Category Archives: Youtube

Exciting New Ways to Extinct Fish

While some had a premonition and some knew, the fact that it’s here suggests a great deal of magazine fodder will be spent gnashing teeth over what constitutes angling privacy, what’s the radius around the angler considered acceptable “air rights”, and whether “low holing” the SOB next to you with a drone carries the same censure as doing it in person.

dronetuna

… I’m not even going to mention whether it’s polite to zoom in on the fly he’s using, or whether you’ll simply make a fast pass to snip his fly line in mid-air …

Drones used to scout for visible fish – humming up and downstream, colliding with your cast – and whose owner operator is faceless and distant, and only appears if you disable his “pet” with a rock.

Learn about the IoT, the Internet of Things, and ask yourself would a small solar camera and IP address ever get cheap enough to mount over all the best holes ? Why wouldn’t the “Wall Of Rising Fish” at your fly shop be a source of wonderment? Instead of asking the fellow behind the counter whether there’s any action on the Creek, why wouldn’t you just check the camera at the Powerhouse?

Bold New World, and if you don’t the Warden will – as budget cuts means he’s driving less , and likely orbiting in an agency Predator instead … and the first sumbitch over limit gets a Hellfire up his tail pipe …

Roger Blue Leader, it’s Fox One on the Red Honda in the Parking Lot.”

Barbed wire, machine guns, and a handful of hackle

manzanar My past experiences with fishing videos had made me unprepared for something quiet and truly dignified.

I’m used to a (pirated) over-amped  Van Halen “Jump” – blaring at me while the artsy- angle turns Agile, Big & Silvery into Slow-Mo, while it showers the camera attempting to free itself from some coifed super-consumer, who’s just as intent on not spilling his Banana Daiquiri, while waving the carbon equivalent of a house payment.

Rather it was a simple historical narrative suggesting that to us fishermen, the McQueen-esque “Great Escape” is something we’re all willing to endure, given how fishing can be both defiance in the face of oppression as well as instrument of restored dignity and balance.

The film is entitled “The Manzanar Fishing Club” and recalls the outbreak of World War II and the subsequent removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast and their relocation into the interior of California, near Lone Pine.

You see, in our house there was a sort of family prejudice against going fishing if you hadn’t permission. But it would frequently be bad judgment to ask. So I went fishing secretly, as it were–way up the Mississippi. – Mark Twain

With trout streams bordering the mile-square perimeter, and with 10,000 Americans penned within, many featuring a life-long fishing heritage, it’s not surprising that the barbed wire and armed guards of the US Army might prove porous in the face of large and willing fish.

As it was Veteran’s Day and my television was already dominated by tales of bravery mingled with blood and guts, it seemed fitting to take a break from Steve McQueen and James Garner evading the Nazi Menace and watch the ingenuity of an internee fashion a split bamboo rod out of glue, a garden rake, spent brass cartridges as ferrules and bent paperclip guides.

Funny how there are no red carpets and Academy Awards for that …

Lines made from cotton sewing thread and hooks made from bent needles, flies scrounged from Sears Roebuck or Herter’s, or simply a pocketful of freshly dug earthworms to make unsophisticated trout into a meal.

What’s more astounding is the details of long forays into the Sierra, how the lure of Mount McKinley had the most adventurous in search of Golden Trout, climbing the 12,000 foot peak and catching both the Colorado Cutthroat and Golden Trout, spending weeks in the woods with a minimum of equipment and often alone.

I’ve always been keenly interested in this period in American history, so I enjoyed the 70 minute feature very much. It illuminates a sordid piece of our past we’d just as soon forget, yet through their narrative gives us anglers insight and understanding on how our hobby can represent so much more in the face of loss of Liberty.

The DVD is $24.95 and available from fearnotrout.com.

Dump the Hodgeman stock and short SIMM’s

Waterproof and breathable is so yesterday, along with all that Extreme you hoped to find. Simm’s will never recover and it seems water repelling rubber soles are the new aesthetic  – with both cleats and felt discarded out of hand.

Likewise for fly rods and Tenkara, as the real aficionados will be touting bare knuckle.

… and for the devout, you’ll have to rework the Jesus legend, as “Ulf” appears to enjoy similar powers …

Those long August afternoons offer ample cross training opportunities, and come the evening hatch you can run right out there with the rest of the throng and grab the fish by the lower lip just as it breaks the surface.

Mayfly? Denied!

Tags: Liquid Mountaineering, walking on water, something to do when fishing sucks,

Fishing’s so good they were jumping in the boat

… sure we poo-poo wild claims of fellow anglers, but that was in those hardship years of your youth, pre-Silverfin. The water was clear, the fish were refined and a meal was skill-based and the work of an evening.

Now angling will be removing the muffler off your wife’s Subaru and driving along the levee with the top down. It may not have the refinement of lovingly placed chicken feathers and ancient grass rods, but we’ll get fed for sure.

Whoever said the “good old days” were behind us, was wrong.

Tags: Asian Carp, French patois, spotlight fishing, market hunters

In light of this startling evidence, is the machine tied fly a myth?

The Daily Flypaper blog posted a fascinating video of the 1.3 million dollar fly tying system from Intuitive Surgical…

… which is a bit misleading, it’s actually an Intuitive Surgical robot showing off what it can do. ISRG has been the darling of Wall Street for a number of years, considered best of breed for computer controlled robotic surgery.

via The Daily Flypaper Blog

While the possibilities are endless, I wouldn’t expect the cost of routine surgeries to suddenly become cheap, perhaps scheduling them may involve menus and a drive thru, but operating amphitheaters remain in short supply. Us humans have shown remarkable resistance to technology especially if it’s holding a sharp knife – akin to the revulsion we felt in handing over our credit card information in the early days of the Internet.

1.3 million is about the same as pre- and post-Med tuition, excluding cadavers and books.

Naturally, watching the video had me wondering – as the work is intricate to be sure, but we’ve always insisted those bubble-packed flies from Japan were machine made, and if machinery intricate enough to create them is of recent invention – what made all those flies during the 50’s and 60’s?

Fly tying machine, circa 1943

Therein lies the mystery as I can find nothing other than a patent application for 1943. History buffs will recognize that it couldn’t have been used by the Japanese until 1946, but may have played an important role in reconstructing Japanese industry.

Is it possible we’ve been misled all these years?

All those big ring-eyed hooks, buttonhole twist cotton thread and a Scarlet Ibis gleaming at us from the capable hands of a human? Makes you wonder what he thought our fish were thinking.

Anyone know what these rumored machines looked like or have an account of automated post war fly machinery?

Tags: Intuitive Surgical, ISRG, fly tying machine, machine tied fly, myth, patent application, Royal Coachman, Wall Street darling, youtube

California’s Water Pirates

The first in a series on the Water Wars of California …

 

… and the rebuttal. The solution is simple, put human life above all other life…

Putting Americans at risk and increasing our dependence on foreign foods? Isn’t that the same thing if we’re forced to import fish?

You’d better hope they’ve got short memories

Little wonder that your typical Brownliner can get a little overbearing and evangelical, our beloved fish are tortured without mercy – just because they can be …

… and while you smack your lips in anticipation of the still beating heart – spleen or other choice viand, what you don’t know is our fish fight to the death rather than face live capture.

If the current science suggests fish eat via “pattern matching” rather than cognitive powers – you’d better hope they’ve got mighty short memories.

Tags: live carp dinner, pattern matching, fight to the death, deep fried carp