Category Archives: fly fishing humor

… and whoever said “Crime doesn’t Pay” wasn’t a fly tier

HandfulofSaddle Those of you old enough to remember Dan White and the Twinkie Defense are about to make bank, but only if you can hold a straight face while being pummeled by Gendarmes and hairless screaming females …

No, we’re not interested in a mundane purse snatching, we’re about to score acres of free 12 – 15 inch saddle hackles that we can turn around for obscene profits on eBay.

US citizen Edwin Rist, 22, who admitted burglary and money-laundering at a previous hearing, was described as a James Bond fantasist by his solicitor.

St Albans Crown Court heard he acted on his “obsessive interest in birds”.

The court was told that Rist suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. His prison sentence was suspended for two years.

Our museum loving “poor little rich boy” has evaded jail time despite stealing 300 pelts from a priceless collection and then parting them out to his buddies overseas (to the tune of about $30,000). It appears the jury bought the tale of misspent youth, video games, and James Bond, which along with Pop Tarts, coerced the lad into a lifetime of antisocial behavior with a hard on for Macaw …

That’s okay, for Dan White it was Twinkies and Coke that made him blow daylight through Mayor Moscone, Harvey Milk, and anyone else that got in his way.

Now that we recognize that I’m showing the symptoms of “an obsessive interest in birds” – and after a lifetime of watching Wiley Coyote fail to capture the Roadrunner, I’m liable to be set off by the sight of dyed saddles, and grab an entire fistful of hair in one big wrench …

… followed by falling prone, curling into the fetal to protect the jewels, enduring the beating while babbling about pyramids and tin foil.

There’s a good reason we’re the last of a dying breed

With reality TV performing introductions of the couch-bound to the great outdoors via cracked crab and icy trawlers, or featuring some suicidal dimwit paragliding into inhospitable terrain and doing without Twinkies for a week, I think we’re all a bit tired of network TV’s insistence that the out-of-doors is only for crazed adrenalin junkies and the idle nitwit that gets lost and runs out of gas.

Outdoorsmen

… and when the magazines wade in with the “who’s the bestest” competition, they’ll opt for making it family-fare, suitable for prime time – and in so doing eliminate all the real outdoorsmen.

It’s called the “Total Outdoorsman” Challenge for a reason. We’re not interested in finding the hunter who can shoot the tightest groups, or the angler who can catch the biggest bass in the lake. We want the outdoorsman who can do both. And then some. Like cast a fly rod into a stiff wind. Or thread an arrow into a tight spot. Or bust clays with a side-by-side. Or maneuver an ATV in the mud. Can you do all of this…under pressure? If you can, then we’ve got a $25,000 check with your name on it.

All you’re going to get watching some fat-arse roar through a forest floor on an ATV, is some fellow that isn’t capable of humping his dinner up the canyon, can’t cook the sumbitch once he gets there, and likely couldn’t get a fire lit if he was issued a couple of waterproof matches.

Them guys use drive-thru, mostly scratching their head and pointing at the pretty pictures …

Real outdoors contests should include; how many days can you wear the same tee shirt without bathing, how many beers can you drink yet still cross a creek on a log, how many times can you blow daylight through a fleeing forest animal as it dashes through the parking lot, can you double the size of your fish with a straight face, do you carry single malt or blended, and which kind of leaves should be avoided when wiping your arse below the high water mark …

Those SOB’s are outdoorsmen.

The last thing I need is a gaggle of fly fishermen – or some equally effete rich SOB that breaks clay with a couple thousand worth of finely engraved over and under, or some dandy that insists on getting bow tags -when steel belted radials work all year …

If I’m going up to the piney woods, I’m going with the crowd that appreciates it. I’m tired of telling the ATV guy that he has to pack his bottles and cans out …

We’ve got Black Ants that size, but they float

Fly tying is a mixture of the two Invariably someone asks me, “what’s the hardest thing in fly tying?”

Most expect me to mention the multiple hours it takes to complete a fully dressed salmon fly, or a knotted leg attempt at realism – involving lots of glue and much effort, but those are simply mechanical tasks and may be time consuming, but are easy once you’ve done them a couple thousand times …

What’s the hardest thing in fly tying?  … giving up your reliance on other people’s patterns, showing a little confidence in yourself and your own critical eye.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise if you think about it critically, but fly tiers and baseball players are the last bastion of weakness and superstition – the only difference between the two, is that one carries a rabbit’s foot for good luck, and the other dismembers rabbits and carries all four should the good luck run out …

Fly tiers will invariable take some form of instruction to get them started and then rely on books and magazines, or the Internet, to continue the learning process. Over time they learn never to trust a photograph and always refer to the text recipe – knowing that lighting and focus can change the hue and color of the fly, making the components less recognizable.

Lacking all the printed materials in the pattern means the finished fly is damaged goods. It’s Awesome*, worthy of mention with Barry Bond’s steroid enhanced home run record.

Flies worthy of publication have magical properties, each having killed thousands of fish – and therefore chosen by editors for their killing qualities – not to be tinkered with by mortals, or anyone else having just finished an Intermediate class.

It gets in our head early, and lies there like a leaden weight.

As the seasons whiz by we’ll occasionally venture out and develop a bug for some favorite venue we’ve fished for years. When someone spies them they’ll be a lot of pursed lips and raised eyebrows, once their origin is known, and we’ll get a half hearted shrug before they move onto the brightly colored monstrosity in the next compartment, whose pedigree includes magazine covers, the latest synthetics, and an offshore source requiring a new rod, new leader, and the reflexes of a Cobra to fish it …

Yet the lackluster was our fly, it was us, the sum of our deduction and science merits only a raised eyebrow and a shrug.

… and as our flies begin to look like the magazine flies, and we start to surpass them in quality we’re emboldened. We select a handful of prophets, whose flies and articles resonate with us and we mimic their work and science.

At some point even that’s cast aside and we’re no longer following the rest of the crowd. Magazine flies are revealed to be nothing more than some fellow’s anthropomorphic idea of what a Damsel fly looks like – and it’s tied poorly to boot.

Now a fishing trip becomes a snack food; you’re swept up in all the dark nymphs that worked so well on the last trip, and how we’ll invent new dark nymphs just for the occasion – and we’ll marvel that they outfish anything tied from a magazine and anything commercially available in the store.

…and with that discovery, you’ll realize that fly tying is many years of learning different fly styles and their construction, whose colors are not set in stone like the picture – but are waiting for you to enhance and define.

Now that you’ve mastered the AP style, the standard dry, the cripple, the big stonefly nymph, the leech, and parachute, only now does science, art, and fishing come together, and your muse is a tuft of dander, or a clump of sparkle.

Those anglers that don’t tie flies wish they did. All of them, without exception.

They’ll learn the same truths as tiers only it’ll take them longer. They have much less to chose from then the rest of us, and little to unbalance their loyalties to the commercial giants; Adam’s, Humpies, Zug Bug’s and Elk Hair Caddis. To them a black nymph can be the AP Black, or the Black Martinez, and nothing else is possible in black and size sixteen.

Probably why the average age of the beginning fly tier is nearer forty-five, and the stray kid is taking it because his dad is trying a second time. A decade or so of fishing ensures those same truths, newly self evident, means without an indentured servant for supply, art and science will compel him to submit to moths and head cement, and the hardest thing in fly tying will be the easier.

The Invasive chortle of the Month Post

Invasive Species? In a little “tea-party” muscle flexing, scientists from Sarah Palin’s home state reveal that the American Bald Eagle, symbol of American might and pride, is an invasive species…

Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt. Let the name of Moses be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men.

Now what are you going to do? Erase all those stamps will be a bother, but the currency is near worthless which should prove to be a relief for the treasury.

With 200 years of symbology invested, removing the eagle would be nigh impossible. We’ll have little choice but to rethink most of our invasive policies, and recognize that as humans speed up and the crust warms, we’re witnessing Darwinism and evolution, and nothing more.

tasteslikechicken2

P.S. Listen to the National Public Radio piece closely …

As loyal as its next handout

Leave it to friend Leaping Bluegill to disclose the depths of our despair, how deep that hole is, and how our dry flies will be held hostage over the next couple of decades …

When it was wives and daughters we were bound by the laws of society,  now that the enemy is a quadruped all we’ve got to worry about is angering PETA eco-pussies, and absent a life sentence for us patriots, Old Fat Ass won’t know what hit him …

He’ll crack an eye to the sound of the clip slamming home – but once those tracers start skipping off the wainscoting he’ll realize his days of farting on the sofa are gone.

I’ll wait until he hits that turn into the kitchen, when those trimmed toenails start to lose purchase,  “skritch-skritching” on the linoleum and momentum requires trading paint with the fridge … flick that selector switch into full auto, put the front blade where he’s gonna be and lean on that trigger hard …

I seen “Old Yeller” and it sucked too. “Best Friend” was what we called you, because we never could remember your real name, you foulsmelling, fleabit, Prick …

puppylocks

puppylocks_advert – photo via Puppylocks

Adorable little ruffian with Whiting neck hackles highlighting those dark eyes so fetchingly … We’ll see how well the anchors hold when I chase the little SOB through the dog doody area while four snarling steel belted radials seek to make “Foo Foo” a throw rug.

The Singlebarbed Guide to whether your Dog is worth keeping

1. Less than ten unassisted retrieves of live game last season, the dog is worthless and a potential harbinger of Satan.

2. … a hamburger is neither “live” nor “game”, see #1 above.

We had a chance when it was a fad, now … now it’s personal.

The Olive Loaf, in traditional full dress

Full Dress Pimento Loaf It’s the singularities surrounding fishing that builds the really juicy legends and keeps us humble, all at the same time. All we can ever agree on is nothing is a given, nothing works consistently, and as soon as we claim something to be true, some rival convert claims it’s a falsehood.

Our experiences a long chain of singularities wrapped in accident, swaddled in chance, never to happen again.

Prevailing theory about what fish see, what they perceive tasty, mixed with a leavening of what we think we’d eat were we a fish – has armored countless bookshelves with massive tomes, all with a shelf life of a century or less, wherein they’re promptly discarded for the real – real, which naturally costs twicet as much.

Of all these mass shifts in thought, the traditional married wing salmon fly has to be the most gaudy and eye-opening of all these feints at understanding stream biology. Even non-fishermen can recognize the intricacies and labor needed to craft the flies, and the many jungles pillaged to construct just a handful.

It’s likely that all that painful rigor extended the “noble salmon-butterfly” ideology far past its supply lines – given that terrestrial biology and Darwinism were dancing close behind sherry and cigars, whose mustached practitioners “harrumphed” their way through this and other topics of their day.

While Blue Chatterer and Macaw had their proponents, it’s a given different camps would evolve to argue the merits of round tinsel versus the tawdry French oval, and good English iron versus that unwieldy Irish O’Shaughnessy …

… while downstairs in the kitchen, legend was brewing …

“AooOW,” Me Da is going to get us all pinched, see yourself what he’s holding…”

“Hush, daughter, my supper is what done this fine salmon in. I was only thinking a bit of herring might tempt a roach or barbel, and I wakes up to this feast flopping at me feet.”

“AooOW,” ‘Tis what’s meant, when Hisself upstairs finds out it weren’t a Green Highlander what done it, we’ll all be off to the Hulks …”

To the Cloud

Cloud_Girlfriend Considering us fishermen and our lack of social graces, even computer nerds have better luck with the fair sex than us.

Six or seven marriages later, you’re handing over everything that wasn’t spent on backing and fly reels, and asking your buddies to help move your fly tying desk, as it’s perched prominently on the lawn, along with your comic book collection.

The advent of social media makes the missus all that more visible, and long distance friends will eventually want corroboration of them tales of daring do …

Consider the Perfect Girlfriend, synonymous with the Perfect Crime. You make her, refine her until she’s everyone else’s dream fisherperson, and benefit from “I was there and seen it” for even the most egregious fishing fantasy.

She tweets, she facebooks, she’s lithe, witty and stunning … she’s your Cloud Girlfriend.

She knows what to say and when, since you control her every move, she knows how to make your buddies wives bland in the comparison, and she’ll never mention the skid mark after your bear encounter, never give up your secret fishing hole, nor correct your 14” estimate, to the 6” inches it really was …

Consider that embellishment is part of your base nature, and for believability’s sake – you may want to go light on the manacles and automatic weapons, the nun’s habit is already over the top.

We who will do battle with water all year and lose, salute you

Too much water I missed the third digit of the snowpack measurement yet instinctively I knew it really didn’t matter. Three digits means a repeat of last year’s watery excesses, and while I resolved myself to keep working on the dry flies like I’d planned, they were unlikely to see much action.

There’ll be plenty of opportunities for fishing, but you can start ticking off the hatches that are off their timetable due to a high water year. Their predictability a thing of the past as they dribble off in smatterings versus the more traditional en masse emergence.

Shad will be for the lucky few, those folks that know their river well enough to seek the proper depth despite the torrential release from the dam upriver, and those that own boats …

… or seek guides, who have boats …

Fishing is like rooting for the home team, and some years there’s that sickening feeling when the quarterback slumps to the ground clutching his knee, and the crowd begins to deflate with, “there’s always next year.”

Sure I’m whining, but only because it’s tough to get mad at something we so sorely need. A billion people without water by 2050, and I’m already making excuses why twice as much has already prevented me from catching a damn thing.

I’ll giggle madly when I get to set down all this drab and mottled, so I can tie another 20 dozen of the brightly garbed beadchain bling, most of which will still be unscathed in the box for next year. I moved to the second box of Shad flies last year, a mixture of anticipation and restocking followed by two years of high water and forced to go cheek to jowl at the few spots it wouldn’t sweep you off your feet.

A single fish hooked for all my efforts.

Again I’ll have an entire week’s vacation primed for the first hint of fish. My boss will gaze at me each Monday morning expectantly, and I’ll be gazing at the floorboards – wishing I could tell him this was the week he would have to make due with the second stringers  …

…while I treat the steady stream of casting injury and sunburn, complain about sore shoulders and limp wrists, and how I can still cast twice as far but only for half as long.

The difference between a feral cat and a domestic tabby is only how much to lead them…

Ate lives left, fleabag I’ll confess to a morbid fascination with the larger invasive species issue, I spend far too much time reading about all the horrors headed our way.

With national parks mulling all manner of restrictions, before banning humans outright, it’s indicative of a war against an enemy that can’t be beaten.

Just insert “seed” for diatom, and you’ll understand why your narrow ass is completely toxic to native flora and fauna. You’re carrying hundreds of them in the folds of your shirt, pressed into the bills of your wallet, stuck to your rubber shoe soles, imbedded in hair, mouth, and anything else that has direct contact with the atmosphere.

As we’ve demonstrated so many times before, the pendulum will swing far past intelligent, until we get into the truly rarified spaces. Our good intentions morphed into some sort of foreign plant Jihad, that’ll spread into secondary markets and accomplish little other than to anger everyone.

 … but the idea of ballistic husbandry, to allow me to rid my yard of my neighbor’s furry passions, and the hides that will result, that I will not curse.

… yea, that’s right, were going to put “rabbit” back on the menu.

A lifetime of uncaring neighbors loosing “TinkerBelle” to crap wantonly anywhere she feels like it, lay waste to any birds I may have sheltered through the winter, and scent my mornings with the penetrating aroma of cat urine…

…  you little furry Motherfu**er, them days is over. You’re going to rediscover camouflage and stealth, leave the quail in my yard alone, or I’m blowing daylight through all that Purina.

Biologists claim that domestic and feral cats are an invasive threat that along with store bought exotic plants, reduce the meager Big City green belts ability to compete with all those discarded invasive plants.

New Zealand and Australia already allow hunting of feral cats, but our domestic population is still killing about 500,000,000 birds per year, which compounds the problem of city blight, whose meager green belts are filling up with invasive plants those missing birds might have found delicious.

Household cats were introduced in North America by European colonists; they are regarded as an invasive species and have few natural enemies to check their numbers. “They are like gypsy moths and kudzu — they cause major ecological disruption,” Dr. Marra said.

– via the NY Times

It’s still comforting to know that once we get a ways down this path, absolutely everyone will be pissed off, not a single invasive will have been diminished, and the cops will be plying the billy club to old Missus McGillicutty whose got a death grip on Cho-Cho, despite the city ordinance to the contrary.

“Salad Days” for the fly tying community coming, with a goodly chunk of Maltese making up for the lack of Eastern Cottontail.

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.