Author Archives: KBarton10

The End of fly fishing as the World has known it

Lands and sticks to any surface, carries seven times its weight and releases on command? Teensy little nano-soldiers that deploy needles to adhere – and they’re going to waste them on insurgents and forest fires?

It’s my goddamn tax dollars at work, so how much to add a barb?

I always knew dry fly fishermen would ruin the sport completely, not with the ascots and monocles, sipping liquor or shaded verandahs, merely their obsession with seeing the fish grab – and how much more fun that was …

Now that Nintendo and XBox will be elbowing Sage and aged bamboo out of the picture – and a visible fish can be impaled by flies regardless of depth, we’ll all decry the blood sports as “lame” and return to the sofa whence we came.

Fly tiers out of business, the sporting fraternity torn asunder, hundreds of years of tradition out the window, and who knew?

Swarm robotics, the ability to manufacture nano-insects that respond to nimble joystick-trained fingers dancing across an iPhone, and the Army will be buying millions of them.

In the long term, the U.S. Army certainly sees miniature “bug” UAVs as a big part of its battlefield operations. According to a recently released roadmap, clouds of them would be used to survey buildings and various sites before soldiers enter them.

– via Federal Computer Week

Controlled by Ipod's and nimble little fingers

– via US Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap 2010-2035

Sure there’ll be old surplus units. We’ll be able to buy a couple of hatches worth and felt pen them to look like Pale Morning Duns … It’ll be part of a package offered at destination hotels, “two nights stay plus fishing” (on some private reserve managed by PETA) where “duffers” can remember how it used to be, while irritating children impatiently wait on Grandpa and his needs.

It’s certain that someone on the Joint Chief’s is a purist – what with trout shaped dirigibles and attack Mayflies, in light of the carnage about to ensue, I just wish he’d foreswear the joints for a couple moments of clarity …

You and I won’t have much to worry about as we’ll be incarcerated along with the rest of the “Catskill 700” … we’ll hear jackboots grinding on gravel just prior to the SEAL team emerging from our riffle – our vest painted with lasers before we’re dropped to the earth, all the while protesting innocence while some kid renders sentence:

“Yessir, he’s got a pocketful of black AR-97A’s, and a fistful of subsurface agents in his vest – looks like cheap Chinese produced knockoffs, probably carrying a biologic payload …”

“Huh?, those are Black Gnat’s, I got them a … (solar plexus blow with gun butt) … huff .. huff .. wheeze.”

Small finger skills qualifies me to assemble the SOB’s which is a plum assignment compared to the sweltering heat of the prison laundry – where all that hard work scrubbing invasives will pay off for the rest of you … for the State.

Tags: Nano robots, swarm robotics, fly fishing humor, fly tier, fly tying contraband, dry fly purist, less joint more chiefs, SEAL team, nano-insects, attack mayfly

Labels and reference color hide a rainbow of sins

dye_fiddling Call me a slow learner, but the aerial display of the fourth will have nothing on the fireworks tonight …

I Figure 26 colors run through the same sink, tracked across identical linoleum – each with a 100% chance of a gaily colored spill outlining big hammy footprints headed toward the Man Cave …

Naturally I’ll spring for roses and chocolate hoping to confuse Miss White Glove, but even with all the innocent looks and promises of romance her spider-sense is liable to tingle.

It’s why I save all those extra Fly Shop ziploc bags, the lecture on “How much fly tying stuff do you need” carries less penalty than the “you dribbled Olive crap all over the living room” variant. By witching hour, all two and a half pounds of dry fly dubbing, plus those sixteen animal hides will be packaged neatly, allowing me to look appropriately shamefaced while she administers the former – rather than the latter, while I distract her with dinner and a glass of fine red.

I was working colors mostly, a new set of dyes and a new vendor always requires an exhaustive trial to see how labels and reference colors stack up to the end result.

I use the “21” method for evaluating new dyes, as the range of payload color can be fairly drastic even among the lightest tints. Take two identical hanks of material, soak one in the bath for one minute – soak the other in the bath for twenty minutes, dry and compare.

Twenty-One Method of Dye evaluation

The upper row shows four colors dipped for just 60 seconds, the bottom row shows the same dye bath after 20 minutes. The rightmost “Maize Yellow” produced a Golden Amber with an extended dip – yet the label reference showed the light maize variant. The leftmost color was “Safari Gray” – a color similar to Khaki, but the extended dip became nearly brown.

The rust brown and dark olive (two middle colors) were labeled as the bottom row, both dark colors – and quite vibrant in intensity. The one minute colors yielded a sage green and a creamy orange – with the cream-orange a huge bonus as it’s used extensively in most of the watersheds I fish regular.

This is why it’s so important to test dyes before using them on precious materials, sometimes the reference color is one minute – other times it’s gained only after the long steep. Knowing which yields what minimizes mistakes and the unforeseen colors.

More colors

Here’s another four dyes with similar issues. The leftmost medium gray and rightmost khaki are only true to the label color after a one minute dip – after that they darken incredibly fast. The center two, medium olive and brick red match the label only after a twenty minute soak. The one minute olive is also a huge color, it’s the Pale Morning Dun pale olive – something I thought I’d have to craft, versus just dipping it in a jug of nymph dip for a minute.

Each of the dyes shown was measured identically, one tablespoon of dye and three tablespoons of fixative, each used identical amounts of water.

Each dye is capable of three distinctive colors, the 1, 20, and 11 minute shade.

A canny fellow looks at the colors available and the 1, 11, and 20 minute results and can exclude certain colors from purchase. Most browns have only minor adjustments in red or black pigment, having it steep longer will match a russet or dark brown which you won’t have to buy.

The above picture is 13 dyes yielding 25 colors – not to mention the most absolute black and bright red I’ve ever seen.

Get Out of Jail Free Card

The Before As no points are scored for being banned from the kitchen, it’s important that the how to make a complete mess is tempered with how to extricate yourself from a screaming and angry woman.

It’s like watching all those crime shows and getting pointers on how to hide the body.

At left is the corpse after three days of desiccation. “Her” corn grabbers being the blunt instrument we need to cleanse – as well as the assortment of  ugly gray, red, and yellow driblets that line the strainer area. Each capable of bringing the Wrath of The Gods onto your narrow shoulders.

Soft Scrub, Get Outta Jail At right is the Righter of Kitchen Wrongs, cleanses fingerprints, restores the Pristine to the porcelain, and is capable of making you innocent of all imagined crimes.

… and don’t nod your head like you knew it already, this is the Goods, Babe.

Lay a generous dollop onto the porcelain and cover the afflicted area completely, give it 10 minutes to work magic, then rinse.

… and don’t buy the lemon as it coagulates in the jug rendering the contents useless. Unless you like driving to the store – blowing through all them red lights.

Along with pink fingers, the immaculate sink is the only means of extending your dyeing career, providing enough cover to enjoy a second or third session …

The immaculate porcelain

The pot scrape remains but all coloring agents are scoured from the surface. The shine has been restored as has the ability to see one’s reflection.

This corpse is buried deep.

Note the replaced strainer from my earliest attempts. All chrome with no tell tale rubber gasket to stain. It’s the perfect crime.

Tags: dyeing fly tying materials, dye reference colors, chrome strainer, dye stains, soft scrub, 21 method

Hopefully you’ve got at least nine fingers left

Wherein we salute all patriots still abed, and commiserate that the empty beer cans and explosive debris on your lawn simply will not wait for your head to clear, or the throbbing temples to subside:

A brightly colored house payment

Us clean-living types braved the cordite and pre-dawn roadside IED’s to get blanked, but the colors are remarkably similar …

Less clean up involved

… at least one of us can make his next house payment.

Tags: July 5th, shad flies, fireworks, IED, clean-living, fishless fishing

Dissolved oxygen responsible for aquatic upheaval

Stonefly nymph Confirmation of what we’ve always suspected, that with the climb in water temperature due to summer’s heat, and corresponding decline in dissolved oxygen, that stoneflies migrate to the faster flows where the oxygen is again plentiful.

Anyone who’s held a stonefly in still water has seen the gyrations it goes through to force oxygen over its gills, but what is less well known is how nearly everything else changes its behavior in light of warming water and less oxygen.

The probability of the stonefly presence increased significantly with current velocity in summer, but not in winter. Because current influences oxygen renewal rates, our results suggest that the distribution of the insect could be restricted by oxygen.

It’s thought to be one of the triggers for benthic drift, wherein an aquatic population lets loose of their former haunts and drifts to find better water (more food, more oxygen, different temperatures) often during the cooler evening hours where they’re less vulnerable to predators.

Therefore, mayfly nymphs must restrict themselves to a narrow range of habitats where behavioral regulation of oxygen consumption is never required, or they may utilize
less than ideal habitats, changing positions when
necessary during periods of lower oxygen availability.

… and as a response to diminishing oxygen, both mayflies and caddis will crawl out from under to perch on top of the rock – exposing their gills to the full force of the current, versus the lesser currents under the rock.

Experimental investigations in a small artificial stream showed that the positioning of mayfly nymphs (Ephemeroptera) on stones varied with dissolved oxygen concentration (DO). At low DO levels nymphs moved to current-exposed positions, presumably to increase the renewal rate of oxygen at respiratory exchange surfaces.

Making them readily available to foraging fish, and more apt to become dislodged and tumble around, something we love to exploit.

While the nuggets abound poring through the scientific papers, trout season precludes exploiting all of them:

Recorded as a percentage of the total number of items recovered per month, stoneflies account for 47% (December), 82% (January), 70% (February), and 57% (March) of the items consumed. These findings demonstrate the importance of stoneflies in the diet of eastern populations of trout during the winter months.

January appears to be the month for the “fattened calf” as the bigger stoneflies appear to be markedly favored by trout. Perhaps the turbidity associated with winter storms makes all but the larger bugs less visible, but 82% is a mighty compelling number.

Tags: Stonefly nymphs, benthic drift, mayfly, caddis, dissolved oxygen, trout fishing, fly fishing

Billions upon Billions served

McHex–via the Toledo Blade / Andy Morrison

I warned you about all of those untreated wastewater byproducts that burble out of the sewage treatment plant unfiltered. Rather than clean up our collective act – we were content with all-female fish and estrogen enriched Wonderbread …

… now the all them Hex’s share your yen for high fat, high sugar meals, and will be shambling out of the darkness to chase your daughter next …

Tags: Hexagenia Limbata, Mayfly, McDonald’s serves billions, wastewater treatment, your daughter’s next

Teetering on the brink always brings out the best in us

Smoked Salmon Vodka Known  galaxy-wide for our sympathetic stewardship, us Homo Sapiens having the accidental good fortune of eating everything above us on the food chain,  so what do we do with an inferior species teetering on the brink?

… do we pause and reflect, right innumerable wrongs, or merely gash ourselves over our lack of foresight in the indiscriminate use of pavement?

Never.

We find even more novel ways to eat the few remaining survivors, or grind up the heretofore inedible beaks, feet, gristle, and unmentionables – to make even tastier things that require us to kill even more …

Coarse fish point and laugh when they see that silvery salmon smolt wandering around befuddled – still woozy from the long bumpy truck drive, and sick from the toilet flush down the long corrugated pipe into fresh water.

“Dude, the ocean is that way, you’ll know because the water tastes like crap and there’s twice as many tampons … but I wouldn’t worry too much because you’ve got to get past that bigarsed concrete wall with the screen that sucks you into the whirling death machinery.

If you make it you’ll want to hug the far side near Antioch, otherwise you’ll get sucked to LA along with all them trash-talking Stripers, who’ll probably pimp you out to them largemouth in Lake Cachuma or Castaic – and you’ll be spending your best years selling crack on some dimly lit weed bed … if they don’t eat you outright.

… or you could take the red pill – that salmon egg over there, and wind up mashed and forgotten in a Styrofoam cooler with empty beer cans and leftover Cheetos … Sure, it’s cannibalism of a sort, but at least you won’t get the Screaming Blue Shitz from all that Ag chemical in the valley.”

Naturally, a few of us decry that wanton exploitation of such a precious resource, but only after we’ve caught our fill and want to preclude others from matching our war stories …

Mmm, looks like deer berries

… so we can make another couple of million paving some marsh so’s we can sell salmon donuts, that use parts even the vodka crowd blanch at  …

Pampered and fed at the hatchery – head filled with nonsense about superior and noble, and some greasy-fat Pikeminnow fills them in on their destiny … you’d think we’d have the courage to do that.

Tags: salmon, smoked salmon vodka, salmon donuts, they were so thick you could walk across their backs, stewardship

I gotta Trout with your name on it Osama

The recently leaked footage of the next generation of Predator Drones has the fishing world in an uproar. Gone are the propeller driven noisy mosquitoes of yesteryear, in their place comes the sneaky-quiet atmosphere fish … the Rainbird Trout…

TroutNator airship

… meanwhile the Defense Department is a mass of denials, claiming the video of the device (found on a Northrup-Grumman engineer’s iPhone) is a hilarious fake.

“Airships or Blimps have been used by the military for the last 100 years, and were it to have offensive capabilities we would have chosen something scary like an Alligator Gar … that and it would’ve cost twice as much.”

Email recovered from the phone suggest it’s a joint NATO research effort with elements of both design and fabrication provided by the German firm, Focke Wulf, and the UK’s Bristol Beaufighter consortium.

“It’s a classic stealthy and aerodynamic design that can root out an enemy in either rocks or dense growth, capable of a violent take (sic) of a single insurgent, or feed wantonly in a target dense environment.

We called it the Rainbird because of the sound it makes from the 20mm depleted uranium Gatling we put on the prototype. Hey, there’s a bad guy, chuck-chuck-chuck-chuck …”

Additional email suggests the working name for the project is the “Trout-N-Ator”, and mentions a larger tank-busting variant – code named “Eastern Bloc-ee.”

There are obviously fishermen involved. Somewhere.

The Bug died screaming, make sure you imitate that

carpenter_ant If fly tying wasn’t such a mood based hobby your flies would be twice as good. A big order of tiny, upthrust, and gossamer locks the poor tyer into a mayfly mindset and when a big black ant is up next – being a “slab” of protein completely out of place on water, the result is tiny, gossamer, and neat …

… which has no parallel when imitating a drowning Chuck Roast.

Knowing my coworkers will be demanding ants by lunch hour, and armed with a half dozen photos from yesterday – whose details are still fresh, I eyeballed a couple of the larger catalogs and noticed every ant was an upright aquatic insect … none were tied as a dead bug, and fewer yet were tied screaming in terror.

The Gods had smiled ever so briefly, and while it may be five or six seasons before I need them again, I learned my lesson.

First of all terrestrial insects don’t ride the surface upright like mayflies. Most of them are dead, the rest are struggling to free a big terrestrial wing from the water’s surface and will expire on their back or curled on their side, and there’s nothing neat and orderly about it.

Wings aren’t gossamer as they’d get in the way. They’re stubby thick affairs that once dampened lose most of their aerodynamic qualities, trapping the insect in whatever position was first contact.

Fish (bless them) are entirely unsophisticated when the equivalent of a Virginia Ham is struggling on the surface, and it’s likely that color and size is all that’s needed.

… and something that allows you to see that flush-in-the-film imitation so you’ll know when to strike.

Not pretty, nor is it meant to be

I dubbed the traditional ant profile using black deer hair, which left fibers poking in every direction looking like big black legs. I slapped some brown and black permanent marker on the lettuce bag from the trash, posted some closed cell foam upright and wound a brown-dyed grizzly hackle around it to add a bit more brownish tint to the overall fly.

Those wings will flop onto the surface and stick as the saran is so light it won’t hold its tied-in shape.

Curled and dead

Contrast the dead ants with the live picture at the top. Orderly and shipshape versus cold and curled – wings splayed. This was the look of the wet insect we fished over Sunday.

Surely, if a large Adams was all it took to fool the fish we’re splitting hairs, yet if you’re taking the trouble to imitate something lose the live bug bias and get disjoint and nasty.

Coifed and combed is for that sweet smelling fellow with the droopy backcast, and was never meant for the bait …

I call it four grabs and a welcome asterisk

It's his lake, the rest of us are backdrop

I lack the Warden-aint-looking-Velveeta “rod holder”, the depth meter, but more importantly I’m missing that gracious and relaxed look that comes with consistent success.

I was too busy sulking to notice. Fishing is five grabs – and if you’re lucky enough to hook most of them it’s a good day; sunburn hurts less, dinner tastes better, and the mosquitoes bother some other unfortunate.

Me. Mostly.

I flopped around trying secret and double-secret, figuring with each new color I’d unlock the lake and its secrets, but it was for naught. The weather was friendly, yet the fishing remained deathly.

calibaetis spinner

Not a Factor.

My Savior

Why you keep a #10 Adams in a box of #16’s

After the sixth or seventh honey bee floated by I was rethinking the McGinty – and why hadn’t I been smart enough to have a half dozen at the ready…

Everywhere was “Pizza” water. Toppings included every terrestrial not supposed to be there, a smattering of everything that belonged, throw in some midges just to confound everyone and a rise was something to dread, not its normal welcome quickening.

Two fish over was the fellow that likes mayfly, and I’d just cast at the fish that prefers Ladybug…

… and that welcome breeze, the one that adds enough cooling to your burnt forearms so’s you won’t notice – suddenly delivers enough protein to wake up everything downwind plus sending the sunbathers screaming.

It’s the reason you have that one bedraggled #10 Adams in your box of sixteen’s – where you pray you used lots of black thread, because having tried everything earlier, you know you’re lacking ants of any shape or color.

A deft use of the nippers – a bit of artistic license, and sent on its way with a prayer. The first fish shakes it loose in midair, and with only four grabs left …

Why you have a #10 Adams

… that satisfying feeling of a solid hookup. Large meat heading for the weeds and suddenly 5X is too thin, gossamer even.

Everything looks better

Suddenly everything looks better. The girls are prettier, the sky bluer, dinner is strictly gourmet, and there’s still some fish working. No one’s noticed – none have crept closer, and after those two Canada Geese trail past my fly …

NO. He did not just eat that…

(The honker is making a wry face, beak and tongue suddenly active)

… and the line is moving smartly from the slack position to nearly taught.

Canada Geese love big dries

Time freezes.

The little Devil on my left shoulder says, “ Dude, figure she’s nearly eight or nine pounds, that bitch can peel line …”

The lesser Devil on my right says, “True, but you’ve got about 60 small children and parents on the beach to your left, that Honker is going to scream bloody murder, likely go airborne – and while you’re flying that kite with your click-pawl pointing its ugly finger right at you, the entire National Park Service is going beat you to death in a really public way.”

… so I feed slack as fast as I can, the Goose is still mouthing frantically and I’m praying the last of my five grabs is a clean miss.

Ptui … and the fly drops safely into the water.

Left shoulder Devil isn’t done yet, “Dude, that counts. It’s aquatic, it lives here – it’s natural, and it was a clean take.”

Right side responds quickly enough, “ An asterisk at best, what’s important is that as the National Park Service has recently converted from wheel guns to the Model 92 – featuring 15 in the clip and one in the pipe – they’ve stopped counting until the slide locks at empty.”

We all agreed that was a good point.

Return victorious or return on thy shield

Dig through the rubble before finding the good stuff I’m the second wave of shock troops intent on despoiling the Pristine. The first wave hit the piney woods absent important supplies like aged booze and microwave pizza.

I got one short call full of the hissing and popping of atmospheric interference – suggesting that I’d better get up there.

“Why? Is fishing awesome?”

“No, * KRRRRR FSSST *  they’re repairing the road and * KRRRR * I’m stuck in traffic.”

Sounds more like a “misery loves company” story – but as I’ve got all the really obscene civilized luxuries in my truck, I’m obligated to go.

Not to mention I’m carrying all the really deadly flies, at least those worth borrowing long term. This year is no different – the crowd will make do with whatever remains from the fistfuls commandeered during last season, assuming resupply is imminent.

Passing provisions and gear between float tubes is always a bit dicey – like two ships matching bearing and speed and hope that your counterpart has a firm grip on the goods.

The communal fly box is chock full of Big 5 wet flies, he’ll have to dig through rubble before he gets to the Mother Load of proven killers. Figure a good stiff afternoon breeze and he’ll be eight or nine feet distant before he realizes he’s been duped.

… or I’ve been, once he lands something of size on a #8 Scarlet Ibis.

Tags: Big 5 flies, gone fishing, microwave pizza, obscene luxuries, fly fishing for trout