Category Archives: fly fishing humor

Too Close for comfort

Roman_Red350Nearly every periodical teases me with some gizmo whose description promises revolutionary change and awesome functionality, and price tailored to a member of the Saudi royal family.

Like you, I have a weakness for gadgets made from the protective titanium bathtub of a decommissioned Warthog, but my budget can only support the early plastic variants of decades past, and am therefore forced to avoid eye contact with my peers when scuttling from creek to welcoming tailgate.

More than once I’ve scratched my head thinking of our fly fishing demographic and the statistics of Who We Are, and would love to claim a bit more education and disposable income than most of the sporting fraternity. On the down side, we still have trouble grasping the notion that an ounce of graphite scrim applied to a spinning rod doesn’t make it base or common, and when slathered onto a fly rod mandrel – doesn’t enhance its value to rival a red diamond, or a pristine copy of Action #1.

Why a bait casting or spinning rod containing as much boron or graphite as a fly rod is one tenth its price, and why we don’t rise en masse to hurl crates of Sage and Orvis into the Boston harbor has  forever eluded my understanding.

All that extra education squandered as we majored in beer drinking with a minor in Sociology or Psychology, and skipped those important Physics classes that would have given us balance and scientific wisdom.  Worse yet is none of them “people” studies sunk home – given the chill with which we relinquish our hole to our brother angler.

When all seems darkest and I resolve to swap fly rods for flower arrangements (to upgrade my friends and peers) the Internet washes up a bit of lightness to restore my mood, akin to Styrofoam at high tide …

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… the $450 bass lure.

I was reading a bass forum on the usefulness of the new (Dyneema) braid was in bass fishing. Most of the participants commented on its fine diameter, and one fellow pointed out the 100 pound test was equal in diameter to his old 20 pound dacron standby – and had the added ability for him to hand-over-hand himself down the line to fetch lures.

As you might expect there was a flurry of questions, and he revealed his newfound obsession for Roman – Made lures from Japan, and as most were $150 – $450 each, he opted to swim down and retrieve them when snagged.

While I admire his sudden frugality, I wasn’t buying the overall story. Anyone throwing $500 dollar bills in Harm’s Way is doing so for the rush of endorphins that come with your losing the entire food budget for the month.

I figured he’d likely had a track or football scholarship – one of those unfortunates that peak in college, have a short NFL career, and are attempting to salvage the adrenalin rush of lost youth.

In summary, the one class in Psychology I was required to take at City College Harvard … suggests that I require at least one group to point fingers at and question their fishing sanity. The notion of us fly fishermen BEING that group, is of course, unthinkable.

Another reason to watch your footing

Despite drought and water rationing, dwindling fish,and fly rods costing as much as a house payment, we’ve got news that will swell our dwindling ranks with eager young converts – hell bent on saving both split bamboo and the environment, regardless of the costs.

perspirationFishing has always been framed as a bothersome exercise, unappealing to successive generations of urban youth, whose refined senses and exposure to woodlands being the neighborhood green-belt where they crap their overweight pooch …

With Hipsters and Millennials in the “sweet spot” demographic, Science has tailored a perfume which will release its scent in proportion to the volume of sweat given off by the wearer, ensuring tradesmen and anglers, and their inattention to hygiene, will be the new “retro” – and our parking lots will be crowded with bearded, flannel wearing anglers, whose flowery bouquet will turn the stomach of everyone nearby.

… and any SOB with the temerity to actually fall into the water will likely change the smell of the entire watershed …

Now carpenters, pipe-fitters, and long-shoremen will be whistled at by the secretaries streaming past on their lunch break, as construction sites will be characterized by “Prairie Blossom” or “Denali Rose” … and investment bankers, with their avaricious demeanor and icy handshake will smell coarse and common.

In addition, the perfume system also has the ability to remove the bad odours that come from sweat. The ‘thiol’ compounds that are responsible for the malodour of sweat are attracted to the ionic liquid, attaching themselves to it and losing their potency.

The breakthrough could have major commercial possibilities, potentially providing a new way to develop products for the huge personal care market. QUILL researchers are currently working with a perfume development company to identify a number of product ideas that could eventually be sold in shops.

   –  via Science Daily 4/2/15

Can slow release mosquito repellant be the game changer that’ll propel our sport into ranks enjoyed by the NFL and Major League Baseball?

A celebration of our myopic and irrational

I’ve always been fascinated how physics, logic, and religion alternately hold sway with anglers, and how quickly we drop one to seek a convenient explanation from the others.

Given the fervor of our practitioners, fishing may also hold a goodly number of lay theologians; those whose use of deities are limited to epithets, and those who couldn’t endure the restrictions of religious study, and opted for a sociology major instead.

Only historians, theologians,  and anglers discuss derivations of ancient events and derive modern theories that explain the unexplainable – and like religion and history, most attempts at learned angling discussion flare white-hot, as our ranks are home to   half wits, zealots, and the unyielding.

never-argue-with-stupid-people

Bass anglers and fly fishermen are the worst of the lot and the least cognizant of their behavior. Add together a bit of religion, arrogance, science, and stubborn, suspend disbelief and ignore physics, and you’ve got something that describes their angling theory and behavior.

… and as I listened to a pair of bass fanatics agree on the only three colors of rubber worm needed to catch bass, I was reminded of our version, the “Adam’s Guy”, and how ardent he was that “ …the Adam’s is the only fly worth fishing , and I catch all my fish using it.”

With an ear cocked to the debate on rubber worms, (which had turned from discussion to a more congratulatory tone) I noted that while the obligatory “fist-bump” was in order, both had confessed to owning a garage full of the unloved color spectrum. Most being blamed on destination purchases – based on bait shop banter, and the balance from YouTube videos (and magazine articles) featuring snuff-dipping felons manning tinny microphones apologizing for winning everything while flinging, “… drop shot, with a Dirty Plum Senko chaser.”

Naturally us long rod fanciers pick on the Bass crowd with great glee, but they’re a mirror of current fly fishing theory. Both groups are equally insufferable in their misapplication of knowledge, both assume the outrageous cost of their tackle makes up for their lack of study or practice, and most lack real knowledge of their surroundings or their quarry, and are content to quote whatever dog-eared rag they’ve stacked by the crapper.

I suppose the fly fishing crowd can claim a moral victory in that they don’t despoil lakes with fossil fuels, but the reality is our leader packages, discarded indicators, and candy bar wrappers are a close second.

Bass fishermen giggle at us because of the nosebleed costs of fly rods, but don’t consider they are uncomfortable without a half dozen rods pre-strung, and how the combined cost of all those reels and terminal gear equal or exceed the cost of our rod.

As both groups represent a relaxing hobby gone terribly wrong, its interesting neither dwells on the actual cost of their catch, as both insist on releasing everything before they’re weighed. This is a convenient mechanism, given any serious study on the subject will be waved in their face by their Better Half, and used to stifle any sarcasm regarding drapery treatments and domestic expense.

All this imprecision results in shaky estimates and gross exaggeration of catch rates, which we gleefully relay to our confederates with clipped syllables that brook little discussion.

“Mr. Adam’s” is equally unwilling to discuss his myopia, and while it may not serve him well hiring a guide to fish a strange river, as he’ll scorn any patterns presented by his handler, it won’t lessen his ardor at force feeding every nearby dimple with his notion of perfection.

Mr. Adams being right … as even a single suicide fish will buttress his theory beyond credibility. He’s conveniently ignored the notion that the Only Fly theorem can be explained by the Commutative Law of Mathematics – which describes why the angler who uses only a single fly for their fishing will catch all their fish on that fly.

commutative_law

This is known in scientific circles as a “truism” … a fact that cannot be argued regardless of the amount of alcohol consumed.

Fly fishermen insist that a massive gold bead on the front of a mayfly imitation actually imitates a mayfly, which might be true if mayflies rode motorcycles and the more numerous Diptera passed a helmet law . This learned scientific notion a derivation based on the original fly being a realistic imitation – and the addition of glitter, opalescent rib and bulbous shiny helmet making the original work even better.

Other realities are never discussed, as they make a mockery of everything us anglers holds dear. How fish only have a split second to eat – before the insect consumes more calories to catch than it’ll contain when eaten … and how even the wildest of bloodlines will eat a cigarette butt should it be presented upstream and at a dead drift …

… downstream presentation making it a vile thing – akin to trash.

The most damning notion is how many male-dominated (male-originated) sports share the same mythology. Like the fable of the Well Chewed Fly; despite a dozen undamaged replicas in the box a damaged fly increases its allure with each fish hooked, regardless of deteriorating appearance.

Crash Davis: I never told him to stay out of your bed.
Annie Savoy: Yes you did.
Crash Davis: I told him that a player on a streak has to respect the streak.
Annie Savoy: Oh fine.
Crash Davis: You know why? Because they don’t  … they don’t happen very often.
Annie Savoy: Right.
Crash Davis: If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you *are*! And you should know that!
[long pause]
Crash Davis: Come on, Annie, think of something clever to say, huh? Something full of magic, religion, bullshit. Come on, dazzle me.
Annie Savoy: I want you.

– from Bull Durham

Religion and fishing have numerous literal links. Jesu Christo and his over-limit angling habit being the most obvious. Both avocations share legions of zealots – yet fly fishermen have yet to detonate a vest in a public setting, suggesting their fervor, unlike the religious variant, has practical limits.

My theory is that all truly talented fishermen are guilty of irrational behavior and myopic outlook, as it’s the armor needed to endure icy waters, extreme temperatures, and  the lack of hygiene of our fishing buddies. We’ve always considered these trials as proof of our devotion, as they are so off-putting to our detractors.

Like celibacy among priests, anglers require suffering to endure the unknown, and both the Meaning of Life and Why Fish Eat, are intangibles and destined for debate until climate change or Thermonuclear devastation makes both moot.

The Benefits of Ponderous

The benefits of walking are many fold. There is the obvious mildly strenuous form of exercise able to rid you of holiday excesses, and the less tangible “.. gets you out of doors so you can reconnoiter all the changes the last couple of storms has brought.”

While “buff and ripped” can only describe the pants I’m wearing, and the “Fair Sex” and the figure I make at the water cooler are no longer a motivational tool,  I’m still mindful that I have to reduce my holiday bulk if only to pull my ass out of the stream bottom and portage around the decaying goat carcass and its companion, the rusting Chevy.

… and after regaining the bank and finishing that climb on hands and knees, a fellow can be be justifiably incensed at his weakness for See’s candy and Christmas stollen, and resolve to see his feet  without they’re being elevated via recliner.

“Incensed” being just enough ire to exploit a fat kid, which is exactly what a Koi is to fisherman.

… and finning toward me was the unmistakable outline of a really fat kid, who like me was struggling with the six inches of water left in the canal, yet coming my way just the same.

From the culvert beneath me tumbled a second snow white fish that had successfully fought its way upstream to join its larger brethren in the skinny water above.

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While I managed to slide the camera out to record my sudden good fortune,  I realized I was attempting to be extra-secretive due to my quarry. Carp are a brawling cockroach of a fish – worthy of a frontal assault with a six pack in tow , but Koi are garden ornaments and quite valuable, and there was sure to be some enraged gaggle of gardeners or socialites completely upset with what I was contemplating …

Ruinous exploitation of the resource, naturally.

And all of those grade school field trips, where I peered over the rail of the bridge bisecting the Koi ponds at the Japanese Tea Gardens, where I was watched with great vigilance by teachers and ninja karate-wielding gardeners, was about to be avenged.

I said to myself,  as I pointed skyward, “ … you bastard, there better be an orange one …”

The squeals of outrage will demand a watery Jihad

mule300While the old adage insists, “ … in Spring, a young man’s thoughts turn to Love,” the Global Warming variant may change that antiquated lyric to, “ …in Summer, a young trout’s thoughts turn to Hybridization.”

A recent study of wild trout intermingled with hatchery fish, based on lakes and hydroelectric dams in Norway – suggests that wild fish and hatchery trout rarely inter-breed. It’s thought the high mortality rate of pen-raised, pellet-fed, fish – coupled with the inability of hatchery fish to make use of spawning creeks – means the two strains rarely occupy the same space at the same time, and interbreeding is negligible as a result.

Released trout accounted for nearly 30% of the sexually mature fish in the reservoirs and it was assumed that the prolonged use of non-indigenous and previously released fish in hatcheries posed a risk to the genetic integrity of wild fish. However, it appears that wild fish maintain their natural, genetic structure, principally due to the high mortality of indigenous and released hybrids and to the fact that released fish do not migrate when spawning.

– from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science

My tortured blend of humor and lay science suggests this phenomenon could be due to their “fast food” diet. How inhaling pellets shat from a cannon leaves hatchery trout couch-prone and listless – versus chasing a shapely wild female up the riffle and into the Gravels of Lust.

But Global Warming and its corresponding changes in water temperatures apparently changes this delicate relationship. With elevated temperatures, “Couch Potato” fish suddenly mount everything, including beer cans and sunken grocery carts and the gene pool resulting is a crazy mash up of hybridized fish.

Despite widespread release of millions of rainbow trout over the past century within the Flathead River system5, a large relatively pristine watershed in western North America, historical samples revealed that hybridization was prevalent only in one (source) population. During a subsequent 30-year period of accelerated warming, hybridization spread rapidly and was strongly linked to interactions between climatic drivers—precipitation and temperature—and distance to the source population. Specifically, decreases in spring precipitation and increases in summer stream temperature probably promoted upstream expansion of hybridization throughout the system. This study shows that rapid climate warming can exacerbate interactions between native and non-native species through invasive hybridization, which could spell genomic extinction for many species.

– Excerpt from Nature Climate Change, July 2014

As I’m one of those horribly insensitive louts that claim to have tread lightly on his environment, (which we now realize as “having our way with the Old Gal,”) and after leaving what few scraps of the watershed that remains to the New Breed of fly fishermen, can only cackle at your indignity when you see some obese Grass Carp mounting that silvery, noble Rainbow (as it lies panting in the hot water), and how righteous you’ll sound when you insist we kill everything with Rotenone, so the gene pool is kept sacrosanct …

In addition to leaving you whatever we couldn’t eat, along with the discarded plastic wrapper of everything we did consume, we’ve imparted to you our antiquated snooty attitude towards salmonids. No doubt you’ll cling to this last bit of purism despite rising hemispheric temperatures, and with the Trout-centric enviro-lobby’s urging – will launch a Genetic Cleansing, or watery Jihad … whichever Politically Correct term you’ll devise for eradicating all the warm water fish that don’t mind hybridizing with lawnmowers or Salmo Salar …

I wasn’t the only turkey in the parking lot, just the most photogenic

american_turkey300Once fully immersed I remembered how I’d sworn to replace my neoprene waders last season.

The tiny holes I’d been unable to track down being the causal agent. That irritating hole right in the billfold area that ensured your wallet and its contents were soaked, the right foot seam that had decayed to instability and was now dampening my sock, and the mid calf fabric leak that ensured everything between wallet and sock was similarly cooled.

Those being “character” leaks, bearable yet adding just enough suffering as to be retold at the campfire each evening, and ensures the patched and weathered exterior of now-porous waders continues to grant “parking lot cred”, that which separates the seasoned angler from the novice …

… yet, it was the Unforgivable Leak that had sprung last season that had sealed this pair’s fate … that mid groin hole that soaks the crotch and extends down the left leg, ensuring you are unfit for public exhibition.

Having skipped the Trout Opener in favor of working, and this being the first wader-clad scout of the year, I was prepared to work the kinks out of my gear, my cast, and my physique, but had forgotten the all-important Vow of Newness from the prior season.

Muscle memory neatly draped the running line over the fingers of the left hand, the shooting head sang out of the guides with only two roll casts and a single back cast, and what little rust that accumulated from seven months of enforced Shad idleness was quickly dispelled. I was feeling the kind of optimism that only a new fish and a new season can bring – unseemingly effervescent yet rooted to Earth by the spreading chill in my pants leg.

My optimism rewarded by the sudden tightening of the line on the swing, and the rod dipped abruptly and reel started its siren’s wail I figured this might be one of those rare nexuses of good fortune I’d alluded to with my earlier karma of bruised ribs and torn waders.

The unyielding mass suggested otherwise, however. Rather than dozens of voracious Shad skewered on a single hook – it was the beginning of my “American River Around the World”, wherein the aspiring angler attempts to catch one of each of the sodden clothing categories; Shirt, Pants, Hat, Swim trunks, or Other (unidentifiable).

American_Shirt430

This trophy was a 39 inch length of Other, possibly of the picnic tablecloth genus. It fought well, yet was not overly acrobatic. I added hat and tee shirt shortly thereafter, but of Shad there were none.

… but Iron Crosses grew everywhere … and as the next swing tightened it snagged something heavy by the arse, and as the reel started giving line it’s telltale screech drew a gaggle of morning dog walkers to the bank to witness my struggle with one of the American River’s Golden Salmon.

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“Golden Salmon” being the brown water label for Sacramento Sucker, and this fellow was about seven or eight pounds and most welcome. It was considerably more festive than the earlier struggle with the Tablecloth, and granted enormous “street cred” with the crowd behind.

They couldn’t see the shad fly buried in the fish’s arse that lent it “wings” (the reddish object in the belly shown above).

Naturally, I did my best to explain to the crowd of well wishers that it was both toothy and venomous, and how I’d saved the neighborhood – or at least its pets and small children …

But the best was yet to come …

Now that I’m a cause celebre’ I’m accompanied back to the parking lot by a vigorous crowd, and was stunned that my sedate little parking area had mushroomed into the headquarters for a “family 5K run.”

… which means I have to disrobe in front of a cast of thousands, and my newfound compatriots are suddenly arm’s distant as it appears I’ve peed myself …

I was acrobatic in my flight from the area … much to the giggles of the kiddies.

Harry Potter’s wand would be hexagonal or quadrate

magicI called it “selective accreditation,” as it is frequently employed by parents to point out despite paying for your college education, next to their life-long accumulation of wisdom – you are still an infant.

Fishing, thankfully, is loaded with similar magics and credentials of convenience.

While fishing at Lake Berryessa, before my ill fated rib mash, I found myself pondering how fishing, science, and magic shared an uneasy relationship, how credentials are granted and just as quickly taken away, and like the movies, a contemporary angler must suspend disbelief to ply his craft with a straight face …

… and as I scuttled around the edges of the lake watching for fish and snagged lures, I encountered the familiar five ounce tuna cans – all of which met their fate at the hands of a knife wielding sadist.

Tuna being an easy chum agent, given its ready availability and oily nature. When stabbed repeatedly with a knife and thrown into the lake will dribble its oily goodness and purportedly draw fish to the area.

At least that’s the scientific reasoning. The movie-magic-disbelief relied on gelatinous ground, as if scent of the oily Tuna is the draw, and tuna being a blue water fish found only in the ocean, and this being fresh water, how is anyone sure it’s attractive to freshwater fish?

An average trip to a supermarket can produce a half dozen edible items that smell to us like rotting something-or-other, gym socks, or much worse. Considering neither chum nor quarry has crossed paths with one another, who’s to say we didn’t accidentally pick the Limburger of oily scents?

… and if five ounces of chum is able to draw fish, what about the gallon of fuel leaking out of your bilge, the cigarette butt you flung idly into your wake, or the ounce and a half of room temperature beer you poured into the water prior to cracking something colder?

Toss in all the asphalt-fossil-fuel scent that washes into the lake when the roadway above is rained on – the oils from transmissions and crankcases, the little bits of humanity jettisoned out of car windows that with each downpour edge closer to the lake, and scent … suddenly gets really muddy.

Five ounces being enough to draw fish closer, but how does that compare with a couple hundred pounds of brake dust, powdered radial tire, and a thousand other manmade scents entering the lake via the rivulet behind you?

I’d like to buy into the science, but I think even the science depends on magic.

I’ve never seen a saltwater fisherman filch a big knot of Powerbait onto a 3/0 stainless and fling the combination into a school of stripers, nor have I seen the pier fishing crowd use salmon eggs for perch, so why isn’t the converse true? …

… and if the pier fisherman chuckles, insisting “ … that’s silly, perch ain’t ever seen a salmon egg …” can’t we make the same case for a landlocked pen-raised trout?

Historians agree that science and magic play a role in the maturation of society, which is why both are found in every society on every continent, however remote. Science is the ability to explain natural phenomena, and magic (often called religion) explains all else.

For anglers, science is boring and egg headed – which is why we skipped Biology in High School, and why should the pendulum swing too far towards the explainable, we flock to the indefinable. We know our sport is steeped in magic, and we know it to be the true source of fishing’s awesomeness.

Anglers use the term “luck” to describe that which cannot be explained, for us “luck” and magic are the same.

Magic is why we believe fiberglass is better than cane, as the science can’t give us a convincing rationale. Why graphite is better than glass, boron is better than both, and if it’s ribbed with titanium, or the blank has unsanded scrim, or is light, heavy, long, or short, has raised the performance bar yet again …

Unfortunately even with rods that cast themselves we fail to let the rod practice during the off season and tie the same wind knots regardless of the boons of technology.

Science follows along obligingly and reminds us that Boron is a metal filament (and what idiot would wave that in a lightning storm), and we skip  those pages in the Fly Shop catalog to find the next unfounded rumor – GMO modified cane that excretes carbon filaments as a byproduct of photosynthesis.

Eco-friendly awesome, until we realize Monsanto holds the patent …

Fishing stores have pandered equally to science and wizardry. They delight in selling us snake oil in as many flavors as colors, and do so with the same rhetoric used by drug dealers; merely providing a service to a clientele that would buy from someone else if not them. While many items will prove unfounded and silly a few years from now, retail’s role is simple pimpage, and as sales and “hotness” are proportional, science provides them empty spots on shelves to stock some new eye-scorching magical goodness.

Science suggests that were you able to devote adequate resources to research and were able to explain all phenomena each angler would be successful on every outing. Anglers know should science gain an ascendancy over magic and we were consistently successful we’d despise the sport, as our successes were now ordinary and no longer a testament to suffering and Manhood.

“Matching the Hatch” gains a brief upper hand for a couple of decades, until mottled and natural becomes ordinary, and the pendulum swings back to married snippets of swan and Indian Crow, and iridescent opalescent, and the colorful magics take over.

Thankfully.

And when the latest periodical insists I dump everything for its Ultra-Violet imbued equivalent, and I confirm that scientists have yet to decide whether my quarry has rods or cones, semi-receptors, or is blind as a bat, my thoughts turn to eBAY and how I’ll slurp your castoffs as if by magic.

Ensuring that despite Sirens attempting to lure me to one camp or the other, I trod the path of the balance and avarice, ensuring my hoard of laughables are buried under a stack of recent purchases and no longer visible.

You’ve been with the Boldness, now nap with the Oldness

guide_serviceScience suggests bold and aggressive trout are likely to dominate their peers, and being carefree extroverts, have the highest likelihood of eating our flies and lures, therefore enjoying a very short dominance …

… and those same scientists have inadvertently bred for aggressive, outgoing, social trout, used to rubbing shoulders in concrete pens, ensuring great numbers of them will be needed to guarantee species survival, as they lack the wily, shy nature of their wild counterparts.

Science also suggests boldness is inheritable – and should the aggressive, outgoing, fearless trout be lucky enough to mount something other than a loose fold of your wader leg, their progeny will also be bold, outgoing extroverts.

It is only reasonable that the last couple hundred years of angling and our relish for killing anything of size, has selected for shy, finicky, and introverted fish. Better yet, similar logic should hold for Mankind, given the bold social extroverts were likely the first ones out of the trench, and war, plague, and saturated fat, has seen fit to thin the ranks of extroverts and ensure species survival lies with “wild” or shy types.

Oracle: I’d ask you to sit down, but, you’re not going to anyway. And don’t worry about the vase.
Neo: What vase?
[Neo turns to look for a vase, and as he does, he knocks over a vase of flowers, which shatters on the floor.]
Oracle: That vase.
Neo: I’m sorry–
Oracle: I said don’t worry about it. I’ll get one of my kids to fix it.
Neo: How did you know?
Oracle: Oh, what’s really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?

… and is the successful angler so because boldness catches aggressive, and rushing to the creek forgetting to lock the car door, or checking for your license, or remembering lunch, catches more fish than us reserved fellows that use turn signals in traffic, and don’t “low hole” those that arrived before us?

Flies and tackle have certainly become bold as they’ve jettisoned somber and become bright and colorful again. Gone are the drab earth colors and camouflage finishes of the shy, stalking angler – replaced by tinted aluminum and the harsh hues of mini-mall neon.

Fly fishing periodicals are obviously catering to extroverts. Their pages depict an incessant litany of fashion, exotic locales, and eye-searing colors, suggesting boldness and audacity is unaffected by mounting debt, weakening economy, nor the indiscriminant accumulation of gear.

Perhaps their readers have read of their fate and are aware that continually low-holing the riffle, borrowing flies from your pals, or relying on Malaysian 747’s to get to those exotic locales, often ends badly – and both accumulated debt and dominance are erased in the resulting mushroom cloud.

It’s no secret that successful anglers stand little chance of reproduction, given their penchant for inclement conditions, incessant mosquitoes, and taint that follows all blood sports. Left to the female of the species, our extroverts have little chance of passing on their boldness given the only thing romantically linked to fly fishermen are beer and the Law.

… and wardens, being stalkers and introverts, aren’t liable to be attracted to boldness unless it is out-of-season, over limit or undersized.

And all this time I’d assumed fly fishing was merely a place for us antisocial types to pick on things smaller than us. Now I know us wily old guys are critical to the sport, as the outgoing extroverts are systematically eliminated it falls to us to propagate the species.

Which explains our relish for making fools of ourselves attempting to ignite the interest of something half our age … and why our numbers continue to dwindle …

Smash Da State (Park?)

I was mistaken that the younger crowd have evolved a more cavalier attitude towards pine trees, campfires, and mosquitoes.

My youth being steeped in environmental activism via proximity to the Haight-Ashbury, and the preponderance of Patchouli Oil, Earth Shoes, Save the Whale, Save the World, and Free the Indianapolis 500,  requiring us to be enviro-centric for fear of being tagged as Establishment minions …

… and as my innocent little fingers bypassed the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Zap Comix in favor of Sergeant Fury & His Howling Commandos, I remember the stern gaze of the beaded fellow behind as he fingered his Berkeley Barb …

“War Comix will rot your brain, Man … it perpetuates the Establishment War Mongering Industrial Menace that keeps us napalming the little brown brothers of North Vietnam …”

( … and I was thinking Sarge was ridding the world of the Nazi Menace, and had no idea he was tied to Linebacker I & II and the bombing of Hanoi …)

Imagine my surprise on a recent scouting trip to find that it’s much worse than first imagined, and that “Occupy Wall Street” has morphed into “Occupy Hat Creek” …

smashdastate400

… and the All-Terrain-Quad-Crazies were the shock troops of a larger movement encouraging the spread of asphalt and tepid drive thru.

Being a student of comic books mostly History, imagine their surprise when they snarl through my drainage to find that like my “little Brown Brethren” the good Sergeant taught me how to deploy a Punji pit …

Your choice of sides being handgun and adrenaline

KFC_Science200You snorted in indignation when I mentioned it the first time. Abandoning our loser enviro-lobby whose message is not at all effective at stemming Global Warming, and out of touch with youth and their growing Enviro-Apathy, and cough up the last of our bucks so the scientists at KFC can save our sport.

… that’s right, the K-e-n-t-u-c-k-y C-o-l-o-n-e-l saves fly fishing …

Scientists are coming to the realization that all of us that inhabit the seven continents are losing their culinary identity, and are opting to eat the same fatty, breaded, deep fried, artery-blocking crap we love so dearly.

While that’s no call to arms by any stretch – what is a growing problem is that fatty-breaded and deep fried needs specific climates to grow in abundance. Think burgers and beef – and piles of shredded cardboard and sawdust McDonald must feed them prior to making them a Hamburger. “Cardboard and Sawdust” isn’t necessarily as plentiful in Antarctica as it is in Colorado, and if everyone requires the same type of climate to ensure their supply of burger … we’re talking WW III and the Big Thermonuclear Cook-off.

Species of any kind being extincted makes any scientist blanch, so increasing the vitamins and nutrients of the fatty & breaded would is  preferably to deploying a few dozen armored divisions to secure the grassy steppes of Mongolia.

“More people are consuming more calories, protein and fat, and they rely increasingly on a short list of major food crops, like wheat, maize and soybean, along with meat and dairy products, for most of their food,” said lead author Colin Khoury, a scientist at the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which is a member of the CGIAR Consortium. “These foods are critical for combating world hunger, but relying on a global diet of such limited diversity obligates us to bolster the nutritional quality of the major crops, as consumption of other nutritious grains and vegetables declines.”

excerpt from PhysOrg, March 3rd 2014

… and what they’ve validated by fiddling with the DNA of wheat and other crops have them poised to fiddle with the double helix of damn near everything that graces wax paper…

So, I’m thinking …Trout are tasty.

There are a few modifications I’d like to see. Heat resist would be good, eats Didymo and craps saddle hackle would be better, larger breasts, increased muscle mass, big fuggin teeth …

… line snapping, air leaping … survives in warm, cold, or raw sewage, capable of taking a man’s finger off at the joint, kind of fish …

The frail nature of our existing foe has removed the woodsy nature of us Outdoorsmen, leaving us prone to infiltration by latte swilling Metrosexuals. A slimy and dangerous opponent would revitalize the sport, allowing us to add matching high caliber side arms, metal mesh accessories, and we could sweep the decks of Puce polo shirts, the apres-fishing latte, and most of the “Ralph Lauren” crowd that have weakened our ranks.