Category Archives: fishing

California Free fishing day tomorrow

Nasty! Tastes Nasty! Just a friendly reminder that Monday, September 6th is the second of the two free fishing days for California. Residents 16 and older do not require a license to catch, thump, or eat anything, in either fresh or salt water.

Note the lifting of the license restriction will not make fish tastier, so the screams of joy and adventure will not extend to the dinner table. Like all real fishermen – kids hate fish – unless a clown serves it …

… and then only maybe.

I’ll urge you to be firm despite the scowls and tears. Teaching them to catch fish may be an elective, but teaching them to eat what they kill is a requirement, a rite of passage.

The Angling Dream Trip and we leave nothing to chance

Peta strikes the pose While the mighty minions of Peta are busy protecting innocent school children  by soliciting colleges to give up their fishing teams – picking up the slack for lazy, insensitive parents who raised their children to adore fried chicken, comic books, and thick steaks …

… still, occasionally, they hatch a pretty good idea.

This time it’s free advertising when your hindquarters are scanned by the uncaring TSA louts manning the Cavity Search & Irradiation unit at your local airport.

The idea has merit, metal augmented underwear that provides a bit more opaque for those naturally shy, and allows a brief extension of digit for those not at all shy …

Angling boxers

Like us anglers …

Your opportunity to beard the prophet is available whether you’re boxers or briefs, as a touch of rubber cement and a dab of tinfoil and watch their scowl deepen.

Even better, when your fishing buddy lapses into unconsciousness after a full day of hot sun, exotic dream trip, and drinks containing umbrellas; rather than shave his eyebrows you can just rearrange the outfit he’s laid out for tomorrow’s triumphant return to civilization ..

this may backfire

… which may backfire, as the both of you will miss your flight while they remove his fillings looking for contraband.

A pal would have the courtesy to save a couple ice cubes from the airport bar, so Mr. Biggest Fish Mostest Fish can sit comfortably between visits to the Bastille …

The Birds and Bees pale in comparison

Imitation dog biscuit That’s when you turn to your son and have a serious heart to heart conversation – probably the hardest you’ll ever have, knowing the horrid truth …

“Kid, you’ve seen the best fishing has to offer, it’s all downhill from here.”

… minutes after the father and son team set up their rods by the banks of the reservoir, they began reeling in their massive catch, which fishing experts have described as one of the largest carp hauls in history.

Mr Lee credited the success on a combination of good weather and the imitation dog biscuits the two used as bait.

– via the Northhampton Chronicle

Which is the truly wonderful part of the story, akin to the freckled kid with bent sapling and enormous dripping trout. The high dollar tackle crowd clandestinely keeps count while gashing themselves in torment …

800 pounds later:

Mr Lee said: “By the end of it, Louis was getting a bit bored really.

Which explains why I can’t hook more than the occasional fish, I’m imitating a real dog biscuit.

Buoyant imitation Dog biscuit, soft enough to use on the hook or hair rig. Our imitation Dog biscuits have been developed to overcome some of the problems associated with other similar products currently available. The inclusion of a counterweight into one side, ensures that the hook always remains on top, out of view of any ware fish. It also ensures that the imitation biscuit sits low in the water, just like a real biscuit that has become waterlogged.

… all I need to do is add a set of bead chain eyes for a counterweight, and lose the deer hair that made mine look like a freshly discarded dry treat.

Tags: imitation dog biscuit, carp fishing, scientific angling, fishing

Stifle the Giggles or you’re in Contempt

I’m not sure my wooden visage could stand the strain. Facing the Magistrate in all seriousness – and staring at 12 years in the Big House, I’d make a yeoman’s attempt …

“Honest, Your Honor, me and Bob there – was actually shark fishing, and them chocolate swizzling Dutchmen just opened fire out of pure orneriness …

Yessir, it was my AK and the RPG was mine too, but we was toodling around looking for a big Finn to blow holes in – not them scrawny Dutchies …”

If Twinkies and coke could get Dan White a reduced sentence, I’d gamble Hizzonor was a fisherman and take my chances – hoping “Bob” could keep his giggles under control – and not blow snot all over my sweet smelling defense attorney.

Captured by Danish commandos, after having their inflatable sunk by freighter-based signal flares, five Somali’s are opting for the “we wuz merely fishing” defense …

Farah Ahmed Yusuf, 25, accused the cargo ship of attacking the Somalis after engine failure had forced them to abandon their shark fishing expedition and seek help.

"The intention was to fish," he said.

"As we came closer, we put our hands in the air. While we had our hands in the air, they shot at us. They attacked us."

I’d call it a dry, it’s mostly barbless, but I’m unsure whether it’s cast with a one hander or something bigger … I’ll take a dozen however – as an RPG would prove useful in heavy traffic.

… and only this oldie-but-goodie to demonstrate proper technique.

Tags: RPG, Somalia pirates, Fishing Defense, shark fishing, Dan White, Twinkies

It’s like Jesus hisself goes fishing, only better

No, I don’t expect you to understand the attraction, being a San Francisco native  and growing up in the halcyon days of local football imparts a special reverence.

“ I don’t want to go fishing with Roger Craig, I want to have his Love Child.”

In or out of wedlock, it don’t matter…

Now that he’s the latest host with a fishing show on World Fishing Network, I may have to buy a TV – or cable, or both.

As the rest of the civilized world was helpless cannon fodder for nearly a decade, the quartet of Jerry Rice, Joe Montana, Bill Walsh, and Roger Craig, became deities to us locals, especially so as the hated Oakland Raiders had been to the Show, and we hadn’t.

Five Superbowls later we annexed Oakland, because we felt like it.

Them as suffered and still hold a grudge can “hook up with Mariko Azumi” – and forswear the legendary 49’er running back for the giggle-bikini action, but it’s a poor surrogate for us bitchslapping your football team for the better part of ten years.

 

Just a taste of Roger Craig against the hated “Lambs”, they had Erik Dickerson and we had Roger, and the entire city would close down quietly as the lights of Candlestick flickered on.

I had a front row seat to something really special.

Tags: Roger Craig, San Francisco 49er’s, Hall of Fame running back, high stepping, World Fishing Network, San Francisco, they were Gods

North, East, and South, but the West side is dead

NOAA crest Just finished a deep scan of the 293 page California Draft Recovery Plan for Chinook salmon and Central Valley steelhead (9MB’s PDF), and I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed. Not so much the scope and cost as their reliance on dam modifications for the existing pristine – versus recovery of any ancestral haunts.

The Central Valley ends at Thomes Creek (near Anderson, CA) and doesn’t start until Sacramento and the American River – with everything on the west side written off as dead water.

It would have been great to see some of the local watersheds reborn. There’s still a salmon run in Putah Creek during wet years, and if they can survive it suggests that a steelhead or two may wander upriver as well.

In summary, it appears easier to build a peripheral canal and appeal to the benevolence of the Feds than it is to strike a balance with agribusiness and attempt consensus on the reallocation sacred cow.

Disappointment stems from the cost, 10 Billion – which will prove woefully inadequate in light of the required time, nearly 50 years. While recent economic upheaval has broached the trillion word and takes the fear out of mere billions, none of us will be around to enjoy any resurgence in gamefish or will be able to wade after the sparkling horde that may result.

Tags: California Draft Recovery Plan for Salmon, Thomes Creek, Putah Creek, California steelhead, peripheral canal, water reallocation

Your Honor, a poor knot doesn’t imply premeditation

The Victim As a really tasty “pain and suffering” verdict could be in excess of twenty million, now’s the time to look hard at your legal staff.

I’ll be sprawled amidst all that oak and cow leather sending another smoke ring towards the ceiling fan, while the earnest young chap insists he’s onboard … he’s got the full weight of his sprawling legal enterprise behind my corpulent frame …

… then I’ll stob the cigar out on his forearm, and if he flinches slightly I’ll be looking for another legal team to defend my use of barbless hooks, light tippets, and small flies.

Fly fishing will be part rodeo spectacle and part courtroom drama. We’ll have stern accusations, wooden faced judges, and be paraded through the docket in an orange jumpsuit, but there won’t be any victims.

… no maimed witness to demonstrate our instream excesses, no grieving relatives to narrate the hideous deed, and only the warden and his ever present stopwatch between us and freedom…

Last month, Antoine Goetschel went to court here in defense of an unusual client: a 22-pound pike that had fought a fisherman for 10 minutes before surrendering.

– via The Wall Street Journal

… because dead fish tell no tales.

It’ll undo the last couple of decades of conservation ethic, and angling organizations will have full color brochures on how best to off your quarry with dignity – we’ll finally listen to doctors and be surprised how good fish taste …

Largely because our neighbors are no longer interested in being an accomplice to our crime.

“0X is the new 8x” – the Boomers will claim, and we’ll be launching curious or dim witted six inch smolts into orbit – compliments of long rods and hawser cable tippet.

… and when that nearly imperceptible take occurs, and the warden steps out of the underbrush holding the incriminating stopwatch, we won’t be worried about the niceties much, it’ll be hand over hand – dog the fins down with piggin strings, yank the gills and lower jaw hook out and yell “Time.”

The case revolved around the idea that the pike suffered excessively because of how long it took for the angler to reel it in. Mr. Goetschel lost the case last month, but is considering an appeal.

The IGFA will pull a “Tiger Woods”, confessing their Director of the 2lb tippet class always seemed a bit twitchy – but he’ll wash up somewhere, likely with his commodore hat still set at a rakish angle.

Barbless hooks will disappear along with the barbaric regulations that promoted unnecessary suffering, along with dry flies – when chicken feathers prove unable to float that meaty treble.

… and you’ll be demonstrating fly tying technique and hook removal to both Fish & Game and your insurance agent, as there’s no chance you’ll be licensed without being bonded.

It’s a bold new litigious world your kids will inherit.

Tags: animal lawyer, animal rights, Pike, Antoine Goetschel, fly fishing the Bloodsport, animal cruelty, Tiger Woods, IGFA, dry flies, Tiger Woods, heavy tippet

Fishing’s so good they were jumping in the boat

… sure we poo-poo wild claims of fellow anglers, but that was in those hardship years of your youth, pre-Silverfin. The water was clear, the fish were refined and a meal was skill-based and the work of an evening.

Now angling will be removing the muffler off your wife’s Subaru and driving along the levee with the top down. It may not have the refinement of lovingly placed chicken feathers and ancient grass rods, but we’ll get fed for sure.

Whoever said the “good old days” were behind us, was wrong.

Tags: Asian Carp, French patois, spotlight fishing, market hunters

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

Torture 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,

Now you can do the honorable thing, forget it in your car

The Next Generation Something I missed from earlier this year. For 2010, the Department of Fish & Game no longer requires California anglers to have their fishing license in plain sight.

Initially it was a good idea, but the advent of licenses purchased over the Internet and printed by home computer eliminated the brightly colored paper – which allowed them to verify ownership from a distance.

Once again you can put your license in your wallet, leave that in the car, then do the “panic slap” of your pockets while the warden starts writing your ticket…

Tags: California license regulations, Department of Fish & Game, changes for 2010