Sure you can handle the pain, but what about the fish?

pissing The Good News is what we’re pissing into the creek isn’t killing fish outright, rather all that runoff from wastewater treatment containing our prescribed anti-anxiety, lowered cholesterol, blood- thinning stimulants, merely make them giggle watching Mom struggle with a faceful of your artificial …

In the current study, the shelter-seeking behavior of fathead minnows was monitored under laboratory conditions for 28 days using digital tracking software to diagnose abnormal behavior while they were exposed to sertraline, which is used to treat depression, panic attacks and other disorders. Sertraline concentrations and lighting conditions significantly affected the time that the minnows spent in a sheltered area.

During dark conditions, sertraline-exposed fish spent approximately 67 to 78 percent of the time that control fish spent in the shelter. During light intervals, fish exposed to sertraline spent between 18 and 42 percent less time in the shelters.

"The shelter was the only dark area during light conditions in the observation tanks; therefore, control fish apparently retreated to the shelter to reduce anxiety, whereas fish exposed to sertraline appeared to display reduced anxiety and did not exhibit this behavior," Brooks said.

– via PhysOrg.com

… which is a big relief for us anglers, given how much we care about our quarry and the fight triggered by us forcing steel through a lower jaw. They can feel good so long as they continue to struggle and peel line …

Now that science has shown that drugs act on fish similar to their effect on humans, we might as well make them eat longer and remain exposed to predation.

It used to be a can opener and tuna fish or creamed corn we chummed with – now it’ll be left over Lithium, or expired pain pills. Some enterprising fellow at TU is probably already negotiating with the DEA to flush a freighter-load of Coca powder down the Illinois River, solving the Asian Carp issue in process.

Time lapsed with conspicuous over saturation

There’s been a curious absence of fish-related anything for the last month or so. I knew that you knew, but was afraid to broach the subject in case you didn’t …

one_fish_breaks_skunk

That’s because guys that write about fishing prefer the notion they’re expert anglers, predators even … the woods and its many inhabitants tremble at our approach …

Nothing could be further from the truth. We encourage our readers to assume that anyone that writes anything knows more than most, and if their prose is stilted and poorly punctuated, they’re expert on any outdoor topic including drinking.

Our editorial license permits we neither correct your erroneous assumptions, nor mention important details like, “…being  got&%$)! skunked”, in favor of a time-lapsed blizzard of overly saturated wild flowers …

Above is the rare Tomato Poppy, the first of Spring …

It cost me two pants legs of icy water, the catastrophic failure of both legs of my hip boots, and was worth every swear word uttered, plus the follow on scratching I did to ease those welts the exposure to Metam-Sodium raised …

The Tongass – Old Growth, Salmon, and Clean Water, all the important things that exist in short supply

National forest? National rain forest is more accurate. Make that old-growth temperate rain forest, an exceptionally rich ecosystem that holds more organic matter—more biomass—per acre than any other, including tropical jungles. And that’s not counting the equally lush forests of seaweed added to Tongass shores whenever the tide goes out. Temperate rain forest flourished from Alaska to northern California and in nations from Norway to Chile. Much has fallen to the ax and saw. In the lower 48 states, 96 percent of old-growth forest of all types has been cut down. The Tongass now represents not only the greatest remaining reserve of huge trees in the U.S., but also nearly one-third of the old-growth temperate rain forest left in the world.

-via National Geographic

I can’t bring myself to eat farmed fish despite the knowledge that everything your kid, and his kids, turn their nose up at – will be pen raised. I take full responsibility for being of the “Them as Borrowed Money So They Could Eat Everything” generation – sandwiched squarely between the Selfless and Selfish generations before and after …

I believe that deep frying renders a flaccid filet tasty, given its saran-wrapped ass is still sore from the Big Stainless, which delivered a pressurized enema of Nyquil syrup and red dye #3 …

So I troll the fish section on the urging of my doctor and other health professionals, who have been berating all of us on the merits of regular fish ingestion, and think of those last few spots on Earth where real salmon frolic …

My state is on its last gasp as host for salmon, and what little of the Northern run that’s left will be extincted when dope is legalized and shoulders past watery tomatoes and wine grapes, to divert the last remnants of Northern California’s water to growing herb.

Group Asks Obama Administration, Congress, to Strengthen Conservation and Restoration of Salmon and Trout Watersheds in Tongass National Forest.

Some states still boast a population of healthy fish, which is why my freezer at the grocery still boasts a token fillet for me to lust after.

Most are chum or pink salmon, and source from Southern Alaska, part of the the salmon rich area known as the “Tongass 77”, seventy-seven watersheds within Southeast Alaska that combine to produce nearly 28% of that state’s Pacific Salmon harvest.

… and it’s no surprise to find nearly all of the 77 rivers are vulnerable to the same issues that extincted California’s salmon industry.

The troubling history of the Pacific Northwest and
California, where salmon and trout runs have disappeared
or face serious declines, foreshadow the types of
problems that could be repeated in Southeast Alaska
unless government agencies, lawmakers and the public
act to make fish habitat conservation and restoration top
priorities. In the Tongass, the opportunity still exists to
ensure salmon and trout, and the people who depend on
them, enjoy a healthier and more stable future than their
Pacific Northwest and California kin.

Past logging practices has already damaged many of the watersheds, such as the Fubar and the Harris, and the constant threat of an increased hydroelectric presence to make the area suitable for development is certain to claim other victims.

Trout Unlimited and local organizations are asking for you to care a bit beyond selecting your next fillet, and ensuring jobs and prosperity for the local salmon industry, rather they’re looking to you to advice Congress that the entire area, all 77 rivers, be managed for salmon versus timber and tourism.

You Can helpLittle doubt the Alaskan fish will face the same pressures of people and progress as the Northern California runs faced and lost. Coupled with our reservations to consume test-tube fish, and urged by the medical establishment to consume an ever greater share of what’s left, it’s appropriate we manage these last sources of fish with the future in mind.

Mom said they were out there …

pioneer_Women Louis L’Amour, prolific writer of cheap Westerns, described them as, “ …women to ride the ridges with – the kind of gal that walks beside her Man instead of behind him …”

This being a fly fishing blog, I don’t expect my readership knows a truly good woman nor a true Angel from Heaven was he to trip over one .. mostly because he’s preoccupied with “Miss UnderAge” in the line behind her.

On rare occasion even my caustic-prick-nature is struck speechless by the profound nature of someone else’s actions, and reserve this moment of admiration for a Mrs. Ellen VanOss …

Ellen believes she will lose her battle with cancer and asked Rongey to make the rod for her and surprised Jack with it at the end of January. It is an 8-foot-long fly fishing rod hand-crafted of split bamboo, inscribed with the Biblical reference Deuteronomy 31:6, where God guarantees he “will never leave you nor forsake you.” Ellen said she wants him to think of her every time he uses it after she’s gone.

Miss Ellen, there ain’t a dry eye in the house …

Six hundred things edited out of Fly Fisherman because the Zip Code wasn’t exotic enough – No.335

I’ve always assumed that questions about the mechanics of dubbing stem from the preponderance of fly tiers that attempt to learn the craft from books, Youtube, or blog posts like this one.

Most of us contract the fly fishing bug from someone else, and while casting and simple tasks like knots are shared from one angler to the next, fly tying and its legacy of dead animals parts is an individual journey for most.

I feel the mechanical ritual described to apply fur to thread is made overly complex in most books, and seeing someone else do it is much more enlightening, especially if you can ask questions.

The neophyte usually peers from an audience at some dignitary tying at a club dinner, who’s so enraptured by a future step as to scrub a mass of fur across thread without really describing much other than what preparation is needed for the feather he’s mounting next.

It’s a step glossed over not so much out of meanness or ill temper, so much as the journey fly tyer assumes dubbing is a simplicity shared by all watching, which is not always true.

Like all things, there is a right way and many wrong ways to attempt the fur on thread nightmare.

  1. Dubbing isn’t applied by cutting an enormous gout of fur from the hide and dipping your fingers in pancake batter to make it stick.
  2. Dubbing isn’t scrubbing fingers together in both directions, it’s scrubbing fingers together in one direction only. Tiers scrubbing fingers in both directions are attempting to make the hole the hook made hurt less.
  3. Commercial waxed thread offers no advantage getting fur to stick to thread, that’s because the wax used by Danville and other vendors is meant to plug bobbin barrels, and is much too hard to be tacky.
  4. Dubbing isn’t applied, nor can it be tamed, by attacking the middle of the fur with freshly licked fingers dripping with training saliva. Training saliva is only available after drinking milk, the rest of us use mousse.

Most of your trouble starts with your dependence on packaged dubbing. Grabbing a bag of fur allow you to pull an ounce or two as easily as the merest hint of color. Mirroring your drive-thru habits, you insist on supersizing your helping – whose bulk will fight you at each and every subsequent step.

Seen_Through

The proper amount should be transparent to the eye, and objects can be seen through the dubbing over its entire bulk.

The second portion is understanding that dubbing cannot be wrapped around thread until it is anchored to the thread at the top, with the balance of the fur then spun around the thread as the fingers move down the fur.

top_anchored

You can’t spin a rubber band tight, or anything tight, unless one end is “immovable” first, dubbing is no different.

It’s a devilishly simple and completely deceptive task, something that even video cannot impart completely, given that sub-steps of “hint of fur” and “anchored” are unknown to the novice, making the overall process simple yet completely foreign.

We’ll call it the “stutter rise” two takes from the same fish

twoheaded_trout Occasionally it’s all a bit much, the six o’clock hour stuffed with stories of disfiguring blight unleashed by Science and avaricious Capitalism on the environment, and as you snap the Telly off in favor of the Wisdom of the InterTubes, you wonder whether selling your tackle isn’t the best way to jumpstart your comic book collection, given that fragile newsprint has more of future than fishing …

… and as you search for precious lifegiving moments of angling clarity, you mistake my wit for safe harbor, only to get both boots in your ample midsection as I lean in and whisper, “ … you’re right, we’re all doomed.”

But that’s later …

Now, it’s time to make Lemonade from all those Lemons, and if the lessons of Kesterson Refuge and all that stolen water, irrigation-induced selenium poisoning has got you concerned, fear not …

… if all the trout from this day forth are born with two heads, doesn’t that mean we’re twice as likely to get ate, they’ll eat twice as much and grow doubly big in half the time?

But when other federal scientists and some environmentalists learned of the two-headed brown trout, they raised a ruckus, which resulted in further scientific review that found the company’s research wanting.

– via the New York Times

I’m reminded of the time I spoke with that elderly couple bait fishing Rancho Seco’s former wastewater treatment area. Big signs proclaimed how Nature and Atomic Energy were like two peas in the same pod …

… and as I asked the elderly fellow would he eat his catch, he nodded sagely and said it was perfectly safe – just as a mallard swam by with a big growth on its head …

Where we call everything by its Glitterati name

I’d planned to watch a little glitz last night, mostly because of Billy Crystal, who manages to make sport of Hollywood’s reigning elite, yet gets invited back as his humor somehow skirts lasting injury.

The Oscars are actually a couple of shows in one; the first where they award gleaming statuary for popularity in acting and immenseness of box office, and the second watching all the folks you grew up watching, how they’ve spread wider in their seats. Once lean, hungry, and fit – now well fed, botoxed and ill at ease wearing a girdle.

Thoughts of that spectacle came unbidden while tromping through the Little Stinking’s lower marshes … where past pools and deep runs had widened or filled with sand, now a caricature of their former selves.

Everything winds up in the creek

I found myself naming them with the actor or actress they resembled. The “Meryl Streep Pool”, wide and holding few fish, but doing so with dignity …

… or the “Jack Nicholsen”, stuffed with silt and lifeless, faint resemblance to any past greatness …

I’m sure sometime tonight I’ll see the rows of directors, producers, and the up and coming starlets. Young and vibrant, bodices layered in jewels and sequins sitting next to a director or their parents –  hoping their aging and 50-something airbrushed leading man doesn’t embarrass them further by asking them out.

Saving critical watersheds … a quarter at a time

WhacAMussel While ecologists lament the uninspiring, “Clean, Dry, and Inspect” message, and its inability to keep us awake, they’ve commissioned something more to the tastes of us natural born killers by opting for a video game to deliver that critical rush of adrenaline, that “them or us” message …

I’d always thought there were too many syllables in the “clean and dry” part to resonate with real sportsmen.

Figure the published mean for fly fishermen being 51, the only real risk is us having to surrender our driver’s license soon – video games and adrenaline sports being something we gave up with our real teeth.

With the power of damn lies and statistics on our side, it suggests we are guiltless in the spread of invasive anything, as only boat owners still have reflexes, and therefore must be the guilty party …

"Invasive species education is critical," said Teeg Stouffer, Recycled Fish Executive Director. "But it can be kind of dry and boring. Just say the words ‘Invasive Species Education’ to people and watch their eyes glaze over. This is a learning tool that is fun, dynamic, engaging and interactive – it cuts through the clutter. We’re excited to introduce Whac-A-Mussel at the BASSMASTER Classic!"

– via the Fishing Wire

… proving all them massively overpowered bass lunatics with their blown V-8’s done it, as everyone knows that protruding Lucite lip on their crankbaits are a mating hotbed for invasives …

Guys that know bugs, scarce supply, large demand

You getting it right and me getting it all wrong, followed by a profuse apology on my part, is getting to be a painful habit around here. Naturally, I’ll admit to nothing other than you’ve been incredibly lucky to date – and society is backing your horse only by purest chance.

This time I was a bit hasty suggesting that hotties of the sub-25 ilk that adore draping themselves semi-clad on a hot rock in mid trout stream, think of sweaty, balding, or portly fly fishermen intruding upon their private and super-sweaty sunbathing sessions – regard us with the same loathing as cellulite …

… I was wrong.

Girls, especially the bronzed and toned super-hawtn3ss, adore men that know bugs. Especially those that can count after running out of fingers, are willing to exploit acres of taut and heaving – made vulnerable by male pheromones of those able to quote Latin or Shakespeare, assuming it was Shakespeare that invented Mountain Dew …

The tarantula lucite, perfect outer wear for today's outdoorsy tomboy

… and assuming your lack of shower and preponderance of bug spray you’ve slathered on yourself as a substitute for hygiene, allows those self same pheromones to exude themselves …

Too many Saturday cartoons for me to trust Wile E. Coyote and his contribution to water quality

Burning_Sands_ODeath On my way back from Fresno I was surprised to see California poppies spreading their bright orange petals amid the litter and grit of the center divider.

Poppies being an April phenomenon and suggests this is likely to be a season full of the unexpected.

Not that any season is ever predictable, but this one appears uncharacteristically so.

Should the bugs take their cue from the wildflowers, then our much beloved Stonefly Grab will be finished long before the Opener, and we’ll be vying over the Doldrums of August, versus the traditional cornucopia that is Opening Day.

What little rain we’ve had coupled with morning’s chill has the local fish on the run, so I’m stumping through newer and drier sections of the creek while the weather remains unseasonably warm. I’m unwilling to venture into the “Burning Sands of Death” areas, between Capay Valley and Hwy 505, during the Summer as the reflected heat off the sand and cobble makes trespass a real agony, regardless of how much water is carried.

As I feared, all the springtime fare are out, along with the few “Early Black” stoneflies only seen during Spring. Many are the larger bugs, #14’s and 16’s, that only come out of the underbrush when early morning gives way to midday warmth.

There are 55 miles of the Little Stinking between Clear Lake and the Sacramento marshes, and with my latest trek I’ve covered almost 20 miles via public access, landowner invitation, or outright sneak-age.

While heat keeps me out of this area most of the year, the water is simply too shallow to support anything but frogs. I did find the occasional scour pool, but most of the drainage is host to a wide and shallow trickle, making the creek 4 inches deep and a hundred yards wide.

Frog water

One such pool was nearly nine feet deep, crystal clear, and had a welcome chill, and given that I was already beginning to perspire profusely I contemplated stopping and shucking off them duds to make like a beached whale …

… it was one small moment of weakness, it would have been miles from any known human habitation, out of sight of any sputtering land owner, or open-mouthed old biddy blinded by my vast expanse of alabaster  …

I figured my pear shaped frame could do with a little sunshine and my exposure to agricultural toxins would be short-lived and assist me in building a robust immune system.

Wile E. Coyote Everyone knows it’s those big fish that live in the ocean for years that have all the Mercury, and like the Corvair, are unsafe regardless of helping size. Tasty little sardines that only live long enough to get their fins damp, and then seek the safety of tins, being safe as all hell …

I set the rod down and glanced downstream … then upstream, and blinked in disbelief at some ill mannered dog in the middle of the river grunting in the Pose Unmistakable.

A well placed rock revealed the interloper to be a coyote, who took flight in a panic …

Yet it cooled my ardor enough. All those manmade toxins just made the story worth the retelling, simply keep your mouth closed and splash about in the coolness of the deep water.

Yet as I splashed a little cool water on my brow, I reflected that if Wile E. Coyote equipped with a nose thousands of times more sensitive than mine own – paused in mid crossing to unleash last night’s dinner, I’d be well advised to remain chaste in my waders.