Author Archives: KBarton10

The Graphite rod with the curves of a woman

I didn’t know much of anything when I saw first saw it, now I’m not sure I know more, but I’ve certainly scratched my head enough.

Knowing that the only truism about “advances” in [insert angling gadget here] science, is that whatever the manufacturer claims can be discarded immediately. It’s up to all them other fellows who’ve laid hands on product to pick the proper tone for the superlatives … as that’s all we ever hear in any product testimonials.

But they’ve still been able to fling the SOB, and reading between the obvious gushing prose and the overtly favorable yields some small barometric differences.

Certainly an “S” shaped rod is a bit of an oddity, and knowing that the maker would have 17 reasons why it was twice as good as a straight rod, I was hoping I’d have that “ahah” moment before I read his line of speculative logic so I could follow that esoteric principle of physics which was being exploited.

I briefly entertained particle physics and quantum theory, but the fit seemed just a bit forced.

Global Dorber Ultra Wave

Seventeen guides on a five weight was easy enough to swallow, given the manufacturers belief that more friction resulted in the fly line touching the blank than anything or anywhere else in the cast. That’s plenty of epoxy and extra weight, but I could follow the scent of the physics – and could therefore nod sagely enough.

A couple of reviews suggested what most reviews do, it was great, mostly awesome, and everything else ever cast was now obsolete, landfill even.

Naturally the forums were quick to Pooh-Pooh everything – as forums are wont to do. Something about anonymity and someone else’s mother always breeds courage …

But having seen all this before, and not having one to fling to offer anything actually learned, I kept fixating on the unknowns and what it couldn’t do …

I’d love to see what the rod tube looked like. I wondered how I could toss it into a truck bed, or lash it to a pack frame, and mostly I wondered how all the scientific data suggested I needed a double recurve in the rod so I could fling enormous gouts of five weight, into a stiff wind, given that 95% of the time I’m fishing at 35 feet or less?

But that’s my fishing, which differs from the manufacturer, and all those stalwarts that fish polar ice caps, forest fires, and really arduous geography.

I figured those self same stalwarts insisted on the technology because all their aging bamboo fleet had kinks, sets, and curves rivaling women, and naturally they were homesick.

Asymmetric is a tough road to hoe, evidenced by the continued fervor over whether to match segment splines or no. Most of us have an elliptical casting stroke, because straight back brings the fly in line with them precious eyeballs. An asymmetric rod with an semi-oval casting motion and you’re going to have a rod release or jump where you’ve never had one before.

I’ll wait a bit and read more – it’s certain that it’ll foster additional forum based hot air, and perhaps we’ll all be enlightened.

Bainbridge Island being so yesterday and all

barbie dumps Ken for Boron OK, so all the free thinking types live in Utah, home to plenty of desert and even more Mormons …

Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed the bill into law this week, designating the Browning model M1911 automatic pistol as the official state firearm.

Polygamists are big on the multiple hit theory of gunplay, hence their choice of an automatic. Any real god-fearing western state would’ve chosen a Colt something-or-other if only to piss off all them Texicans – who believe all that Louis Lamour hogwash and figure they annexed Hartford, Connecticut sometime during the War Between The States.

Actually the Browning M1911 has its roots in Ogden Utah, hence a very real connection to the state and its infancy.

While rod makers showed only after most of the real estate was civilized, most states should still scramble to honor what rod makers are left, only they’re a curiously nomadic lot and like the NFL will insist on a generous stipend to keep them in their existing stadi … er … quarters.

Legislatures will have to glad-hand whatever craftsmen remain at whatever political cost, overlooking the tacky epoxy and graphite dust ingrained in their suddenly firm grip, and offer both keys to the state and/or a two week stint in rehab, depending on the degree of varnish inhalation.

All them eastern states will be fighting over everyone whose ever fished in Vermont and built bamboo anything.

I’m hoping California overlooks all past glory. Winston got miffed over Hollywood’s refusal to add their star to the Walk of Fame and fled to Twin Bridges, Montana. Leaving California only the sullied Powell brand, long fallen from any real prominence.

Hopefully our now penniless legislature will skip any ties with the besotted crowd that remains and adopts China, as their lock on manufacturing and volume may be just what’s needed to introduce the boron II Barbie rod, and we’ll again assume our rightful place as trendsetters versus followers.

Not just restore the fishery, but Big Trout and the Lewis & Clark kind of stupid

lewis_and_clark_trail The lack of commentary on our previous article suggests fishermen are a stoic and heartless lot, unwilling even in the face of  insolvency to spend less of the government’s cash to balance budgets, bomb Libya, or any other semi-humanitarian act …

So we’ll pose the question again, this time with science insisting that were we only to close our most sacred fisheries for a couple of years periodically, we’d have more fish, bigger fish, and they’d all be stupid again.

You heard right. That fearless kind of  Stoopid.

Enormous hungry fish unafraid of the harsh glare from your Magenta reel, no longer skittish of your Orange-Orange florescent weight-forward hurtling overhead, and uncaring that your sticky rubber wasn’t – and while you wring the Didymo from your sandwich with much cursing, they’ll continue to feed unhurried and within arm’s reach.

” It seems that by closing the area off, communities may not only build up the amount of fish in the area, but make them easier to catch, which helps meet the goal of having fish for a feast. But this may pose a problem where temporary closures are used for conservation rather than community goals.”

“Our results highlight a previously unconsidered mechanism through which a rapid and large decline in fish biomass may occur when a closed area is reopened to fishing; reduced flight distance resulting from protection may increase some fish species’ susceptibility to spear fishing,”

– via PhysOrg.com

If science insists special regulations may be needed to protect all them fatties lolling in the current once the fishery is reopened, then it’s the closest thing to “guaranteed” ever.

Weigh the sacrifice before insisting on being heard. A couple of marginal years spent hardscrabble fishing for foot long federales, versus a couple years at a new venue resulting in unmitigated slaughter upon your return.

Think, Gents. How bad can a few days off your home water hurt, compared to the larger picture?

There’s no houses floating past, yet …

Tsunamis must be in fashion, given my last 48 hours crouched under the bed hoping a tree limb isn’t headed for the roof – and with it, thousands of gallons of California’s freshwater variant…

Now as the water district trucks snarl and slide toward the abyss, counting the remaining feet from the lip, I’m wondering whether this’ll all be gone by shad season, or whether I’ll be shaking fist like last year.

Big dark clouds rolling inThe 10-day forecast suggests it’ll rain constantly, and my sleepy little backwater is already running 73 feet deep, so there’ll be little respite from gnawing fingernails and hoping the creek starts to recede given it’s less than 20 feet from flooding Interstate-5.

tsunami2

Those oaks are on an island thirty feet above the creek, evidence that the last couple of days have added generously to the drainage burden, and we’re looking at an additional 40 foot of water over last weekend. The I-5 bridge in the distance has about 13 foot of freeboard before it’s flooded too.

The familiar bridge view

The familiar bridge view is obliterated, the creek has filled in the normally dry areas and is nearly 200 yards wide. A flood of this magnitude will moves hundreds of tons of gravel, and nearly all the root balls and debris remaining in the flood plain.

Good for cleansing purposes as it’ll flush all the chemical spills and nitrogen fertilizers into the ocean, along with a couple more truck chassis and a horde of rubber tires.

With flood stage a scant 11 feet distant and 10 days of rain forecast, it’s liable to be close.

Hope these forecasts are better'n weathermen

A cane pole is what I’d call it

Without all that meticulous planing, hand sanding and the careful assembly of six equal strands of historic weed, is a shellacked cane pole worth $695?

Tenkara fans seem to think so. Or is it the nose-inna-air purist tenkara fans that insist on the natural mats? Fishing being what it is; the last bastion of opinionated SOB’s that aren’t watching NASCAR – each fringe group simply can’t be happy without inventing some cash merit-badge so they can flash gang sign in the parking lot.

Otherwise, a cane pole would be easily mistaken for a curtain rod or the butt-end of a broom, so they shellac it shiny and call the fellow that made it “doctor.”

Doctor Scholl's

For about $9 Montgomery Wards offered the literal version, outfitted fetchingly with naugahyde faux-cane bole and matching smoking weskit.

But for the spendthrift who derives his stature only by the volume of dead presidents plunked onto the glass, stick with the rarified Tenkara stuff. Me, I would never buy a rod from a doctor unless it was his estate sale – and then I’d be expecting a discount.

Pappy does Cane better

Instead I’d rather dump coin on some toothless fellow with an infectious grin, likely called “Pappy” whose been supplementing his social security check by guiding big city swells with a battered johnboat and a rusty Evinrude.

While I don’t believe for a second that Tenkara is the purest form of anything, I do believe what Pappy’s drinking may be the purest corn ever exhaled …

Considering I’ve only got twenty good years left, I figured two would be enough

It was simply the best fly line ever made, and if you were a bamboo junkie your heart broke on the announcement of their demise. The best plastic facsimile to the silk fly line, with a finer tip than any line before or since …

… that self-same tip that won’t float more than six inches unless you curse it with much vigor..

It shoots twice as far as a conventional line, and the brace on the table and message from the owner, below is testament to their being hoarded forever.

Sunset_Line_Twine

… and making the generous fellow that had a few remaining, my new best friend.

Masterline brochure Page 1

There may be a few more available, if interested drop the nice man a note.

I have a stash of old vintage Masterlines that I am going to part with. They are the Sunset Line and Twine Formula F series. Sunset is the firm that distributed Masterlines in the USA . It is my understanding that the Formula F is the identical line to the Masterline Chancellor which is the mid-grade line under the Chalkstream. However, these lines are available in creamy white (called foam white by Masterline) and olive (called surface green by Masterline) where the Chalkstream was available in grey only.  The olive lines I had have all been sold.  These are beautiful lines and some of the best casting lines ever made. I feel these lines are specialty lines that are excellent for spring creeks and rivers like the Henry’s Fork as they are not super high floaters. What they lack in high buoyancy, they make up in performance. These lines are thinner and have greater density than regular plastic lines. So, they cast really nice. They also have fine tips. They are probably the closet thing to silk. I am selling them at $50 per line, plus shipping. Considering the price of new modern line ranges from $60 to $70 and that I have seen the Chancellor selling as high as $135 online, I feel the price is more than fair. These vintage lines are new (never used) and include the original label wrapped around the line. I have the creamy white and some olive in DT4 and DT5.  The olive have all been sold.  If you are interested, please let me know via email at ffftroutbum@yahoo.com soon as I do not expect these lines to last long. I will accept check or money order and a 3 day inspection period.  Ideally, I would like these lines to go to people who are familiar with them and would enjoy them.

Masterline Page 2

I would guess these are late 80’s (early 90’s) vintage. Note the “No Silicone” warning on the above sheet. Standard DEET based insect repellants will make the surface instantly tacky, wash repellant off immediately.

… and reading the above now you understand why the new Scientific Anglers textured lines are mentioning golf balls.

Don’t let the age bother you, these lines are as supple as the day they were spewed through the extruder.

Don’t act so surprised, you knew they were going to do it

Them girls bought them all, honest! It’s like turning on the living room light to find your dog frozen into immobility as he rearranges that warm dent on your sofa cushion. It’s that same shocked expression that’ll bring a smile to your face as you kick his butt off the soft and fluffy …

There’ll be shock and amazement aplenty when all those fly tiers realize the folks pimping Whiting saddle hackle to women for hair extensions is their local fly shop.

Naturally, Whiting promised their first priority will always be fly tiers and fly shops – and the faddish teenyboppers that wanna-look-like-Miley-Cyrus can all go without (meaning they can lightfinger Poppa’s stash) .

So the fly shops pump their fist along with their customers, as it’s a boy’s life and “no gurls allowed …” – even though them counter-men adore all that taught flesh giggling their way through the upstairs dander.

Now that their supply is assured by Whiting, they’re onto eBay by the bucketload, selling dyed Grizzly hair extensions by the fistful. The Whiting shipment received and hustled into the back room where it’s dismembered into little 5 feather packets and sold for $10 – $15 each on ebay…

… giggle …

…while you mean old men have to do without.

grizzhairebay What’s not so smart is most of them are selling under the shop account, and was I the Whiting Hackle Company I might want to be bring a couple of those vendors up short, as I have enough troubles keeping the fly tying market in feathers without some sharp SOB hoarding all the good saddles in the back room – claiming them damn girls bought it all ..

Just click the Nomad Anglers picture above to see what they’re telling their customers …

The only reason I’m not completely incensed is because the selfsame idea crossed both our temporal lobe about five minutes ago, and you’re suddenly wishing you’d paid more attention to my articles on dyeing.

… and for those shops poised to unload onto the marketplace, don’t use words like “Cree” or “Furnace” to describe your hackle, hair dressers don’t use words like that, dummy.

Traverse City Orvis

Nor is it surprising that I’d find Orvis selling hair extensions to the gals. The seller above appears to be the Traverse City, Michigan Orvis store, called “Streamside Orvis.”

With Opening Day just over a month away, I’d accuse these shops of really poor timing at the minimum. Nothing like a shortage of hackle just when the customer base seeks it most.

The Sharp stuff is in the mail

The last of them mean old ladies in the Post Office line have finally sheathed their brooms, irate that I keep hogging all the pretty girls in the Priority mail section. I keep telling them it’s for a good cause, but at that age anything standing between them and a nap is the enemy.

If you sent me a note for scissors, they’re in the mail.

It seems like I may have curried favor with most of the TU chapters between here and the Asian Carp, with a sprinkling of US army servicemen (which I immediately hit up for exotic Afghan flightless birds downed by drones ), and other fishing clubs. I was pleased to send nearly 300 pair to about 24 different organizations.

Figure 10% actually live through the experience without slitting wrist and that’s 30 newly hatched hoarders for next season’s reality show …

I’ll continue to hoard all that defective metal and perhaps we can do this again ..

In all this suffering can it be that an occasional fly fisherman can play fair without it being considered weakness?

Now that the worm is so much smaller does the resolve exist to do the right thing or are we fishermen insistant that previous wrongs have been so egregious we’re going to plow forward without thought to consequences and our fair share?

The federal government is starting to trim their budget meaningfully, not meaningfully enough to abandon that trillion dollars of rare earth discovered in Afghanistan, nor is it willing to leave Iraq and 12% of the world’s petroleum to its fate,  but it’s going to play hell with a half dozen  federal fish hatcheries – as well as renege on the promise of a few dam removals and let salmon fisheries wallow their way into extinction.

States meanwhile are raising the prices on licenses 30% to 50%, closing state parks on weekdays and reducing budgets on unnecessary entities like fish & game wardens and enforcement agencies – all to plug the gaps that federal funds and their sudden withdrawal have played in their fiscal integrity.

It’s the New Austerity, complete with the economy completely “fixed”, the big banks a feeding frenzy still on life support at the fed window, Wall Street is now honest again, and only the middle class civil servants defy the new frugal, insisting on driving the country deeper in debt and into the waiting arms of the Asian menace…

Naturally, the fishing and hunting conservation pundits are crying foul, insisting on “a day of Salmonid Rage”, hosted by Starbucks and someone’s film tour, without benefit of anyone knowing what to protest, so long as they look upset and slop coffee with verve …

… which draws me back to Morgan Freeman’s speech in “Glory” – “how them white boys have been dying for years and now its time we ante up like men …”

All this living beyond our means, dining out versus eating in, and a new car every three years was supposed to teach us something. Now when things are grim there’s no talk of “the tough get tougher” – rather it’s  mail in the house keys and walk, hoping the neighbors don’t notice you lowering their property values further.

Sure, John Wayne is long gone, and the last vestiges of the Marlboro men wink meaningfully from the damp rail at the gay bar – with them the pioneers and selfless individuals that tossed the yoke of oppressors, and built this cathedral in the first place …

Yet it begs the question, with the last of the Greatest generation becoming fewer, can this be our rallying cry – and if so, “how many trout streams is our part?”

We arm wrestled federal and state governments at every turn, we claimed rare and sacred songbirds nested there, famous Indians were buried close by, and them timbers were the last refuge of the spotted owl. We litigated until we made it hideously expensive no matter what the solution was, as it was our tax dollars and it was about time that dam came out regardless of who was using it.

It’s a difficult topic to be sure. But with our conservation groups insisting we still should be angry should the teat be denied us, despite all of the hardship and suffering of those around us, it simply doesn’t sit well to resume business as usual.

With this latest tragedy in Japan demonstrating the frailty of nuclear reaction contained in our best engineering, it’s likely to come to a perfect storm for anglers, especially so due to all the uncertainty in the Middle East.

Islamic Fundamentalism could claim a couple more countries as easy as not, and we’ll feel obligated to occupy them too, or it’ll mean less oil exports due to sanctions from our government, and with nuclear no longer seen as “clean” we could see a redoubling of drilling in our interior, our exterior, and the wholesale embrace of the oil shale industry.

Which in contrast with liquid oil, is a dirty, water-intensive business.

Most of which exists in the Western trout states. Especially the Bakken deposit of North Dakota and Montana, rumored to contain as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

Fracking oil shale isn’t the same as pumping liquid oil. Freshwater is pumped into the ground to float the crude to the top and increasing a well’s recovery rate. Considering most of the West is flirting with drought due to population increase, it’s liable to add yet another commercial interest with the lawyers and politicians to force their way to the head of the table.

… where they can litigate farmers and livestock interests for the little clean water remaining.

… and they’ll bring those pipelines down from Canada, through Montana so they can carry all that brew to someplace that’ll refine it. They’ll want right of way, which won’t be hard to get especially if it involves national security or some heightened Defcon consideration.

All that’s coming soon enough, but for the time being I’m not going to protest to my senator or congressman on the next three rivers I’m asked to save. I figure that’s my share for the dream of a balanced budget given that I’ve responded like a proper whiney-bitch-spendthrift and complained that the government should save ________ by removing its dam, intervene in the water pumped south for lawns, or ban the use of dill pickles in sandwiches, all of which saved the spotted owl.

I need to save those precious goodwill-fairplay credits for when they’re really needed, like in the next couple of years …

Fly fishing being a lot cheaper than most of us think

It was a nice enough thought, how to restore an aging libido who’d squandered his youth huffing aniline dyes and white wine vinegar. I’m not sure why the unsolicited advertisement suddenly put things in perspective, but figuring a $350 rod, a $60 reel, $200 worth of waders, and $500 dollars more in terminal tackle and flies, I’m thinking fly fishing is much cheaper than first thought.

Sure, we got roving gangs of middle aged civil servants stealing from our fly shops, and smashing our windows at pull-out points near the river, but when you compare fly fishing to some of those seminal moments of your life … kicking the kids out of your house, a Smithfield Ham, your first parking ticket, or the first time you used your medical marijuana card and scored something other than billy club … erection_pack

… it still worked out to be less than $7.50 per …

Whether it was Old School or New Age dating; $350 for the clothes, one or more pricey two-person dinners, $200 in gas and Pepsi, and $500 so the cleaning lady found and hid all your porn beforehand …

… all this so your average marriage can last eight years.

Figure the first half is “constantly” and the second half being “occasionally”, your lifetime batting average (with half your belongings paid out every 11 years) renders a “10 Pack” completely useless.

Like beer, when you’re young a 10 pack is half an hour, and in your dotage becomes an ambition, never realized.

As you fish between 9-12 outings per year, and assuming them to be weekends, you’re afield nearly 24 days per year, with a precision rod lasting a decade or more, figure four fish per day, that’s nearly one thousand fish for an $1100 buy in, pretty cheap for “the best entertainment you can have upright lying down, depending where you are in the cycle.”