It’ll take More than fries and a smile

The title appeared innocent enough, but its import sent a chill down my spine.

Inference and Science are never mixed without trouble, as inference is the opposite of scientific rigor. While I instinctively understood that my “connecting the dots” was a leap of faith, the conclusion was so hellish as to ensure our beloved pastime is threatened …

“ Female bats are fussier than males when it comes choosing where to eat in urban areas …”

Knowing that Mother Nature often shares her constructs across species, and buttressed by my personal experiences that Human Females share the same tendencies as  bats, suggest this behavior is present in  fish as well.

Make_Trout_Want

For most this will be a yawner, but knowing most of the freshwater fish in the world live in environments rich in Estrogen and are steeped in female hormones, and noting Science has indicted the water treatment folks with their callous extermination of gonads of all types, suggests the bulk of our quarry are at minimum transgender … or are already female.

As such they’ll develop the rarified palate and be doubly difficult to catch.

What Science has yet to explain is whether a “sale” tag on the fly will make them eat more often, or whether they’ll simply browse your fly box without touching anything.

For those scoffing at my reach of the available facts, note that like Human males, male bats settle …

Males, on the other hand, seem to be less particular and are just as likely to be found settling for poorer-quality woodland patches next to built-up areas. (Via Physorg)

Both species having low self esteem in common, and don’t pay much attention to the quality of what they stuff in their gob …

In male cuttlefish, mated behaviour was not affected by female receptivity; however, familiarity with the female did affect male mating behaviour. Males exerted a strong preference for unfamiliar females ..  (Via Physorg)

Males settle … and in females, prefer some “Strange” …

I don’t make this stuff up, I infer it, which is way better.

All of my Grammatical tendencies exposed

My continuing struggle with apostrophes is second only to my use of labels to paint the opposition… both being growth areas should I ever aspire to write traditional ‘Zine fodder.  While I’ve given up attempting to decide when it is proper to use an apostrophe, my  struggle with epithets has become “throwing the widest loop possible” .. thereby angering everyone.

In this instance it was my incorrect and chronic use of the term “Metrosexual” to describe myself and those as toss flies in anger.

Erroneously, I had assumed clean shaven, sweet smelling, and well coifed, to be a liability in fishing – as both fashion, perfume, and fat free milk, repelled fish akin to human urine.

lumbersexual

Thumbing through my gaily-colored-but-ever-shrinking fishing periodicals showed little resembling the anglers of my California streams. No chapped lips, roman noses, scuffed boots, and missing teeth, and unlike my locals, no one is ever depicted walking, most are escorted by drift boats and liveried guides.

While the balance of the multi-page spread hawked monogrammed Puce self-wicking shirts, rather than the killing tools of my sport, their spokespeople looked out of place and uncomfortable with mosquitoes, water of any kind (except in Bourbon), and fishing of any type.

As I couldn’t imagine these airbrushed dandies advancing up the survival-skill-food-chain, given their inability to wear the same shirt for most of the week, and reluctant to learn how the reapplication of mosquito repellent can overcome pure “Sourdough” that is companion to a watery debauch, I had sought to diminish them with a potentially appropriate – yet hastily chosen epithet.

Further study on the subject suggests anglers (especially the effete fly fishing kind) are not so much a Metrosexual as we are “Lumbersexuals.”

The distinction is significant.

A “metrosexual” is someone aware of the imbedded fashion associated with outdoor activity, and has a suitable closet to match. Function is unrealistic, given there is no reward in being successful, so much as cutting the appropriate figure while hunkering over the après’-fishing craft beer.

Metrosexuals spend more time in front of a mirror than an aging starlet, and have sanitary rituals and niceties that are foreign to most men, and appreciated mightily by females.

If a metrosexual drops his Standard-station bean burrito in the dirt he will consider it unclean. Then he will separate the plastic wrap from the organic elements and look for separate garbage cans for each.

Metrosexuals are sensitive and have high self esteem, which is why they excel at selling fishing tackle and are such poor fishermen.

A “Lumbersexual” is a fellow that retains one or more studied outdoorsy elements to his lifestyle. Carefully manicured chin stubble, plaid shirts, shooting jackets, or owns a hunting dog breed that ignores verbal commands and “points” only Siamese and coffee-ground covered chicken bones.

… and before you get all apoplectic – recognize that Fishing, by any definition, IS that lingering outdoorsy affectation … so we’re all guilty.

Wide, wide, loop.

From around the web: Emblematic of confused state of masculinity today. As a comedian I know puts it, men today have full beards but shaved balls. "Folksy on the face, creepy on the balls."

The Benefits of Ponderous

The benefits of walking are many fold. There is the obvious mildly strenuous form of exercise able to rid you of holiday excesses, and the less tangible “.. gets you out of doors so you can reconnoiter all the changes the last couple of storms has brought.”

While “buff and ripped” can only describe the pants I’m wearing, and the “Fair Sex” and the figure I make at the water cooler are no longer a motivational tool,  I’m still mindful that I have to reduce my holiday bulk if only to pull my ass out of the stream bottom and portage around the decaying goat carcass and its companion, the rusting Chevy.

… and after regaining the bank and finishing that climb on hands and knees, a fellow can be be justifiably incensed at his weakness for See’s candy and Christmas stollen, and resolve to see his feet  without they’re being elevated via recliner.

“Incensed” being just enough ire to exploit a fat kid, which is exactly what a Koi is to fisherman.

… and finning toward me was the unmistakable outline of a really fat kid, who like me was struggling with the six inches of water left in the canal, yet coming my way just the same.

From the culvert beneath me tumbled a second snow white fish that had successfully fought its way upstream to join its larger brethren in the skinny water above.

white_koi500

While I managed to slide the camera out to record my sudden good fortune,  I realized I was attempting to be extra-secretive due to my quarry. Carp are a brawling cockroach of a fish – worthy of a frontal assault with a six pack in tow , but Koi are garden ornaments and quite valuable, and there was sure to be some enraged gaggle of gardeners or socialites completely upset with what I was contemplating …

Ruinous exploitation of the resource, naturally.

And all of those grade school field trips, where I peered over the rail of the bridge bisecting the Koi ponds at the Japanese Tea Gardens, where I was watched with great vigilance by teachers and ninja karate-wielding gardeners, was about to be avenged.

I said to myself,  as I pointed skyward, “ … you bastard, there better be an orange one …”

Brief Hiatus nearing completion

Been a bit reluctant to add more to the site as there was the potential to move it onto another vendor. Naturally I didn’t want to confuse the issue any – after exporting all of my past blather and saving it should the move prove less than advertised.

To hell with that … given the sudden parting of the Heavens and the deluge that resulted. While the drought (both writing and water) has taken a couple of wicked body shots, we need a bit more weather and time to ensure next year’s fishing is a sure thing.

Back shortly.

Five to Eleven generations and then there’s Hell to Pay

trouts_Gone360While scientists giggle at us trout and salmon anglers, knowing our fragile quarry and how they’re damned to extinction via Global Warming, they throw us a bone by reassuring us that as climate changes over the coming centuries, we’ll not have to deal with “Quasimodo Trout” or something equally misshapen shuffling about  the muddy bottom …

… and no, they’re not concerned enough to forswear Ebola research in favor of crafting a more resilient Salmonid, they are merely reassuring us that despite the warming of the Earth’s crust and the dwindling water supply, we’ll not have to fret over Carp-Chinook hybrids or Bluegill Rainbows.

(That indignity being somehow so horrific as to make them blanch and stare at their feet hoping we didn’t notice their earlier glee.)

The latest research stems from the Lake Huron archipelago and centers on a recent study of Canadian Brook trout. Wild and hatchery fish were intermingled and the resultant prodigy examined via the genetic microscope, suggesting that while breeding occurs between wild and hatchery fish, natural selection continues to winkle out foreign genomes in favor of those developed for the unique environment and wild populations win in the end.

It turns out that within five to 11 generations of fish (about 25 to 50 years), the foreign genes introduced into wild populations through hybridization are removed by natural selection. That means fish populations previously bolstered by hatchery stock are, genetically speaking, indistinguishable from purely wild populations.

– from Phys.Org

The journal Evolutionary Applications is host to the research and while considerably harder to follow, suggests the findings are preliminary (as population dynamics are a function of time), yet interloper genes are quickly discarded and the resultant strain become genetically identical to the original wild populations over time.

Although we believe that our study demonstrates that salmonid populations can exhibit no effect of hybridization after 5–11 generations, more studies of this phenomenon are still required to aid policy makers when classifying the protection status or management practices for populations known to be hybridized. Our results additionally provide hope for wild populations of high ecological and economical value currently displaying negative effects as a result of human-mediated hybridization with domesticated conspecifics. If the incoming flow of foreign genes can be stemmed and the environment resembles that experienced by the wild population prior to hybridization, there appears to be a considerable chance that populations will recover, and possibly in less time than previously thought. Similar conclusions have recently been made about canid species exposed to hybridization, but that continue to experience the same selective regimes of their nonhybridized ancestors (Stronen and Paquet 2013).

–from Evolutionary Applications (Wiley Online Library) 8.27.14

Global Warming aside – it is a bit of welcome good news in light of how much “cross-pollination” our hatchery practices have induced in North America.

While politicians are quick to grasp any photo opportunity, they’re reluctant to pursue most forms of science beyond that practiced by pollsters. Any increase in watershed temperatures is likely to be met with a “doubling down” on stocking – versus solving the issue completely, and it’s nice to know that should we emerge from this scientific abyss, there might be a few “neo-native” fish to survive with us ..

Wherein the ravages of time and middle age require prosthesis

It was a case of not knowing … what I didn’t know; how one day I too would be swearing at a tangle of glasses and lanyards, and how tenuous the grip on my sunglasses would be as I swapped them mid-riffle for my magnified readers …

… how I would find that suspending them from my neck just meant they would intertwine with clippers and hemostats, suck fly line into their snarl at the slightest breath of wind, and how either set would routinely tangle in branches and bankside undergrowth and threaten to garrote me should I move in any direction.

I too would learn that bifocals and trifocals suck in earnest, and how the “sweet spot” on their lenses isn’t sweet enough to bring into focus my water-refracted feet, and how anything short of a crablike scuttle is unwise while wading.

I guess my older buddies were reluctant to confess that the ravages of Time would deprive me of things I assumed I would enjoy forever – so I was ill prepared to require Little Blue Pills of Turgidity and “Coke Bottle” glasses to see tippet.

Two pairs of glasses dangling from your neck simply doesn’t work, given how quickly they will become intertwined with one another and anything else dangling from your vest. The venerable magnified loupe dangling off your sunglasses was a bit better, but after we parted company (compliments of scrub oak) I opted to abandon sun glasses altogether, and simply hung a set of 250X readers around my neck for all knot tying.

Unfortunately, you can’t wear the readers so you’re without eye protection or polarization and that solution is far from elegant.

Bifocals require you to move your head to find the small spot in the magnifying area that brings your fingers into focus, and while I’ve tried diligently to make the switch, I’ve abandoned them entirely. Too much of the lenses are neither magnified nor focused, so I find them infuriating to use.

hydrotac

I do keep tinkering with the combination of sunglasses and readers, and occasionally I spy something with the potential to alter my inelegant solution.

I am currently fiddling with the Hydrotac product shown above. These are a pair of semicircular lenses that can be stuck to any regular eyeglass (or sunglass) by simply moistening them. They peel off with finger pressure when you wish to remove them from your sunglasses.

Hydrotac_Glasses

Here is what they look like when dampened and attached. I’ve tamped the excess water off the lenses, and worn them for an hour or two fishing. They act much like a bifocal, but have the advantage that there is no out-of-focus areas. The Hydotac semi-circle are 250X magnification and the surrounding lense area are all the identical prescription for distance.

HydroTac.Nymph430

Here is a sample of the 250X magnification portion of the inserts. The magnification works quite well, and any issues of fish splatter or the lenses getting dirty can be resolved by peeling them off, rinsing them clean, and reattaching them to the glasses.

Naturally I would do this while resting comfortably on the bank. Cold fingers and fast water will likely peel these from your hands and you’ll be left with nothing.

I have not subjected the glasses to a lot of abuse so this is still a “work in progress” review. Falling headfirst into fast water may peel these off the lenses, so I don’t yet know how much stress the adhesion can withstand. Their protective container doesn’t strike me as being a good solution for your fishing vest, so some attention to their storage may be needed as well.

In either case, they work well for their purpose – and are about the same price as low cost reading glasses, about $20.00 per set. They are available in +125 to +300 magnification.

* Due Diligence: I purchased the set used in this review using my own money, no vendor freebies nor contact with the vendor was initiated nor accepted.

Takes a licking and keeps on ticking …

An observant fellow notes a trout swimming in a Swiss lake appears odd, and discovers trout are evolving natural defenses against the local Osprey …

swissarmy_trout430

While I don’t think the Timex watch is a Swiss invention, it engenders new respect for a heretofore fragile salmonid.

swissarmy_trout2430

I imagine the local Osprey are likely perfecting the Immelmann and how best to engage fish using, “Death from the Side.”

The squeals of outrage will demand a watery Jihad

mule300While the old adage insists, “ … in Spring, a young man’s thoughts turn to Love,” the Global Warming variant may change that antiquated lyric to, “ …in Summer, a young trout’s thoughts turn to Hybridization.”

A recent study of wild trout intermingled with hatchery fish, based on lakes and hydroelectric dams in Norway – suggests that wild fish and hatchery trout rarely inter-breed. It’s thought the high mortality rate of pen-raised, pellet-fed, fish – coupled with the inability of hatchery fish to make use of spawning creeks – means the two strains rarely occupy the same space at the same time, and interbreeding is negligible as a result.

Released trout accounted for nearly 30% of the sexually mature fish in the reservoirs and it was assumed that the prolonged use of non-indigenous and previously released fish in hatcheries posed a risk to the genetic integrity of wild fish. However, it appears that wild fish maintain their natural, genetic structure, principally due to the high mortality of indigenous and released hybrids and to the fact that released fish do not migrate when spawning.

– from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science

My tortured blend of humor and lay science suggests this phenomenon could be due to their “fast food” diet. How inhaling pellets shat from a cannon leaves hatchery trout couch-prone and listless – versus chasing a shapely wild female up the riffle and into the Gravels of Lust.

But Global Warming and its corresponding changes in water temperatures apparently changes this delicate relationship. With elevated temperatures, “Couch Potato” fish suddenly mount everything, including beer cans and sunken grocery carts and the gene pool resulting is a crazy mash up of hybridized fish.

Despite widespread release of millions of rainbow trout over the past century within the Flathead River system5, a large relatively pristine watershed in western North America, historical samples revealed that hybridization was prevalent only in one (source) population. During a subsequent 30-year period of accelerated warming, hybridization spread rapidly and was strongly linked to interactions between climatic drivers—precipitation and temperature—and distance to the source population. Specifically, decreases in spring precipitation and increases in summer stream temperature probably promoted upstream expansion of hybridization throughout the system. This study shows that rapid climate warming can exacerbate interactions between native and non-native species through invasive hybridization, which could spell genomic extinction for many species.

– Excerpt from Nature Climate Change, July 2014

As I’m one of those horribly insensitive louts that claim to have tread lightly on his environment, (which we now realize as “having our way with the Old Gal,”) and after leaving what few scraps of the watershed that remains to the New Breed of fly fishermen, can only cackle at your indignity when you see some obese Grass Carp mounting that silvery, noble Rainbow (as it lies panting in the hot water), and how righteous you’ll sound when you insist we kill everything with Rotenone, so the gene pool is kept sacrosanct …

In addition to leaving you whatever we couldn’t eat, along with the discarded plastic wrapper of everything we did consume, we’ve imparted to you our antiquated snooty attitude towards salmonids. No doubt you’ll cling to this last bit of purism despite rising hemispheric temperatures, and with the Trout-centric enviro-lobby’s urging – will launch a Genetic Cleansing, or watery Jihad … whichever Politically Correct term you’ll devise for eradicating all the warm water fish that don’t mind hybridizing with lawnmowers or Salmo Salar …

Exploring what little damp remains

Tracking down “little blue lines” on a map hasn’t proved fruitful of late, given that which was once blue … is now overly warm or dried up completely.

Having come over the hill from Santa Rosa last week and skirting the edge of Lake Berryessa, I noted a lot more bank was visible, yet Putah Creek still had ample flow despite scarring from the Monticello Fire of early June.

Olives, Pomegranates, and walnuts are compelling, but I’d played the  “Domestic Goddess” for most of the last month – it was high time aprons and fruit Pectin played second fiddle to a wisp of fiberglass waved in anger.

Last year I had fished Putah Creek from above, through the UC Davis campus and south of Interstate 80, and while access was plentiful due to sprawling campus, the water was sheathed in oak woodland which alternated with brambles, thickets, plowed fields, and blackberry bushes. So parking nearby was easy – yet achieving the water without injury proved much less so …

Putah_Wood1

Wading being a mirror of the terrestrial experience – given the perils of interlocking wader-killing underwater limbs, slick clay patches, and rotting vegetation that appears firm until it isn’t.

Opaque olive water may be off-putting to the trout crowd, but it’s a welcome sight to us “frog water” aficionados that recognize a combination of tough access, obvious bouquet, and discolored water, are hallmarks of the “new Wilderness” … ignored by fishermen, scorned by dog walkers and joggers, and home to unknown fisheries and homeless encampments.

Putah_wood2

… and while everyone else roars past oblivious to the dark line of trees hiding the creek from traffic, it’s not without its moments ..

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… and even if the bulk of its inhabitants were of the five-inch class, there were indications that an occasional resident reached larger dimensions. Naturally, they would only make an appearance when sliding across the slick clay yielded a tree branch through a wader leg – as only outright suffering makes wary fish less so.

Kelvin_CheckDam

A point debated by my fishing buddy, whose obvious delight at basking in the sun while monopolizing the only real estate permitting a free and unfettered back cast, overcame his lust for larger fish.

After clawing my way through alders, clinging underbrush, and gingerly negotiating a homeless bunker complex, the idea of resting without peril next to the babbling brook was most attractive.

While many complain about the Lack, I shift my attentions to the Plenty

The drought and its unrelenting grip on the weather remind us of the absence of many things; moisture in any form, fishing of every type, and how Fall is being kept at arm’s length, denying us even a brief respite.

… unless you count forest fires as welcome change.

This year we had fires in every significant trout drainage in the state including; Hat Creek and Fall River, Yosemite, the Upper Sacramento, American, and anything else sloped towards the Pacific and sporting an overly warm dribble from the Sierra.

Naturally ebullient and unwilling to dwell on all the things denied us, I’ve busied myself with the Plenty, letting those prone to sourness swear at inclement conditions and hot weather.

olives1The Unexpected Plenty: defined by a big rig negotiating an onramp poorly and leaving 10000 pounds of Jalapeno Peppers on the edge of the road.

The Hoped for Plenty: that Garlic field whose harvester missed enough furrows as to allow me to squirrel away enough garlic to render myself off-putting to a Zombie Apocalypse, an uprising of Vampires, or most anyone ringing my front door.

… and the Unasked for Plenty; the appearance of enough Olives on the trees ringing the fields to allow me to dabble in toxic chemicals, converting the bitter and astringent Olive into something more docile and table worthy.

Fishing has been relegated to observation of the watershed and the realization that the two greatest despoilers of the environment are actually the root of the creek’s continued survival…

Man, for all his shortsightedness and many faults – occasionally preserves a watershed by intent. While that is infrequent in my unclean waters, occasionally we grow tired of crapping on the small and defenseless, and guilt makes us part with a few farthings for restoration work.

That other great despoiler of watersheds is the Beaver. Considered an unwelcome invasive in both South America and Europe, as it has great appetite for bank burrowing and tree felling, neither act endearing the beaver to anything else sharing the watershed.

As my creek has been dry since July, and does so each year at that time, the only life left in the watershed is contained in pockets of deep water. After the floods of Winter, the beaver rebuild their dams over the Spring, deepening the creek measurably, and these “islands of water” are all that remain for the fish, flora, and in stream fauna. Without beaver and his incessant engineering, I would have no fish.

beaver_dam

I still patrol the last few islands every couple of weekends. I carry a rod so as not to be considered a “person of interest” by the occasional jogger or landowner intent on my doings.  I note the mink and beaver that occupy the remaining water and realize that predation doesn’t need my help. In this overly warm, stagnant environment it’s likely each fish hook thrust through jawbone could weaken the few brood stock that are left, and imperil next year’s fishing.

Which will be moot if this drought persists.