Author Archives: KBarton10

Free Range Dubbing: Unless you’re looking at it in direct sunlight, you’re not seeing what I made for you

Free Range Label I figure my sudden foray into dubbing was like McDonald’s adding salads to an otherwise lard-based menu. How the lights abruptly dimmed and the sudden demand for lettuce left most of the country rediscovering Broccoli for their evening meal.

Like the gals and their hair extensions, I was unfazed that I emptied most warehouses of everything furry. I started with the wholesale furriers, worked my way through the local stuff and fur coats on eBay, and when I’d exhausted the obvious sources, I’d make the call to my contact at the SPCA to see what was chilling rapidly …

A couple of months worth of effort turned into the better part of a year’s worth of research, failed automation, test groups and test colors, research on color mixing, dyes … and worse, suddenly needing to find vast amounts of odd animals to include once refined to their final formula.

Failed automation meant having to do it all by hand in the kitchen. Meaning it’s been a lonely year – bread, water, and solitary confinement does that to a person …

All of this started off simply enough, a general indifference to the dubbing products available in today’s fly shop, most of which featured some sparkly synthetic as its only real quality. Absent from the shelves are the natural dubbings of the past; crafted to make it easy to apply on thread, or coarse so its stubbled profile resembles something comely, or all natural featuring aquatic mammals to make gossamer thin dry fly bodies.

Instead were pushed towards some glittering turd that is about as easy to dub as a Brillo pad, and sparkles like a perfumed tart.

So I brought the manicured styles back; finding in the process that few tiers are left with the skills to refine dubbing to specific tasks, fewer relay the ritual to print to teach others, and most new tiers are content with products the way they are as they’ve not been exposed to others. It’s as if the qualities of fur and the skills to turn them to our advantage are disappearing.

As mentioned in previous posts on dubbing, there are three distinct layers in a crafted dubbing, allowing you to insert distinct qualities as part of each layer’s construction. I’ve likened dubbing construction to a cigar, where the finished product contains binder, filler, and wrapper.

The Wrapper is the coarsest material, often made of animals with well marked guard hair, suitable for adding spike and shag to the finished blend.

The filler is often the coloring agent, made up of semi-coarse or semi-fine materials that comprise the bulk of the dubbing…

… and the binder is the softest component, which is often added in proportion to the filler and wrapper to hold all three layers together in a cohesive bundle.

Somewhere in all of this can be a fourth layer, not always present, that I call “special effects.” Shiny or sparkle, pearlescent or opalescent, some quality that natural materials lack which can be added to liven it with color or a metallic effect.

Free_Range_Dubbing2

The Free Range Difference

What I’ve constructed is a dubbing designed to assist both beginner and expert tiers by including specific desirable qualities that should belong in any quality nymph dubbing:

Ease of Use: The material isn’t unruly nor possessed of qualities of some Brillo-style gaudy synthetic. The soft binder layer entraps the spiky wrapper and makes dubbing the fur onto the thread easy.

Sized for 8 – 16 hooks: All the fibers present in each color have been sized to best fit your most common sizes of nymphs. That means you won’t be yanking too many overly long fibers out of your dubbing, or off the finished flies, as even the multiple guard hairs used have been chosen for length as well as coloration.

Minimal Shrinkage When Wet: The fibers of the filler layer, which comprise the largest part of the dubbing as well as most of the color, are chosen for their curl, so they will maintain their shape wet or dry, and what proportions leaves your vise will be retained when the fly is soaking wet.

Blended Color versus Monochrome: Each of the colors is the result of between 5 and 11 different materials, each with different shades and tints that add themselves to make the overall coloration. Like Mother Nature, whose insects are never a uniform color, each pinch yields a bit of unique in every fly tied.

Spectral Coloration: The special effects of each are often synthetic spectral color components, containing a range of colors that are sympathetic with the overall blend color.

Only Buggy Colors: We chose to concentrate our colors into traditional insect hues leaving the lightly used colors out of the collection. Most fly tiers have a drawer filled with colors that are rarely used, we’d prefer to focus on the “money” colors like olive and brown.

Rather than a single color of Olive, we’ll offer a half dozen olives – as they’re far more useful than coral pink or watermelon. We’ve done the same for brown and gray, and even added effects to make more than a single black.

Food-based Names: Everyone knows that colors named with food references are twice as tasty to fish. We got’em, they don’t – ’nuff said.

Twice as much: Earlier in the research phase of the project I discovered the average dubbing vendor now only gives you 0.91 of a gram with 2 grams of brightly painted cardboard. I’ll give you a couple grams of goodie, and a biodegradable slip of paper instead …

Free Range Dusky Olive

What it isn’t …

It’s not going to leap onto your thread unassisted, nor will it make your fingers less tacky and curb your propensity to grab too much. It’s not some painted harlot made gaudy by too much color. Special effects are nearly invisible to the eye, representing about 2% of the fiber, and until the fur is moved into direct sunlight, only then can you see the refractive elements that make the mix glow and sparkle.

Naturally once someone says, “ … and the trout see …” Everything past that is a leap of faith. Millions of nice fellows have roused from their cups to pound  table and insist trout love something or other. This entire collection is my sermon on colors and textures, imbued with everything I hold sacred.

Until I can get some automation in place this is more a labor of love than  profit. I managed to incur some fierce loyalties to the end result from many of the folks testing, and with a new season about to debut and them tying to make up for lost time, they’re looking for me to live up to my end of the bargain.

I have 20 colors completed and am planning about 10 additional colors to fill gaps. Most of the Olives and Browns and Grays are completed already, I just need to see what I reach for that isn’t there.

Yes, we’re a bit ahead of our supply lines still, but the season starts next weekend, and I can’t have you feeling naked and resentful. I figure after a couple trips into the season I’ll know exactly what’s missing.

If you would like a sample of the dubbing, drop me a note. I’ll put something in there you’ll like and you can send me a stamped envelope to cover my expenses …

Where they sleeps at night

The National Fish Habitat Board just released a summary of the risks for watershed and habitat degradation for the entire US.

Overall, 27 percent of the miles of stream in the lower 48 states are at high or very high risk of current habitat degradation and 44 percent are at low or very low risk.  Twenty-nine percent of stream miles in the lower 48 states are at moderate risk of current habitat degradation.

fish_habitat_at_risk

It’s the usual suspects that are causal agents, most being activities of us humans, and the harsh chemicals that run off our land when it’s turned to industrial uses.

That harsh red band splitting California is where I live and fish, suggesting at least one stalwart crept to the edge of the bridge and tossed some vial into the murky brown below.

The report is very light on science and a suitable read for the average angler, if you’re interested in a map of your state and a brief mention of projects and issues, take a look at the 72 page PDF.

With cutting edge carbon technology

The process wherein you become your father is long, memorable, and completely horrifying. One day you’re dutifully changing your oil at 3000 miles, only to be reminded that no one does that anymore.

… or your painfully enduring some meeting that’s prolonged by the speaker feeling it necessary to answer his smart phone at every ring, holding the balance of the table a yawning captive.

The phone may be smart, but the SOB using it has the IQ of a cucumber.

What was once  the childish wide smile with face pressed against the fly shop glass has become the “Bah, Humbug face”  – worn only because you own everything good already, and the only thing missing is new, which may or may not be good.

Once we broke the fifty-bazillion modulus barrier, we listened patiently to the superlatives and dismissed ownership out of hand, we’d fallen for that lure back when we could achieve modulus at the mere sight of a sale, or just a fistful of red saddle hackle. Now that we’re in our dotage it isn’t cutting edge carbon technology we’re seeking, it’s just a quiet moment on the john.

And if it has a remote, heated seat, hidden bidet, has quadraphonic stereo, and has the suction power of a Death Star’s tractor beam, including all air in the bowl treated by carbon filtration, the price is goddamn academic …

After a lifetime of icy duck blinds, frozen limbs due to prolonged immersion in icy steelhead water, suffering all manners of discomfort and poor sanitation, handfuls of leaves that prove less so, I’d consider dumping six grand on a bonafide engineering marvel.

The touch screen controls may not have been such a good idea, at least not for us fisher-types.

… and whoever said “Crime doesn’t Pay” wasn’t a fly tier

HandfulofSaddle Those of you old enough to remember Dan White and the Twinkie Defense are about to make bank, but only if you can hold a straight face while being pummeled by Gendarmes and hairless screaming females …

No, we’re not interested in a mundane purse snatching, we’re about to score acres of free 12 – 15 inch saddle hackles that we can turn around for obscene profits on eBay.

US citizen Edwin Rist, 22, who admitted burglary and money-laundering at a previous hearing, was described as a James Bond fantasist by his solicitor.

St Albans Crown Court heard he acted on his “obsessive interest in birds”.

The court was told that Rist suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. His prison sentence was suspended for two years.

Our museum loving “poor little rich boy” has evaded jail time despite stealing 300 pelts from a priceless collection and then parting them out to his buddies overseas (to the tune of about $30,000). It appears the jury bought the tale of misspent youth, video games, and James Bond, which along with Pop Tarts, coerced the lad into a lifetime of antisocial behavior with a hard on for Macaw …

That’s okay, for Dan White it was Twinkies and Coke that made him blow daylight through Mayor Moscone, Harvey Milk, and anyone else that got in his way.

Now that we recognize that I’m showing the symptoms of “an obsessive interest in birds” – and after a lifetime of watching Wiley Coyote fail to capture the Roadrunner, I’m liable to be set off by the sight of dyed saddles, and grab an entire fistful of hair in one big wrench …

… followed by falling prone, curling into the fetal to protect the jewels, enduring the beating while babbling about pyramids and tin foil.

Fishless fishing streak broken abruptly, as were all the Opening Days jitters

It wasn’t overflowing its banks, it was mostly transparent, it was largely wet, completely private and I managed to commit most of the Opening Day sins on my tackle to exorcise me of later demons.

While the first fishable water of the season made it feel like Opening Day, and the jitters that come with throwing your first cast in anger added to the growing body of evidence, Opening Day isn’t till next weekend, where the rest of you will feature all these same highlights hundreds of miles from your home …

I shipped water into my waist highs, right about the crotch area.

I bollixed a cast badly enough such that it combined with the feathery weed it gathered on the return, required me to cut away everything and start over …

I imbedded a fly in a soft and flaccid area of my frame – that can’t be rubbed in public.

I added color to both face and pallid forearms. Bright red.

Peeled a tick off my neck … and had to eyeball every square inch of gross fatbody for fear I was hosting creepy crawlies. I peeked between clenched fingers, recoiling at the doughy expanses of blindingly white flesh that were proof of winter’s excesses.

… and left most of a double sawbuck in bankside vegetation. Which was required of me.

I got ate which was the important thing

But I also got ate. Which breaks one of many long and dour spells, where unruly weather makes finned prey the scarcest photo on a supposed fishing blog.

Moore_Siphon

The creek still has a couple of weeks to wait. While the color is returning it’s not the placid little drainage I remember, nor can it be crossed at any point, as the bonafide white water confirms above.

I’m getting eager to walk it given that the mouth was open to the Sacramento for a full two weeks. There’s no telling what might have poked its nose into my quiet little backwater.

.. and if it doesn’t belong there I may have to start a fish rescue …

Sure I offered to help … myself

If they’d only let me know I’d have been happy to help. Now that all the rain swollen creeks around my place are starting to recede, it’s revealing all the navigationally challenged animals that climbed out of the murky Sacramento and attempted to ascend my beloved Brownline …

brownline_monster

They intercepted this rare Green Sturgeon just shy of the mouth of the Little Stinking, and when I asked could I borrow it, they got all huffy and short tempered. The idea of six foot of prehistoric prey attempting to melt aluminum being irresistible to me…

There were quite a few salmon, striped bass, and sturgeon stranded in the Yolo Bypass upstream of me, the above scene was Fish & Game attempting a rescue – given that once the water dried up, everything would perish.

Maybe next year I’ll wade down there and fling a Ghost Shrimp on a 6/0 treble, just to see what breaks first.

Rock Snot merely “visually unpleasant”

Didymo_MotherConnecticut officials side with US Fish & Wildlife scientists in the belief that the once fearsome Didymo, or Rock Snot as it’s more commonly known, is largely harmless to both insect populations and fish in infested streams.

It’s a win for the fish regardless of whether you believed rubber soles exonerate us of all sins or no …

Didymo has had a negative effect on water bodies in New Zealand, creating large mats on the bottoms of rivers and affecting the food chain. Although the algae has been found in the Northeast, the same effects have yet to be seen in New England, Aarrestad said.

“Colleagues [in Vermont] have assured me that the devastation was not what they’d seen on the other side of the world,” Aarrestad said. And in New Zealand, “there is no scientific evidence demonstrating negative effects on trout populations.”

*Peter Aarrestad, director of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection’s Inland Fisheries Division (and those are my boldings)

All of which makes the articles in the Maryland media that much more humorous. My personal favorite skipped the wading issue entirely, suggesting Didymo was spread by angler’s feet … which suggests the Missus will insist we keep our socks on while in bed.

Now all that remains is for the two groups to get their stories straight, as the US Fish & Wildlife article was written by New Zealand scientists who claim they also saw little damage to their insect populations contrary to the Connecticut excerpt, above.

It’s certain that no one wants to alter any of the watersheds visually or otherwise, but someone in the conservation community needs to alter their sensationalist fear message to match the the facts as they emerge …

For a more formal treatment of  “Didymo as potentially benign”, see the always wonderful Turning Over Small Stones .

There’s a good reason we’re the last of a dying breed

With reality TV performing introductions of the couch-bound to the great outdoors via cracked crab and icy trawlers, or featuring some suicidal dimwit paragliding into inhospitable terrain and doing without Twinkies for a week, I think we’re all a bit tired of network TV’s insistence that the out-of-doors is only for crazed adrenalin junkies and the idle nitwit that gets lost and runs out of gas.

Outdoorsmen

… and when the magazines wade in with the “who’s the bestest” competition, they’ll opt for making it family-fare, suitable for prime time – and in so doing eliminate all the real outdoorsmen.

It’s called the “Total Outdoorsman” Challenge for a reason. We’re not interested in finding the hunter who can shoot the tightest groups, or the angler who can catch the biggest bass in the lake. We want the outdoorsman who can do both. And then some. Like cast a fly rod into a stiff wind. Or thread an arrow into a tight spot. Or bust clays with a side-by-side. Or maneuver an ATV in the mud. Can you do all of this…under pressure? If you can, then we’ve got a $25,000 check with your name on it.

All you’re going to get watching some fat-arse roar through a forest floor on an ATV, is some fellow that isn’t capable of humping his dinner up the canyon, can’t cook the sumbitch once he gets there, and likely couldn’t get a fire lit if he was issued a couple of waterproof matches.

Them guys use drive-thru, mostly scratching their head and pointing at the pretty pictures …

Real outdoors contests should include; how many days can you wear the same tee shirt without bathing, how many beers can you drink yet still cross a creek on a log, how many times can you blow daylight through a fleeing forest animal as it dashes through the parking lot, can you double the size of your fish with a straight face, do you carry single malt or blended, and which kind of leaves should be avoided when wiping your arse below the high water mark …

Those SOB’s are outdoorsmen.

The last thing I need is a gaggle of fly fishermen – or some equally effete rich SOB that breaks clay with a couple thousand worth of finely engraved over and under, or some dandy that insists on getting bow tags -when steel belted radials work all year …

If I’m going up to the piney woods, I’m going with the crowd that appreciates it. I’m tired of telling the ATV guy that he has to pack his bottles and cans out …