Category Archives: fly fishing humor

Matching the Hatch, the forgotten chapters

Thread them M&M's on the shank It’s a stretch to be certain, but rather than assume we’ve taken Matching the Hatch to its logical conclusion; with all the permutations and combinations of insects and imitations well documented, have we overlooked the obvious and forgotten that even the most well trodden path can meander with time?

With chemical additives and female hormones bathing each successive generation of both insects and fish, will our meticulously imitated three-tailed mayfly have four tails within the decade?

“Much of what humans consume you can detect in the water in some concentration. We’re a nation of coffee drinkers and there is a huge amount of caffeine found in waste water, for example. It’s no surprise that what we get from the pharmacy will also be contaminating the country’s waterways.”

Outside of the obvious and potentially limitless changes due to caustic and odiferous chemicals, is their tacit agreement within the angling media to ignore the enormous benefit of resident fish strung out on Starbucks or Marlboros?

… guides have exploited these sacred cows for decades, and us being starstruck and completely obedient (as we’ve driven for hours and parted with considerable coin) have knotted on any number of trout chow, mashed ciggie, foamed latte’ imitations at their behest – while swallowing some explanation on how the October Caddis really has a big sooty arse just prior to emergence.

… and if you don’t remember that lecture, it’s because most of it was in Latin.

Both the over-the-counter and generic drug selections are neatly imitated via do-it-yourself M&M’s, Just add the Viagra, Quaalude, or Progesterone label and your fly box will be bursting with quality imitations.

Even the moral issues have been put to bed by steelheader’s.  They’ve gashed themselves publicly over their continued dependence on beads versus flies – and “Melt in your Mouth, Not in Your Hand” should be child’s play by comparison.

Hemingway's Cuban

At least I’m not going to curl up in a ball all secretive-like when asked what I’m using, it’s a Hemingway’s Cuban – one helluva cased caddis imitation …

… only because the biggest Arcus Iris Salmo get all near-sighted once they grow past eight or eleven pounds, and all them rods, cones, and photoreceptors start sending misinformation that is countered by the Hemingway, E. Pluribus Unum

Tags: Caddis, chemicals in drinking water, nicotine, female hormone, cased caddis, fly fishing humor

Only on the Internet do we find the real advertising gems

Dead guys fly fishing

Dear Sirs,

Your recent week-long West Yellowstone clinic on “Long Lost Secrets of Fly Fishing Returned From the Grave and Brought back with Us,” was ill conceived, disgusting and worthy of a refund.

While both lodge and private streams are Orvis endorsed, neither of your featured speakers were licensed or bonded, and neither said much or, as far as I could tell, ever fished.

As I’d brought my family I couldn’t take part in the midnight seminars, and suggest you get more experienced speakers who won’t crumple into ashes at with the first rays of dawn.

My wife is a basket-case and has foresworn all future family Togetherness outings. Your repeated demands to use my daughter as a “ritual zombie sacrifice” was tactless and without regard to her motherly instincts. I didn’t mind so much, but you should’ve offered a significant discount on lodging and the return of her iPod.

I was especially disappointed in your entomology session, where we were limited to terrestrial insects attracted by your hosts. I had assumed it would be aquatic insects we’d be studying, with in-stream lectures, not blue bottles and their role in decay …

I’d give long thought to your continued participation as the host for this series. I cannot in good conscience recommend this farce to anyone.

Tags: real angling advertising, dead guys fly fishing, secrets from beyond, Internet advertising, fly fishing,

A special ring of Hell awaits these fellows

Ruby red, lemon yellow, orange orange It’s a fact that only chance collocates decent fishing with anything resembling cuisine.

At best there’s the local flavor of greasy spoon, a fast food franchise or two, and a local pizza parlor – at worst, there’s whatever you left in the motel refrigerator supplemented deftly by the minimart.

The evening hatch dooms us to whatever is open after 9PM, so choice isn’t always an option that first evening … all that changes the second night as celibacy becomes a viable alternate.

As us fishermen are sensitive to impoverished local economies we’ll gun it past the national chain (which closes too early anyways) and opt instead for the indigenous chow …

Common to all watersheds and exotic venues is the plasticine menu, featuring ruby red tomato slices with dew bursting from every pore, crisp green lettuce plucked by the Green Giant hisself, anatomically correct chicken pieces with hints of gold and russet in its greaseless crust, everything is plumb, buff, nutritious, and warm.

Even the liver looks good, and you know you hate that.

Then that sodden, gelatinous ocher mound is slammed between your fork and knife – and just before you insist it isn’t what you ordered, something vaguely recognizable (usually a beak or foot) bobs to the surface where it stares at you menacingly…

 

It’ll do likewise around 2AM no matter how well it’s chewed, nor will it alter shape or form during its entire journey through your gastrointestinal tract and beyond.

For the first time we get to peer behind the menu and see the sinister SOB’s and their sickening craft.

Tags: fishing cuisine, food shoot, cheese pull, greasy spoon, evening hatch, fly fishing humor, fly fishing exotic venues,

Informal research crystallizes the Invasive Species Issue

Singlebarbed reader “Ed” recently took me to task on my curmudgeonly stance to invasive species, outlining newly minted facts that was sure to change my mind, and those of my readers …

On Saturday I was visiting a girl friend and we were using her kayaks which hadn’t been paddled in awhile.  We cleaned them up, washed them out … turns out the one I was in had a bit of a leak so I went to shore to empty it …

Copperhead Invasive 

… and found it carrying a lethal copperhead. Naturally, my first thought was for the watershed so I spritzed it with 409, which blinded the SOB, made it angry as hell – and it was fanging anything that moved.

I stomped it six or seven times with rubber soles and while they flattened it some, I couldn’t get any real purchase to finish the job, so I grabbed my extra pair of felts and beat it to death …

… and they’re right, there was twice the guts, eyeballs, teeth and scales on the felt than on the rubber.

You may want to rethink the felt – rubber thing.

… and my response was particularly evasive given the circumstances:

Ed, just how long have you known this gal, and is she sending you a message? … Just sayin’ is all …”

Tags: invasive species, copperhead, girlfriend, Formula 409, kayak fly fishing, rubber soles, felt soled wading shoes

The End of fly fishing as the World has known it

Lands and sticks to any surface, carries seven times its weight and releases on command? Teensy little nano-soldiers that deploy needles to adhere – and they’re going to waste them on insurgents and forest fires?

It’s my goddamn tax dollars at work, so how much to add a barb?

I always knew dry fly fishermen would ruin the sport completely, not with the ascots and monocles, sipping liquor or shaded verandahs, merely their obsession with seeing the fish grab – and how much more fun that was …

Now that Nintendo and XBox will be elbowing Sage and aged bamboo out of the picture – and a visible fish can be impaled by flies regardless of depth, we’ll all decry the blood sports as “lame” and return to the sofa whence we came.

Fly tiers out of business, the sporting fraternity torn asunder, hundreds of years of tradition out the window, and who knew?

Swarm robotics, the ability to manufacture nano-insects that respond to nimble joystick-trained fingers dancing across an iPhone, and the Army will be buying millions of them.

In the long term, the U.S. Army certainly sees miniature “bug” UAVs as a big part of its battlefield operations. According to a recently released roadmap, clouds of them would be used to survey buildings and various sites before soldiers enter them.

via Federal Computer Week

Controlled by Ipod's and nimble little fingers

via US Army Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap 2010-2035

Sure there’ll be old surplus units. We’ll be able to buy a couple of hatches worth and felt pen them to look like Pale Morning Duns … It’ll be part of a package offered at destination hotels, “two nights stay plus fishing” (on some private reserve managed by PETA) where “duffers” can remember how it used to be, while irritating children impatiently wait on Grandpa and his needs.

It’s certain that someone on the Joint Chief’s is a purist – what with trout shaped dirigibles and attack Mayflies, in light of the carnage about to ensue, I just wish he’d foreswear the joints for a couple moments of clarity …

You and I won’t have much to worry about as we’ll be incarcerated along with the rest of the “Catskill 700” … we’ll hear jackboots grinding on gravel just prior to the SEAL team emerging from our riffle – our vest painted with lasers before we’re dropped to the earth, all the while protesting innocence while some kid renders sentence:

Yessir, he’s got a pocketful of black AR-97A’s, and a fistful of subsurface agents in his vest – looks like cheap Chinese produced knockoffs, probably carrying a biologic payload …”

Huh?, those are Black Gnat’s, I got them a … (solar plexus blow with gun butt) … huff .. huff .. wheeze.”

Small finger skills qualifies me to assemble the SOB’s which is a plum assignment compared to the sweltering heat of the prison laundry – where all that hard work scrubbing invasives will pay off for the rest of you … for the State.

Tags: Nano robots, swarm robotics, fly fishing humor, fly tier, fly tying contraband, dry fly purist, less joint more chiefs, SEAL team, nano-insects, attack mayfly

Labels and reference color hide a rainbow of sins

dye_fiddling Call me a slow learner, but the aerial display of the fourth will have nothing on the fireworks tonight …

I Figure 26 colors run through the same sink, tracked across identical linoleum – each with a 100% chance of a gaily colored spill outlining big hammy footprints headed toward the Man Cave …

Naturally I’ll spring for roses and chocolate hoping to confuse Miss White Glove, but even with all the innocent looks and promises of romance her spider-sense is liable to tingle.

It’s why I save all those extra Fly Shop ziploc bags, the lecture on “How much fly tying stuff do you need” carries less penalty than the “you dribbled Olive crap all over the living room” variant. By witching hour, all two and a half pounds of dry fly dubbing, plus those sixteen animal hides will be packaged neatly, allowing me to look appropriately shamefaced while she administers the former – rather than the latter, while I distract her with dinner and a glass of fine red.

I was working colors mostly, a new set of dyes and a new vendor always requires an exhaustive trial to see how labels and reference colors stack up to the end result.

I use the “21” method for evaluating new dyes, as the range of payload color can be fairly drastic even among the lightest tints. Take two identical hanks of material, soak one in the bath for one minute – soak the other in the bath for twenty minutes, dry and compare.

Twenty-One Method of Dye evaluation

The upper row shows four colors dipped for just 60 seconds, the bottom row shows the same dye bath after 20 minutes. The rightmost “Maize Yellow” produced a Golden Amber with an extended dip – yet the label reference showed the light maize variant. The leftmost color was “Safari Gray” – a color similar to Khaki, but the extended dip became nearly brown.

The rust brown and dark olive (two middle colors) were labeled as the bottom row, both dark colors – and quite vibrant in intensity. The one minute colors yielded a sage green and a creamy orange – with the cream-orange a huge bonus as it’s used extensively in most of the watersheds I fish regular.

This is why it’s so important to test dyes before using them on precious materials, sometimes the reference color is one minute – other times it’s gained only after the long steep. Knowing which yields what minimizes mistakes and the unforeseen colors.

More colors

Here’s another four dyes with similar issues. The leftmost medium gray and rightmost khaki are only true to the label color after a one minute dip – after that they darken incredibly fast. The center two, medium olive and brick red match the label only after a twenty minute soak. The one minute olive is also a huge color, it’s the Pale Morning Dun pale olive – something I thought I’d have to craft, versus just dipping it in a jug of nymph dip for a minute.

Each of the dyes shown was measured identically, one tablespoon of dye and three tablespoons of fixative, each used identical amounts of water.

Each dye is capable of three distinctive colors, the 1, 20, and 11 minute shade.

A canny fellow looks at the colors available and the 1, 11, and 20 minute results and can exclude certain colors from purchase. Most browns have only minor adjustments in red or black pigment, having it steep longer will match a russet or dark brown which you won’t have to buy.

The above picture is 13 dyes yielding 25 colors – not to mention the most absolute black and bright red I’ve ever seen.

Get Out of Jail Free Card

The Before As no points are scored for being banned from the kitchen, it’s important that the how to make a complete mess is tempered with how to extricate yourself from a screaming and angry woman.

It’s like watching all those crime shows and getting pointers on how to hide the body.

At left is the corpse after three days of desiccation. “Her” corn grabbers being the blunt instrument we need to cleanse – as well as the assortment of  ugly gray, red, and yellow driblets that line the strainer area. Each capable of bringing the Wrath of The Gods onto your narrow shoulders.

Soft Scrub, Get Outta Jail At right is the Righter of Kitchen Wrongs, cleanses fingerprints, restores the Pristine to the porcelain, and is capable of making you innocent of all imagined crimes.

… and don’t nod your head like you knew it already, this is the Goods, Babe.

Lay a generous dollop onto the porcelain and cover the afflicted area completely, give it 10 minutes to work magic, then rinse.

… and don’t buy the lemon as it coagulates in the jug rendering the contents useless. Unless you like driving to the store – blowing through all them red lights.

Along with pink fingers, the immaculate sink is the only means of extending your dyeing career, providing enough cover to enjoy a second or third session …

The immaculate porcelain

The pot scrape remains but all coloring agents are scoured from the surface. The shine has been restored as has the ability to see one’s reflection.

This corpse is buried deep.

Note the replaced strainer from my earliest attempts. All chrome with no tell tale rubber gasket to stain. It’s the perfect crime.

Tags: dyeing fly tying materials, dye reference colors, chrome strainer, dye stains, soft scrub, 21 method

Hopefully you’ve got at least nine fingers left

Wherein we salute all patriots still abed, and commiserate that the empty beer cans and explosive debris on your lawn simply will not wait for your head to clear, or the throbbing temples to subside:

A brightly colored house payment

Us clean-living types braved the cordite and pre-dawn roadside IED’s to get blanked, but the colors are remarkably similar …

Less clean up involved

… at least one of us can make his next house payment.

Tags: July 5th, shad flies, fireworks, IED, clean-living, fishless fishing

Billions upon Billions served

McHexvia the Toledo Blade / Andy Morrison

I warned you about all of those untreated wastewater byproducts that burble out of the sewage treatment plant unfiltered. Rather than clean up our collective act – we were content with all-female fish and estrogen enriched Wonderbread …

… now the all them Hex’s share your yen for high fat, high sugar meals, and will be shambling out of the darkness to chase your daughter next …

Tags: Hexagenia Limbata, Mayfly, McDonald’s serves billions, wastewater treatment, your daughter’s next

I gotta Trout with your name on it Osama

The recently leaked footage of the next generation of Predator Drones has the fishing world in an uproar. Gone are the propeller driven noisy mosquitoes of yesteryear, in their place comes the sneaky-quiet atmosphere fish … the Rainbird Trout…

TroutNator airship

… meanwhile the Defense Department is a mass of denials, claiming the video of the device (found on a Northrup-Grumman engineer’s iPhone) is a hilarious fake.

Airships or Blimps have been used by the military for the last 100 years, and were it to have offensive capabilities we would have chosen something scary like an Alligator Gar … that and it would’ve cost twice as much.”

Email recovered from the phone suggest it’s a joint NATO research effort with elements of both design and fabrication provided by the German firm, Focke Wulf, and the UK’s Bristol Beaufighter consortium.

“It’s a classic stealthy and aerodynamic design that can root out an enemy in either rocks or dense growth, capable of a violent take (sic) of a single insurgent, or feed wantonly in a target dense environment.

We called it the Rainbird because of the sound it makes from the 20mm depleted uranium Gatling we put on the prototype. Hey, there’s a bad guy, chuck-chuck-chuck-chuck …

Additional email suggests the working name for the project is the “Trout-N-Ator”, and mentions a larger tank-busting variant – code named “Eastern Bloc-ee.”

There are obviously fishermen involved. Somewhere.

Return victorious or return on thy shield

Dig through the rubble before finding the good stuff I’m the second wave of shock troops intent on despoiling the Pristine. The first wave hit the piney woods absent important supplies like aged booze and microwave pizza.

I got one short call full of the hissing and popping of atmospheric interference – suggesting that I’d better get up there.

“Why? Is fishing awesome?”

“No, * KRRRRR FSSST *  they’re repairing the road and * KRRRR * I’m stuck in traffic.”

Sounds more like a “misery loves company” story – but as I’ve got all the really obscene civilized luxuries in my truck, I’m obligated to go.

Not to mention I’m carrying all the really deadly flies, at least those worth borrowing long term. This year is no different – the crowd will make do with whatever remains from the fistfuls commandeered during last season, assuming resupply is imminent.

Passing provisions and gear between float tubes is always a bit dicey – like two ships matching bearing and speed and hope that your counterpart has a firm grip on the goods.

The communal fly box is chock full of Big 5 wet flies, he’ll have to dig through rubble before he gets to the Mother Load of proven killers. Figure a good stiff afternoon breeze and he’ll be eight or nine feet distant before he realizes he’s been duped.

… or I’ve been, once he lands something of size on a #8 Scarlet Ibis.

Tags: Big 5 flies, gone fishing, microwave pizza, obscene luxuries, fly fishing for trout