The global mining powerhouse, Rio Tinto, will divest itself of its share of the Pebble Mine, donating its 19% stake in the project to a pair of Alaskan charities.
The Pebble Mine has been the focus of much heat and wrath among the both environmentalists and the angling crowd, given the overall region is responsible for an enormous salmon population and many attendant industries.
After spending the morning listening to the throaty bellow of twin Evinrudes echo off canyon walls, and admiring the resultant rooster tail that accompanied each watercraft’s emergence from the launch area, I’m thinking the average boat wielding Bass fiend may be a victim of his own mobility.
I’m perched precariously on a 30% slope carefully fan-casting to anything I can reach, and the flotilla of corvettes and beer barges pause just long enough for a couple of casts before mashing gas pedal and disappearing to greener pastures.
I can’t blame them for enjoying the adrenalin rush, nor the wind in their hair, I just think them a bit giddy knowing all that watery real estate has neither crosswalks nor stoplights, and there’s nothing quite like announcing your presence with authority.
Lake Berryessa is only a scant twenty minutes distant, allowing me to swing by periodically to see whether the Bass are on their beds and burble some poppers to see if the top water bite has started.
While the pitch of the exposed bank can be hell on ankles, the lake was is excellent shape given the drought, with only 30 feet of bank above the waterline. You can walk around the margin pitching flies into the shallows pretty effectively, so long as you walk in the direction that keeps your casting shoulder pointed towards the water. That keeps leader and flies out over the water instead of bouncing off bankside rocks and brush.
All the little coves and depressions along the shore line give you ample opportunity to fish, with one side invariably shaded and others featuring weeds or the occasional downed tree. I wear a pair of lug-soled hip waders to give me a bit more range of motion, as I can stand in the water where it’s flat, and provides a bit of separation from the bank ensuring you keep the fly over fish, instead of scrambling around unhooking it from accumulated brush and rocks.
The Bass are most certainly on their beds, but appear more intent on mating than eating, so it appears a trifle early yet.
The above shot shows a smallish (2 lb) fish and her beau hovering just off the bank on the bed. I trundled a crawdad imitation past the pair without them acknowledging me or the fly. The larger fish is around six pounds, and was worthy of nervous lip chewing on my part. (I am unable to determine sex reliably, but I marked them with a best guess based on observation of behavior.)
As today is the start of a general warming trend, I’d suspect the coming weeks hold potential for some spectacular fishing.
I did manage to find a few fish early, before the boats starting rocketing about and while shade dominated the coves …
All of the fish had a weakness for my ribbon yarn Crayfish (#2), built with a fistful of long fiber iridescent cactus chenille that I dyed for shad flies, married up with a generous dollop of ribbon yarn and rubber legs.
A pair of large black bead chain eyes mounted in the tail position ensure the fly sinks dramatically, which is useful when fishing the deep water that a canyon lake presents. A simple pattern that take about the same amount of time to lose as to tie, ensuring the handful lost in fish and brush are not overly missed.
After multi-million dollar advertising campaigns touting “tax free” zones for New York startups, how Texas is “business friendly”, Massachusetts insists, “Take a Real Vacation”, or Montana’s “Get Lost in Montana”, Michigan has entered the fray by making itself extra appealing to fly tiers …
Fly tiers … because the high dollar tourista have already been lured to larger states. The 20-something social media moguls gravitate to the Big City, the Hip Hop squillionaires insist on similar digs, leaving Michigan attractive only to us economically challenged middle class types, and the the occasional marijuana kingpin whose entourage contains a bevy of canny tax lawyers that minimize their obligation to state revenues.
… and Michigan’s subtle, yet frugal, message makes me think that California, “the Land of Fruit and Nuts”, might be better served by the sudden exodus of me and the fluttering horde of moths that pursue my collection of animal dander.
Instead of employing the Madison Avenue’s word artists, Michigan opted to exploit its native fauna, by removing any restrictions to Steel Belted Radial season, and adopting an, “if you kill it you can eat it” bylaw governing its roads and waterways.
“While fresh roadkill like deer can be consumed, I introduced this bill at the request of several constituents who have asked to use roadkill for various purposes, such as hunting, composting or salvaging the hides,” Booher said. “This is about reducing regulations and saving taxpayer dollars.”
It’s a match liable to make other states wish they’d pandered to us more openly, given our ranks are swollen with aging and stable taxpayers with a monstrous appetite for asphalt kinetics and deer hair.
All that remains is adding a roll cage to a Toyota Prius so you can sneak up on game like Gunther Prien sliding into Scapa Flow …
Science suggests bold and aggressive trout are likely to dominate their peers, and being carefree extroverts, have the highest likelihood of eating our flies and lures, therefore enjoying a very short dominance …
… and those same scientists have inadvertently bred for aggressive, outgoing, social trout, used to rubbing shoulders in concrete pens, ensuring great numbers of them will be needed to guarantee species survival, as they lack the wily, shy nature of their wild counterparts.
Science also suggests boldness is inheritable – and should the aggressive, outgoing, fearless trout be lucky enough to mount something other than a loose fold of your wader leg, their progeny will also be bold, outgoing extroverts.
It is only reasonable that the last couple hundred years of angling and our relish for killing anything of size, has selected for shy, finicky, and introverted fish. Better yet, similar logic should hold for Mankind, given the bold social extroverts were likely the first ones out of the trench, and war, plague, and saturated fat, has seen fit to thin the ranks of extroverts and ensure species survival lies with “wild” or shy types.
Oracle: I’d ask you to sit down, but, you’re not going to anyway. And don’t worry about the vase.
Neo: What vase?
[Neo turns to look for a vase, and as he does, he knocks over a vase of flowers, which shatters on the floor.]
Oracle: That vase.
Neo: I’m sorry–
Oracle: I said don’t worry about it. I’ll get one of my kids to fix it.
Neo: How did you know?
Oracle: Oh, what’s really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything?
… and is the successful angler so because boldness catches aggressive, and rushing to the creek forgetting to lock the car door, or checking for your license, or remembering lunch, catches more fish than us reserved fellows that use turn signals in traffic, and don’t “low hole” those that arrived before us?
Flies and tackle have certainly become bold as they’ve jettisoned somber and become bright and colorful again. Gone are the drab earth colors and camouflage finishes of the shy, stalking angler – replaced by tinted aluminum and the harsh hues of mini-mall neon.
Fly fishing periodicals are obviously catering to extroverts. Their pages depict an incessant litany of fashion, exotic locales, and eye-searing colors, suggesting boldness and audacity is unaffected by mounting debt, weakening economy, nor the indiscriminant accumulation of gear.
Perhaps their readers have read of their fate and are aware that continually low-holing the riffle, borrowing flies from your pals, or relying on Malaysian 747’s to get to those exotic locales, often ends badly – and both accumulated debt and dominance are erased in the resulting mushroom cloud.
It’s no secret that successful anglers stand little chance of reproduction, given their penchant for inclement conditions, incessant mosquitoes, and taint that follows all blood sports. Left to the female of the species, our extroverts have little chance of passing on their boldness given the only thing romantically linked to fly fishermen are beer and the Law.
… and wardens, being stalkers and introverts, aren’t liable to be attracted to boldness unless it is out-of-season, over limit or undersized.
And all this time I’d assumed fly fishing was merely a place for us antisocial types to pick on things smaller than us. Now I know us wily old guys are critical to the sport, as the outgoing extroverts are systematically eliminated it falls to us to propagate the species.
Which explains our relish for making fools of ourselves attempting to ignite the interest of something half our age … and why our numbers continue to dwindle …
There’s new evidence published today that’ll have the fishing community in a tizzy, given their common belief that unclean anglers and felt soles are the root cause of the intercontinental spread of Didymo.
The article, “The Didymo story: the role of low dissolved phosphorus in the formation of Didymosphenia geminata blooms,” cites research done in both Canada and New Zealand (by their respective governments) that suggests anglers have little to do with Didymo blooms.
Ouch.
Specifically, it mentions the linkage between our feet and the spread of Didymo bloom has proven less of an issue since the original indictment, “On the Boots of Fisherman” was published in 2009.
“The analysis of these data entitled, ‘On the Boots of Fishermen: a History of Didymo Blooms on Vancouver Island, BC’ was published in Fisheries (Bothwell et al. 2009), with the statement:
….all of the evidence suggesting that recreational fishermen
have played a role in the movement of Didymo regionally
and globally is circumstantial.Nevertheless, the publication was widely accepted as an
important step in initiating management actions aimed at
controlling the spread of aquatic invasive species. Yet,
the explanation for the spatial and temporal occurrence of
blooms of D. geminata as the result of human vectors was
based on coincidental timing.” (my italics –KB)
Unfortunately us fishermen don’t get a free pass to trod crap through the watershed, as the article plainly suggests that we might have introduced the lifeform to the continent, but introduction of the diatom doesn’t provide the environment for it to bloom.
“However, while the presence of cells is obviously prerequisite, introduction alone is not the cause of bloom formation.”
Instead, the research suggests four factors are attributable to the natural occurrence and reoccurrence of Didymo, and are man-influenced issues consistent with exploitation of the planet and unrelated to shoe hygiene per se ..
“… we propose four mechanisms operating at
global or regional scales that could potentially result in a
decline of Phosphorus, i.e., oligotrophication, entering fluvial systems.
We outline the following as hypotheses of the potential
ultimate causes of D. geminata blooms: (1) atmospheric
deposition of reactive nitrogen resulting from the burning
of fossil fuels and urbanization; (2) climate-induced
shifts in the timing of snowmelt and growing season that
decreases P(hosphorus) inputs to rivers; (3) N(itrogen)-enrichment of landscapes
during agricultural and silvicultural activities that result in
greater retention of terrestrial P(hosphorus); and (4) a decline in marine derived nutrients, particularly P(hosphorus), resulting from widespread depletion in spawning salmon. Although these processes do not apply to all regions, they are not mutually exclusive and could act synergistically. These processes are in need of further investigation for their role in driving blooms of D. geminata.
Rather than demand the revocation of your state’s felt sole ban, and the subsequent restoration of your favorite footwear, note the final sentence of the above quote, “further investigation is needed.”
I caught hell the last time I mentioned the issue, and am likely going to do so again, but it just proves my initial beef that crowd-sourced science via fly rod, pitchfork, and public outcry, is typically a bit less exacting than that practiced by the fellows in white lab coats.
I was asked about the pending Turkey season and what was the local outlook, and while I typically hover around fish I do cover a lot of unkempt and out-of-the-way turf, as getting to the water without being shot, bitten, or arrested takes me all over the drainage.
This year the quarry is constrained by water, and the above turkey track still had the edges folding into the depression – meaning the bird was braving the exposed bank at midday.
Turkey being notoriously shy creatures and despite your being surrounded by a flock of 15lb birds, can get by you with nary a bush moving to show their passing.
My allergy with “No Trespassing” signs often has me bursting out into their midst without warning – as the circuitous path necessary to give the angler plausible deniability takes me into inclement areas. Avoiding landowners, ambitious dogs, and the 300 beehives I disturbed accidentally – means I occasionally have to move blindly and without benefit of friendly terrain.
… and scaring hell out of the big-arsed birds means I usually emerge with a couple of extra tail feathers given their hasty departure.
Hunt water. Hunt the path between the roost and water – and it shouldn’t be too terrible surprising if the roost tree is closer to the creek than last year.
The lack of water means the ground remains hard and flinty, so I’m not seeing the usual scrape areas they work with them big clawed feet.
The lakes I hit last week had an abundance of tracks near the water’s edge, and that means they covered 300-400 yards in the open to get there.
A canny fellow would take advantage.
I was mistaken that the younger crowd have evolved a more cavalier attitude towards pine trees, campfires, and mosquitoes.
My youth being steeped in environmental activism via proximity to the Haight-Ashbury, and the preponderance of Patchouli Oil, Earth Shoes, Save the Whale, Save the World, and Free the Indianapolis 500, requiring us to be enviro-centric for fear of being tagged as Establishment minions …
… and as my innocent little fingers bypassed the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Zap Comix in favor of Sergeant Fury & His Howling Commandos, I remember the stern gaze of the beaded fellow behind as he fingered his Berkeley Barb …
“War Comix will rot your brain, Man … it perpetuates the Establishment War Mongering Industrial Menace that keeps us napalming the little brown brothers of North Vietnam …”
( … and I was thinking Sarge was ridding the world of the Nazi Menace, and had no idea he was tied to Linebacker I & II and the bombing of Hanoi …)
Imagine my surprise on a recent scouting trip to find that it’s much worse than first imagined, and that “Occupy Wall Street” has morphed into “Occupy Hat Creek” …
… and the All-Terrain-Quad-Crazies were the shock troops of a larger movement encouraging the spread of asphalt and tepid drive thru.
Being a student of comic books mostly History, imagine their surprise when they snarl through my drainage to find that like my “little Brown Brethren” the good Sergeant taught me how to deploy a Punji pit …
The only reason I have any fishing gear remaining in the house is She hasn’t seen the carnage yet …
It was to be a tale of Good and Bad News. The Good News being she would be occupied elsewhere all weekend, and I could go fishing…
The Bad News being any thoughts along those lines dispelled by the same warning tingle that alerts Peter Parker to the menace of Doc Octopus; a whirl of tan wings trundling through the living room about the size and shape of a scout for the dreaded Great White Hackle-Slurping-Fur-Crapping moth swarm.
Alert to the danger you rush to your tying bench knowing it to be at risk, and you’re met by the peaceful bliss of Smallville – all defenses in place, everything bagged and put away, and nary a movement from any drawer however dark and remote.
… and while in the bathroom you see another “tan Fokker” climbing for elevation and mash it gleefully against a wall.
Which leads to a check of extended storage; bags and boxes containing your overabundances that aren’t used as often, the full skins too large to fit in the drawer, the pheasant tail bags, and the sack of salt water colored buck tail, all which come up clean.
… then the third sighting and subsequent kill, and as you scrub fragments of chitin and hairy wing onto your pants leg – you know that sickening feeling that somewhere, somehow, you’re the unwitting host to a really bad infestation …
Hudson: [Knowing that the Aliens are close, Hicks and Vasquez are welding the door shut] Movement. Signal’s clean. Range, 20 meters.
Ripley: They’ve found a way in, something we’ve missed.
Hicks: We didn’t miss anything.
Hudson: 17 meters.
Ripley: [Checking the tracker] Something under the floor, not in the plans, I don’t know.
Hudson: 15 meters.
Newt: Ripley.
Hicks: Definitely inside the barricades.
Newt: Let’s go.
Hudson: 12 meters.
Ripley: That’s right outside the door. Hicks, Vasquez get back. Hudson: Man, this is a big fuckin’ signal.
Hicks: How are we doing Vasquez, talk to me?
Vasquez: Almost there.
[They welded the door shut, and stepped back away from the door]
Vasquez: There right on us.
Hicks: [Waiting for the Aliens] Remember, short controlled bursts.
Hudson: 9 meters. 7. 6.
Ripley: That can’t be; that’s inside the room.
Hudson: It’s reading right man, look!
I’d checked everything I used for storage except the Room That Has No Name, containing the unused normal household extras – a few boxes of unused books, some extra dishes, a stack of my hard fishing gear – rods and tubes …
… and opening the door was witnessing the sack of Rome, complete with scurrying hordes of insects pouring out of the crevasses and crawling onto the walls to avoid the thin light intruding on their debauchery.
… and with them went all plans for fishing, as the infestation I found in the storage room was so bad, so numerous, and so blatant, that I simply closed the door, and wadded a towel against the jamb to keep the balance of the house clear.
Gross.
The real crime is that I’m about to be banned from my own domicile unless I return to lures and bait. Past outbreaks having sensitized She Who Cares Not for Dead Things to the roulette played out on my tying bench each evening.
… and the source of the infestation not some unmarked boxes of dead animal pelts – rather a down comforter opened by a mouse to feather his own nest, then exploited by the Winged Borg to explode their population exponentially under my watchful care.
Protesting my innocence being completely futile as past sins have me so far in the doghouse as to welcome fleas, as they’ll be the only thing talking to me for the foreseeable future.
All that’s left is the porous “I love you” defense, where the Condemned foreswears a weekend of fishing for the, “I could’ve gone fishing but instead I cleaned the store room knowing how much it meant to you” defense.
While it always sounds good on paper, keeping a straight face is critical, and while you’re making the Ultimate Man-bleat-noise she’ll see some laggard squadron of the “Dawn Patrol” break out of the closet to start their death spiral in front of her … my grin will out, and my arse cooked.
My last blurb mentioned how everything was likely to arrive early, be shorter, and fraught with unrealized complications, and would require anglers to brave Nature’s adversity.
I forgot how modification of a standard pattern was a Sacred Cow and could land a naïve fellow in hot water.
Reducing a pattern to fit on a smaller hook requires considerable changes to the basic pattern, and a canny tier needs to understand the waters they just parked their toe in …
The materials and accoutrements of large hooks rarely extend to their smallish cousin without interpretation, as the physics of the smaller hook cannot be denied.
Yet the biggest issue facing an angler intent on modifying an existing pattern is not the dressing, rather it’s the inherent Magic in the dressing. Tinkering with a known killer that may be a couple decades older than you are is the equivalent of tinkering with “luck” – crucial to fishing yet largely indefinable, akin to Jungle magic.
If you change a favorite classic to reduce its shape, colors, silhouette, or weight, did you ruin it?
… and if so is goat sacrifice enough to appease an Angry God?
Most anglers would never consider something so base and tasteless, and the notion of changing the tail on an Adams’ is sacrilege. An Adam’s is perfection, a fly that dominated every environment into which it has been hurled …
While we commend your fervor, one of your biggest and earliest hurdles in fly fishing is the understanding there is nothing special about an Adam’s or Royal Wulff, they simply enjoy the same happenstance that allowed VHS to beat out Betamax, which was a better public relations firm.
… and us fly fishing snobs can be swept up into two piles; those that insist everything you throw at a fish should remind it of what it ate a minute ago, or, the group that insists you should scare, piss off, or antagonize the fish into lashing out uncontrollably.
That first bunch will laud you if scientific rationale is part of your color and material reduction, the second will adore you if you spread a little opalescence or add an invasive tinsel.
In most cases neither group will acknowledge the other, and while they may occasionally buy each other a drink or surrender the riffle to the other contingent hoping they fail they do have much more in common than most would think.
The agree on the silhouette of bugs, their many stages, the split finger fastball, and the small of a woman’s back, but deviate on the colors, tinsels, and beads with which each must be dressed.
In short, you can tear a grand old pattern into pieces, reassemble the silhouette and colors, and you’re likely to have as killing a pattern as when you started. Add in a bit of sparkle or give the old gal a hint of color as a “tramp stamp” and you’ve not sullied the past an iota, merely given homage where it’s due.
… but if you put your first name in front of it, or use the word “invented” in the same sentence … you’re reviled by both groups, you’re an Untouchable, a Poser – or worse, a Belieber … to be cast from us like a indicator foam in trophy water.
The local farm journal is bemoaning vines and trees budding earlier than normal. Early nut and vine crops are a bigger issue given the drought and the increased salinity of the Delta, whose waters are tapped when rainfall is absent. What little fresh water currently flowing from the hills isn’t enough to push the salt water back towards San Francisco Bay, and pumping brackish water is not an option.
I mentioned in an earlier post that the drought would advance the calendar of nearly everything; stoneflies gone before Opening Day, most hatches early versus their traditional schedules, and much of the Sierra fishing like August once June arrived. This from past experience of similar trauma in the Seventies, and how painful were the lessons learned.
While most focus on the high country and it’s Pristine, I’m already gearing up for the Other White Meat, Shad, and how the run, such as it is likely to be, will be small and arrive early, and how we’ll be further constrained by river closures, and last minute gear changes none of us seem plan for …
Chatting with the dam operator from last week’s outing, I was curious on how much they were releasing and what were their plans in the event of a windfall of moisture. “Eleven …”, says he, “We’re currently releasing eleven feet per second, and have no plans to release more until we fill the lake behind …”
With the drought-based closures of California’s more prolific fisheries due endangered salmon and steelhead – and with the potential for the Shad run to be smaller, shorter, and sooner, it’s likely that whatever 2014 has in store could be a “hot mess.”
… all fishing will be banned through April 30, 2014 on the American River from Nimbus Dam downstream to the power lines crossing Ancil Hoffman Park.
… late April – early May usually debuts the run, and if water conditions make them arrive sooner, they’ll be moving through the river without us doing more than watching.
Nimbus Dam and Folsom Lake (above), source of the American River.
The above shot of Folsom is prior to the most recent spate of showers, but we’re still absent the multi-day pounding rain that saturates the ground and generates runoff. Current flow in the American is 500 CFS, which is about 10% of what it should be – and about 20% of what it is when the fish are aggressively invading the river.
It may be time to ditch the Spey rod and grab the one hander. Distance won’t be an issue given the river shrinkage, and a sink tip may be better than a full sinking head in many spots. Don’t be surprised if smaller and “less bright” is the preferred rig, as you’re likely to be pawing through the bins hoping to see #12’s instead of the customary 6’s and 8’s.
As I fished mostly size 8’s last year, I’m looking at reducing the weight and dressing, opting for a dimutitive collection of bugs on 2X Strong, standard shank, 10’s – 12’s.
Bead chain can’t get much purchase on shanks that small, so if you use them be mindful the finished fly will spin with finger pressure and have a tendency to unwind and fall apart. A Model Perfect bend and single smaller bead – or 2AMP wire wrap – may be much better than the classic chain, both in weight and its resultant durability.
I’ll add some tips on reduction in a future post.