Author Archives: KBarton10

Adding extra studs to wading boots, how to tap dance your way to larger fish

wading_stud I’m giggling while Science chides me about noise pollution and fish –hoping to make me feel bad.

I suppose if I owned a boat I’d feel worse, but the article concludes that even short bursts of noise can distract fish while feeding, and they’ll make more errors in judgment and ingest things they shouldn’t …

The foraging mistakes are consistent with a shift in attention when exposed to noise, and in the natural environment these mistakes could be costly: increasing the chances of ingesting harmful items, and affecting the risk of predation if fish have to forage for longer to compensate for reduced efficiency.

I’m not so sure science was expecting to be serving information to the enemy, fellows like myself reading the conclusion and hanging on every word …

… but in elementary school we learned we could unnerve a good hitter at the plate by yelling, “hey batter-batta, SWING ..”, and anyone watching golf has to believe science, given anything louder than a duck fart sends a dimpled ball through someone’s picture window and muttered curses by even the most practiced golfer.

Can we induce a fish to eat something the wrong size, wrong species, and if so – how far away from the fishes maw do we trigger the underwater equivalent of a car alarm?

 

Taking it a step further, if we run out of the hot fly can a tantrum at the precise moment make something less worthy, extra-tasty? It’s certain we swear often enough in critical situations, perhaps we need to do so much louder …

I suppose SIMM’s will break the thousand-dollar barrier when it adds zippers and Sensurround, and then we can race each other out of parking lot to set hook while fiddling with the volume on Walkürenritt …

You’ve overlooked the fact that you owe once again

license_checkYou get to make quite the scene forswearing candy, the remaining quart of egg nog, and the last slices of fruit cake enroute to recapturing your High School physique.

Like all religious zealots, the Monday after the last bleat of festive horn becomes so much more important, given you’ve sworn never to eat sweets again, promised most of your fishing weekends to ardent gym workouts, and are revitalized knowing neither processed white flour nor the Devil have a grip on your vitals …

I’m not going to belabor the point nor burst your sweaty bubble. Like every other attempt you’ll find out for yourself that Tofu and Seaweed tastes like gummy boat bottom, fresh fruit and veggies is a close second, and nothing you’ve found tasty or flavorful is on your permitted list, at least not without a couple hundred sit-ups.

While you’re tooling aimlessly through the city streets tempted by all the bright colors and considering breaking fast – knowing you love the paper hats, hot grease, and fries, perhaps you’d consider exercising a bit of will power and purchasing your new fishing license instead.

Yes, amid all that sugar and remorse you’ve overlooked the fact that you owe once again.

… and the completely certain thing is that if you chance even a single trip, despite being heeled with all the proper credentials for the last 35 years, a warden will show. You’ll be apprehended while protesting mightily, and after you display all those conservation memberships in your wallet and on your bumper, they’ll throw the book at you.

… a rakish cut to your waders, and who does your Botox?

Yesterday’s post suggests a combination of poor economics and seasonal excess have woken you to fly fishing’s retail malaise, where you’re prepared to let the vendors auger in under the weight of pricey zipper-front waders, multi-thousand dollar fly rods, and titanium imbued vest accessories, featuring trout shaped drink openers …

Given that bleak economic outlook, and if they’re not buying fishing tackle, where are “manly men” spending those precious dollars budgeted for recreation?

Plastic Surgery.

“Typically people think of celebrities and high profile men going under the knife,” said Stephen Baker, MD, an ASPS Member Surgeon based in Washington DC. “And while that may be true, the typical male cosmetic surgery patient that I see is an average guy who wants to look as good as he feels. Most of my patients are ‘men’s men,’ the kind of guy you might not think would have plastic surgery.”

-via American Society of Plastic Surgeons

Statistics released today suggest we’re about to jettison the whole woodsy thing in preference for looking woodsy. Actually “being outdoorsy” having all manner of discomforts including; no street lights, mosquitoes, and cold at night …

MJ_BeforeAfter

For us anglers it’s no longer appropriate to hoist the fish of a lifetime with outstretched arms. Instead, a Hero pose includes a Botox stiffened expression, ample cleavage, liposuction, and male breast reduction …

The list is comprised of the fastest-growing surgical and minimally-invasive procedures from 2009 to 2010. Criteria for inclusion: Procedure performed on at least 1,000 men in 2010. (Surgical procedures are listed in bold).

  1. Facelift – 14% Increase
  2. Ear Surgery (Otoplasty) – 11% Increase
  3. Soft Tissue Fillers – 10% Increase
  4. Botulinum Toxin Type A – 9% Increase
  5. Liposuction – 7% Increase
  6. Breast Reduction in Men – 6% Increase
  7. Eyelid Surgery – 4% Increase
  8. Dermabrasion – 4% Increase
  9. Laser Hair Removal – 4% Increase
  10. Laser Treatment of Leg Veins – 4% Increase

Once our angling media spots the trend, Fly Fisherman will regale us with an annual “Gutz & Buttz” Issue – rival to Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Spectacular – and we can jettison strike indicator articles in favor of Top 10 lists featuring; Best dressed, Best Unsmiling Pose, Most BreastMeat, Best Thousand Yard Stare, and Tightest Montana Guide Ass …

… which with obligatory centerfolds will sell millions of copies on both coasts (and none in the center)  … giggle …

Hoisted on my own Petard

… and I was hoping I had the lock on death and despair.

Tackle Trade World has easily one upped me by presenting the rumors of Cortland’s demise were premature, Hardy & Grey’s lays off 27 staff (31% of their Alnwick workforce), and both Hardy and O. Mustad & Sons have been hemorrhaging money and Mustad is about to be taken over by a private investment firm …

despair

It is interesting to note that similar US Industry-focused rags are touting percentile increases in fishing as a means of cheerleading, whereby any ray of light in a darkened tunnel has to be the exit …

Also interesting was the reference that the Cortland CEO made to having trouble with banks and financing, and how the economic malaise seems to have caught up with a luxury business. These being consistent with the economic commentary of numerous CEO’s in the Fortune 500.

Proof that Santa exists despite the Post Office’s insistence they shut him down

With less than a week before you’re consumed by those, “what was I thinking …” resolutions that stem from another year of excess, and you’re reminded that along with Aerosmith you bought the 2011 version of the Hula Hoop, while cackling Internet pundits gleefully point fingers and publish the Top 10 worst fads of 2011 …

worstfads

Proof that Santa got my letter despite the Post Office threatening it was closing both of its distribution centers in the Arctic …

Just don’t expect any feathers this year, they’ve all been sold already.

I’m not sure who is the target audience, but if it’s us adults that’s an indictment of a sort

… and on a trifling note, Carnegie Mellon University has given up attempting to alert us citizens to the perils of the Asian Carp Menace, mostly because we are bored senseless by scientific dialog, and they’ve opted to make a free web game so us anglers can walk a mile in their environmental shoes …

Be the Carp, Feel the Carp – as you extinct resident species, consume all available benthic chow, then knock boat anglers senseless …

… then you take a turn as the federal Carp Czar, where you keep public opinion on your side in between emptying tanker trucks of Rotenone into swimming areas filled with small children, frying water-skiers with electric fences, and all the while placating both tourist and fishing industries.

I had to mop sweat more than a few times, but Billy Joe Bob triumphed in the end.

… and as a dry fly its floating qualities are without equal

… and you figured that Christmas was immune to one of my “there are no fish left and what’s left ain’t worth the trouble,” articles – where one or more scientific bodies posts some graph with the big red arrow heading south …

But you’re wrong.

Christmas isn’t sacred, and now the cat’s out of the bag I can reveal the secret Royal Humbug Humpy pattern I’ve whipped up with some mane and part of that Big Red Nose …

Six Hundred Things edited out of Fly Fisherman because the Zip Code wasn’t exotic enough – No.256

When tying on hackle tip wings you can save yourself grief if you take the time to prune the duff that is part of the tie-in area created when the tips were mounted.

The dreaded hackle wing fiber duff

Most tiers simply leave the fibers trapped by the thread, lifting and pushing them back towards the wing when the hackle is wound forward. In most cases that forward-facing tilt will be caught by later turns of the hackle and all those fibers will wind up intermixed with thread, head cement, and the eye of the hook.

Trimming the duff fibers away

Instead take a moment to pull the wing tips back exposing the duff material and removing it completely with a few snips of your scissor. This simple step almost ensures the eye of the fly will be free of fiber when it’s time to finish it off with a whip finish.

Hackle duff fibers removed

With the extra fibers cut short, nothing is left to impede the hackle, roll the stem into an odd position, or is long enough to be bound down by the hackle stem and combine with head cement to block the eye.

This simple step allows the wings and their angle to set and locked into position, less likely to be moved by the subsequent steps of the fly and any accidental materials forced into their path via torque.

Christmas shopping guide for the Fly Fishing Widow

You’ve survived another long and tiresome year as spouse of an ardent fly fisherman, and while a great many promises were made, most were followed by profuse apologies and much hand wringing, and none were kept …

… and now rather than raking leaves like you asked, he’s expecting you to wait table as his fishing pals help themselves to all the good liquor and your baked goods, while putting their big feet up on your upholstery.

Not cracking the whip last Spring was cause for the suffering you endured last year, and rather than begin anew it’s time the big lout gets his fillings rattled a few times – delivered in that special way that mocks both him and his craft.

whiting_grizzly_saddleAt left is a Whiting Saddle Hackle – these are special bird skins raised for fishing that your husband purchased for tying his flies. He owns many more that he’s hidden from you, mostly so you would not connect them to the large credit card bill he always lectures you about.

Gather up anything with a Whiting label and tuck them away in a shopping bag.

Go treat yourself to a new hairdo from somewhere that sounds French, really expensive. or both. While the nice lady is making suggestions about cut you need, show her the contents of your shopping bag and ask could she put two or three dozen of the longest feathers into your hair as hair extensions. Offer to sell the rest to her for a manicure and pedicure.

iphone_cover

At right is one of those silly “trout skin” iPhone covers your husband insists he really wants for Christmas.

They’re much too expensive, but the size makes a great stocking stuffer, and while he won’t admit it to anyone, the both of you know its more trout than he catches in a year.

No doubt he wants it to look masculine while ordering his, “ iced, half-caf, whipped Mocha Latte, with the chocolate swirly” – but this once you may consider honoring his wishes – by soaking the case in vegetable oil for a couple weeks …

Akin to tucking away a football, he’ll quickly learn not to answer his phone in “Hero” mode, one-handed – given his streamside inability to juggle slippery trout for the camera – and an expensive greased 4s over pavement.

Then there’s the “once in a lifetime” trip that he wants to do more than once.

Last year it was the Seychelles, you suffered mosquitoes and the unwanted attentions of all those unemployed guides lounging around the verandah.

He returned sunburnt and a hero each evening – then drank too much with all his new-found pals and had to be poured into the sack for tomorrow’s early start.

“Togetherness” was what he promised, which you endured while holding his head out of the toilet.

This time hand him a French-English dictionary and when he looks puzzled, remark that once he’s conversational he can think about Martinique, St. Barthelemy, or one of many French colonies for Bonefish, Tarpon, or Tigerfish – and omit details of the bed and breakfast you’re booking in the upper Champagne district.

An angler suddenly faced with the reality that your not changing planes in Paris – rather you’ve booked weeks of endlessly romantic wineries, old churches, and antique stores to visit, will be brought to heel in a manner most befitting.

As the rods fall from his nerveless fingers and he begins to curl into a fetal ball on the tarmac, remind him that you’re tired of reminding him about the lawn each weekend, and if he asks nicely … then maybe …

Man of the Year is for literates, which of us will grace the cover of GQ is the real question

stanky It’s one of the great conspiracies of our industry; how SIMM’s, Orvis, Columbia, and Gander Mountain, have spent time and money marketing clothing to anglers, yet only when the catalog falls from our nerveless, napping fingers does our girlfriend insist we buy something …

We don’t tell because it would simply kill the bastards to know that only girls and hunters like Taupe.

… real Fishermen resent fashion as it confuses us from what’s truly important, warmth and not-warm-enough.

… real Fishermen resent color as it allows society to notice we haven’t changed our underwear this week.  We know that fresh undies adds precious minutes to our morning ritual and allows lesser men to get to the river first.

We’re aware society requires we cover our ample paunch, blanched soft arse, and other sensitive bits – with something – otherwise the late arrivals would bring John Law and chase us out of the best water.

But that’s all we know, yet all of that is about to change…

Imagine jeans, sweats or socks that clean and de-odorize themselves when hung on a clothesline in the sun or draped on a balcony railing. Scientists are reporting development of a new cotton fabric that does clean itself of stains and bacteria when exposed to ordinary sunlight.

Their report describes cotton fabric coated with nanoparticles made from a compound of titanium dioxide and nitrogen. They show that fabric coated with the material removes an orange dye stain when exposed to sunlight. Further dispersing nanoparticles composed of silver and iodine accelerates the discoloration process. The coating remains intact after washing and drying.

– via PhysOrg.com

I know some of the above terms are unfamiliar, so I’ll translate: “washing and drying” means … in case you fall in.

Self cleaning underwear that allows you to drop trouser for ninety seconds, which because of beer you have to do anyways, and like Jesus Hisself, all sins and indiscretions are wiped clean by modern science.

I bet astronauts get it next …