Category Archives: Nothing to do with Fishing

Once it can swim 40 miles an hour will we quibble about whether it is a fish or not

Some suggest the Mecha-Fish might be used for the forces of Good, leading schools of fish away from oil spills, or other form of toxic calamity.

As we aren’t among those silly do-gooders, I’d suggest a haversack full of AA batteries, red lipstick smeared fetchingly on the front, then released to bring that school of voracious stripers within casting distance.

… then it can go get tuna or salmon.

 

At minimum we could replace those static rings used by tournament casters and see how they fare against moving targets …

I’d pay money to see Steve Rajeff deliver the Han Solo line, “Good against remotes is one thing. Good against the living, that’s something else …”

Once all the real fish are relegated to seed banks and test tubes, the Mecha-Fish might be our only adversary. Purists will insist it’s capable of carrying invasives and decry its use in anything other than a swimming pool, but once it’s capable of melting a Hardy – will any of us really complain?

With all those fancy fish finishes already decorating large arbor – add some injection molded latex embellishment and we’ve got game.

Test – Mecha Fish, Bluetooth, Steve rajeff, han solo, fly fishing humor, tournament casting, fly fishing purists, asterisk

Sure doesn’t sound like guts and entrails

Yea, we're really going to mourn this Sure it’s morbid, but knowing all of the scientific hijinks involved haven’t you wondered what they were going to call it?

… a leading producer of functional, sustainable Tilapia biomass …

With the Food & Drug zealots insisting it has to respire to be called “fish” – and the animal welfare crowd insisting it has to have a heartbeat to be an animal – and hence possess a soul, and with consumers adamant that it has to be boneless to be real food,  Madison Avenue has to come up with some catchy new phrase to describe the contents of  fish-like substance.

On the surface, it’s brilliant.

Note how weak it sounds when added to, “ %$#@*, that noxious bath of chemicals you’ve leaked into the water has nearly destroyed the Tilapia Biomass!”

Widows and orphans don’t exist with “biomass” – as it sounds too much like, “eww, hope I don’t get any on me ..” Now we can stomp life out of whichever species tastes best, without mourners or anyone protesting.

Love it.

Test: tilapia biomass, widows and orphans, real food, madison ave,

The California Delta just another victim of conspicuous consumption

Father Serra and the Missions of Ca Another in a long list of reports on Delta water use, the state’s best and brightest suggest that 75% of the rain and snowmelt of the Sacramento and San Joaquin watersheds must flow through the Delta and into San Francisco Bay to maintain ecological equilibrium.

True to form the report was met with great skepticism by water users;

Big water agencies that rely on the pumps criticized the report in news releases as imbalanced and “purely theoretical.”

In human terms it means we’re already using twice what the report allows, and the tensions between folks holding rights to the water are bound to escalate.

Meeting all of those requirements would require San Joaquin farms, Southern California and portions of the East Bay and South Bay that rely on pumps in the southern Delta to cut their Delta water use by one-third in addition to recent cutbacks required to meet endangered species rules.

For other water users upstream, including utilities serving Oakland and San Francisco, the effect could be even worse — up to 70 percent, because the goal to increase river flows would make more water available in the Delta for pumps to export.

But those figures do not take into account water rights laws that say agencies with older rights — including some in the Bay Area — should not have to give up water for newer users, and that agencies closer to water sources also should not have to give up water to those relying on Delta pumps.

– via the San Jose Mercury News

As the report is non-binding it remains just another data point on what plagues all the western states. Limited water, too many people, rampant construction, and the conversion of desert to irrigable land.

Us fishermen and conservationists might start the teapot boiling, but we’ll be on the sidelines during most of the ensuing legal orgy – as cities sue other cities, farmer pitted against farmer, and decades of legal haranguing ties any real change to the courts.

… and it wouldn’t surprise me to see documents dating back to Father Serra and Sir Francis Drake waved about with great furor …

California delta, water wars, Sir Francis Drake, Father Serra, Spanish land grant, water rights, Sacramento River, San Joaquin River, San Francisco Bay

Wherein we propose a modification of the 3rd rule of outdoor storytelling

It’s the Third Rule of the sporting fraternity, in the retelling of any feat of sporting prowess, add two inches (or a half pound) in case your audience has heard this yarn already …

Adherence to the 3rd Rule ensures your friends and neighbors never tire of your oratory – you never repeat yourself either forgetfully or pedantically, and you must go fishing a lot.

I was in mid sentence, and that 6” black bass was now 14” – weighed about thirty six pounds, when a tremendous crash echoed above, a pale lightning bolt descended from the Heavens striking the 8” tree limb above me – and as I scattered for cover, impacted my truck in precisely the spot I’d vacated …

owned

  … suggesting that even the 3rd Rule of the Sporting Fraternity has limits, and as He had heard the story enough times, was sending me a quick warning shot to restore the straight and narrow.

Me, I figure I’ll need to add six inches (and two pounds) to each retelling, so He doesn’t recognize the story as one already heard.

Full Disclosure: That Bass, was all of six inches, honest.

… and that branch was 16” if it was an inch – a veritable tree trunk even ..

Tags: The Man, warning shot, outdoor storytelling, fish stories, complete falsehood, born again

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,

Teetering on the brink always brings out the best in us

Smoked Salmon Vodka Known  galaxy-wide for our sympathetic stewardship, us Homo Sapiens having the accidental good fortune of eating everything above us on the food chain,  so what do we do with an inferior species teetering on the brink?

… do we pause and reflect, right innumerable wrongs, or merely gash ourselves over our lack of foresight in the indiscriminate use of pavement?

Never.

We find even more novel ways to eat the few remaining survivors, or grind up the heretofore inedible beaks, feet, gristle, and unmentionables – to make even tastier things that require us to kill even more …

Coarse fish point and laugh when they see that silvery salmon smolt wandering around befuddled – still woozy from the long bumpy truck drive, and sick from the toilet flush down the long corrugated pipe into fresh water.

“Dude, the ocean is that way, you’ll know because the water tastes like crap and there’s twice as many tampons … but I wouldn’t worry too much because you’ve got to get past that bigarsed concrete wall with the screen that sucks you into the whirling death machinery.

If you make it you’ll want to hug the far side near Antioch, otherwise you’ll get sucked to LA along with all them trash-talking Stripers, who’ll probably pimp you out to them largemouth in Lake Cachuma or Castaic – and you’ll be spending your best years selling crack on some dimly lit weed bed … if they don’t eat you outright.

… or you could take the red pill – that salmon egg over there, and wind up mashed and forgotten in a Styrofoam cooler with empty beer cans and leftover Cheetos … Sure, it’s cannibalism of a sort, but at least you won’t get the Screaming Blue Shitz from all that Ag chemical in the valley.”

Naturally, a few of us decry that wanton exploitation of such a precious resource, but only after we’ve caught our fill and want to preclude others from matching our war stories …

Mmm, looks like deer berries

… so we can make another couple of million paving some marsh so’s we can sell salmon donuts, that use parts even the vodka crowd blanch at  …

Pampered and fed at the hatchery – head filled with nonsense about superior and noble, and some greasy-fat Pikeminnow fills them in on their destiny … you’d think we’d have the courage to do that.

Tags: salmon, smoked salmon vodka, salmon donuts, they were so thick you could walk across their backs, stewardship

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.

The Greatest Invention yet to come may be here now

electronicsp Top 10 lists be damned, the greatest advancement to fly fishing ever invented is about to debut – and us old mean bastards can take our rightful place in the riffle undeterred by all the energy drink antics around us …

… assuming we still have good balance, naturally …

According to PixelOptics the patented electronic lenses provide dynamic and intelligent optics by using a combination of “chemistry, electricity, and other components” to correct for visual problems such as presbyopia, or loss of near focus common in people over 40. The lens has a section with an electro-active liquid crystal layer within it, and the index of refraction of this layer can be changed by a small electrical current passing through it, with the focal length varying with the current applied. Motion detection of the glasses is achieved by motion sensors similar to those used in the iPhone.

In automatic mode the electro-active layer is turned on and the focus changes automatically and almost instantly as the wearer tilts his or her head (to read a book or newspaper for example) and looks through the transparent electronic layer. In manual on mode the lenses behave like normal progressive lenses with the electronic layer frozen in the on position for close distances with the eyes looking down, but objects straight ahead in the distance can still be seen clearly. In manual off mode there is no current in the electronic layer, and so the lenses act like a low power progressive lens, which has little distortion and is good for everyday activities such as playing sports, walking, and so on.

Presbyopia, a fearsome word … you’re going to get it in your mid-40’s and it’s a game changer.

Having enjoyed perfect vision all my life I was not prepared for the impacts to my fishing (and fly tying) when my vision started to change. Small flies and fine tippets were useless without magnification, and if your glasses landed in the creek the trip was over.

Worse was the last 30 minutes before dark – the Sacred Time, when dumb fish get dumber and the big fish finally ease out from the protective cover of their log – and all I could do was hope the fly I’d tied on earlier would continue to work.

Now, like you, I fumble with reading glasses knotted around my neck – or trying to get sunglasses with a reading prescription that cost many hundreds of dollars, only to watch them tinkle apart on the side of the boat – or sink gracefully out of sight …

Low distortion electronic lense

… it ain’t fair. Just when all those skills come together, Father Time pulls the rug out …

The electronic glasses give a wider field of view with much less distortion than traditional bifocal lenses or progressive addition lenses. They also give optimal vision for far and near distances, and in between.

The down side is that batteries are sold separately. The manufacturer recommends they be charged nightly, and claims a single charge is good for 3 to 5 days, just enough for a long weekend.

A thousand dollar bamboo rod or similar priced glasses? I wouldn’t even blink … but I’m going to look awful silly with a big Styrofoam float attached to my specs.

Tags: Presbyopia, small flies, prescription sunglasses, bamboo rod, electronic lens, fly tying, old farts unleashed

Spread of Invasives coincide with the density of Hedge fund Managers, anglers are in the clear

The National Academy of Sciences claims the “filthy rich” are living up to their moniker, as population density and per capita income are corresponding closely with the volume of invasive species in Europe – more closely than climate, geography, or physical barriers to species introduction.

… which shouldn’t be that startling, as rich countries have the taste for exotic imports and the means to consume them – and rich people have the ability to globe hop to distant and rarified climes and take nasty with them – or bring nasty back…

High numbers of alien species are supported by
a high human population density and great wealth, reaching the highest values in regions with more than 91.1 inhabitants/km2 and wealth exceeding about US$ 250,000 per capita

Using a similar algorithm and a map of the per capita income for the US, I’d think Maryland is a ticking time bomb of infestation, being the richest state in the Union on a per capita basis.

While you contemplate flight to those last pricey enclaves of pristine, remember you’re statically certain to infect those upon arrival. Do us all a favor, migrate to some pricey loft in the Big City – we’ll allow you the occasional visitation rights once you’ve been thoroughly decontaminated.

Tags: invasive species, the rich done it, National Academy of Sciences