Category Archives: current events

I think Sylvester Nemes died for all of our sins

sylvester_nemes I’m sure most of you have seen reference to the passing of Sylvester Nemes earlier this week, author of The Soft-Hackled Fly and The Soft-Hackled Fly: A Trout Fisherman’s Guide.

I attribute much more to the man than most, as he appeared at exactly the right time and rescued fly fishing from a fate worse than death.

We were headed down the Dark Path, it was the ascension of Swisher & Richards, Caucci & Natasi, and the dawn of man-made synthetics. Fly fishing had jumped its historic banks and was destined to evolve into leg counting, the correct number of feelers, and making waxy-stiff imitations that were anatomically correct, but hamstrung the artist and lent imitations as much comely as an inflatable love doll. Legitimacy was to say something in Latin rather than English, and authors insisted we cast out the false prophets like Ted Williams, Joe Brooks, and Ray Bergman along with the rest of the baggage.

Sylvester Nemes was a much needed counter to all this sudden religious fervor, as the only mystery that Latin couldn’t dismiss was why precise imitation failed to outfish something made of dog hair and owl feathers.

… and to lend credence to this odd duck, on his heels came the second British invasion, authors and fishermen like Goddard & Clarke and Frank Sawyer suggesting that a bit of ambiguity could be as powerful as precisely knotted legs or a shiny carapace.

We all breathed a bit easier after that …

I had the good sense to know something horrible was wrong given the porcupine quills needed for “new wave precision” stonefly nymphs kept finding my fingers at regular intervals. Up till now fly tying had never been painful – unless I was showing my flies to others.

You won’t see many describing similar attributes to Mr. Nemes, like double-knits, most of us aren’t man enough to admit wearing them. We were caught up in the book burnings and New Entomology, and we didn’t realize how close we’d come to plastic insects and turning our beloved sport into something of complete snobbery.

One Adams too many, Rhode Island Red sought in fly tying homicide

You assumed my earlier warning a product of an overly active imagination, and scoffed at the notion that animals were capable of holding a grudge.

Now as you bar the door and shovel your fly tying stash out the rear window hoping to escape the vengeful eyes of the neighboring flock, it ain’t so funny, is it?  …

In California, Killer Whiting Saddles are roaming the streets, slashing car tires and innocents alike, incensed by the wanton wrenching of fistfuls of small hackles, compounded by winter’s chill on featherless and skinny hindquarters, and the constant barbaric and ritualistic deep frying of their womenfolk.

Attacks on humans have become so brazen, a citizen was killed while under the watchful protection of the local police.

Dry flies are a lot of fun, but are they worth your life?

Those Brown Trout do love their Mercury

donnerI’ve always associated the distance driven and the elevation climbed as proof positive I’ve left civilization in my wake.

Once the skyline changes from cement and glass rectangles to jaggy pines, I start getting those destructive thoughts; how I can drink the water, or bathe in it – as filters and iodine are no longer needed, Guardia and cow flop are in my wake – along with everything else the good doctor warned you about.

.. sure I know better, but it still takes the wind out of your sails when you see a blurb on a lake at the very crest of the Sierra’s, whose west side drains to the Pacific Ocean, and East side would flow to the Rockies, and the singularity you dare not forget is “only one meal a week, less if you’re pregnant.”

Nice to know that even the highest and farthest are neither pristine nor chaste – and the Blueliner’s are clinging to something that isn’t blue at all, it’s merely less brown, less odiferous than what I wade in and call home.

The report on Donner Lake’s ailments and contaminants has just been released by CALEPA.

How to get top price for unwanted fly tackle on eBay

It’s certain to alter my eBay experience and while the bricks and mortar side of the tackle business will likely retaliate with skimpy dressed sandwich-board waving nubiles, Grandma and the local constabulary will make short shrift of a vendor that succumbs to temptation.

She claims her earlier sales were cancelled due to a violation of eBay’s sales policy, and now that she’s read the fine print she’s back on the Internet with even more to sell …

That's $33 per lure

… which, given her immaculate feedback rating is liable to drive squinch-faced Meg Whitman into a tirade of four letter words unparalleled in today’s modern boardroom.

I’ll tip the hat to the innate display of creativity. Next time I’ve got some broken 10-speed or extra lawn furniture I’ll be sure to frame them nicely between Miss June 2001’s … er … obvious talents.

Like everything else on the Internet, if it looks soft and smells sweet, it’s a pipedream obscuring some unshaven truck driver from Des Moines.

Lord help us all if she’s got rods to sell … you be sure to alert me.

Both a warning and a reminder for California anglers

All this just to purchase the damn thing I can just imagine that old guide turning apoplectic as he explodes at the console, “I don’t want to use no gawd … damned … computer, just gimme my gawd … damned fishing license …”

Sorry. In addition to seeing through off colored water and threading a #20 dry fly onto tippet, you may want to brush up on them precious keyboard skills …

The California Department of Fish & Game has embarked on a new process for getting your fishing license, and naturally they claim it’s easier, faster, and largely computerized. The downside being that either you or the store clerk will have to enter all that data somehow.

I opted for an online transaction via their web site, with a menu of charges that resemble a fast food drive thru.

Rumor has it that it’s a three inch wide strip of paper that can grow in excess of 64” long (depending on the options chosen) which will add a couple inches to your wallet when folded. The basic license is 3” x 7” and once you start adding ocean privileges, second rod, and all the other flavors it’s been said the license can reach five feet in length.

My license is 3 inches wide and 7 inches long. The basic license cost was $43.46 and the second rod stamp was $13.53. As it was last year a Bay Delta Enhancement Stamp is not needed to fish the waters of the Sacramento/San Joaquin River or the Bay Systems.

I also decided to purchase a Steelhead Report and Restoration Card, which cost $6.48. Again the printer produced another light blue thermal copy, actually two separate pieces of paper both of which were 14.5 inches long. One was the report card itself again printed with my personal information on it, the other copy with instructions, examples and fishing location codes to report the water on which the steelhead were caught.

Needless to say if you also secured a salmon punch card, a sturgeon punch card or any other report card, you are talking about quite a bit of paper to be folded into a wallet.

– via MyOutdoorBuddy.com

… which was confirmed by an incredulous angler holding a handful of tickertape, along with all the new rigor associated with its purchase. If purchased as a gift, you’ll need to provide all the data on the license to the counterperson, including their height, weight, eye color, driver’s license number, and full address.

If purchased online at the Department of Fish & Game’s website, you’ll have to navigate a bit of poorly written HTML to purchase via credit card. At the final screen will be a downloadable PDF as a temporary license that will work for two weeks while you wait for the full license to be mailed you.

temporary_fishing_license

At issue is all the menu options and sub-licenses and how they all must be attached to the main license. It could be that they’re meant to be separated  but that would be asking to forget one or more of them.

What’s likely behind the new format is cost. Thermal paper is cheaper to produce than adhesive backed stamps on Tyvek, and printing it on a roll of toilet paper allows inexpensive Point-Of-Sale printers to be used. Governor Schwarzenegger hasn’t been terribly friendly to Fish & Game and continues to ravage their budget, what you’d expect from a fellow that did all his recreating in a gym.

The new system requires vendors to purchase a DSL line to the Internet (which may not be possible in those out of the way locales) and while the DF&G are providing the touch screen console and printer, a number of shops have decided to stop selling fishing licenses entirely, as it’s simply too much bother.

Remember that the temporary licenses (PDF’s) printed on normal paper with ink or laser are not permanent – and standard 20lb bond will dissolve in water, so I’d suggest enclosing it in a license holder to keep it dry.

… then again, 60″ of folded 3 inch wide paper could prove indispensable in the woods …

Fish hatcheries impacted by state budget shortfalls, less fish the result

There may be less of these in our future It appears that budget shortfalls and emphasis on belt tightening may have exposed the soft white underbelly of the “put and take” fishery. With both federal and state budgets being carved of fat, and desperate to avoid too deep cuts to the remaining muscle, a combination of license hikes and the systematic redirection of conservation funds may result in a lot less fish for your local creeks.

That’s because when Science fails it often does so catastrophically. The role of a hatchery in this modern era has changed from fishery restoration to fish production, the ability to augment what Mother Nature provides with a steady stream of catchable fish at a rate greater than or equal to their being consumed.

Which was the flaw in their thinking.

Outlined in an article on the New York angling scene, with the state deficit looming at around a billion dollars, and after a license hike of 53% last year, the state hatchery system is faced with not enough money to complete their mission, despite their plight being one of the reasons for the license increase the prior year.

For the first time since 1976, no eggs were taken from the Adirondack strain of lake trout in Raquette Lake, which means there will be 115,000 fewer lake trout for stocking in 37 waterways, Kemper said. Staffing shortages and budget cutbacks have reduced the egg take for landlocked salmon at the Adirondack hatchery by 50 percent, which will mean 700,000 fewer salmon stocked to New York waters, he said.

– via the Wall Street Journal

As hunting and fishing organizations assumed the new revenue was earmarked for agencies charged with the conservation mission, imagine their surprise to find the government may have other plans …

… which will lead to more law suits and additional expenditures, while the remaining holdovers from last season are attrited slowly under the ever-increasing hail of PMD’s with a Pheasant tail dropper.

It’s been that way in California for years, and if your state hasn’t yet it surely will.

Anglers have endured any number of cost increases with only minor grumbling. With incomes stifled by a sluggish economy and with less government being a rallying cry of the next dozen elections, will we begin to see initiatives on the ballot requiring dollars raised from license increases and special stamps, be spent in a manner consistent with their purpose?

… as this new austerity trickles its way throughout Main Street and finally settles into your kid’s consciousness that he’s not going to peer at Life via the lambent glow of an X-Box, it’ll make the both of you read the fine print of the new trout stamp legislation and wonder whether the State that’s proposing to tap you for “spare change” isn’t really going to put it up their nose – versus buy a trout’s dinner like they claim.

They’ve got to fill all those hotel rooms with somebody

Big changes destined for the Lake Tahoe basin has California legislators scrambling for dollars to fund the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act of 2010, which will no doubt end up as “California Pork” inside some other piece of legislation…

Responding to a recent study produced by UC Davis, which suggests 50% less snow for the Sierras, an earlier thaw, massive flooding of the Truckee River, which will eventually run dry by the end of the century, and phosphorous precipitation and removal of dissolved oxygen, will transform the area and surrounding watersheds into something much less picturesque.

… with the inevitable fight over the remnants of the Truckee, as it’s one of the primary sources of fresh water for Reno, Pyramid Lake, and some of the farm communities within Nevada.

Add to that mixture the “degree per decade warming trend” and Tahoe might find new life as one of many trophy largemouth lakes and a regular host to B.A.S.S  tournaments.

BASS Tournament 

There’s plenty of hotel rooms, and them bright lights of Reno will still beckon to the unwary.

You may want to apply it the night before, for fear of spilling it on your waders

Great_White_Love Deep down I’ve always postulated the source of fly fishing’s elitism stems from the lack of goo on our fingers.

Professional Bass fishermen use artificials and barbless hooks just as we do, only they spatter and paint their offerings with everything from tobacco juice to the Scent of a Thousand Nightcrawlers.

Scent being the Unclean Thing, akin to Doe Urine, only more pungent.

Whatever superiority we feel has to have roots in hygiene. Fly fishing being the lack of anything you’d have to wipe on a pants leg, or lick off a finger, prior to eating lunch.

Unfortunately that’s all about to change.

The war on aquatic invasives has started to spawn all manner of technologies that will find a place in your vest. That goes double for anything as unobtrusive as a squeeze bottle that resembles fly floatant but is filled with fish pheromones.

“By putting female carp implanted with osmotic pumps inside traps, we predict that we will be able to attract and capture large numbers of the sexually mature male carp from reaches where the “pheromone traps” are set.”

… and because traps are inhumane, especially for large fish that love to eat flies and peel plenty of line, we’ll have to protest their deployment while applying a generous dollop of Lust in the Elodea to everything in our fly box.

It’s only a matter of time before the same process produces a raft of pheromone based ointments covering every gamefish from Jack Smelt to a Great White Shark. Fly tiers will be soaking it into the underbody, and guides will be ladling it into the boat’s wake, removing the inhibitions of most of the fish downstream, as well as any locals that depend on the creek for their drinking water.

There’ll be a great debate over whether it’s fly fishing or not, and a few whispered stories about some fellow spilling the bottle on his waders, but complete success always breeds a certain understanding among us gentlemen.

Proof positive that fly fishing is too expensive

They left most of the marshmellows Considering the thieves broke into the first building just to tunnel through three additional brick walls and snatch all the fly rods, I’d suggest that it’s  proof we’re spending way too much on tackle, or there’s little confidence on the Euro rebounding anytime soon …

… not that I expect the vendor community to feel guilty or lower prices any, I was merely hoping the Fed would realize us anglers should take part in the next round of quantitative easing, complete with access to the fed funds window and that tasty interest rate.

While our lending institutions are still holding the cheap cash close to the vest, our unrealistic need to own IM-6, IM-9, and IM-XVII might jumpstart the economy in time for the holidays.

Cannabis to save the Pacific Salmon

Golden Gate Park 2011, we're bringing back the "Be in" I’d always assumed I was fortunate being raised in the Haight-Ashbury during the ‘60’s. Exposed to different ideas, religions, and a litany of self proclaimed holy men. Now I find out the old neighborhood has been classified as a “part of the World.”

Meaning this world. For most of two decades it was unknown which planet rotated nearby, and which Galaxy was the better question …

Today, there are still parts of the world that rely on Cannabis stalks as a primary fiber, mainly because of its ability to grow “like a weed,” without requiring lots of water, fertilizers, or high-grade inputs to flourish. But the seeds, which house the plant’s natural oils, are often discarded. Parnas points out that this apparent waste product could be put to good use by turning it into fuel.

Now when I visit the folks, instead of fellows rushing the intersection to wash my window for spare change, they’ll be huffing the exhaust and causing my car to stall.

With the election a short month distant, California has the potential to piss all over J. Edgar’s memory with the legal morass that’ll come with legalization. It could be a Second Gold Rush – with the pharmaceutical industry claiming all the acres North of Sacramento, and Exxon claiming everything South …

Eureka, Dude.

The hemp biodiesel showed a high efficiency of conversion – 97 percent of the hemp oil was converted to biodiesel – and it passed all the laboratory’s tests, even showing properties that suggest it could be used at lower temperatures than any biodiesel currently on the market.

If it doesn’t need the water of the current vascular crops and all those orange groves, might it be the salvation of the Pacific Salmon, or will Los Angeles merely annex most of Arizona for a parking garage?

As for other industries that utilize Cannabis plants, Parnas makes a clear distinction between industrial hemp, which contains less than 1 percent psychoactive chemicals in its flowers, and some of its cousins, which contain up to 22 percent. “This stuff,” he points out, “won’t get you high.”

– via PhysOrg

Want to bet? An entire generation thought dried banana peels were an e-ticket to Utopia. They’re all bankers, lawyers, and hedge fund managers at the moment, but they’ll just use a bigger pipe this time.