Author Archives: KBarton10

The Peanut Butter Sandwich a capable substitute for OJ

Naturally my first thoughts are conspiracy. Some war mongering industrial conglomerate attempting to take my “just kill me” flu induced weakness, to bar my prose from the collective consciousness …

… although the Trout Underground claims otherwise – something about the backup module of the blog software generating page faults that eventually took out a city block worth of servers.

I figure Shakespeare had the same problem, which is why he and Mickey Spillane went the “dead tree” route.

The Essential Flu Fighting Gear

While vile conspiracy sought to muzzle us forever, I was saved by a golden haired angel that replenished our larder with the barest of essentials, wooden peanut butter sandwiches compliments of the Girl Scouts.

Something to read, something to imbue with mucous, and something out of character to fill our belly in between naps – all the prerequisites for a sustained recovery.

Tags: test post, flu, sustained recovery, conspiracy

Through the Nyquil Glass, and Darkly

You take the green Nyquil and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

You take the red Nyquil and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

I don’t think someone sits down to invent anything, genius just doesn’t function that way. Great ideas are unasked for and come unbidden with roots enmeshed in frustration – and what starts with a lack of #16 Elk Hair Caddis, morphs into some small structural change that survives additional abuse – or rides more gracefully, add a half dozen colors and it’s a viable new fly.

With most of the gaps in my flybox filled compliments of much needed wet weather, and an upright posture is preferred to prone – due to the ravages of the flu, much of what I’ve created recently are experimentals and variations on a theme, color, or just delirium.

… and as I plug away with Olive’s and Orange’s, Brown and Puce – I find myself tying a lot of standard patterns using only color substitutions, as their construction method is sound and reliable.

… or perhaps mucous has least affected the color centers of the brain, and the rest is tying via rote.

I suppose those tried and true construction styles are hard to beat, and changing the color of the hair or body is often more rewarding than reinventing the wheel.

Periodically I have to tinker with some of the classic styles to address deficiencies of their fishing design, hackle being the bane of the underwater bug. With its fragile stem and proximity to the head, and prone to Harm’s Way when sunken or aerial.

Brass beads aid in shielding hackle from most rocks and errant casts but eventually something is able to part the stem and the bug is lost.

I was emboldened by the Nyquil – as I’m prone to lightheadedness when airways cinch closed and crumpled Kleenex marks my shuffle between bed, bathroom, and tying desk.

Keeping the stem inviolate is the trick – whether it’s fish teeth, sharp rocks, or tree branches. On the above fly the hackle is parachuted around the wingcase butts, then a slip of vinyl is folded over, and finally the wingcase itself (which is also fragile). The vinyl will persist if the Pheasant tail is shredded, and the fragile chicken stem is never exposed to the elements.

It started as a wild enough idea, parachuting the hackle around the wingcase then folding the material forward per normal – as in the below.

… but then I realized the wingcase was every bit as fragile as the chicken hackle, and hiding the entire assemblage was the better idea. It’s an interesting take on an age old problem, and as I’ve not seen it before, the idea may stimulate your creative juices.

Tags: fly tying, parachute nymphs, fragile hackle stem, durability, fly style, test post

The Trout Underground Posts Bloggy Mea Culpa

This is TC of the Trout Underground (the fool who hosts Singlebarbed so all you malcontents will have a place to hang out together, leaving the rest of us alone), and I won’t go into the gritty details about what’s been happening beneath the surface here at Singlebarbed’s blog.

Suffice it to say we’ve struggled with a bad Web server, and moving a corrupted blog to a new host (which was crashing as a result) wasn’t ideal.

And yes, I’ve seen a few largely sleepless nights as a result.

Basically, Jack London stuff, but on a digital level.

Hopefully, we’ve got the bugs worked out, but we were forced to revert Singlebarbed’s damaged site to a backup taken a couple days ago.

I expect Singlebarbed – as soon as he’s back among the living, and free of his Nyquil-induced haze – will handle his missing posts (parts of which were recovered).

Sadly, there’s not much to be done about the last couple day’s lost comments.

With any luck, there won’t be any more posts like this. (Then again, with any luck, there won’t be any more blogs like this either.)

You may resume your normal blogging activities.

See you on the Internet, Tom Chandler.

We’re moving this evening, new web host

New host, better uptime The next 24-48 hours things may be a little dicey, as Singlebarbed moves from it’s existing web host to a new vendor. This will require a domain name change (DNS) that will have to propagate over to other servers to update the site’s IP address and locale.

What that means in simple terms is that your browser may send you somewhere we aren’t – and the condition will persist until your local address cache or DNS server receives the updated location.

… which is why my posts are few and far between this weekend. We chew fingernail while the Trout Underground ignores spouse, children, and Valentine’s Day – to ensure your access to fly fishing fancy remains inviolate …

Tags: DNS server, IP address, chew fingernails, web host, Liquid Motion

The cure for what ails me

Fog is starting to lift and I’m gripped with the fervor. A slim chance of fishing this weekend – and unsure whether the ills of recent server issues are behind us…

We’ll test her out by slamming a big JPEG or two into the deep end and see if she holds.

The cure for the common Winter malaise is size – with a leavening of silliness just to keep us on our toes.

The Cure for Shack Nasties is size

Just the thought of something bold enough to slam a size 2, is enough to pat the vest for a tippet spool appropriate to handle weight. Awkward and ungainly – barely able to remain aloft – and doesn’t land so much as craters.

Thorax needs a “D” cup, we’ll do better on the next one.

Tags: Czech Stonefly, fly tying, server test, winter blues, whimsy

Server Crash silences lippy pear shaped author

I call it an enforced vacation, wherein the server dies screaming and the Trout Underground spends the next 48 hours with phone glued to his ear dealing with unrepentant tech support types …

… which I find funny, as I are one …

Apparently most of the data was lost after last Friday, but as most of the posts were forgettable – it’s no great loss. I’ve restored what I can – but we’ve lost all comments and my mail is once again inoperable…

My apologies for the service interruption, but in all things there is a bright spot. TC has a great excuse to avoid shoveling snow, and I get a day or two off to lounge around – versus scrambling frantically trying to find something to amuse you.

Bear with us.

Possession, tunnel vision, and cheapskate, all the trappings of greatness

Most of you swore next season would see you with fly boxes bulging – and absolutely nothing has been accomplished despite the mighty oaths to the contrary.

I’ve always used the Exorcist model of offseason restock – wherein book or article induced “possessions” fight over my immortal soul, and the result is one less agonizing chore.

The last two were induced by Reed Curry and the Czech Nymphing tome. Reed’s stimulus I’ve not yet shown as I’m in no mood to be laughed at – and while some of Czech patterns have been revealed, it’s some of the materials that caused my jaw to grow stern …

Scud Back or Magic Shrimp Skin is a material that costs ungodly coin, and simply needs to have its source identified before I can sleep nights. Small packs costing $5 or $10 are the bane of fly tying – and while I substitute vinyl sandwich bags freely – I’m still tormented by the search.

The material is a 2 mil vinyl tape (or sheet) that is quite stretchy, semi transparent, and possesses a gloss finish on one side and dull on the other.

Permanent felt pens and a Glad sandwich bag are my favorite substitute – just sneak into the mail room and use their paper cutter to make all the strips you need for less than penny…

Sandwich bags are about 2 mil thick, and the larger Zip Loc flavors are about 3 mil, either works wonderfully.

Teflon tape (for wrapping plumbing pipe threads) works elegantly, but it’s a might slippery and comes only in white.

Construction flagging tape is 2 mil and has all the florescent colors. It’s the tape tied to the surveyor stakes – and depending on roll size and width it’s about $2 for a couple hundred feet. It also has no adhesive backing – which is a plus…

2 mil flagging tape for surveyors

Vinyl tape is mostly solid colors (link is to 6 mil to show colors) – but transparent solids are available. Sold in many thicknesses it’s available in 2 mil and used to mark electrical wires, adorn hula hoops, and a wide variety of other uses. The adhesive can be removed with toluene or alcohol (depends on the type of adhesive used) and yields shiny on one side and dull on the reverse.

Available in sizes from 1/16” to 3” wide. It may be best suited as the strips only need to be about two inches long for a completed fly. A wide tape would allow you to cut each strip across the tape rather than lengthwise and

Electrician’s tape comes in a dozen colors besides black, and while mostly sold in 7 mil, other sizes are available. It works admirably as a Czech nymph carapace, as will the transparent Kapton tape – used to insulate circuit boards from solder.

Shad_Hydropsyche

Most of these tapes are made for outdoor use and are UV treated to resist the effects of sunlight. Magic Shrimp Foil and their ilk strike me as having the same issue as latex, a one season fly. Open your box the following winter to find the material cracked and in little pieces.

Above is florescent pink surveyor’s tape tied as a large caddis pupa. You’ll be giggling no doubt – but once Shad season starts in earnest it may dawn on you that the Czech style may be used for something other than trout …

… it’s all part of the Exorcist method, get possessed then tie everything that way including dry flies …

I may run this through the American to see what them steelhead think …

Tags: flagging tape, Czech nymph, cheapskate, magic shrimp skin, scud back, vinyl tape, fly tying materials, glad sandwich bags,

Crash Dummy Trout a boon to the Angling Photographer

They have heard the countless stories interspersed with Catch & Release holiness that excuses physical proof. Buddies and in-laws whistle appreciatively while stories of fish hooked, held, and lost are offered with grainy digital images featuring out-thrust arms that skew proportions, motion blur where fish should be – and large splashes where the shy yet agile quarry anticipated the shutter and escaped with little record …

Modern angling photography requires even more time out of the water for intricate poses that flash gang sign and colors, risks suffocation in favor of message, and flirts with the backlash of readers angry when the subject is seen downstream belly up …

A Rare Manchurian Trout caught outside its home waters Rifle poses and the one-handed grip featuring a 22” fish whose spleen is annealed to it’s spinal column predominate. Naturally they were dropped two or three times before the fetching colors shown perfectly.

If the photograph is our only record, we certainly picked a hideous subject to validate our immortality.

What’s needed is a good stable prop we can use out of the water that will survive the demands of our vanity, the gut squeezes and accidental drops, and can be tucked into the vest for better light, better backdrop, or until the beercans can be policed from the riverbank.

The Paper Trout, the Perfect Crime.

At right, a rare Manchurian Trout caught in local waters. While the fisheries biologists postulate its origins and search for the brood stock, we can yank stretch and Vogue the little devil into anything necessary for the Six O’clock news.

Download and assemble at your leisure, or offload onto the company plotter for easy expansion to any size or weight necessary.

Tags: Paper trout of Japan, angling photography, manchurian trout, crash dummy trout, photography props, catch & release, trout fishing

We put the Junk in Junk Food – a Superbowl photo journal

Little Stinking in between rain showers

A Saturday scout in between rain showers. The Little Stinking, swollen and defiant… Bagged it in preference to assembling an artery hardening ensemble of deep fried, coagulated, and partially hydrogenated Superbowl chow.

Superbowl Sunday

It was the Czech’s against the Slovak’s at my place – and the first quarter featured Strawberry Yogurt Pretzels and …

Czech_Nymph1

… Brachycentrus, which suddenly sprouted a hint of Claret to match – washed down with a fully leaded French Roast chaser.

Dree Brees removes Indianapolis body parts from his facemask

The second quarter started briskly, and while Drew Brees clawed a couple of Indianapolis body parts out of his facemask, the Czech’s retaliated with …

Black Beans featuring Cilantro and Tomato

… the Black Bean, Cilantro and Tomato nymph. I was a mess – hyped on sugar, caffeine, and with a methane potential of a herd of fattened bovines.

.. and the Aint's are beginning to ..

By the third quarter the Saint’s fans were getting raucous while the Indianapolis crowd grew silent. As the excitement grew I was noisily toasting each and every catch, run, and timeout. I’d sworn off the bean dip, yet it would haunt me throughout the day.

Yogurt Stained finger nymph

The spinach and black olive veggie loaf was the antidote – yet it added a certain hallucinogenic bent. Embellishments started to come unbidden to the latest Czech patterns – and the book was closed in favor of the Sunset Rhyacophila …

Superbowl_4thquarter

By the fourth quarter I was on the downward spiral while the Saint’s began their ascendancy. The down side being that the obscene mixture ingested allowed me to translate both Czech and Slovak – and I could read the giggles and catcalls from the tiers whose patterns I was attempting to reproduce.

The Pepcid-Maalox Olive Dun

… which was a warning sign it was time to hit the medicine cabinet, but not before finishing a dozen of the Pepcid-Maalox Olive Dun in size 14 …

I think I missed the Lombardi trophy, but I was past caring …

Tags: Czech nymphs, Olive Dun, Slovak fly tiers, Czech fly patterns, Brachycentrus, Rhyacophila, Super Bowl, California cuisine, Maalox, fly tying

Figure he outweighs you by 50 pounds before you get all indignant

We’re ill prepared to encounter someone interested in our fish – where our attempts to catch them interfere with others trying to photograph or paint fish in their natural surroundings.

As the Pristine dwindles it’s likely to put a great number of heretofore invisible wildlife lovers squarely in our path. and begs the question, who gets first dibs at the quarry?

Considering we’ve got a stellar track record of sharing secret fishing spots with each other not at all, I fear my reaction to a bird watcher or watercolor artist insisting I stay back from a pod of feeding fish would be confusing to me at best …

I was reminded by this piece from the UK, how a member of an angling club legally harvested a cormorant from the club water, then was accosted by militant bird watchers and beaten soundly.

… not all insect lovers, bird watchers, and water color artists are pansies, and they’ve got their share of louts and Visigoths too.

By default I’d have to cede the water to them as was there first, according the same privilege to other nature lovers that I’d give to the Brethren.

But their view of the proceedings and ours will not match, a lesson drilled home on a blind date some twenty years ago, wherein the comely lass was introduced to me by the shores of a lake.

Big mistake.

Our communal pal quickly explained my inattentiveness to the fact that I was a “great fisherman” … and when her lip started to curl, I knew I was raw meat.

Frantically attempting to salvage the occasion and mention, “I let them all go.” – figuring that was the one saving grace that might set things square. Her response was thinly veiled, “do you like torturing them?”

Figuring all those Big City gals shared the same mentality, where salmon are shat onto a Styrofoam platter and saran-wrapped via conscious choice – and coupled with the spectre of enforced celibacy, I was happy to change zipcode within the year.

It’s an unlikely topic, yet with all the pressures on these precious resources, a skirmish or two may be in our future.

Tags: trout fishing, watercolors, outdoor photography, nature lovers, sharing natural resources, raw meat,