Category Archives: Nothing to do with Fishing

For two days a year I become the baked equivalent of Brad Pitt

Nearly twice a year I’m required to join the rest of society for a weekend of normality – foreswearing hooks and tinsels, muddy creek bottoms, mashed sandwiches, and foul language.

In addition to the demise of the neatly tapered whip finish, most of us 99%’ers require a plastic container and paper label extolling the leaden nature of Grandma’s Fruit Cake – so we can tell how many slices we’ll have before the Type IV Diabetes klaxon summons the Gendarmes …

The many decade-long fairytale of Grandma’s Orgy of Christmas Baked goods has somehow given way to a smoldering microwave and a store-bought box of sugary unmentionables.

… which gives off a comforting whiff of overly warmed plastic when zapped, so we remind our kids of how plastic smelled – back when it had real carbon …

As I represent the 1% that still makes everything by hand – it falls to me to make the workforce regret coming to work this week, and stuffing themselves beyond capacity because the food is real for a change.

Fatty does a reasonable impersonation of Grandma

When you’re attempting to feed 40 or 50 people the Precious becomes the flat areas of the kitchen. As each smoking tray is yanked from the oven it was offloaded onto my makeshift cooling rack, wherein I shoved aside boxes of scissors, hooks, and flies – in favor of cinnamon, powdered sugar, and slivered almonds.

Herein lies the lesson for you young bucks – given that tomorrow everything feminine within a couple of zip codes will be making big doe eyes in my direction, as I’ve been identified as the Baking Equivalent of Brad Pitt.

… which will last so long as I’m upwind of them gals …

It’s not about being the best fisherman, it’s about being the best provisioned – you’ll always get the invite so long as you can lay on the smoking board  …

The list of donors being long and distinguished

While completely contemptuous of the current congress, I was surprised to learn that in addition to insider trading, ignoring any real responsibilities and the President, they have a sportsman’s fraternity – a caucus actually – where they can pontificate on all the reasons they love Mother Nature, so the carbon lobby feels obliged to add a couple zero’s to the legislators favorite charity … hisself.

pepper_Spray_congress

While the Democrats have consistently outshot the Republican team for the last three years running, it was amusing to see the group mentioned in a recent interview …

Mullins: What in the world does the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus do?

Harper: We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition.

While I commend the above sentiment, I’m thinking they may want to dispense with the sporting clays and simply unload on the assembly from the spectators balcony.

… with an approval rating less than 10%, tree hugging Democrats are indistinguishable from washroom toe-tapping Republicans, and we’d be better off reshuffling the hand versus playing the cards dealt.

I figure those hoary old politicos who’ve held their seats for a couple generations will soak up most of the lead – leaving them young, fast-moving freshmen to hide behind all those splintered oaken seats.

Might increase their respect for the office – and give their debate on the ban on lead fishing tackle some small insights.

The 2011 Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation Banquet and Auction was hosted by Amgen, Anheuser-Busch, ATK, Cabela’s, Cox Enterprises, Dallas Safari Club, Diageo, Ford Motor Company, Intermedia Outdoors, National Shooting Sports Foundation, Natural Resource Results, North American Deer Farmers Association, Outdoor Channel, Richard Childress Racing, Safari Club International, Shimano, Sportsman Channel, Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America and Yamaha Motor Corporation USA.

You always hated the taste anyways, now you can point and claim it’s a Ponzi scheme of Madoff proportions

The consumer be damned, what’s important is the IGFA will have proper protocol for certifying all them lab-induced trophies we can look forward to in the coming millennia …

 

As every watershed could wind up whelping mongrel fish; escapees from fish farms mating frantically with whatever genetic material is pumped into the overly warm trickle by Fish & Game, the real question is for us anglers – can we broaden our minds long enough to redefine our catch?

We’ve failed horribly in the past.

Recent sampling in Europe has found as much as 30% of fish at market mislabeled. While no one is pointing fingers at some broader conspiracy to replace fancy cuts with mongrel fillets, our collective palate wouldn’t know guppy from Fillet O’ Fish.

… we prove that daily at the drive thru …

“Fish passes through so many hands from the time it’s caught to the time it’s sold that it’s hard to tell where the mislabeling occurs or whether it’s intentional. That makes the process very difficult to police,”

In the US, Consumer Reports suggests 20-25% of the fish on store shelves isn’t the product advertised.

Genetic bar coding will allow many extra world records of the more mundane variety, like hybrid Rain-browns, or the fabled Kokanee-Walleye-Musky mixture, known fondly as the “Kowalski” – takes artificials voraciously, fights like hell, only you have to teach it to swim …

Outside of a chaste population of fingerlings in some chilly headwater, genetic bar coding will confirm that everything that bumps ass on algae has some form of interloper in its bloodline, and outside of the hoary ancient records where only a shock tippet and a couple of feet of leader was needed, nearly all non-digital IGFA records will likely join Roger Maris’s as some quaint but meaningful codicil is attached (*61).

There will only be two kinds of fish left; Mother Nature fish – found behind glass in aquariums – whose pedigree rivals that of royal and ancient, and *fish … “real” having been trademarked in an earlier court battle …

*Fish :  contains lips, beaks, heavy metals, nitrogenous fertilizers, soy meal, jowls, gills, scales, copepods, and organic matter. Organic Matter contains more lips, innards, test tube genetic material, red dye #4, and the occasional fingernail …

Where we get all solemn and lay it on overly thick for the non-fisherman

Fishing being a more painful variant of masochism, whose practitioners lust for big fish knowing they’re accompanied by hardship; cold rain, poisonous snakes, blisters, and other trappings of kink, yet are still at a loss to explain its attraction to normal folks.

While traveling last week, I did have time to inhale a small salad while enjoying the banks of the mighty Eel River. In between bites I noticed a bit of motion in the water and am rendered vengeful and solemn by the sight of 200 large salmon milling in a circle only feet away …

Nothing like a fish that appears to be six inches wide at the back to give a fellow real trouble swallowing lettuce …

Eel River at Weott, California

My accomplice was oblivious to the spectacle as he was negotiating  three inches of rare roast beef and a monstrous hard roll, while giggling at my self-inflicted dietary choice. Suddenly one of the larger fish comes cleans out of the water and dampens us both …

“Dude, that was a salmon.”

I nodded the affirmative as he noticed all the other fish leisurely rolling in contentment, finning their way over to give me the finger, then swimming a lazy circle to repeat the insult.

He exclaimed, “ I can run us back to Fortuna and you can buy a rod and reel, and we could be back in an hour…”

I shook my head, “No, fishing is a karmic-Zen-Masochistic thing – and while I don’t expect a non-fisherman to understand; the reason the fish are here is because I lack my fishing gear. In physical terms, both fish and fishing tackle are positively charged ions – and can never occupy the same space – nor get close enough to one another to cause harm – as their natural state repels the other.

If I had brought the gear we’d be standing in a torrential downpour with a flat tire, fishless – or that prominent badge on your truck would cause Weott’s version of “Jimmy Olsen Cub Reporter” to stop and immortalize us for the six o’clock news and the both of us holding big dripping fish and a pink slip …

Driving to Fortuna is for godless amateurs – who’ve not fished enough to learn this truism …”

At this point he’s looking at me fixedly, jaw open and roast beef visible, “OMFG, that’s some serious hokey horseshit,” he says.

I’d tried to explain it and failed. Now I was content to wave as the fish swam past knowing it as a quasi-religious truth recognizable only by those that believe. Not the old-timey religious types – more like those that are fool enough to stand in cold water and have done so enough times to recognize this immutable Law of Nature.

None of that silly “one hand for the ship” stuff

2Rafters1fisherman

I figure this is a larger lesson for society. The hubbub over perfumed and coifed Wall Streeters gambling with everyone’s 401K is moot for us outdoorsy types. As fishermen we knew whether tarred with the 1% label or granted membership in the other 99%, we’d land on our feet regardless of new economics …

Two Rafters, One Fisherman, whose instincts are akin to a predatory cat, never ruffled, never hurried, aware of everything and its consequences …

Guess which is the fly fisherman. No hint necessary as it should be that obvious …

That last hunting trip with your buds

If you’re still intent on impressing your pals that you’re foreswearing jobs and responsibilities, wives, and all other forms of material constraints – how it’s all about the fish, the woods, and damn little else – I’ll call that bluff.

There’s little to fear, as outdoorsy trials go you won’t have to do much other than sign a piece of paper now …

holysmoke

Later it may not be so easy, but at that advanced stage of the game, who cares?

Perhaps a grand sendoff for an old retriever – who spent the last couple of seasons licking his balls by your fire …

… or now that your spouse, who bitterly resented the time spent on your outdoor passions and both your rod and gun collections, has finally passed this mortal plane, you can spread her ashes complements of 10 cases of shotgun shells – containing everything from teeth fillings to wedding ring …

… and when the warden complains of  steel shot only, you can get all tearful about how it was her last wish, to use them gold fillings and gall stones to take out an entire V of geese – when the lighter steel merely rattled off the wing coverts.

And when you march up to St Peter at them Pearly Gates, you can do so knowing that the wife and kids are looked after – as the last thing some interloper will see is you coming across the living room at 900 fps …

I love the smell of Napalm in the morning, it smells like … Science

Is it a vast conspiracy of vendors dictating to a few well meaning, yet chronically underfunded conservation agencies, and can this omission of information be the final straw we need to demonstrate our collective frustration in a molten pool of self-immolated 6X tippet?

For years we’ve been serenaded by all them pale, veggie-loving scientists about our thoughtless spread of Quagga and Zebra mussels. They’re busy bashing our boats in one sentence and damning our caustic footprints in the next …

invasives

… when all this time they knew that if both Quagga and Zebra Mussels were introduced into the same lake, that the Quagga would kick Zebra ass, and there would only be a Quagga mussel problem to clean up.

Listen all! This is the truth of it. Fighting leads to killing, and killing gets to warring. And that was damn near the death of us all. Look at us now! Busted up, and everyone talking about hard rain! But we’ve learned, by the dust of them all… Bartertown learned. Now, when men get to fighting, it happens here! And it finishes here! Two mollusks enter; one bivalve leaves.

– loosely adapted from Mad Max, Beyond Thunderdome

Apparently all them eggheads failed to mention how the Great Lakes is pockmarked with the scars of the two warring mollusks, and that the hordes of Quagga are spanking all comers including Asian anything and their capitol, the Edmond FitzGerald.