Author Archives: KBarton10

Which would be quicker if you ever lived up to them promises

fly_casting I remember peering through the bushes intently, awestruck at the grace them old duffers displayed while sawing their line back and forth in a double haul, back and forth seemingly without effort, leader never tangling, and I wondered whether I would ever be skilled enough to do likewise …

… and whether I would ever lose my fear of them same mean old SOB’s when it came to critiquing my casts, and like church, would I ever be accepted as a member of the congregation, able to walk erect versus hiding in bushes fearful some old cuss would claim I was afflicted with limp everything.

I remember thinking it must take forever to learn such skill. Now I find out “forever” is cheap – only about $79,000 worth …

Former garda and keen angler James Moynihan, whose fly fishing arm was seriously hurt in a scuffle with late night revellers, has been awarded damages of just over €43,000 in the High Court.

– via the Irish Examiner

The math is actually pretty fair. Figuring a minimum wage of $10 an hour (it being a labor of love therefore you can be paid a pittance) that would be a monetary settlement of 7900 hours, or 329 days.

The average angler fishes nine times yearly, but spending most of his time arguing with kids, erecting tents, deploying stoves and camp gear, inflating mattresses and answering,  “No, we ain’t there yet!”

Figuring seven of the outings are the garden variety two day weekend, and two are the rarified three day “Total Woodsy Immersion” that makes 20 days per year of fishing.

Each weekend contains two such days, so that’s 20 days per year of fishing, suggesting that 329 / 20 = 16 years of fishing to learn how to cast effortlessly.

Quicker if you ever lived up to them offseason promises …

Why you want to learn to cast better and quickly

yellowstarthistle The famous “fly eating bush” – nemesis of the western fly fishermen, appears to have a long and illustrious future should global warming descend on us in all its projected fury …

When exposed to increased carbon dioxide, precipitation, nitrogen and temperature, all expected results of climate change, yellow star thistle in some cases grew to six times its normal size while the other grassland species remained relatively unchanged, according to a Purdue University study …

Nice.

Yellow star thistle enjoying two qualities among fishermen that make it the most cursed plant in Mother Nature’s repertoire. The growth is tough and nearly impossible to sever, and the star shaped growth of thorns leaves no possible way to remove an errant fly without being completely butchered by its thorns.

In the western watersheds I frequent, star thistle grows easily to four feet, is almost always growing right up to water’s edge, and after retrieving two or three low casts manually – you start snapping the flies off versus going back to donate more blood  …

Yellow Star Thistle growing to a menacing height of 18 to 24 feet? It’ll require a machete as part of your wading ensemble, and breathable waders – regardless of layers – will not protect you one iota.

Guide wear for guides, how that nerveless glassy stare is caused by your hideous casting

One of those facts that every new guide is horrified to learn his first season. How clients never bother to practice casting before buying a fly fishing trip of a lifetime, and how the guide has to teach a heavy handed neurosurgeon how to cast more than ten feet, often simply thrusting a beadhead  Bobbercator combo into their hands to get clients into the proximity of fish.

Unfortunately, guides are now subject to new forms of lumps and contusions, and like the NFL are having to sit some of their marquee talent due to the increasing number of concussions …

Mark IV Guide Helmet

Most clients quickly become skilled in bead-bobber fishing, and no longer content with brass or copper, quickly opt for the increased density of Tungsten and the softball sized indicators needed to keep them aloft. As a result,  guides are showing  symptoms of brain scarring akin to lifelong boxers and NFL quarterbacks.

Protective gear has been needed for years, and the Easton–Bell Corporation gives us a sorely needed helmet, while continuing work on as yet unreleased flak jacket.

Given the countless hours a guide sits in peril, it’s nice to know he’ll only have to cut two small holes in his cowboy hat to ensure a couple of extra decades to his career … nerveless and unflinching as 4X long and 3X heavy flits by earlobes and soft body parts.

Then again they may be confused about their reason for being

Dear Large Outdoor Clothier,

Neon Persimmon Pink Gentlemen, I received the  shirt you’d asked me to review just before Memorial Day weekend.

Normally I would have considered the timing perfect, as that three day holiday is when all of us take to the woods intent on sport.

I would have subjected your clothing to an exhaustive battery of tests, wearing it overly long (ignoring the grimaces of my companions)and ensuring my commentary was both learned and factual.

Unfortunately, I cannot bring myself to remove it from its sterile wrapper, much less wear the damn thing.

This is not clothing suitable for the outdoors, this is the type of shirt you wear if you want to have sex in the cramped stall of a public restroom with a fellow angler.

I’m unsure what you call the color internally, but I would ask you how am I supposed to blend into my surroundings should I stalk a large brown trout feeding in the shallows?

Was I fortunate enough to have a pod of wary Bonefish within casting range, how am I to deliver the fly when my clothing is eye-watering, capable of searing a fish retina with prolonged exposure – and cannot help but make everything within a hundred yards flee without hesitation?

I consented to this arrangement as you made my last fishing vest. It lasted 25 years, and was a testament to your long history of quality outdoors garments. It was so well put together your stitching made me – and it – nearly invincible.

Those memories made me stray from my core competencies and entertain the idea that a shirt of similar construction and durability could become essential equipment in the woods, and I was qualified to judge both its fit and function.

Instead I receive a shirt suitable to flag the Coast Guard should I become shipwrecked on a deserted island, or making me a fashion plate should I wish to clink glasses with Bernie Madoff on the fantail of his yacht …

… with all his new boyfriends, and me blushing fetchingly.

An outdoor clothing company has the responsibility to make quality clothing to assist the hunter or angler, and should not insist that the cut of the garment or its color work at cross purposes to its owner.

If it does, it’s confused about its reason for being.

I figure it was the work of those merry pranksters in your marketing department – who read my column on occasion. Figuring they owed me one for all them “lifestyle” digs, and good sports all, they insisted you send me one in the heart-stopping “unsalable” color.

It was a great gag, especially as it was at my expense.

Full Disclosure: I’m returning the garment to its maker unreviewed, unopened, and at my earliest convenience, never to stray into riskier territory than a green Pendleton …

A Sloppy coarse farmed fish gets the Glamour label

meryl-streepTaking all that DNA sequencing out of the crime lab and aiming it at your meat counter suggests that nearly 25% of prepared fish in meat counters are mislabeled. Steaks and fillets often lack scales fins or identifying features which allows a cheap freshwater catfish to substitute for a higher end cod.

… and earning perhaps the greatest nickname ever, our lowly farmed tilapia gets its due ..

Yellowtail stands in for mahi-mahi. Nile perch is labeled as shark, and tilapia may be the Meryl Streep of seafood, capable of playing almost any role.

Naturally the FDA will make every attempt to crack down on the practice.

… when it suits them.

While I’m skeptical if they say it’s good, I’ll always believe the brethren when they say it’s bad …

anti-mosquitoI remember his comment as if it was yesterday. “It attaches to your belt and emits anti-mosquito sound waves, keeping the bloodsucking pests off you without changing your genetic code with a generous dollop of DEET …”

Upon his return from the wilds of Alaska we were doubly quick to ask, “Well, how did the mosquito thing work?”

His reply was ominous, “I had to get a transfusion in Fairbanks, and another before leaving Sitka. Eventually I flung the contraption into the brine as we approached Seattle …

As I wander through the app store on the iPhone (which I’m testing for work), you can imagine my uncontained glee when finding an outdoor application …

Despite the risk of carrying it strapped inside my waders, I can repel all manner of bloodsucking organisms, laughing all the while as I expose my nether regions to the impotence -  until my battery sputters and dies …

Which, I’ll guess, will be about seventeen feet from the parking lot.

I can only assume that “Kids-Safe Mode” is when you’re forced to give your own life to save your children.

You get a sudden waft of hot electronics, and press the phone into the midsection of the closest child, screaming, “Bobby, take your sister and RUN!” …

Masked Dry Fly fishermen sought in bait heist

The Royal TrudeI’m not so sure it wasn’t a rogue band of dry fly purists that assaulted the local bait shop, making off with a 100,000 maggots. Given the meager supply of dry fly hackles were nearly exhausted due to rampant hoarding of trendy hair stylists, and with the season just underway, it was likely a spur of the moment act of desperate men.

It could have been PETA, but maggots are neither adorable or expensive, ensuring there’s little interest in a bill board campaign or simple martyrdom – as plenty can be scavenged from the periphery of the local roadbed.

The clue is all eight of the bandits beat off the proprietor and throng of angry fishermen with golf clubs … which is damned suspicious in anyone’s book …

Eighteen holes is obviously lacking that sweaty primal-thing, where you can squeeze the life out of something smaller than you …

It’s the same quality education we got – at the end of a strap, mostly

The School of Knock Psychologists are thinking children learn words in some unknown and mysterious method, versus the more traditional associative pairing … see Daddy, hear the word “Daddy” – assume the looming enormous thing that smells like beer, is Daddy …

I could have told them they were barking up the wrong tree, simply because all real knowledge is transmitted by pain, not by cooing about the floor with Mom, swathed in warm blankie while reaching for titty …

Most of us learned all the really deep-seated lessons of Manhood by losing limbs, teeth, gouts of hair, and blood –and if there was baby talk it was the opposition making fun of us – just before we felt the boots in our midsection …

Same goes for fishing.

We learned what “Steelhead” were only after freezing our nuts to the tailgate, wondering why everyone was giving us the wave-off when we started removing aching body parts from them wet waders.

We learned “Barbless” knowing it was the part we couldn’t see – the rest of the hook being buried up to the shank in thick, flexible, sunburnt, neck flesh … the closest medical attention being only slightly less than the isthmus of Bataan  …

We learned about fly rods and the cost of a college education only when we found out we could afford only one, not both.

We learned friendship when our buddy loaned us his rod, and fisticuffs when we stepped on it in a drunken stupor, and he didn’t see the issue closed by sharing in our profuse apology.

With all the “spare the rod, politically correct, never a harsh word” parenting of the last couple of decades, it’s our fault if kids haven’t had the educational opportunities we’ve had, or lack the vocabulary us troublesome kids possess, why admissions to Harvard are at low ebb, and the economy languishes just above flatline…

The 100 Greatest Books in the World and a nosebleed for a diploma, it’s the “Cliff’s Notes” of an ivy league education.

Fling it upstream then mash the button as it goes by

Hovering Predator seen from underwater It was so much easier when I lived on the banks of Hat Creek and could fiddle with the fly before throwing it at the same fish I’d thrown it at the night before. If they ate it, it was success. If they didn’t, we kept fiddling with it.

With no fish visible last night I had to eat my own creation, and absent my glasses, proof of concept is casting the fly rod left handed and upstream, poking the camera into the water as the fly draws near hoping we get a couple of good shots.

At left is proof of landing correctly despite being cast forty times, the fly being soaked, yet I’ve got enough stabilization to keep the proper attitude.

The wings are in the Mayfly configuration, and as the camera lens is bisected by the water you can see the blob of upright dyed gray elk, exactly as planned.

In focus and above the waterline

At right is the view we see, the wings are dry and absent the wax I’d original used to clump the fibers a little more.

Two turns of hackle, a bit of my special dry fly dubbing, some dyed gray elk, and we’re looking at something designed from the ground up to be a really efficient killer.

What determines the best and most effective flies is not how many fish they’ve caught and where, it’s how confident the owning angler is using the fly – and whether he leaves it on for a few casts or a few hours.

As a guide I’ve heard many learned anglers mention the killing qualities of their favorite flies, I’d nod knowingly as each was completely correct in their assessment.

“I catch all my fish on the Adam’s …” – and if that’s all you ever put on – it’s a prophecy.