Category Archives: humor

… and you hunch over to protect all the sensitive bits

While I’m not entirely certain what felled me, the romantic version involves the rushing of air overhead, a flash of yellow, and then the snarl of a bright yellow plane climbing for altitude. It’s the Brownliner’s version of hearing the squeal of skidding tires in an intersection, yet instead of the sickening crunch that follows, we get the oily vapors of some nameless chemical descending from above.

While crop dusters are part of the watershed, the guessing game resulting from being dusted ranges the full gamut. Plane screams by overhead and chemical follow; by midweek either the thinning spot on your head has filled in noticeably – complements of fertilizer, or is thinning further, due to Paraquat.

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You’re never sure whether the guy saw you and mashed the nipple to cover you in something he thought hilarious, or it’s your luck that made you emerge from the undergrowth just in time to take a shellacking.

I spent a week scratching most of my nether half, from crown to ankles, so the Math is fairly simple. Half the time it’s fertilizer and the other half is something to kill crop pests, and all the time they’re unwelcome.

Or it was that new concentrated purple-label Tide that smelled to high heaven. It’s even scarier to assume something that’s supposed to clean you up is more caustic than airborne Bug B Gone …

The Great Wader debate that wasn’t

Pink_Camo197“Look at this,” he says as he thrusts a pair of waders under my nose, “the thread’s broken on the knee and they’re unraveling already.”

I don spectacles so I can see where he’s pointing, little worm tracks of abrasion on his zippered breathable awesomeness, and I’m not sure whether it’s fabric that’s deteriorating or an honest abrasion that’s causing the knee to decompose.

“That’s what you get for buying these weak-assed breathables,” I says, “Neoprene is way tougher than breathables and they’re only a tenth the cost.”

He wrinkles his nose in disapproval, “Yea, but Neoprene is hot and makes you stink.”

Now I’m the one that’s incredulous, “Stink? … You’re sacrificing wading functionality over a bit of sweat?

I continue the lecture, “Stink is the essence of fishing; it’s climbing into your sleeping bag smelling of repellant and wood smoke, it’s the reason your wife backpedals on your return, and it accompanies your gift of Deadness in her sink. Stink is salmon eggs, squid, or night crawlers wiped onto a pant’s leg or forgotten overnight in your car. Stink is a mashed sandwich in your fishing vest, it’s proof of success, of Manhood, and without stink fishing would buckling under the influx of carefully manicured stubble and Metrosexuals.”

“Furthermore,” I says – with the bit firmly in mouth, “ when dipped properly Neoprene is not overly hot, it doesn’t ship water inboard when you fall in, is warm in Winter – ensuring you can outlast other anglers in icy water, is comforting if you break a leg and forced to spend the night awaiting rescue, and has a tough nylon outer fabric that resists abrasion coupled with a cushioned foot to ensure you can wade all day in comfort.”

Unconvinced, he gives me that squinched up, weaseled look. “True, but you still smell bad, and you wear pants under your waders and they get wet with perspiration …”

I chuckle, “If we’re talking about me specifically, I don’t need waders to smell bad, they only change the odor from my ‘normal off-putting’ to its unspeakable musty variant …”

“ … and”, as I deliver the death blow, “ … Neoprene is form fitting so when you emerge from the water in front of them sunbathing bikini clad 20 year olds, your ‘rubber girdle’ has a slimming effect, instead of the blousy, voluminous look that breathables have …”

He nods quietly, “I hadn’t thought of that, you have a point.”

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.

Only if you spell his name backwards will he disappear

I remember being horrified when I found out that Mister Mxyzptlk was able to stomp the guts out of Superman despite the dizzying array of superpowers The Man of Steel possessed.

Being an imp from the 5th Dimension, Mister Mxyzptlk was able to channel bad luck to his assistance. Every time Superman attempted to thwart his crime spree, the blow would decapitate some old lady in a crosswalk, or his super-heat-vision would fry some school bus full of kindergarteners…

… and I’m convinced I am firmly in the grips of something similar …

… broke a tooth Friday on the stone part of a “stone-ground” tortilla. Saturday, “Gopher Team Six” unearthed a monstrous rock just under the grass canopy of the rear lawn, and the mower was destroyed in an instant.

Having played this game many times I realize eventually the worm will turn and my ill fortune could turn into a monstrous day afield wherein everything below the water ate everything I tossed their way …

… but hanging off that large root above the rock outcropping while negotiating the forty-five degree slope of the lake was asking too much. Just as I had maneuvered to safety my feet slid crumbled the shale below and I bounced off a big rock outcropping that mashed ribs and robbed me of breath. I did manage to retain my grip on the root despite my sudden full fetal, and gasped out the obligatory, “double f**k me” once I had enough breath …

… Swearing profusely being the aerobic form of walking off a nut shot …

Newly reminded that my streak of poor luck was in full swing and thankful I hadn’t broken another rod, I wobbled up the cliff while wheezing in pain, hoping there had been few witnesses.

Chores being dangerous and fishing being doubly so, I opted for finishing the day afield like a proper dandy, thinking the pursuit of wild flowers couldn’t manifest itself into anything worse than a bee sting.

The idea was sound enough, but all attempts to record the adventure were scuttled by Little Meat, who apparently is just that and all HAM.

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I thought orange flowers were distinctive and represented little chance of malady, he thought they needed watering …

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I thought white flowers would make a pretty picture, and he thought the 2500 pound bull needed exercise … most of that being in my direction.

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I thought yellow flowers was breathtaking, he thought it appropriate to drop deuce, fortunately for all of us, he was discrete …

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I’d throw a stick in the opposite direction and when the shutter clicked the beast was mid-frame and smiling. I think I’ll drive slowly to work tomorrow … with blinkers on …

… or perhaps pull the blinds and simply go back to bed.

All that’s needed is a Toyota Prius Monster Truck

Deer_HAir_TruckAfter multi-million dollar advertising campaigns touting “tax free” zones for New York startups, how Texas is “business friendly”, Massachusetts insists, “Take a Real Vacation”, or Montana’s “Get Lost in Montana”, Michigan has entered the fray by making itself extra appealing to fly tiers …

Fly tiers … because the high dollar tourista have already been lured to larger states. The 20-something social media moguls gravitate to the Big City, the Hip Hop squillionaires insist on similar digs, leaving Michigan attractive only to us economically challenged middle class types, and the the occasional marijuana kingpin whose entourage contains a bevy of canny tax lawyers that minimize their obligation to state revenues. 

… and Michigan’s subtle, yet frugal, message makes me think that California, “the Land of Fruit and Nuts”, might be better served by the sudden exodus of me and the fluttering horde of moths that pursue my collection of animal dander.

Instead of employing the Madison Avenue’s word artists, Michigan opted to exploit its native fauna, by removing any restrictions to Steel Belted Radial season, and adopting an, “if you kill it you can eat it” bylaw governing its roads and waterways.

“While fresh roadkill like deer can be consumed, I introduced this bill at the request of several constituents who have asked to use roadkill for various purposes, such as hunting, composting or salvaging the hides,” Booher said. “This is about reducing regulations and saving taxpayer dollars.”

It’s a match liable to make other states wish they’d pandered to us more openly, given our ranks are swollen with aging and stable taxpayers with a monstrous appetite for asphalt kinetics and deer hair.

All that remains is adding a roll cage to a Toyota Prius so you can sneak up on game like Gunther Prien sliding into Scapa Flow …

And The Lord said, “Modify my killing patterns not with thy name or risk Everlasting Censure”

Reduced_DressingMy last blurb mentioned how everything was likely to arrive early, be shorter, and fraught with unrealized complications, and would require anglers to brave Nature’s adversity.

I forgot how modification of a standard pattern was a Sacred Cow and could land a naïve fellow in hot water.

Reducing a pattern to fit on a smaller hook requires considerable changes to the basic pattern, and a canny tier needs to understand the waters they just parked their toe in …

The materials and accoutrements of large hooks rarely extend to their smallish cousin without interpretation, as the physics of the smaller hook cannot be denied.

Yet the biggest issue facing an angler intent on modifying an existing pattern is not the dressing, rather it’s the inherent Magic in the dressing. Tinkering with a known killer that may be a couple decades older than you are is the equivalent of tinkering with “luck” – crucial to fishing yet largely indefinable, akin to Jungle magic.

If you change a favorite classic to reduce its shape, colors, silhouette, or weight, did you ruin it?

… and if so is goat sacrifice enough to appease an Angry God?

Most anglers would never consider something so base and tasteless, and the notion of changing the tail on an Adams’ is sacrilege. An Adam’s is perfection, a fly that dominated every environment into which it has been hurled …

While we commend your fervor, one of your biggest and earliest hurdles  in fly fishing is the understanding there is nothing special about an Adam’s or Royal Wulff, they simply enjoy the same happenstance that allowed VHS to beat out Betamax, which was a better public relations firm.

… and us fly fishing snobs can be swept up into two piles; those that insist everything you throw at a fish should remind it of what it ate a minute ago, or, the group that insists you should scare, piss off, or antagonize the fish into lashing out uncontrollably.

That first bunch will laud you if scientific rationale is part of your color and material reduction, the second will adore you if you spread a little opalescence or add an invasive tinsel.

In most cases neither group will acknowledge the other, and while they may occasionally buy each other a drink or surrender the riffle to the other contingent hoping they fail they do have much more in common than most would think.

The agree on the silhouette of bugs, their many stages, the split finger fastball, and the small of a woman’s back, but deviate on the colors, tinsels, and beads with which each must be dressed.

In short, you can tear a grand old pattern into pieces, reassemble the silhouette and colors, and you’re likely to have as killing a pattern as when you started. Add in a bit of sparkle or give the old gal a hint of color as a “tramp stamp” and you’ve not sullied the past an iota, merely given homage where it’s due.

… but if you put your first name in front of it, or use the word “invented” in the same sentence … you’re reviled by both groups, you’re an Untouchable, a Poser – or worse, a Belieber … to be cast from us like a indicator foam in trophy water.

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.

A couple guys in waders on Dancing With the Stars could change all that

I was forced to listen to yet another purported fisherman regale me with, “ … the only fish suitable to my palate is the Fillet O’ Fish” … an unabashed reference to the LongJohnus Silverus, that legendary gamefish known only as the “Breaded Unknown.”

… “Unknown,” because its DNA is indistinct and occasionally shows traces of horsemeat … unknown whether it’s a resident of the North Atlantic or South Pacific, and no living creature has witnessed whether it swims, humps its way through the mud, or reproduces outside of a test tube.

… and while my version of fish is often a noble animal and worthy adversary, that distinction has been lost on those that prefer “fast” rather than “good.”

It’s a combination of jaded and jealous, as the only aspect of our pastime that gets airplay is some environmentalist gashing themselves because they saw someone pissing into a trout stream, which brings out the same tired Old Guys to reminisce about the Good Old Days when you could kill everything without repercussion, and not surprisingly, we get few if any converts.

Top Gun boosted recruitment of would-be fighter pilots fifteen or twenty percent, yet for us fishermen the only positive news we can summon is:

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… and while even that small bit of positive press from the folks that brought you “Umpteen Billion Served” is welcome in the absence of Hollywood starlets in waders, the reality of it all is much harsher …

They Can't Sell it Either Sustainable fisheries be damned, call it Pollack, Polack, or Alaskan Cod, nobody is willing to make eye contact …

… snores contentedly in the safety of His bosom

It’s become quite plain that God adores big fish and cares not at all for me … I suppose it’s because there are so few truly big fish, and there are so many aging and overweight atheists, that the planet could do just fine with less …

My early morning foray was premature in the least, what with Winter only half done and ice crunching underfoot. Nothing stirred in the pre-dawn chill, yet each big flood requires me to inventory 22 miles of river, and with couch-riveting NFL madness some hours distant, I figured to work up a sweat and earn some spinach dip.

Each year the Winter cataclysm reveals itself to be “cleanse” or “cover” flood – moving many hundreds of tons of gravel from upstream to deposit all over the the watershed. Sometimes the gravel removed restores deep water – and in other years covers what used to be a deep run or pool.

Naturally I’m pouting when a favorite spot disappears under a gravel bar, but on occasion during a cleanse, an old hole emerges – or a new hole is formed.

This being a “cleanse” year, I was getting fairly excited, numerous deep slots had appeared in the shallow stretches, and the former “Big Fish” stretch, which had been ankle deep last year, was now 5-6 feet deep and liable to hold considerable fish this Spring.

Then I thought about Old Logjam, that hoary and ancient Largemouth that I’ve been battling with all of last year. His hide-a-way being on the far side of an underwater timber, recessed in a 10 foot deep pool at the roots of an old willow tree, partially submerged.

I can get a fly in there from above, but the doing exposes me to him – and he giggles while pretending to flirt with whatever I toss his way …

… I’d guess Old Logjam to be about seven pounds, and if we were keeping score, which we aren’t, I would run out of fingers quickly … in his favor, naturally.

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While most of the river is still too deep for hip boots, I slipped and slid my way across loose gravel and heavy current so I could see whether this year’s battle had been made any easier.

… instead, I got a newly scoured twenty foot deep pool, with twenty feet of logs and branch overburden stacked on his protective root ball, ensuring Old Logjam gets even Older …

With us aging fatties gnashing teeth while we donate yet another awesomely tied, impeccable minnow-Crayfish imitation, while Old Logjam snores contentedly in the safety of His bosom …

It’s why we walk so far from the parking lot, why we forego all them creature comforts

I had a hard time coming to the realization that my passion for fishing had limits, and despite having suffered every deprivation known to civilized Man, there was a hard limit to what I was willing to endure to catch fish …

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… I was unwilling to “teabag” a cold dead fish as a budding celebrity, just to make sure you thought twice about fish stix …

Fish love, over-exposed celebs posing with over-fished carcasses all to make you really want to kill a contented, grass chewing, Chuck Roast instead.