Category Archives: Nothing to do with Fishing

Now that fly fishing is all mainstream and snuggly

I always wondered just how much the fishing angle would play if I strode up to the voting booth and was faced with the unenviable choice of Tweedledum, “I love the out of doors, some of my best friends live there” – and Tweedledee, “I love the out of doors, I fly fish there often.”

As both were generously financed by Goldman Sachs – and all other things being equal … would fishing tilt the balance ?

The Palin Infomercial

… not after last weekend.

But the publicist that dreamed this stuff up should be elected Lifetime Press Secretary, as this is the logical conclusion to a decade of reality TV, the Celebrity Infomercial.

“Infomercial” because you can’t call them candidates, as the Law requires all your opponents equal time to fidget with guns, snow, and fly fishing – and try to look polished in the doing.

It’s the same dance seen on your TV each night. Commercials with ornaments and pine trees, snow, and smiling white teethed children – only nobody dares say the C H R I S T M A S word, as the Thanksgiving turkey hasn’t been carved yet. (Part of the deal struck with the major networks when they swore never to call the election before the polls on the West Coast had closed … you can’t say “X-Mas” until turkey’s been served.)

In four years time, it’ll be Jerry Brown’s California – where they’ll prop up an aging Linda Ronstadt, slather her with ‘dark tan’ pancake ending around her Adam’s apple – prop her next to a surfboard, and let her crack wise about Sushi …

Episode 2 through 8 will feature Jerry peeling off his Birkenstocks so he can tout “green” jobs while barefooting wine grapes, then posing nest to a waving field of premier bud – while he rationalizes balancing California’s budget by exporting reefer to the rest of the lower 48, and specifically your block …

He won’t mention that his plan to balance the Federal deficit involves similar trade with most of the European Union. The Cartels will have to be content smuggling Bananas, as they’ve got plenty of foot soldiers, but they lack Cruise missiles and the half dozen nuclear carriers needed to make us take them seriously.

Then some fellow from Wisconsin will want thirty minutes on Sharp Cheddar, before yielding the floor to his colleague from Hawaii who’ll pimp pineapples and grass skirts.

Trust me, you’ll love it.

Oprah Winfrey Infomercial

Oprah Winfrey’s retiring from the little screen, can she be part of this burgeoning trend seeking office?

She’s got the docu-drama in the can, featuring fly fishing and Oprah’s Top 10 List, and most fear executive office may be one of them.

You cheered the new fly fishing movie thinking it was going to bring flocks of young folks to fill gaps in our line, how it was going to mainstream our quaint little craft into a marketing juggernaut like NASCAR, and now look what we’ve got …

Guys older than us airbrushed into health, adding to the burden of empty water bottles in your riffle.

While you’re up in the parking lot barred from the water, with those nice professionally dressed – yet unsmiling men with sunglasses examine both your fly box and your colon.

A desperate attempt to prop up a dying pastime

Hunters and Fishermen all I was surprised to learn that next month’s elections will have four states choosing to add hunting and fishing as constitutional rights; those four possibly adding to the ten that already have passed such a statute.

Apparently political correctness is very much alive and well, and the recent success of newcomers like the Tea Party has caused us few remaining outdoors types to ensure our sporting heritage isn’t compromised by some photogenic charismatic and a few choice sound bytes …

I’m thinking it may be overkill, but I’m often wrong.

I’d always assumed that once men found out that farmed Tilapia were steeped in enough hormones to change their sex, even the animal first-er’s might grip crotch and demand wild-caught everything.

Tilapia often contains an artificial male sex hormone that is absorbed by humans when eaten. Because male tilapia grow faster and are more lucrative than females, the fish are often treated with the hormone to induce a sex change.

Then again, Mom does most of the shopping …

With animal-friendly organizations litigating everything involving hunting or fishing as a wildlife control, it neatly explains why us fishermen are never called to defend native fish from invasives – or why Rotenone is the preferred fishery management tool, versus us lawn chair predators and our bottomless ice chests.

I’m not so sure we’re not in a gunfight already.

The new initiative synthesizes Friends of Animals’ tradition of opposing hunting and predator control with scientific evidence pertaining to coyote behavior and ecology, thereby fostering respect for coyotes in Pennsylvania so that these animals may live on their terms. Our campaign will promote respect for coyotes as conscious beings, and educate people about the role of coyotes in the local ecology and how communities can support alternatives to the lethal management of coyotes.

I’ve never doubted that coyotes weren’t conscious beings, they’re one of a few species that successfully negotiate the rural-urban interface, and can be found living in some our largest cities.

I just cannot understand why us hunters and fishermen, who celebrate the outdoors – who ask our respective legislatures and representatives to save a little water for wildlife, or please don’t pave the entire state – save a small corridor of greenery so them tasty quadrupeds can enjoy some small dignity … before we blow daylight where daylight shouldn’t be. Why does it always fall to us killers to propose less freeways, strip malls, and civilization?

All around us, nature is being managed to death, with malls and freeways taking its place. Animals are being driven from the land on which they were born and concentrated into smaller areas and blamed for a laundry list of ills they never created. It’s time for communities to call for ceasefires, and reverse a trend that’s bad for all of us…

Ok, here it comes – less development so the community will have precious open space where the animals can frolic – and have unprotected sex …

… Community leaders should deliberate on the facts, seek and nourish what’s best in our community, and keep recreational and controlled hunting, deer contraception and sharpshooting out of Westport.

… nope, we’re keeping hunter’s away and embracing the Wal-Mart Superstore. We’re not passing out freebie condoms, and begs the question – how many of these stalwarts would buy guns if threatened with bulldozing their home so deer would have a dab more forage space.

Who knew a Mullet had such a flair for showing off

Tossing a trash fish onto the bank is a time honored angling tradition. It’s been frowned on of late, but the Asian carp has brought back the practice along with baseball bats, shoulder pads, and now with easy to clean wading boots with cleats and rubbers soles, we’ve even resurrected the River Dance … of Death.

… because like terrestrial cockroaches, it’s them or us.

It doesn’t jibe well with the Catch & Release ethic we’re so fond of espousing, but clean water and black dots seems to cloud vision making some fish more equal than others …

Special regulations apply to trash fish as well, but many are not bothered by hurling lesser fish to an excruciating death, gasping out their final moments on some hot rock amid boot heels, curses, and giggles.

While I don’t ascribe to the above practice, we’d like to point out that those that do probably throw a baseball like a girl, grunting when they do ..

 

Considering the world’s record is an astounding 196 feet, the only question is whether that record is held by the fish, or by the thrower – or is it a joint venture?

“A very official world master’s record for a mullet,” Bradstock said in an interview with the New York Times.

Bradstock also claims to have hurled an iPod 154 yards, a mobile phone 132 yards, a soft boiled egg 118 yards, a football 82 yards and a golf ball 180 yards, with all but the mobile phone footage available on his YouTube page.

… and here I thought all tournament fish were released gently.

The Marlboro Man does Catfight

Once the fishermen find out it’s an island they’ll scatter to the four winds hoping they can scrounge some old monofilament and feed the less fortunate members of the tribe. Once they see the size of the local Bonefish they’ll insist on Catch & Release – or some form of ultra-purism – which’ll piss off the camera crew and producer, who’ll trade an off camera Bologna sandwich to the swing vote – sending Mr. Fisherman packing …

My money is on the hunters. Fishermen are wound too tight and lack the social niceties to survive the group scene. They’ll skip the all important backstabbing alliances; “I’ll give you my last pair of dry socks if you vote for Betty” whispered at the council fire, and then disappear for hours when they should be doing tribal chores.

You knew they would do it

Another in a long line of trashy reality shows, pitting 12 outdoorsy types against insurmountable hardships like; running out of shampoo,  not wearing a cowboy hat, throwing a temper tantrum at a Chevron vending machine,  keeping a Boy Scout Troop pinned down while rifling their foodstuffs, and exposing the lean Marlboro Outdoorsy is prone to fits of childish rage when wearing a grass skirt in mosquito country, without any protective mint Skoal …

“The Ultimate Sportsman” slated to air Thursdays at 10:00AM EST, 2010 on Versus is a premier hunting and fishing reality
TV series. Twelve contestants will have the opportunity to participate in a series of hunting and fishing adventures
throughout North America.

You can apply for the freebie fishing via their website. As a film of yourself is involved, you may want to practice that steely grimace – where you discover salmon eggs are mixed with your JuJuBee’s …

It’s plain these fellows don’t know the difference and don’t care to know.

13) If you were going to be in People magazine, what inside info about you would be put up next to your picture?

17) List your past experiences with hunting and fishing. If you have no past experience with hunting or fishing then explain your
intentions for wanting to be introduced to the sport of hunting
and fishing!

… and don’t really care, they’re mining ratings and are desperately seeking drama queens in camoflage. I think they’re hoping someone will respond as below:

Hunting and fishing seems like a lot of fun, but I actually prefer running around a darkened campsite brandishing sharp objects and wearing a hockey mask.

Throw in some poor sport blowing daylight through a doe, and two fellows caught stuffing lead shot down a trout’s gullet – and it’s pure ratings gold.

Cannabis to save the Pacific Salmon

Golden Gate Park 2011, we're bringing back the "Be in" I’d always assumed I was fortunate being raised in the Haight-Ashbury during the ‘60’s. Exposed to different ideas, religions, and a litany of self proclaimed holy men. Now I find out the old neighborhood has been classified as a “part of the World.”

Meaning this world. For most of two decades it was unknown which planet rotated nearby, and which Galaxy was the better question …

Today, there are still parts of the world that rely on Cannabis stalks as a primary fiber, mainly because of its ability to grow “like a weed,” without requiring lots of water, fertilizers, or high-grade inputs to flourish. But the seeds, which house the plant’s natural oils, are often discarded. Parnas points out that this apparent waste product could be put to good use by turning it into fuel.

Now when I visit the folks, instead of fellows rushing the intersection to wash my window for spare change, they’ll be huffing the exhaust and causing my car to stall.

With the election a short month distant, California has the potential to piss all over J. Edgar’s memory with the legal morass that’ll come with legalization. It could be a Second Gold Rush – with the pharmaceutical industry claiming all the acres North of Sacramento, and Exxon claiming everything South …

Eureka, Dude.

The hemp biodiesel showed a high efficiency of conversion – 97 percent of the hemp oil was converted to biodiesel – and it passed all the laboratory’s tests, even showing properties that suggest it could be used at lower temperatures than any biodiesel currently on the market.

If it doesn’t need the water of the current vascular crops and all those orange groves, might it be the salvation of the Pacific Salmon, or will Los Angeles merely annex most of Arizona for a parking garage?

As for other industries that utilize Cannabis plants, Parnas makes a clear distinction between industrial hemp, which contains less than 1 percent psychoactive chemicals in its flowers, and some of its cousins, which contain up to 22 percent. “This stuff,” he points out, “won’t get you high.”

– via PhysOrg

Want to bet? An entire generation thought dried banana peels were an e-ticket to Utopia. They’re all bankers, lawyers, and hedge fund managers at the moment, but they’ll just use a bigger pipe this time.

If corporations read newspapers we might see a little synergy

Dear McDonalds Management,

fofdollI was at a loss when I found out the New Zealand Hoki had made the Endangered Species List. It’s not front page news as the name is unfamiliar to most, but you and I know it as the fourth fish  used in your popular Fillet O’ Fish sandwich.

You started with Halibut whose price thankfully prevented their extinction, but you’ve mostly eaten the other three.

On the chance you might be interested in a bit of positive press, I thought I’d bring to your attention a white meat fish that would fillet nicely, and may garner you a mention in a “green” vein, rather than the traditional, “Ronald McDonald, Corruptor of Youth, Pied Piper of Saturated Fats and Red Dye #3.”

More importantly, the Asian Carp – a.k.a Silverfin, Kentucky Tuna, etc., is available in virtually limitless numbers, reproduces unlike anything we’ve measured to date, and is available domestically. You can employ US citizens, most of which have lost jobs and homes and could use the work, plus achieve all kinds of Brownie points with the Obama administration and six or seven states – and all at the same time.

It sure does, you don't even change the slogan

That kind of positive press is bankable, and any corporation would give both McNuggets for a crack at enhancing their brand in such a positive manner.

It should be relatively easy to find a series of spices and deep fry methodology that will replicate the unnaturally firm texture of your Hoki offering. Asian Carp being a freshwater fish might be a bit softer – but nothing you couldn’t fix with a touch of Portland cement.

The marketing possibilities are endless.

If there’s any environmentalist backlash, or Greenpeace inserts a schooner between you and the Great Lakes – you may want to consider the Frankenfish – but you have to kill it two or three times before it stops moving…

Fly fishing was never designed to be all those things

flyfishing_motivational

We keep cropping up in the strangest places, tagged with even stranger attributes. How fly fishing can be linked with leadership is a stretch, given that we’re proponents of an antiquated sport that limits our casting distance, doesn’t sink very well, and lacks scent.

The taglines best suited for the above picture should have been …

Antisocial

The water’s icy, I can’t feel my feet so I can’t put them in my mouth.

… which is better than the fluffy vendor version, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.”

I think you probably have six or seven better’n mine…

Most would be thinking Zig Zags

The Zig Zag Man I’d  assumed “leave the dance with them as brung you” was an unspoken truism, yet it doesn’t hold for the  Madison Ave crowd who are abandoning us fishermen in favor of the prime 22-30 age group.

Despite the century old tie between beer drinking and fishing, the self-styled “King of Beers” figures youth will abandon sour energy drinks in favor of sour tapwater – a flavor common to most American beer.

…and to cement the deal they’re even offering free beer as a come hither – which may be an act of quiet desperation,  if you can’t sell it you might as well give it away.

Us recently deposed anglers apparently have moved into craft-beer, our maturity alerting them newly-refined taste buds that waving a sprig of hops and barley over laundry water doesn’t make a compelling beverage.

… doubly horrific is that Budweiser would abandon fishermen just as we were about to return to their bosom. Now that we’re aware of the ecological impacts of bottled water and how much we’ve missed the tinkle of broken glass.

To appeal to the under-30 set that has ignored the brand — but is a prime consumer group for beer — Budweiser will unleash its biggest-ever national free-sample effort in trendy bars and eateries. The campaign begins Monday, with the slogan “Grab some Buds.”

… which assumes the younger element still has enough disposable cash to do trendy, and hasn’t already been laid off.

The 9% decline in Budweiser inhalation mirrors an identical plunge in angling participation. Rather than acknowledge the Recession or rampant unemployment – Budweiser may be compounding their problem by alienating droves of their staunchest supporters, or at least those outside of NASCAR.

Little doubt the board room was giddy at the understated elegance of its latest slogan, however, chances are they overlooked that most of the blue states would reach for Zig-Zags instead of the aging and tawdry King of Beers.

Brand consultant Robert Passikoff has serious doubts about Budweiser’s effort. “They’re in trouble because they don’t know how to talk to consumers,” he says. “They no longer know how to create an emotional bond.”

It’s an emotional bond if you have to sweep up behind those Clydesdale’s surely enough, but an aging wagon with a Dalmatian isn’t going to pry the Monster energy drink out of Junior’s sweaty grip.  

“Grab some Buds” is pure lowbrow, but as the advertising types have chosen the vernacular, we might lure some youth into the sport with, “Grab some Buds and Rods” or “Tie-stik is Monster Bud” – perhaps bringing hordes of youngsters to expand the coffers of our  angling organizations, or at least those adventurous enough to print the tee shirts.

Hello 911? I’ve got a heron on life support and am out of baggies

Dr. Skinner's Animal Shelter They’re onto me …

Seven short miles away an entire UC campus is determined to find out why Yolo County drivers never hit anything while driving. My streets and thoroughfares clean of corpses and the local Interstate a lone buffer of Purity in California’s asphalt archipelago …

They claim they’re compiling more accurate statistics for the occurrence of animal-automobile kinetic couplings, but I think the county commission is thinking national game refuge and the funding that comes with it.

Now that they’re commissioning an iPhone app to ease road kill reporting, it gives me blanket absolution from my necro-scavenger hunt and burgeoning life list, and should the girlfriend complain, I can always blame science.

An old iPhone case tucked into the center console next to the array of Ziploc sarcophagi; a squeal of of rubber smoke, a hurried exit, and should the casual bystander note my interest in the bleeding corpse – I’ll give them a friendly wave and stab a forefinger at the cold glass of my Apple phone.

The site’s founders hope to soon hire a software engineer to design a smartphone app. They think one would attract new and younger volunteers, speed up the process, and, with built-in GPS function, assure more accurate location information.

Call me an ambulance chaser, but a quick scan of the website each morning – a quicker call to the boss to explain my tardy, and every Blue Heron that duels Detroit will be reclassified as “long beaked naked chicken” – just as soon as the clasp on my Buck knife closes …

While initially I was put out at the NY Times for lavishing the  “Doctor Roadkill” moniker on someone with clean conscience hands, I really don’t need the rest of the fly tying world finding out from Perez Hilton where I score all the free goods.

For those of you interested in assisting UC Davis and their scientific research –  road kill reports can be filed at the CROS site. While I don’t expect you’ll understand, it would be a great assistance to science should you standardize your nomenclature:

Don’t merely enter “stray kat”, rather use metadata that is useful to researchers, like; “medium blue dun with bronze highlights and a rich maltese note to the forelegs (or maybe that’s just axel grease). Light bouquet, rated a “double bagger” due to rampant livestock.

That’s the scientific method and befits us amateur entomologists.

Conspicuous is my omission of the route to work. Knowing the playful nature of our readership, I’m sure to discover that both Polar Bear and fur seal have a yen for the center divider.

Habeas Corpus may apply to our beloved Asian Carp

I see it as tantamount to complete submission, just one more highly paid fellow standing around scratching his head when the Silvery Horde pours through the locks …

The White House has tapped a former leader of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and the Indiana Wildlife Federation as the Asian carp czar to oversee the federal response to keeping the invasive species out of the Great Lakes.

–via Sacramento Bee

The reference to the former body politic for the Greater Russian Empire, whose family was dragged into the Siberian chill and shot, along with their doctors, maids, and servants, doesn’t breed thoughts of success, and may be partly to blame.

We’ve had security czars and drug czars but their job was easier. Dealing with human foibles or cravings is a sight more predictable than slowing the spread of a remorseless silver vacuum capable of eating half its weight each day.

“When it comes to the Asian carp threat, we are not in denial. We are not in a go-slow mode. We are in a full attack, full-speed-ahead mode. We want to stop this carp from advancing.”

I suppose like his predecessors, the Asian Carp czar will mobilize the military, carefully lining up phalanxes of mechanized infantry and their supporting cast, and unleashing holy hell on the Chicago River and its tributaries, until the environmentalists complain about the swans ingesting spent .223 – and calling a halt to the hostilities.

“Certainly there are some legal questions that are in process, but there has been a history already of good cooperation among the states,” Goss said. “I believe that will be one of my strengths, talking at the level of the department of natural resources in each of the states so that we can very carefully coordinate our efforts.”

It’s certain that I’m cynical and jaded and coloring this in the least favorable light, but this issue doesn’t have the years  to construct some alternate system allowing commerce to flow from the Great Lakes downstream. Our sacrificial lamb and his meager 80 million budget are opposed by both people and fish, not merely the fish alone.

The extensive commerce and barge traffic of the region enjoys voting privileges, which can slow an aggressive solution just long enough to have the fish pour into the area with little or no opposition.

Once established and with free rein of the Great Lakes, everyone can throw up their hands and point fingers, then resume business-as-usual, free of the potential costs of portaging goods overland.

Attorneys for the defense countered that the DNA research has never been used in this manner and was unreliable. They argued that even scientists disagree about the likelihood that Asian carp are capable of sustaining a large and destructive population if allowed to enter the Great Lakes

It’s a repeat of the California Salmon debacle, where the interests of business are at loggerheads with the environment. Attorneys deny the most basic scientific tenets for fear of the financial implications to their clients, and despite plenty of consistent scientific opinion, the process drags on until ..

poof

.. too late, all gone. Now we can all go home happy.