Category Archives: humor

Honest, Lucy will hold the football this time, Charlie Brown

I’ve never understood why anglers (as a group) scored so poorly in the math department. Sure, we got a double helping of optimism, but that was so’s we’d stand out in the rain all day…

Jesus and the Apostles were fishermen, but they had the same problems with figures and addition… It might be why JC was so upset with the  money lenders, one of them had the audacity to ask, ” if a barque loaded with Menhaden left Antioch on the morrow, and at the same time a skiff full of Olive oil left Delphi, how much would I …”

Recent events suggests the Roman approach of skewering would have been a better tactic, but like most anglers – Jesu Christo practiced “catch and release.”

I’m not complaining about the raw estimation practiced by our profession, both rounding up and significant digits are all schools of Mathematics with many weighty tomes to back their usage.

The average age of fly fishermen is 51, that’s the number used by Madison Avenue and explains why old scotch, young broads, and things that make a large arse comfortable are featured prominently in our advertising. It’s why angling periodicals feature foreign destinations, and rods are so expensive, because you’re supposed to be older and wiser and have a couple pesos to rub together.

All that by the wayside, what is it about statistics and averaging that gives you fellows so much trouble?

The condensed version, “average” is the important concept to grasp. Simply put, for each one of these:

 

There’s one of these:

bikini What we can agree on is that both specimens are in extremely short supply.

Ignore the candy thrown at you by the “Yellow Journalists” at TroutUnderground, he fishes cane – synonymous for a slow learner.

“Slab of the Week”, “Arse of the Week” or “Breastmeat of the Month” is all smoke and vapor, and the “eye candy” that teases you into thinking monstrous hatches are followed by Lust in the Dust, are pure myth…

… propagated by middle aged fat guys that passed English (barely) and failed math too.

Average age 51, suggests there’s plenty of ladies interested in the sport – they may not have the long legs or bustline to suit your particular kink, but plenty own great tackle, can cast like hell, and own boats.

If Grandma had 60 acres of river frontage, I’d consider raising my standards to match.

If I was to name a fish based on a single act or deed

This sumbitch would be “FATTY”.

Steadfastly ignore everything your Momma taught you, spend the bulk of your day chasing tail rather than get an education, then tuck your feet under Ma’s table and ask, “What’s fer Dinner, Yo.”

 

The damn fly is as big as he is – and it’s up to us to give this fellow the education he’s sorely lacking.

Meet the Singlebarbed blog’s favorite glutton, a largemouth bass – which aren’t very numerous in the Little Stinking, now I know why.

I’d think before getting amorous with your catch

I hope it was Koi, the alternative is too ugly It’s the way of all things.

Climb to the top of the food chain over many decades of adversity then see it all undone by a promiscuous Koi?

The massive die off of Carp at California’s Clear Lake appears to be linked to someone dumping unwanted Koi, infected by Herpes. How the disease spread throughout the Carp population is still somewhat a mystery, but it may involve unprotected sex and a lot of drinking.

Water, most Likely.

It’s raining iPhones

It could lead to a $300 projectile I love gadgets as much as the next fellow, and after eyeballing an Apple iPhone some months ago – I figured sooner or later I might end up owning one.

Now I’m glad I waited as there may be a better than average chance at scoring a free one. The software geniuses at Freeverse have debuted the first fishing game for the iPhone, and like the Wii, it’s motion activated.

You’ll remember the Wii as the cause of all those smashed TV screens, the “heat of battle” caused the controllers to slip from sweaty fingers – neatly imbedding themselves in some fellow’s expensive wide screen.

… reading the fine print of the iPhone game, it mentions “casting is activated by an overhand throwing motion” – which means the well heeled fellow at the bus stop may want you to “go long” ….

If you want one – just keep running.

It’s a thought … $300 per catch may put you in the middle tier payscale for NFL receivers.

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Never has so few been shunned by so many over so little

No one’s accused us of being overly clean or bright, but we own the “adventurous” label hand’s down.

All brownliners have a host of aberrations; we’re as superstitious as baseball players, display enough nervous tics to warrant rehab, and practice strange ritual, reviled and largely misunderstood.

That’s why we only offer lunches to the folks we like. Slaw dogs may be the pinnacle of cuisine in the higher elevations, but Wasp cookies are “culinary cutting edge” regardless of which continent hosts the Brown water we’re in…

Native foods contain  precious anti-bodies to combat the accidental dunking, and coupled with our lay entomological studies – we seek education and immunization in every calorie ingested.

… and on slow days, it’s bait.

Adapt, evolve, and overcome; Darwin didn’t plan on sissies reproducing, and we take offense if we’re escorting one through the Brown Water.

Slogging through all that odiferous stream bottom usually eliminates the urge to dine, especially for the first couple of outings. We dispense with the usual formalities like crystal dinnerware and silken napkins, preferring the camaraderie of finger foods to break the ice.

Neat rows of Protein, no ceremony - just dig in It’s fairly common to mistake our fly box for the party tray as they look so much alike. Neatly ordered rows of “Czech Nymphs” await the angler bent on protein, but “Czech” for fish hooks before swallowing…

Brownliner’s have always espoused “green” dining – only because introducing such high energy foods to traditional fishermen turns them green in a hurry. We keep the recipes close to the vest, and discourage the casual diner from inquiries like …

Now we're going to see some green “…. what was that delicious, crunchy, invigorating item in the salad?”

“I’m so glad you asked, it’s a native species common to all brownline watersheds that feeds off decaying flora and fauna, has zero Transfat, and domesticates amazingly well.

Rich in protein, typically taking on the flavor of its host, it’s abundant, muscular, and rich in nutrition.

It’s our ‘little entomological nutrition powerhouse’ and a trade secret.”

I bet A.J. McClane howls at my misfortune, I bet he was an SOB too

Charlie Brown and I had the same vocabulary, featuring a plaintive howl everytime Lucy yanked the football away. My battle was with the fly tyer’s of  A.J. McClane’s Standard Fishing Encyclopedia – it was the bible featuring color plates of flies and their recipes, allowing me to gauge my proportions against the real thing.

I’d always be three quarters finished when they’d mention Medium Blue Dun, or Gray Jungle Fowl – and I’d start cursing in earnest. Substitution is a four letter word when you’re learning how to tie flies, usually you’re already substituting the right way of doing it with your way, and to replace materials wholesale is akin to cheating.

Matching the completed fly with the grainy photo in A.J. McClane’s book was compounded by the fluorescent green hackle you’d substituted for medium blue dun, enough of a change to reduce effectiveness and preventing the fly from earning a spot in your box – as it’s now somehow tainted.

Years later we found out that a Greenwell’s Glory couldn’t catch crap, and the chartreuse hackle we’d added could only have helped.

I lived in fear of fine print, as every author hid the “mongoose mask hair” or “rutting beaver forepaw” behind an asterisk or small text, and delighted in knowing some new tyer was uttering a howl of protest.

As a kid I’d take my hard earned coin down to the fly shop and press my nose against the glass, psyching myself up for the pending ordeal; dividing $2.18 among thousands of “needs” – and winding up with 14 little glassine bindles of feather dander.

Sure, I had rabbit aplenty, but never Olive rabbit, or Olive thread, everything I tied for the first decade was black thread, Size A Nymo – and I was a stud for scoring that. My Light Cahill’s suffered accordingly, as once they were dampened they were Really Dark Cahill’s.

Now that I’m old and mean, I recognize that ritual of suffering is a crucial component in rounding the skills of a good fly tyer. Suffering steeled your resolve when neighbor’s tabby met steel belted radial and a dull Buck knife and swift burial were warranted. Lingering at the gut pile meant you could high grade all the mallards, widgeon, sprig, and teal – fighting maggots for the best flank feathers. It taught you to accelerate at the deer – in the last possible moment, rather than brake hard and have him come through the windshield.

…and that critical moment when you connected the dots and realized all those bludgeoned baby seal’s were needed for a full dress Green Highlander? You shrugged it off quickly in your haste to score a dime bag…

Now that you’ve reached your maturity, forged hard by the crucible of those tyers what came before you, tithing “one tenth of your get” to animal fur and brightly colored feathers, it’s time to instill in your legacy as many obscure items as practical so the next kid quits in tears.

Time is on your side, Old Guys get to have dusty old boxes of “the Good Stuff” hidden away. Most of the dust is moth eggs, but even the rumor of stash is enough to keep a young prick in deferential mode – he’ll save the lip for his parents, where it counts.

It’s your responsibility to send subsequent generations screaming in defeat, so it’s doubly important to recognize an impossible material when you see it. Low production and esoteric usage helps, and very little is needed. Enough to comprise an egg sac on a dry fly, or articulated limb on a nymph – just enough to make the fly impossible to tie.

 

It’s like a quiver of arrows, you trot them out as needed – each trial more difficult than the last..

I’m holding the above in the wings, next time some fly tyer claims, “I seen my buddy tie that,” I’ll trot out the “Lagoon” color on some money fly, and watch him writhe in agony. 100% viscose, flat chenille in colors not likely to grace a fly shop anytime this century.

A.J. McClane got me with rare and exotic animals, urine dyed fox, and twisted silks from the Orient, my legacy will be synthetics that were used to trim Elvis Presley’s Cadillac…

I bet A.J. was an SOB too, must be why I liked his books so much.

Try Brownlining, your neighbors will like you more

It's quite the hatch, for some folks He certainly shows an enterprising bent, but I think he needs to get out more often. Trapped in an urban setting, there’s always some fishing venue that’ll draw less attention to yourself.

It’s unclear what the daily bag limit is – but being arrested by the authorities with 500 in possession is just a trifle much. It’s guaranteed to incur the wrath of us law-abiding anglers as wasteful is about the only sin that focuses our collective ire.

What trips poachers up is returning to the scene for another round of angling debauch, unfortunately with that many pairs of missing women’s underwear, the authorities are bound to be lying in wait.

I figure he fishes cane, as those fellows always were a bit “twitchy.”

The Brownline ABEL

Fishing the brown water has always had a “Budweiser” mystique about it; the luxury of knowing you’re never going to meet someone, therefore bathing is optional, coupled with the social stigma – no clique, no secret handshakes, and the knowledge that Fly Fisherman magazine will never reveal your secret spot.

Abel Carp finish Now Abel reels has ruined it for us odiferous stalwarts – making a “Carp” finish on their latest line of reels.

I don’t mind too terrible much, but I know that reel and me have a date with destiny. I’ll never have the coin or moxie to buy one, I just know that the screaming angler I rescue from a couple feet of toxic sludge will have it – and I’ll come face to face with the knowledge that the “last odiferous frontier” has been tamed…

Then again, in one last paroxysm of outlaw – I could stake him out on an anthill or take his shoes and reel – then chase him through the flaming gravel beds of Death.

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Elastomeric sounds horribly sexy, but it’s still a rubber cap

I figured he was needling me because of my boundless generosity and acute business acumen. It’s a “no brainer” really, what with the decline in the stock market and all of us looking for that second job to make ends meet, I figured to leverage our fishing expertise into big coin…

“Caribou Barbie’s” husband leveraged his into a shot at Mr. Vice President, and his fishing could be from Marine-1 from now on, why should we aspire to less?

All I had in mind was utilizing them precious dirt water skills to go into the scrap metal salvage business – and with Daytripper, the Roughfisher, and myself – that’s three states, and in the current economic climate that’s a multinational conglomerate.

I’ve got more rusting metal in my watershed than the Coral Sea, and at current prices all it takes is a little elbow grease, a couple of conservation organizations to lure into our enterprise, and we can sit back and make like Sanford and Son’s.

Instead, Daytripper sends me a napkin when I need a crane … Microtrash? The smallest refuse in my creek … is me …

How many rusting Audi's will fit in one of these

Saving the environment from the perils of a six inch length of monofilament is a worthy gesture, but in a brownline fishery it’s the scale that’s all wrong.

I need something like Noah’s Ark where I can add rusting debris in pairs; first the Audi’s, then lawnmowers, water heaters, washing machines, tractors, bridge girders, and the small stuff like Volkswagens and Subaru Foresters…

That's a nine foot rod for comparison Think bigger guys, note the small sample to assist you in scoping the effort…

It’s not collecting aluminum beer cans to assist the school band in scoring uniforms, it’s heavy industry and enough income to score us each a couple of burritos.

Remember, after the first couple of million all our sins are forgiven, we’re the lions of the new-New Deal, and the cover of Time and the stony faces of a Senate sub-committee are only a heartbeat away.

You can have one, but you must renounce your ancestral claim to lands and castle

There’s nothing like the plaintive howl of a youngest son to turn Ma into a baking dynamo, and likely she made older brother eat a bar of Ivory Snow for high-grading the baked goods.

It’s the same rush of adrenalin that allows Mom to lift a car off a child, trifling details like “he’s round as a butterball and could afford to lose 20 pounds,” is lost in the rattle of pans and flurry of baking powder.

The least I could do was take older bro fishing, now that I’d ratted him out, an opportunity to torment him further – dancing just out to fist range – chanting “Ma loves me more’n she loves you..”

Little brothers are pricks even in their dotage.

New water was in order as I was still smarting from Saturday’s outing. We moved upriver to a stretch neither of us had seen, sandwiched between two gravel quarries.

I don’t think the fish had seen a fly before and we had our hands full; smallmouth, largemouth, sunfish, hardhead, and pikeminnow assaulted us in large numbers, mostly smaller fish – and the action was brisk.

“Igneous Rock” was fishing a Manhattan Leech and I started off using a similar fly I call a Jelly Belly, it’s another glass beaded monstrosity using oily rose colored glass beads.

 

The above fish is a Sacramento Sucker in pretty stressed condition, note the copepods attached to the lower extremities. He’s wearing a Jelly Belly, making him a double sucker.

Almost identical to the Pikeminnow, Sacramento suckers are distinguished by a bit more yellow pigmentation, and the lateral line is straight; Pikeminnow have an upward slant to the lateral line at the rear of the gill plate.

 

This time of year water is both low, and extra warm – making fish vulnerable to parasites.

I swapped out the smaller fly for the Little Stinking Olive – I’d had time to produce some variants that had double the lead of the earlier flavor, and added 4 strands of soft crimp Aurora Blaze Angelina to the tail. It’s the dredging version, fast sinking and with a bit of flash to assist in deeper, darker water.

Everything ate it, including bluegill and sunfish.

Older Bro busted off his leech and I palmed a Little Stinking Olive, it was time for some horsetrading. “OK, I’ll give you one of these, but you must renounce all claim to my Lemon cake, there’ll be no ‘tithing’ – no ancestral blood right, no imminent domain issue with the goodies, deal?”

I glanced back his way and saw him with a fish on, “See, I told you!” He paused long enough to call back, “hell, this ain’t the first one, this is the fourth fish..”

It was the scene from “Dances with Wolves” – two fellows separated by an insurmountable gulf of sugary citrus infused plunder, thinking, “Good Trade.”