Author Archives: KBarton10

The Great Conspiracy, how you’ve grown fond of the egghead in the fly fishing label

The thought itself is fairly unnerving, you’re all part of a vast fly fishing conspiracy, whom I’d like to think will be undone by my plaintive squeal, but more likely my driveway will fill with black sedans, and I’ll be having high tea with patriots like Ollie North …

… right before my blog disappears and you’re staring at an oft-longed for “404 error.”

It all starts simply enough. I’m researching the East and West Forks of the Carson River, which I’ve never been to and will be fishing in a week or so – and my fishing buddy orders the “killer dozen”  from the local fly shop and plunks them on my desk for review.

I’m looking at seven nymphs and five dry flies, and all seven have bright golden beads and half the materials are opalescent tinsel or iridescent flash of some kind, and I’m wondering why no one besides me even notices the sudden and complete dominance of attractor flies, and how they snuck in without even the dry fly crowd noticing.

A better Pheasant Tail, or simply an attractor conversion

Trends being dominant in our fairly technical sport, with vendors and experts alike, insisting whatever we used last year cannot compare to the airy lightness of this year’s model …

This is a nymph on drugs

When Ernie Schweibert’s “Matching the Hatch” ended the reign of the attractor in the 1950’s – there was song, dance, and thousands of articles on false gods, new prophets, and every angler added Latin to his light cocktail banter.

Two fellows met on the trail and the familiar greeting had morphed into pidgin sophistication, “… caught all mine on a Ephemerella Canadensis, with a pronounced anastomosed wing, a hint of mottle, and some snowshoe hare I used to imitate the E. Pluribus Unum.”

Us “real” anglers feigned the regurge when we were out of eyesight, insisting that “His Lordship” was a “nose-inna-air” fanbois-purist, and only us backwoods types understood the true piscatorial mind, in spite of our matching ascots, flashy gear, and similar sounding lisp.

As this was pre-Bobbercator, the magazines and periodicals had room to applaud our scientific bent, knowing it was only a matter of time before one of us got the Nobel prize snapping pictures of Plecoptera fornication – or wrote the Trico-Sutra. In the meantime, Latin infused every issue and Science was the reason for an enlarged wingcase, a soft hackle, a rod taper, or a furry undercarriage.

Vendors appealed to our sudden bent towards egg headed-ness, and stopped phrasing their sales pitch in terms of luck or fancy, rather our understanding of physics had entered rarified post graduate space – and instinctively we knew that direction of the graphite weave could alter both space and time, and unless it had been to the Moon – or was a progeny of the aerospace industry it wasn’t fit garb nor tackle …

… relegating bait and lures to the Unclean Thing, whose use was an admission of Piltdown Man, low IQ and a single, unbroken eyebrow.

With fifty years of us genius’s running around the environment, insisting simply everyone must listen to every opinion, we’ve taken a fancy to all that faux-intelligence we’ve convinced ourselves we possess – which is why you appear a tad reluctant to admit …

… that attractors are functional flies with the killing power equal to a Swisher & Richards NoHack, that Latin is unnecessary when it comes to fishing – and worst yet, we haven’t been honing skills at all, instead the more consistent fish catchers are twice as LUCKY as the rest of us …

… which is why I mention the end of the single biggest trend in the last half century, and all I get a yawn …

Denial.

Let me put it to you a little differently, just so you can embrace what the next fifty years will be about …

twinkie_fish

If you perched on a log, and wired a small treble hook to your big toe and tied an overhand knot of Christmas tinsel, held your nose and keened, “eebie, eebie, Eebie” – you’ve got a better than even chance of limiting.

… If they are hatchery fish with monkeyed-genetics, you could start a goddamn cannery with that ensemble …

Knowing what I know now – the ascension of Attractors, and the validation of Bergman, Brooks, and more importantly, your Dad – which is the most painful of all given the attempts to “Xtreme” the sport and remove all vestiges of Poppa and his pipe … it doesn’t surprise me you’re attempting to cold-shoulder this fundamental shift in our beloved sport.

That’s denial squared, babe.

Every so often I wish they would reinsert me back into the Matrix with the rest of you. I long for those innocent days when the tinkle of small talk included, fast action, limp, or Spey, and we’d not so much as blink at the thousand dollar price tag, when we could move onto weightier topics, whether carbon fiber wrapped to the right is more effective than the same cloth wrapped to the left …

… but in light of this old direction of shiny and colorful flies, I can’t shake the thought that if a river moves five miles an hour and a fish can see a size twenty insect for only 12 inches – with a quarter second to decide whether to strike or no, they must eat a ton of mouse turds and cigarette butts, given the fields nearby are full of them, and when dry – float nicely …

Naturally, I’ve got a big hammy foot squarely in both worlds. Half of my nymphs start with a big gold bead and some opalescent something-or-other, and the rest are decidedly old school, given that it’s honestly quite hard to improve the efficacy of the original Pheasant Tail nymph, Zug Bug, Hare’s Ear, or AP Black, despite all of our collective attempts to make it so much more … visible.

The only difference I can detect between “new” and “old” is beads being so much heavier – whose weight is concentrated in such a small space – makes more of a splash when landing than the unweighted or weighted non-beaded fly.

Meaning, I’ll have to cast one a bit further from the quarry than the other, that’s all.

But if fish are stupid, and care not whether they eat a dislodged Caddis versus a submerged dog turd, isn’t the real issue – and root cause of your unrest – the invalidation of all that vendor bullshit, and the public disclosure that you’re a damn fool for buying expensive tackle?

In that case, a guy that pays $800 for a set of waders is a real jackass – because if a fish is dumb enough to eat anything drug through the water – than only a nincompoop blows all his cash on something expensive – unless it’s a fashion statement and being seen is everything.

Ditto for the thousand dollar rod, as you’re an idiot regardless of income level, and proof there’s a sucker born every minute …

Which is why you’re clinging desperately to the ghost of Ernest Schwiebert’s scientific angling, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary in your fly box, hoping no one will notice the both of us have closets jammed with expensive gear.

Our enlarged craniums rationalized how we could purchase exceptional gear and read enough books and we’d remove “Luck” from the fishing equation …

We were excited that we’d be able to tell the rest of the world, “any Luck?” was a heinous slur, and how it was raw … goddamn … smarts that made us successful, not luck …

… luck was for guys that smeared marshmallow-salmon egg on their pant’s leg, who sat and watched the gals sunbathing while getting drunk, steadfastly ignoring both rod tip and its commotion.

So you cling to your anatomically correct dry flies for fear someone will notice the same thing I did, and won’t tell a friend of a friend – who knows your wife, so the next time you beg for an aircraft-grade anything, she’ll scoff at the notion of it bleeding energy when the anti-matter based disc turns gaseous, and how real masculinity requires you to have not one – but a pair of them.

It’s ok, your Dad had plenty of science backing his assertion that an Alexandra, with its fetching iridescent Peacock and sliver of red quill wing, was so killing a fly because red was the color of blood and therefore all that silver tinsel body was wounded … and … so very vulnerable …

You don’t want to play that game with me – do you?

His lordship is spending the next fortnight despoiling the Royal and Ancient with a Singlebarbed lid.

Wannabe_TravelWriter While I mentioned that both respect for the out of doors and culture existed across the pond , and not the flavor us colonials practice, with our four wheel, gas guzzling offroad equipment and medical waste …

He still insisted on tormenting me with the above picture, with the following inscription;

“I found that place you said I should look for … Hardy & Gray’s, and they’re having a really big sale on fly tying materials; Baby Seal, Polar Bear, Toucan, Speckled Bustard … I don’t recognize any of that but they’re on the list you gave me. The person at the counter mentioned I might run into problems with Customs on my return and wanted to check with you – is he right?”

Dear TravelWriter, they always say that. Ignore his warning, he’s merely jealous that he doesn’t get to fish for free in all the public fly water available in the US … double down on my order of baby seal, and if the TSA guy or Customs asks you what it is, just say, “Freshly Clubbed Baby Seal, and I’m Rick James – Bitch!”

How to trim your fly tying obligation by half

The Thrill:

Noticing that Bass flies look nearly identical to flies for rockfish and perch.

Are these Bass flies, or Saltwater?

The Thrill that Comes Once in a Lifetime:

Confirming that theory by prying the brightly colored SOB out of the wrong fishes mouth … and noting that the hint of rust didn’t appear to spoil the reception nor the lust induced strike that followed …

Nothing else has phased us fly fishermen, hence “legal” isn’t an option

flo_grizz The firm that I knew as “The Scourge of Grizzly Hackle”, Fine Featherheads – has apparently ignored PETA’s repeated “cease and desist” warnings about false advertising, and has drawn a law suit as its reward.

At issue was the Featherhead claim that Whiting Farms treats its roosters “ethically” rather than gleefully tearing great handfuls of  feathers out by the roots while stomping life out of the rooster. Whiting denies the denial claiming it provides spacious individual quarters for the birds who are gassed when harvested.

If memory serves someone tried that with humans a half century ago – and it was frowned on then too … “Ethical” now being in the eye of the beholder – and not so much the victim …

Us fishermen have never garnered the wrath of PETA, as we’ve always been dismissed as insensitive brutes – with nothing to be gained via class action or any other form of legal recourse.

Besides, one of those lissome young feather models probably leaned over to a compatriot and whispered the PETA negotiator couldn’t possibly understand that feathers were a fashion must have – as she was skinny and pale and wearing Earth shoes. The lawyer overheard, and threw the book at Feather-Momma and her clutch of wood nymphs.

They’re all at the mouth daring each other to make a dash for reproductive safety

salmon_sushi Scientists have finally discovered the reason behind declining worldwide salmon stocks, and the answer will both surprise and alarm …

For the first time scientists have discovered that migrating salmon can detect mammalian predators by the scent of already digested salmon in wastewater, which allows the migrating fish to determine whether its safe to move upstream.

"It’s the predator’s diet – not just its own smell – that’s alerting the salmon," explains Dr. Laura Roberts from the University of Swansea, co-author of the report published in Animal Behavior.

Otters are common predators of salmon so it’s clearly useful to the fish to be able to sniff them out.

The smell acts as an early-warning system for the fish, even when they can’t see the predator. It lets them work out the potential risk of being eaten and balance predator avoidance with other vital activities like foraging and reproducing.

… and test dives performed just outside the mouths of historic salmon rivers have found all the missing salmon milling about waiting for someone else to chance the first dash upstream.

Females eventually give up and release their roe in one girdle busting spasm – and then they all rush back to the safety of the open ocean. Wastewater treatment hasn’t been able to remove the scent of the fillet you ate yesterday, and everytime you flush you’ve reinforced the notion that upstream is instant death.

Again it’s your fault … if you’d been man enough to walk back to the porta-potty – instead of using a nearby bush, them fish would’ve bowled you over with sheer numbers.

Intercede early enough, and we can get them precious eco-votes for the price of couple of thrown rocks and a cold coke

It’s the trip every guide fears and every father dreads; how to introduce Poppa’s lifelong love to his progeny,  in a way that results in beaming children that gaze at their father in complete adoration …

… add the pressure of yesterday’s post, where at this young age we can BUY precious eco-votes for the price of a single candy bar or cold coke, and the even the most optimistic parent begins to blanch …

I call it the “15 minute rule” – add the ages of all the participants and divide by their number and you get the number of minutes you can fish without complaint.

Watch as I use my jovial fat guy powers to undo all that stern tutelage about not talking to strangers, and undermine their natural shyness around strange adults. Cringe as I swear like a sailor, and find gross things for kids to throw at their brother – while I show a couple of potential fly fishermen where “Eewww” grows, and how much fun you can have doing things your Ma would have a fit over …

My client, Garrat

Failure isn’t an option anymore, we have to package a time honored snooty old profession into something that rivals a massively multiplayer online pseudo-reality.

Which is yet another reason to celebrate warm water and the appetites of coarse fish, most of which are willing to bite anyone or anything that comes within range, and will hurl themselves at a bit of wrapped flash with a fluffy tail and a come-hither action.

Above is my client, Garrett who thought a fly and bubble pretty lame, the spinning rod and Rooster Tail not much better, and insisted on the fly rod and measured retrieve just like his Pop and older bro, below …

Kelvin and his son, Bradley

… and while he attempted to remain good natured about double skunking his older bro and his poppa, his cool handling of the voracious Brackish water Barracuda (aka Sacramento Pikeminnow), revealed his outdoors nature in the face of mano y mano encounter with a known man eater.

Actually, it was all those parental lectures on respect for elders that allows me to assist a young fellow thrust into unfamiliar and odious surroundings.

He assumes everything I say and do is gospel, and everything Dad says and does can be ignored. That gives me the upper hand in reminding Dumpling he should keep his rod tip low so he can feel the slightest nibble …

momz

Rocks_at_cars

… especially when we get to throw rocks at cars – which makes enormous metallic smack noises and with Pop urging us to further mayhem and to get wet, which is foreign to anything we’ve ever believed about adults – none of which know how to have fun as they never throw rocks at anything …

Which provides just the type of break from fishing so that we can drink Gatorade and eat “fart bars” and relax in the shade – and then try fishing some more on the way back …

Proud Poppa's smile says it all

… where both proceed to cast their own rods, hook and land their own fish, and the smile on a proud poppa’s face is a mix of relief and outright fun, suggesting the scene to be repeated many times over.

Eco-votes, baby – go get you some…

The Rise of eMAN, and decline of Nature worship

digital_man Healthy living is browsing a web page that mentions, “eating whole foods” – and as I finish ingesting a whole box of donuts, I can snicker, “I do that.”

Unfortunately the United States ongoing love affair with processed white flour, fast food, and the Internet has overcome the miracles of science, and for the first time since we’ve recorded history – the current generation (35-45 year olds) has less life expectancy than we do.

Which is a pity, because now it’s going to take so many more of them to pay for my golden years …

The downfall of Modern Man began in the mid-1800’s where advances in milling technologies allowed us all to afford processed white flour versus the coarse, nutrient laded, peasant stuff we had been eating, and our fate was sealed with Henry Ford’s automobile and its attendant technical marvels, the lack of walking and exercise, and the drive thru eatery…

I’ve always been a bit on  the skeptical side of most of the angling surveys that claim we’ve increased the number of anglers – only because most of those “victories” had us increasing less than the margin for error (typically around 5%).

We may be seeing evidence of a fundamental shift away from people’s appreciation of nature (biophilia, Wilson, 1984) to ‘videophilia,’ which we here define as ‘‘the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media.’’

Those last lean years since late 2007, could be explained by more folks looking to fishing to eat free (because license sales have been down year after year), versus any real return or appreciation of the out of doors.

Yet today we are seeing a fundamental shift away from nature-based outdoor recreation. What is replacing outdoor recreation in people’s lives? A recent study of U.S. national park visitation yielded some surprising results. It found that four variables explained 97.5% of the decline in visits to national parks. These were: time spent on the Internet, time spent playing video games, time spent watching movies, and oil prices.

– via Minnesota Dept of Natural Resources

After 50 years of steady increase, per capita visits to US national parks have declined since 1988. This decline, coincident with the rise in electronic entertainment media, may represent a shift in recreation choices with broader implications for the value placed on biodiversity conservation and environmentally responsible behavior.

– via Is the Love of Nature in the US becoming the love of electronic media?

Industry pundits cling to small changes in demographics that refute the above, but I’d suggest the larger picture is the crest of a natural bubble in outdoors participation, and both us fishermen and the larger conservation-ecology movement is headed for increasingly lean times.

Evolution of Man

The Boomers before me emigrated to the Haight-Ashbury to form their perfect Utopia. When Heroin and capitalistic warmongering industry got the better of most, they fled into the woods and joined communes, wore Earth shoes, and grew dope.

Decades later when British Petroleum wants to drill clean through to China, they emerged from banks, brokerage houses, and the defense industry and voted Nature-first, leaving BP to gnash teeth and buy more lobbyists.

But when they’re gone, and we’re gone, who’ll make up that massive bloc of eco-votes to to ensure what little that’s unspoiled remains so?

While I suck up the Internet and all manner of porn with great gusto, I know my days are numbered, only because I can balance all that stolen music and free movies with fishing. Mostly because the Internet didn’t exist during my formative years and the only reliable porn was when the bachelor next door moved out and us kids unearthed tattered Playboy’s while dumpster diving.

All this was driven home as I fiddled with the lawn mower this weekend. I was pondering the larger picture – how we were the beneficiaries of generations that loved the woods, and how that may not always be the case, and out from the neighbors house comes their 27 year old son …

… he’s got the world completely tuned out; earphones on that link to his iPhone, and is texting away blissfully as he strides down the driveway. Just as both thumbs engage with the screen his feet become entangled in a couple of turns of garden hose, and he face plants with great force …

Broken glasses, he’s wiping blood from his nose while inspecting his phone for damage, then readjusts his ear buds for maximum acoustic effect and gets in his car to speed away.

Still texting … as now he’s got something really profound to tweet.

Naturally, I’m in awe. First at the desire to cocoon from any external stimulus, and despite the “not looking , can’t hear”, focus on fingers and completed text and the bloody ending … the knowledge that this is what’s speeding toward me in the opposite lane, suggests it’s not an indifference to the outdoors issue – so much as pure Darwinism.

There’s going to be a lot less of them, and they’ll be oblivious to why. Perhaps they should stay indoors, it’s so much safer for homo-sapien-digitalis.

Invasive Chuckle of the Month – Clean Boil then Butter

All those hours spent reading articles on clean, dry, and  inspect, which elevated our readiness to the angling equivalent of Seal Team Six – to defend ourselves from any hidden environmental menace, may have positioned us to be the only group able to appreciate the enormity of the latest invasion-du-jour – and act on it with all possible haste.

Them_orUSThere comes a time when duty overrides creature comforts and you wave farewell, as you respond to a higher responsibility, knowing that only the selfless actions of those like yourself can save the planet.

It appears that the warming currents of the Pacific Ocean have finally reached critical mass, allowing millions of succulent Alaskan King Crab to invade Antarctica.

Knowing that “Clean, Dry, and Inspect is no longer pertinent, rather it’s been replaced with “Clean, Boil, and Butter” – and considering Antarctica is largely No Man’s Land, it means there’s no limit to what you can eat – nor any sovereign military to prevent you from mailing the rest home …

… music to the ears of us budding Type II Diabetics.

Hat Creek trophy water to be restored to prominence?

I’m calling it the first in what I hope to be a long stream of tasty tidbits, given CalTrout has announced in their Streamkeeper’s Log that both Hat Creek and Fall River will be the recipients of some overdue ecosystem love …

Given that I lived, fished, and guided the area for a couple of decades, I can attest to what a unique and challenging fishery it used to be – how there’s no parallel for it this side of a bevy of well known Montana spring creeks, and perhaps this time we’ve learnt our lesson and are prepared to treat the creek with a bit of proper reverence …

Having spent a couple of undistinguished seasons as the CalTrout Streamkeeper for Hat Creek, with most my time pointing wardens at poachers, watching both disappear in a cloud of dust, and educating innocent folks that failed to read the forty-seven signs suggesting bait was not allowed on a “Single Barbless Artificial Only” resource, I figure a couple of cents worth of advice has been earned … just for old times sake.

Carbon Bridge, former home to fat and sophisticated spring creek fish

While the managed trophy stretch of Hat Creek is three miles long, in its historical flavor – only a mile consistently holds fish.

Sediment blown into the creek from the Baum-Hat Canal sidewall blowout delivered a watershed killing load of sediment from which the creek was never able to recover. The Carbon Bridge flat water (pictured above) and similar slow moving stretches had their life-giving weed beds inundated with a sediment load that stifled all the bug life, removed all fish cover, and the population of large fish vanished.

Hat Creek is regulated by the flows from Powerhouse #2 – and  cannot rid itself nor scour the stream bottom clean as its water level never varies. Some of the work they’re doing on the Colorado River might be worth noting – how they’re intentionally scheduling deluges from the dam to free the streambed of accumulated sediment.  Opening the dam valve and releasing water down Hat Creek’s ancestral streambed might be assisted by the spillway just above the Powerhouse, but the far bank has already eroded with emergency releases and would need to be covered with concrete or something resistant to an extreme surge of water.

Cover the far side with a protective membrane, then divert the creek through that emergency spillway that bypasses the Powerhouse and let that uncontrolled jet of water work some magic.

Hat Creek Powerhouse #2 Riffle

With fish holding in only a single mile, you’ll be doing the same with anglers, parking, and foot traffic. Once the magazines are blaring your successes to the masses touting your success with both fish and habitat, you’ll have hideous erosion issues. Muskrat burrows undermine most of upstream banks – and all those arriving anglers will be equipped with sticky rubber soles with hiking cleats – and those cleats are considerably more destructive than flat bottomed felt, and they’ll rip that soft bank out by the ton as they scramble into and out of the Powerhouse #2 Riffle.

We tore out a hundred feet of that bank using flat felt soles – cleated rubber is likely to be many times that …

The boulders and rip-rap you’ve put at the parking areas and the Powerhouse riffle is a great first step, but so long as the anglers concentrate only in a narrow area, rather than the full three miles of creek you’re offering, you need to plan for the worst possible case of foot traffic and nothing less.

Perhaps you’d consider a ban on wading anglers?

That’s a bold move.

It may be time for such drastic thinking, given that a competent caster should be able to do quite well on the open grassy plains that dominate the water above the 299 bridge.

In this day and age of wader-borne nasty, why not point at invasive species and let them shoulder the outcry and blame for wading restrictions? We’ve been primed by conservation organizations and vendors alike harping on how our collective unclean is destoying the world’s best fisheries. Copy the SIMM’s model,  claim how much you’re thinking of the future – yet you’re solving plenty of now in the process.

Just saying is all, it’s worthy of some thought.

Clearing the upper half of trapped sediment can be matched only by making the stretch between the 299 Bridge Park and the Britton Weir hold fish. You tossed a couple handfuls of pebbles into the creek years ago – and that was simply not enough. The rocks weren’t big enough to make fish linger past the six inch mark – and while it was a good idea, the ROI never materialized.

You’ve got the better part of a mile of monotone current, twelve to thirty-six inches deep without any cover or underwater features outside of bank shade. Why not down some of those dead trees that litter the area – and drag them into the creek?

Most of the forest below the 299 bridge was crisped in a forest fire a couple years ago, and while the pine was logged, the owners left all the trash wood still standing, that dead timber is likely free for the taking – and you wouldn’t have to drag it more than a hundred yards.

Decay is supposed to be as good a remedy as anything, and thirty to fifty thick pine trees trunks should anchor a lot of fish – as well as add places for your waderless anglers to fish from. Add another big crop of large rocks to trap additional debris and induce some scouring water flows and perhaps you can turn that nondescript featureless cobble bottom into something more conducive to stimulating fish life …

… more importantly you have the ability to spread all those magazine reading anglers out over the full creek, which lessens the severity of all those feet climbing out of one parking lot.

And let’s not poo-poo the “magazine effect” – as articles claiming huge selective fish were available to match wits with is what drew those  pilgrims that never set foot outside of the Powerhouse #2 riffle.

Despite their success and sophistication at taming a 12” fish that was still stunned from being caught by the guy next to them, it was the lure of “hard” that drew them – even though they lost their taste for difficult when bested by all those truly selective fatties lolling in the flat water below.

And the hardest lesson of all, that which you failed to learn last time, is that you will never be done – and you’ll never finish this project. Stream restoration is not a sprint, it’s a marathon, and you can’t blow all your cash making a brilliant showpiece – the envy of the entire state – then assume you never have to spend a dime on it again.

You will never be finished. Each success will bring more anglers that will destroy banks, fish, litter parking lots with water bottles, and crap in overflowing toilets. You will have to fund treatments commensurate with the angling pressures and perform more surgeries knowing that each of your successes has yielded some failure in your earlier planning.

There’ll be a ton of folks making a goodly living at your expense, why not insist that guides shoulder some of that fiscal burden – perhaps charging them for the right to take clients to exploit all that hard work?

Twenty bucks contribution per angler would generate enough to staff that parking lot washroom with a sommelier or washroom attendant – or buy a hell of a lot of fry …

… or fund a tank full of Rotenone, a vacuum cleaner, and a couple of chain saws that’ll be the cheap underpinnings of something truly great.

You had it right the first time, unfortunately you didn’t consider the destructive power and uncaring sensibilities of us anglers – who didn’t even have the courtesy to offer the Old Gal a towel once we were done.