Category Archives: fly fishing humor

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.

Different medium yet same avaricious compulsion

Onion skins, how to score them in quantity It all started with five years spent on graveyard shift. Sleeping during the day and working all night appealed to me in some odd fashion, mostly I attributed my ease at being the only fellow in 48 floors of offices was all the time spent afield, as the quintessential antisocial fisherman.

My co-workers never saw my savage coupling with the leftovers from the office party, didn’t have to watch the thin veneer of civilization stripped away as I stalked loose change in the return mechanism of candy machines that dotted the employee lounge.

A note on my desk and half empty plates left in the fridge was my only interaction with the rest of the planet.

With my metabolism completely corrupted by the odd schedule, I resumed working days with little outward issues. I had to remember to bathe again, and observe the societal pleasantries associated with co-workers that were confirmed humanoid; a nod, a wave, an occasional smile.

… but I never was able to sleep past 0600 ever again. Which is why it’s my habit to buy my groceries on Sunday, while the rest of the planet sleeps blissfully.

… and while the medium has changed, natural materials capable of staining holy hell out of pants and fingers, fur and feather alike – I find myself schmoozing the stock clerk at Raley’s the way I would fly shop staff …

… because I’m staring at that monstrous bin of white onions, with the doubly monstrous bin of red onions as its neighbor, and my voice gets all silky and friendly like, “You guys ever empty that onion bin and sweep out all the husks?” says I, all caring and neighborly.

The problem with natural materials is there’s nobody to ask what’s enough, or how many dye baths will crushed walnuts shells make before I should toss them.

Instead, as I’m the only paying customer in the store at that hour, I look left – look right, and then dig out all the white onion skins while the clerk is busy restocking the orange juice or granola bars.

All the while I’m expecting the firm grip on the shoulder, and the command to ten finger the potatoes, so I can be featured on the front page of the paper all pasty and pale in the hot white light of the overhead fluorescents.

If I play my cards correctly it’ll be me and the bums fighting over dried daisies in the dumpster, but only after I convince the checkout lady that her first impression of me as a vile creep, was a bit wide of the mark …

He goes by JDaumer, he says he knows the Rogue real well

All that and chips Naturally you’ve rushed into the digital universe befriending every dimwit without bothering to check where they knew you from or why they wanted your address. The sudden deluge of farm animal porn in your mailbox was a clue that “liking” the 1100 people that haven’t had sex with goats, might not of been too bright, especially with your wife standing there shaking a fist full of contraband recently repossessed from your now wide-eyed offspring …

If only part of what the eRomance sites are claiming is true, how we’re fleeing that ancient and boozy flesh-stalking ritual, and rushing headlong into the thorny bosom of the Internet to meet our prospective bride – whose flashing eyes are purely digital, airbrushed flawless like Playboy – and with a fetching handle to match…

… to hell with women, why aren’t we digging up destination fishing buds? How much simpler it would be to befriend some fellow at the destination watershed, then sleep on his sofa while we insist he guide our every step. His reward for missing work and catering to our every whim, we’ll be best friends, like in grade school …

Us aging boomers can’t spell social networking, and are faced with hideous and insurmountable questions like, “Do I even exist if I lack a Twitter account?” Singlebarbed dares say “yes”, and is prepared to guide you through the Internet’s version of small talk, as only an antisocial can …

Bromance Relationship Rule #1: Don’t define your relationship online unless you plan on raising eyebrows at the casting club. If he pays his portion of the bar tab, gas, and meals without being reminded you’re in a stable and committed relationship.

If he balks at the gas pump or claims his wallet is in his other pants, (conveniently under all the gear strewn in back) chances are the relationship is tenuous and he’s got a commitment problem. If he opts for the “all I got is hundreds” – he’s hoping you’ll be generous enough to allow him to GPS your favorite riffle to return later and pillage it.

Hand him a five and motion at the mini mart, tell him to get you a pack of Wrigley’s. Once the doors close behind him, squeal onto the interstate, you can always break even by auctioning his rod and possibles on eBay.like

Bromance Relationship Rule #2: If your current “steady” can’t make the trip, don’t change your online status to “available” until you’ve had a face to face discussion about fishing with someone else. It’s just not classy.

The last thing you need is someone sobbing electronically after you display a weekend’s worth of large fish pictures on your Facebook page. Big fish, lots of them, he wasn’t there. Reinforcing the notion that painting the living room should have been done last month as originally promised, instead of the entire community of his friends and wife able to snicker at his untimely and catastrophic emasculation.like2

 

Bromance Relationship Rule #3: If you find yourself checking your ex’s profile daily estimating length and girth, and seeing your favorite riffle pillaged and burnt, you should probably unfriend him.

To take this a step further, you should really give your former pal a heads up that you’re changing your status. Rather than making it “available” right away, maybe the two of you can settle on something less humiliating like “Have sack full of grape Intruders, will travel” or  “looking to raw dog Oncorhynchus mykiss, need riffle.”  After a few weeks or months have passed, and everyone basically knows you’re no longer an item, then it’s appropriate to go back to “available.”like

 

Bromance Relationship Rule #4: It’s OK to share major relationship news online only AFTER you’ve picked up the phone and called your loved ones.

Your wife will be thrilled to know you jettisoned Bob somewhere on the upper river.  Bob always creeped her out in the first place. Your new pal ties all his own flies and has enough for the both of you means he may be a keeper. This time treat him like one. He’s neither a beast of burden nor a tackle dispensary, and wipe your feet before sleeping on his couch. Respect The Skills, especially if you value him for more than a single fling.

All those wide stretched arm motions can throw spatter

Stain Interactive is a bit of a stretch, unless you count licking the postage stamp.

“Flyin Ties” launches an interactive bit of garment care, allowing you to mail your stained ties from your desk so they can extract the coffee, mustard, or lipstick you’ve managed to spatter across all that expensive silk …

… and that involuntary cringe was unwarranted, you knew it was only a matter of time before someone named something after our favorite bit of dyslexia …

If meat has feelings, can you return it if it begins sobbing

Feel the butcher's sharp knife It’s apparent that AFTMA is content stonewalling the issue, but as all those emotional fully urbanized types begin to join ranks, will we recognize the peril before we’re all swept off the streets and put to forced labor?

It’s quite plain fishing is headed for one of those perfect storms like hunting, bowling, pets, sweaters, or anything involving a handful of something that resists mightily.

Declining fish, declining fishermen, bigger appetites, more bird watchers, and the hoards of new emotions we’re discovering in our dinner – are all pushing us to the point where we’ll have to remarket our sport or suffer societal censure and wholesale excommunication.

Our angling publications delight in displaying decapitation, boats awash in blood and offal, tales of masculinity and suffering, domination of prey and their harsh environs, and copious mention of how much we prize our stocks of dead animals as they enable us to kill so much more.

I’d propose wordsmithing our current standard into something that looks like we’re no longer the interloper, the harbinger of Death. We can retain the content and message for the like minded, yet remake fishing articles into, “… how fish love tissue massage, and where’s the best place to spend a weekend massaging them.”

In short, us sporting types may have to go the “secret society” route.

“It is also internationally recognised that we must quantify not only the biological cost but also the emotional cost of animals used for production of food and fibre.

It’s plain that the farm lobby is way ahead of us on this. Over the next couple of decades we’ll be regaled with tales of the perfect Tri-tip, and how playing Lady Gaga in the barn just as you relieve the bloated bovine of its ethereal self (blow daylight through the brain pan), lowers the cholesterol level of red meat by half.

It’s important the animal not suffer, the farmer on the other hand had better like female soloists.

All those force-fed geese and milk fed veal are vanishing out of sight, replaced by Grandma with fresh-baked cookies and animals that claim they rent the grass.

“With increased public concern about the welfare of animals, and consumers seeking ‘animal welfare-friendly’ products, Australia’s livestock industries are focused on improving farming practices to meet changing expectations.”

Our problem is not considering PETA had pals, and while we focused intently on all the invasive species, watershed, and property rights issues, only to turn around and find how many more of them there were than us.

Then again, they could be stymied trying to identify which of the barnyard animals is more equal than others. Cows being the practical jokers that they are, pointing out the hiding place of Tom Turkey didn’t smooth relations much come Thanksgiving.

To make matters worse we distribute their naked pictures on the Internet

smart_fish In the 80’s us lay scientists were full of ourselves. We’d embraced the fact that trout ate bugs, that Latin made us sound really intelligent, and the more syllables and body parts we could string together made us irresistible in a social setting.

We were “trout geeks” and we ignored pocket protectors in favor of the stomach pump.

We scoffed at the antiquated non-scientific notion of the Europeans, who insisted that any trout hooked on flies had to be killed, as it would never take the artificial fly again.

We knew better.

Our imitations would hook the same fish many times, we just had to imitate more real insect parts with each hookup. We thought ourselves  invincible, Latin and Mayflies had made us so…

While our theories may have been sound it may have only been coincidence and the hatchery system that allowed us to think Catch & Release was the most appropriate method of disposing of a noble yet vanquished prey, eating them had become tantamount to serving beef brisket in Calcutta, and was out of the question.

As trout chow is shoveled into the hatchery pen and those precious pellets filter down through the water column the Bold & Brave fish, gluttons all – are rewarded for their aggression with the lion’s share of the chow.

The shy and introverted fish hang about the periphery admiring the fat, sleek aggressive fish, wishing the gal’s looked at them thusly …

When vacuumed up and shat into the neighboring brook, the fat, sleek, and aggressive fish wound up slurping the gaily colored Marshmallow Salmon Egg, leaving the creek populated with mostly the shy introverts.

Shy fish were cautious and ate selectively, and fishermen did not fare well against this wily prey, insisting the creek lacked enough fish to return, and going elsewhere for more sleek fat, stupid fish.

“But it are not always the bold and aggressive fish who are most successful. When we marked trout individually and released them back in the wild, it were shy trout who grew most rapidly.”

– via PhysOrg.com

Which suggests the angler that wishes to fish over smart, large fish releases his prey, and those that measure their enjoyment by constant action should kill everything, paying special attention to mashing life out of anything big.

Both theories being sound, and unlike us our European brethren just like brisk action over size ..

… and we’ll be hearing more from our friends in PETA shortly, now that we knowingly stuff a sharp hook through their face and distribute naked pictures of our shy and introverted prey on the Internet.

Can fresh water flows alone explain the decline in anglers

Too much placid upbringingTwenty years of data is pretty compelling evidence that  streams are akin to the mortgage crisis, we fiddle and tinker with obstructions and flows attempting to guarantee everyone living on their banks isn’t washed away in a flood, when Darwinism may be the better course for landowner and watershed.

In studying 3000 watersheds in the US, and thousands of jetties, abutments, dams, rip-rapped banks, and countless ways we’ve invented to make flows more moderate, we’ve managed to change nearly 90% of the major watercourses in the US.

Hooray for us as terra-forming locusts …

The down-side is that in taming the flow of any river, we’ve also begun to modify both the invertebrates and fish that live there. Naturally, all those modern palaces we erect near the bank must be preserved like tombs of the Great Pharaohs, and in so doing we erect countless structures to avert floods, erosion, and normal channel movement. All this secondary construction is successful in turning the wild current into something less so, which genetically selects for fish and invertebrates that survive best in slow current and lakes.

In short, you erected that fabulous log palace because you adored the big brown trout out front, but because you put a house where it doesn’t belong, your kids (if they don’t strike your name from all pillars and monuments) will be fishing over large Bluegill.

So let it be written, so let it be done.

… and because I’ve got a yen for both science and the absurd, perhaps we might extrapolate this latest theory as a larger metaphor for civilization as a whole.

With thousands of niggling little constructs that parents and society use to keep us in line, ensuring our environment is absent those savage peaks and valleys, have they really been quietly selecting for fat, diabetic, and urbane as the traits for the modern enlightened Man, ensuring there’s fewer of us sporting-aggressor types so’s we’ll never get within a zipcode of the Big Red Button and the Bomb?

Yes. Wow.

Us fellows that delight in the out-of-doors having outlived our usefulness. Hunter-gatherer skills shed for the ability to double park, more drawers in the bathroom for his makeup, and cooking is correctly guessing the number of seconds to wave a frozen unmentionable so all four corners of the box are warm.

The Royal Foie Gras with Cheese, the official burger of Theodore Gordon

supreme_fois_gras Now that the World’s collective microscope is off our convexness we can get back to eating all that grease-imbued unhealthy.

No more sermons from “green” zealots admonishing us how unhealthy our kids have become, and no high pitched, pallid scientist illuminating the damage done to the Ozone layer by herds of  Big Mac’s as they graze  peacefully.

Instead we can point fingers at French fast food, which has debuted the Foie Gras Burger, containing acres of duck fat and types of cholesterol that vaporizes arteries on contact, with science gasping for the words to aadequately describe the peril.

As diseased goose liver shares a bit of “snooty” culinary reputation in addition to being a Widowmaker,  the fly fishing community will greet the dripping SOB with open arms, and declare it the Official Burger of Theodore Gordon.

It’s obvious them Eurotrash weren’t content with the “Royal with Cheese” and felt it necessary to one-up us on the societal diabetes scale by adding even more lard.

… and they’re welcome to it. It’ll be percussive Darwinism as us newly svelte American tourists will be side-stepping the disenfranchised Islamic fundamentalists as they rush the cafe entrance with a vest full of nitrates, wherein the slow and fat will eat the blast.

Hamburgers being synonymous with American culture, and with copious references to their care and usage in exported media, we can only hope that  “look at the big ass on Brunhilda”, doesn’t get attributed to Pulp Fiction.

Naturally the Trout Underground will recant their hasty decision to go with a mere chili dog and Cole slaw as their mascot, and it’ll be the subject of much tension on the Drake boards as to proper condiments appropriate for this gelatinous monstrosity.

A vest like that has to be named “Lucille”

I told him, “ …when I debuted the Sixth Finger I spared no expense … fly fishing being no different than most male dominated sports, with fellows claiming they’re reading when they’re hoping for a picture of sweat-soaked flesh with a come hither gleam. Sex sells, so I hired Gertrude “The Grip” Mapplethorpe, whose hands can raise a fellow’s blood pressure, who’s graced nearly every Cabela’s catalog ever printed, whose fingers launched scissor sales beyond my wildest expectations.”

My brother feigned interest.

“The problem you’re facing is fishing vests have always been marketed like dirty underwear; shelf folds visible and on some uncomfortably-stiff sales intern whose sweaty hands lack grime or callous. What’s really needed is some tanned and ripe number stretching seams into the realm of convex, like “Lucille” in Cool Hand Luke – so’s we don’t notice the guy wearing the damn thing mounted his reel backwards.”

 

I’m not getting the head shake that suggests agreement, so I continue,
“I mean we’re two old fat guys and the only way we’re going to get near some sub-30 buxom is if we pay them right?”

My brother is intent on watching his fly drift off the far bank, and appears moved yet unconvinced, mostly because my fit of marketing genius is on his dime …

“So, we can drape them ladies over most of the brownline with the emphasis on taut, sweaty, and extreme – and with all those features and new stuff no one’s seen, it’ll be provocative and doubly extreme.

Meanwhile we can take turns on the camera, making our lechery legitimate, and if anyone sees us we can say they’re our girlfriends – which will make them incredulous and keep prying eyes off your fantabulous vests and preserve their secret until you’re ready.”

Igneous Rock does voluptuous

(Naturally it would be twicet as awesome if we didn’t have to pay them to be our girlfriends, but we can convince them we’re famous, and most would think it a privilege.)

“ .. so whaddya think?”

My brother slowly reels in his line and affixes the fly in its dangling keeper and comments to no one in particular, “ … I passed a fourth kidney stone the other day … “

Which in my bloodline is a “No” – and I’m duty bound to make one last attempt…

The Brownline Diva

“You’re opting for the staid and jaded low-budget-fly-fishing-Diva option, where I’m supposed to wade circles around your corpulent frame snapping pictures, while you hope the convex of your waistline conveys the more traditional ‘I’m well fed, so this gear must be good’ image, which relies entirely on a sympathetic fifty-plus, aging-not-so-graceful, fly fishing audience to make your designs successful?”

“ … and may explain why the fish ain’t eating at all. That portrait is enough for an involuntary regurge, dooming ‘Cyber Monday’ and all its nouveau retail goldmine to Hell and Perdition …”

“I charge double if you want them in focus …”