have a fly fishing equivalent …”

And as my newfound pal is lulled into thoughts of warmth and safety, he mentions that along with his new Bass kayak he’s bought, he  just plunked down fifty bucks for an airbrushed, broken-back rainbow trout plug that he hasn’t dared try because he’s scared he might snag something and lose it …

Black_Dog_baits

Which throws me into a fit of cost-concious outrage, “Fifty Bucks, FIFTY BUCKS? forasinglefugginbassPLUG? Fifty gotdamned dollars for six ounces of balsa and a few Korean trebles?, OhMyFugginGawd, that’s simply insane – does your wife know about that (and does she have a sister that’s equally gullible?)…”

Which simply proves any perceived gulf between types of fishermen is utter BS, there’s one of us born every minute.

The dreaded simple housekeeping post

Simple housekeeping post, nothing to shrink away from …

Item 1: Dry Fly Samples: I sent out 35 samples of dry fly dubbing to anyone who had the request to me before Sunday. As rendering the stuff into final form takes a bit of time, and I enclosed at least three colors for each of you, I had to burn weekend daylight to get it all enroute.

I have a second batch going out this weekend, for those requesting it since last Sunday. You’ll likely be getting it early next week, so don’t despair – Singlebarbed loves you (not!), tuck in that lower lip …

Item 2: Free Fly Tying class scissors for Clubs: I have another batch of cosmetic defect SixthFinger scissors that are free to any casting club that asks. I’ll include 12 sets (mixed sizes and metals) for each request to those folks that ask on behalf of their fly tying program. Emails to me (address on the “about” page at top), first come first serve. (looks like about 4-5 classes worth available).

Item 3: More travel awaits: Not content to send me to all the Northern counties of California, now I’m touring all the southern ones to boot. Posting will be affected, so you’ll have to amuse yourself with something else for a bit.

The only real difference is my refusal to shower when in the South state. It’s the knowledge that I’m wasting precious Northern California snowmelt that prevents me from using anything damper than a Towelette.

Guess I won’t get invited back – and I’m okay with that mostly …

Remember, everytime you drink POM Wonderful a Kitten dies

kitten4 I once prided myself on my understanding of Science, but this new stuff is a slow learn.

I’m tempted to look at your exam and copy your answers, as I can’t seem to grasp some of these longwinded connections …

The Greatest Estuary the world has ever known is dying, with the Delta Smelt simply a hood ornament representative of the larger ecosystem. Scientists suggest we’re pulling too much freshwater out and pumping it south, so Mssr. Resnick (owner of all the Kern River Water Bank) and his spouse (owner of POM Wonderful) call in a chit from Senator Feinstein to overturn that scientific evidence …

… then they mount a smear campaign to blame the Striped Bass as the root evil of the Delta – claiming even bass boats and small children are on their diet.

Better still, California Department of Fish & Game decides (or has it decided for them) that the bullshit press paid for by Mssr. Resnick is one of a lot of possible stressors of the aforementioned fragile drainage, and as we need to deal with ALL of those stressors equally (some being more equal than others) we should boost the bag limit on the invasive Striped Bass (itself in decline) in order to restore balance to the San Francisco Delta.

Stripers being similar to Al Qaeda operatives, faceless, non-voting, and therefore the root of all wickedness.

For February, the California Fish & Game is holding public comment on the below changes;

The basic proposed changes are as follows:

  • Raising the daily bag limit for striped bass from two to six fish.
  • Raising the possession limit for striped bass from two to 12 fish.
  • Lowering the minimum size for striped bass from 18 to 12 inches.
  • Establishing a “hot spot” for striped bass fishing at Clifton Court Forebay and specified adjacent waterways at which the daily bag limit will be 20 fish, the possession limit will be 40 fish and there will be no size limit. Anglers fishing at the hot spot would be required to fill out a report card and deposit it in an iron ranger or similar receptacle.
  • Changes to the sport fishing regulations for the Carmel, Pajaro and Salinas Rivers to allow harvest of striped bass when the fishery would otherwise be closed.

I realize that while many might shake their head at this latest outcome, this darkest of hours, it merely represents the tip of the iceberg of what’s coming.

Jobs, baby – and damn the environmental consequences. It doesn’t matter that our youth was spent placing Vibert boxes in streambed cobble, picking up litter and releasing our catch, the excesses of our middle age undid all the good we accomplished – despite cotton bell bottoms and Earth shoes.

Unfettered consumerism coupled with mortgage debt, the Great White Shark of society.

… suggesting it’s no longer appropriate for me to lug 2-stroke oil bottles and gallons of anti-freeze out of the brown water … better  I empty them into the creek to give my foe a “soldier’s death”, worthy of their tenacity and honor.

Where I was once conscious of the ecology and stepped onto the bank to make water, now I’ll simply “drop-trou“ in mid current and let fly.

The choices for us being simple. Either we aid fish evolution so it can swim up sewer pipes to inhale one or both of your ass cheeks in a single grab, or it dies a horrible death – screaming for its mommy.

… and just as suddenly we’re arm in arm with those we fear most?

Congress can’t agree on trimming a nickel from the federal budget, nor can they bring themselves to address any meaningful social issues, certainly not in a timely manner – but they’re determined to blow hell out of the Internet.

They must’ve assumed that lacking a face or political affiliation meant the Internet is fair game, yet in the face of recent public backlash, they’ve had to shelve SOPA and PIPA, the legislation meant to placate the RIAA, Hollywood, and every other media entity struggling with Internet-based change.

Senator Bob Corker (R-TEN) is proposing they do away with our beloved tax free online shopping, by introducing the Marketplace Fairness Act (S-1832) which will require any vendor whose sales are in excess of $500,000 to collect the taxes owed the state where the sale originated.

Meaning, I’ll be required to pay California sales tax at any and all “large” retailers.

SMALL SELLER EXCEPTION.—A State shall be
authorized to require a remote seller, or a single or consolidated provider acting on behalf of a remote seller, to collect sales or use tax under this Act if the remote seller has gross annual receipts in total remote sales in the United States in the preceding calendar year exceeding $500,000.

While this doesn’t seem horribly one-sided, Congress sure seems bent on eliminating any tiny perk us 99%’ers enjoy – and we’re supposed to agree with their vision under the guise of something heartwarming like “fairness.”

“Fairness” would be sending all those mortgage company execs to jail, or all the bank CEO’s, as most committed securities fraud by lying about the health of their institution while the Fed covered their hidden shortfall with our taxes. Fairness might even mean ensuring Senators and Congressmen go to jail for insider trading as I would, or giving me less jail time for downloading a pirated Michael Jackson song than you gave the Doctor that killed him …

In recent history, fairness is just bullshit word meaning “everybody but me” and doesn’t quite mean what it once did.

I’m sure the few large establishments our tiny industry has spawned will not welcome the requirements and paperwork, but it should put the “Big Box” retail names in a bit of a housekeeping disadvantage, compared to the smaller local shop.

… and it will spur some employment, given that each larger entity will have to increase the front office staff to handle the 8000 different tax rates and the quarterly filing of reams of triplicate paperwork owed each of those municipalities.

In these harsh economic times, and with our quaint little hobby still flirting with the thousand dollar fly rod, I can’t see it as a means to persuade me to  buy this year or even next. The nature of the Internet makes Europe and Asia just a UPS truck distant, and with the Euro plummeting earthward, I have a compelling argument for me to move more of my angling transactions offshore.

There is a vibrant line of fly fishing products outside the US and choices are surprisingly familiar; Rise and Echo rods are Korean or Chinese, Hardy & Greys, Loop, Mustad-Tiemco and the rest of the hook industry is offshore, Airflo lines and scads of other fly shop standbys are of non-US origin.

While understanding the intent of the legislation and acknowledging the idea was technically sound, my dim view of all this stems from the chaos that is the federal and state budgets – and how both may boost our tax rates to cover shortfalls or simply to service the national debt. Most states are already arguing over many tax increases as well as cuts in existing services to paper over the loss of property taxes, and the holes in their finances that’ll result once the federal government trims its spending.

Once all the dust settles many states could be facing a sales tax of 10% to 12%, and with the world vying for hard currency to lessen the blow to their respective economies, the dispossessed little guys may come to realize the Internet contains more than the US, just as I did.

“Our business and the sport of fly fishing depend on healthy specialty fly shops. They are critical to growth in revenue and jobs,” said K.C. Walsh, President of Simms. “This legislation will close a critical loophole that has given an unfair advantage to online retailers.”

-via Angling International, February 2012 (Issue 49)

On the surface the proposition is a noble one, but I can no longer trust my elected officials to have my best interest at heart, and therefore I trust nothing spawned of them at face value.

I kept faith with the dictionary’s version of “fairness” – continuing to pay my mortgage payments regardless of the value of my home, continuing to pay state and federal taxes no matter which Fortune 500 company was bailed out – and at no time did I succumb to the neo-fairness as espoused “within the Beltway” and the aging demigods that haunt those marble corridors.

With the fly fishing industry poised to follow Redington and go direct to the consumer, it’s certain that all the paperwork and staff needed to accommodate this new legislation is liable to cool their ardor somewhat.

Which may be why Simms joined with Amazon.com and Walmart as being in favor of the legislation. I find those entities strange bedfellows to cozy with given they’re the self-same retail giants we’re trying to keep from swallowing the local shops …

All municipalities woo the “Bricks and Mortar” companies to locate stores within their districts. Deal sweeteners like property tax forgiveness and other waivers can be agreed upon to convince retailers to erect stores and hire locally. Online vendors get no such breaks, yet will have to pay the same taxes as if they did.

Some pundits are convinced it’s the springboard for a national sales tax, others suggest it’s anything but fair, and the rest suggest Amazon and its ilk will cash in big …

I lack the answer, and outside of old fashioned suspicions will be the first to admit a lack of credibility. We’ve seen this so many times and been promised it was other than a wolf in sheep’s clothing, that I doubt the “enemy” would be in such a rush to back the bill if the legislation actually levels the playing field.

Wherein we recant the “you can’t have none” taunt, and admit to most of the obvious shortcomings

One of the horrors of being thoroughly enamored of a hobby is the fits of giddy that result when something attempted actually lives up to the original idea, versus flaming out midway through the development process.

My ambition was to develop a dubbing that mimicked the superfine aquatic mammal fur we’ve reserved for dry flies, yet was cheap and plentiful, took dyes well, was easy to mix and blend, and could replace the increasingly costly fur bearers like mink and otter.

Synthetics have become dominant in many areas of fly tying, yet have never lasted long in the dry fly space. Most are borrowed from aerospace or the carpet industry and have fibers too coarse for tiny fly bodies.

The fly tying market is tiny relative to carpets, which is why we’ve always adapted other items versus entreating DuPont or 3M to make something to fill the void. We dutifully salvage what looks promising, but most fibers made for upholstery, yarn, or car interiors, are useful for nymphs and streamers, not for gossamer or tiny.

Periodically some neo-prophet makes a wild claim that vaults a product into the limelight, like polypropylene, but nothing made by Man has ever lasted long enough to dominate muskrat or beaver, or any of Mother Nature’s aquatic fur bearers.

dry_dubbing

Dry fly bodies need extra fine materials that allow the body to be dubbed thinly to avoid absorbing too much water. Tiny amounts of fur can be air dried with a couple of false casts – too much fur is a sodden lump that we curse with every ungraceful landing.

With all the yarns and oddities I’ve pawed through over the last decade I managed to find a material heretofore unknown in the fly tying lexicon, whose fibers rival the thin filaments of aquatic mammals, absorbs dyes like a Black Hole, and is cheap as dirt – other than requiring a great deal of my labor to render it from its found form to dubbing.

Here’s the best part … the damn stuff floats as it’s naturally buoyant, something the aquatic fur bearers can only gnash teeth over …

Queue giddy.

As a means of apology for the excesses of yesterday’s post, if you email me your mailing address I’ll toss a couple of useful colors into an envelope allowing you to fiddle with it, after which you can call me an outright lying SOB, so thoroughly wrapped up in his own magnificence as to have lost sight with reality.

I will not use these addresses for any other purpose. unless you say you don’t like the material – then I’ll sign you up for every porn site containing pygmies and grape Jell-O …

I have about four pounds of test colors, most being initial attempts at the Big Three; olive, pale olive, and gray. I have plenty of rust, some browns, a bit of Trout Underground Scarlet (which has been reserved by his Bleeding Lordship), and plenty of PMD look-a-likes.

I don’t mind sharing, and wouldn’t mind a bit of feedback either.

When I get to the process of picking final colors I will engage readers that want to take part in that process, just as I did with the Free Range Nymph products.

My mailing address is on the “About” link at the top of the page. I don’t ever dare type it in because of all the page crawling spiders that harvest email addresses for spammers.

You shouldn’t have to pay for poor quality control, take the time to visually inspect any fancy fly tying hook purchase

Tying these fuzzballs reminded me of all the notes on competition hooks and their efficacy I’ve been scribbling over the last couple of seasons. I find myself having so many defective hooks of late, and at thirty-five cents a hook I keep trying to make up for poor quality control and fix them with tying thread, simply to get a bit of service before cursing, snapping the thread, and hurling them into my waste can.

Over the last three years, I’ve accumulating a couple thousand Knapeks, Grips, Dohiku, Skalka, and Hanak’s – and the common thread among all of these seems to be how many poorly wired eyes exist in the small dry fly sizes.

I switched over a couple seasons ago because most of these newer manufacturers use the Redditch standard versus the Mustad/Tiemco extra-long shank variant.  Much of the early angler commentary I had read mentioned quality control and too-soft wire, but at the time was directed at the Czech nymph styles, which by nature are fast sinking, rock pounding, heavy abuse flies.

While I’ve had no wire issues over the last couple of seasons with nymph, Czech nymph, streamer, and dry fly hooks, big problems exist for nearly all the makers of small dry fly hooks.

Small being size #16 and below, which isn’t all that small …

Knapek has been the most egregious offender, and despite multiple purchases over the last three years, show little change in their quality control. Many of the 25 packs of dry fly hooks #16 or smaller have 8 or 9 hooks with incompletely closed eyes.

… suggesting that for each $6.50 spent on the hooks, $2 or more is wasted.

Low Profile Midge

This is one of the Low Profile Midge prototypes I’ve been fishing last month, using a Knapek #18 dry fly hook. You can actually see the butt end of the incompletely closed eye and how much thread it took to get some use out of the dang hook.

For those interested in trying these hooks I have no issues with the larger sizes and styles in all flavors and models. The larger hooks (#16 and above) have far fewer eye defects, but I would also recommend a visual inspection of the container contents.

Most of these are sold in transparent packages. Take the time to shake the hooks onto the bottom of the container so you can visually inspect the eyes. Purchase those boxes that contain the fewest visible defects.

The fly above is something I’ve been refining for the last couple of months. In Black, I used it as a Trico spinner with mind-numbing success rates on local coarse fish.

Underneath the hackle is a double shellback of moose fibers. When married with a dab of slightly undersized hackle you get a low profile, high floatation, midge-spinner shape.

Note the slim profile of the body, how the dubbed shank is almost the same diameter as the bare hook. This is my Free Range Dry Fly dubbing, natural floatation combined with fibers so fine as to make a fly tyer drop to both knees and weep aloud …

No, you can’t have any … yet.

More on the hooks and their qualities after this season …

There was no badge for lippy kids bent on time wasting or sloth

A brief article in some Fishing Wire spam caught my eye and I thought to pass on the tidbit for any proud father whose child might be planning on achieving their Fly Fishing Scout badge.

A cursory eyeball of the exam suggests fewer than half of the anglers I know would pass it, given there’s no section devoted to beer drinking or how to tell falsehoods. “Proud Papa” might have to bone up on some topics ancillary to fishing, and mighty damn quick …flyfish_safety

Then again, some canny lawyer’s son might have a thing or two to say that might update the exercise, but with a couple grizzled scout leaders staring me down, I’d cave and opt for the expected answer myself.

As you may have guessed, my struggles with authority as a young lad precluded my taking part.

Women are fine, girls never, and pals maybe

I’ve warned you plenty of times – yet still I’m the recipient of your extended digit and pronounced raspberry. The Pied Piper of Taut Flesh keeps you thinking you can mix pleasure and sacred avocation, yet us old guys know better – we tried it and perfection can’t be improved on ..

Large fish sipping naturals, a light breeze rustling aspen leaves, the burble of cold water over slick rock, and the gasp of pent up carbonation released in a rush …

… or in the case of us oldsters … never mind.

Girls don’t mix with fly fishing. Women might – but that tired old cliché of sub-twenty year olds roasting bottom on the sandy borders of some mountain freshet, eager to share a meaningful tryst with old guys that haven’t showered all weekend, that is a complete falsehood.

Same as the notion that you don’t need little blue pills for your … um …indigestion.

Slow learner?

Bachelor Episode

– via US Magazine

Click the picture above to watch all that flesh and giggling tautness sneer at one another, complain constantly, backbite-fu, and generally piss all over our beloved sport and their Bachelor host (when he can’t hear) …

Remember, I watched it for scientific reasons, you’re the one with the penchant for complete (gag) trash.

Take that Mister “We’ll just add a hatchery”

There are so many absolutes, so many unequivocating terms in the below as to be downright scary:

A new study has revealed that the impact of a hatchery environment on steelhead trout is so profound that in just one generation genetic traits are developed that cost fish the natural ability to be able to survive in the wild.

Nineteen years of research on the Hood River in Oregon will have both scientists and anglers in an uproar once it’s common knowledge that we’ve been unknowingly selecting for big sea-run trout that like concrete ditches and prefer the taste of dried kibble …

… and will we be able to look that thousand dollar spey rod festooned with black nickle and dripping acres of rare and exotic dander, without feeling less the Man and so very shortchanged … perhaps dirty even?

We’ve known for some time that hatchery-born fish are less successful at survival and reproduction in the wild,” said Michael Blouin, a professor of zoology at Oregon State University. “However, until now, it wasn’t clear why. What this study shows is that intense evolutionary pressures in the hatchery rapidly select for fish that excel there, at the expense of their reproductive success in the wild.

-via Worldfishing & Aquaculture

In short we’ve been catching the social moths, the trollops, and the used car salesmen of the steelhead world.

What’s worse is the potty mouth diet we’ve been catering to … These being the Twinkie eaters, the migrating fish that dine at fish ladders and Chinese takeout rather than forage for a meal, and all those wonderful and intricate patterns that have proven so successful have been a colorful representation of the hatchery ditch followed by a shovel full of desiccated dog chow.

We sure showed them, opposing thumb and big frontal lobe really proving the difference this time.

I’m going back to salmon roe goober and florescent marshmallows, food befitting some fat-bottomed fish struggling for breath on the cobble, trying to gasp out more fart jokes …