I am shocked that there is opposition to young fishermen …

I find it compelling drama but as it’s occurring in Europe there’s hardly a mention of the issue in our media. 

SANA, the largest angling organization in Scotland is rocked with scandal because its board accepting money donated by the fish farming industry, whose very existence threatens the last wild stocks of Scottish salmon.

SANA’s own website confirms its Migratory Fish Committee is committed to “campaigning against certain activities of the Scotland’s west coast marine salmon farming industry in the belief that these are endangering wild migratory stocks and the environment.”

However, this did not prevent trustees of the national governing body for game angling from agreeing a three-year sponsorship deal, understood to be worth a total of £12,000, with SSC for SANA’s International Youth Fly Fishing Team.

– via the Scotsman.com

It certainly represents a pickle for any well meaning angling organization. On the one hand money is so rare that anything is gladly accepted – and on the other, we’ve never had the luxury of donor organizations that may be working at cross purposes to our own, and are ill equipped to define who’s on our side and who’s not.

It’s plain that somewhere in the States we’re going to be dealing with the self-same issue – and we’ll be as stunned by the offer of money as we will be to the carnage that ensues should we accept.

With half of all seafood already pen raised – and with the world’s population continuing to grow, this issue is going to get more tangled and complex rather than less so. Terrestrial pens or blue water facilities may prove part of the solution – but it’ll be decades and many lawsuits before we work the kinks from the system.

Of particular interest to me in the article are the comments from the public – and the argument made by the industry shill about us wanting to preserve the wild fish only to kill them ourselves.

Like the presidential candidates, I’m unsure how we’ll appear in the court of public opinion. I’ve got no answer to refute that “you’re killing them too” issue. We know we kill fish, even when it’s catch and release, and mortality rates have been well documented …

I can’t help think of that nice, retired, dentist fellow, who didn’t really want to be club president this year – and how the crowd shouted down his protests and elected him anyway … and the limo from Gorton’s has just squealed to a stop at the curb and the well dressed suits fix him with a greasy smile …

Damn few called – and even fewer chosen

We’re never going to be confused with The Most Interesting Man In the World or the thousand dollar jam he’s pimping – but there is that special something that sets the Singlebarbed reader apart from mainstream fly fishing – or even your average serial ax murderer.

On stream or off, it’s that special flair that makes us human yet more so, in some indefinable way – larger than what surrounds us …

One of the Eberle clan

… the impossible lie for some, yet not to our readership – which sees the “possible” when others see naught but hardship or disaster.

Psychologists have a long winded term for it – and while I’ve forgotten most of the syllables other than “-complex” it’s sure to be flattering.

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 …

Salmon Anemia uber alles

Sushi2 While the hew and cry over genetic variants of Mother Nature’s finest will be played out in boardrooms and courtrooms, rest assured that our knack for bullying the environment, and then crapping on the survivors is largely intact.

It seems humans and their reared salmon have finally managed to bridge the wide gulf between wild stocks and their pen raised cousins, by introducing a hatchery caused disease into the wild ..

.. Salmon Anemia, no known cure, and a yen to trod upon whatever we don’t gill net …

The virus that causes the disease originated in the mid- 1980s in Atlantic salmon fish farms in Norway and spread to Scotland, Canada and the U.S. Farms in Chile also were infected, probably via imported eggs.

– via Bloomberg

This time it’s Mother Nature’s turn to gasp, as our disease affects both Pacific and Atlantic salmon, and therefore is the perfect, and final solution to the “salmon menace.”

Finally, some fish farms, particularly in British Columbia, should be relocated away from the migratory corridors of wild fish, so that any anemia outbreak that might occur there would be less likely to spread.

… and while they’re pointing fingers and debating across international borders, the lesson to be learned was already known to us fish chasers, “scrub your boots and don’t crap where you eat.”

Yellowstone Park, is it being loved to Death?

National Park Service The National Park Service’s report on the continuing issues of Yellowstone Park is full of grim news. Daily visitations continue to climb, leading to stress on the infrastructure, and all the invasives spread by car tires, clothing, and felt soles, continue to resist efforts at controlling them.

On Yellowstone Lake:

Nearly 550,000 lake trout have been removed from the lake
since 1994, including about 146,000 in 2010. The number
of lake trout caught per 100 meters of net has been rising
since 2002, suggesting that the lake trout population has
been increasing faster than the fish are being removed.

On the creepy crawly invasives:

First detected in the park in 1994, New Zealand mud snails
are now in all of the major watersheds, where they form dense colonies and compete with native species.

… and on us:

After exceeding 3 million for the first time in 1992, annual visitation at Yellowstone fluctuated between 2.8 and 3.1 million until new records were set in 2009 (3.3 million) and 2010 (3.6 million). About 70% of the visitation occurs from June through August. Although there are no day use quotas, lodging and campgrounds in the park can accommodate only about 14,300 visitors during the summer, while daily visitation during July 2010 averaged 30,900. Fall visitation has increased since the 1980s and now comprises about 21% of annual use; winter visitation has never been more than 6% of the annual total.

With all those vehicles and their sticky rubber tires, over 20000 acres of invasive plants were treated, many with herbicides, a first for Yellowstone. Campgrounds and trails are consistent sources for most of the vegetative invasives, suggesting it’s us at the root cause.

With little change from the 2000 plan, and a harsh economic environment, it suggests “fighting them to a draw” might be a valued outcome, given a Congress with little sympathy and no mandate other than steep cuts in spending.

There are no boundaries to a fly tyer’s depravity

A box of Twinkies inhaled in a moment of weakness, $3.49 …

twinkie_golden_delicious

New sneakers that motivate “Fatty” to walk twice as fast to shuck unwanted flab, $65.00 …

Merrill "Felony Flyers" walking shoes

… an inattentive bird owner who puts a $4000 parrot with his ass hanging out the window …

A handful of Blue and Gold Macaw

 

The uncharacteristic positive post on fishing

I not sure of the pattern, but I'd guess there was a bead head on itBeing as they are simply numbers, you can ally yourself with the half-full crowd, or go with those as thinks them half-empty.

Most of the angling media has been citing small upticks in angling as a resurgence in the sport and a sign of a stronger economy, yet most of the story remains unpleasant with more to come. Wishful thinking and small upticks in statistics aren’t likely to keep us out of another trough before all those ripples from the mortgage wreckage grows quiet.

Call it a gift from your neighbor and our pals in Europe, and take it along with the rest of the damn lies and statistics, with a generous leavening of salt …

The National Sporting Goods Assn. found that sport fishing in California dropped from 5 million people in 1985 to 3.1 million in 2004. That number took another dip this year, to 2.5 million.

The California Department of Fish and Game also shows that in 2008 it issued 2.8 million fishing licenses. Last year the number had dropped by 400,000 and through Aug. 30 of this year by 300,000 more.

– via the LA Times

Add all that up and you can see why the body politic plans to kick the environmental lobby to the curb, given that since 1985, half of California’s anglers no longer purchase licenses …

Yet in uncharacteristic upbeat style I’ll suggest us longtime Californio’s have merely opted to fish illegally, rather than donate all that license money to be pissed away on the Governor’s pet projects or civil servant pensions.

If the government can redirect the cash as it sees fit, we can decide to keep the cash and blow it on munchies or Starbux and simply take our chances. Due to the budget most of the wardens have been let go already, and with hatcheries spreading Whirling Disease and Didymo, what are they really going to do, take away our birthday?

In a short 25 years we’ve lost half the anglers and three quarters of the fish, yet based on those numbers we’re still winning!

(… and you were expecting another downbeat we’re-all-gonna-die post.)

Fly fishing upstaged by real guides and real guns

puttheroddown1 I warned you often enough, instead you listened to those lesser prophets who insisted girls would adore you for staring at their anatomy, now they think fisherman are all creeps, and have chosen hunting instead.

Legions of taut and bronzed, out of work, single-parent, womenfolk tasked with raising both flavors of offspring, newly interested in the out-of-doors and wilderness adventure, and can vote – and because of a couple out of control fishing websites – and your instinctive leer, they’re lost to us forever …

I’m not so sure I buy into the rationale for the sudden trend as published, with the economy teetering on the brink most parents will insist that food on the table pales in comparison to all else, especially where children are concerned, and a shotgun and a couple cases of ammo might be a better investment then gold, given how much easier it is to train in weapons, purchase some, and than take someone else’s doubloons at gunpoint …

Hunting implies dusty trucks, battered coolers, sharp knives, and guts; a oneness with your surroundings that only death and the controlled napalm that an aging GM heater can provide.

“Ma’am, I’m pretty sure you were low and away on that last shot, I believe you vaporized both his nuts. Rather than chase that high-pitched keening Wildebeest, who’s in obvious pain – and liable to be really pissed into those brambles – why don’t you and I retire to the truck for some hot coffee, while he bleeds to death in them bushes?”

Meanwhile you’re urging her to wade a bit deeper into cold water – and if she’s really patient and attentive she’ll get to remove a barbed hook from her icy and slimy quarry, while imbedding it into her wrist when it leaps to freedom …

With the main event being a guide lunch that someone stepped on, whose condiments are ageless, and meat unidentifiable …

All fly fishing can really offer in comparison is some sweaty handshake with a well intentioned,  “if you catch it you’d better let it go” admonition – which doesn’t put much food on the table, and a “OoO, wash your shoes as they might track nasty into the creek “ – which is what she told her kids, but they didn’t listen.

Both are suited to a nasal, high-pitched delivery which can be hampered by the intentness of our stare at Miss Bronzed & Heaving’s upper torso, who is pretty tired of our admiration, and would love punctuating our fantasy by ratcheting a live round into her newly oiled sidearm.

… which warms nicely when fired repeatedly …

I’ll finally get to know whether Great Blue Heron tastes like Chicken or not

Guy_Fawkes It was painful watching the Republican debates the other night, what with each candidate insisting they’d remove any regulations that slowed job growth. It appears our rivers and estuaries will be drilled like a root canal, most migratory species extincted, and a steady runoff of industrial waste and toxins into whatever you fish most …

… and all them students clapping merrily as if they’d heard profound for the first time …

Democrats aren’t any smarter and it’s liable to be a tough couple of decades if the pursuit of jobs and deregulation meets the Son of Global Warming.

While us fishermen mill about in disarray, given all our hard-fought environmental protections suddenly under scrutiny, and most of our conservationist bodies still fighting over felt soles and “who stepped in what” we might have to form our own clandestine “Occupy The Esopus” movement – with what remains of angling’s lunatic fringe …

Which aren’t as plentiful as they once were. Caring for the fish was overtaken by “caring more about your rakish figure in outdoor duds” – how the thousand dollar fly rod and the Cafe Mocha neutered most of our real outdoorsy types, them that lacked a full set of teeth or most of their frontal lobe – and thought like fish do. The rest of us didn’t help as we gave them the cold shoulder thinking they gave the rest of us a bad name.

“Old Timey Conservation” meant if you found 12 sticks of dynamite on the creekbed we might’ve drawn short straw for which dam to make porous, or showed some real ingenuity by making the casting club pond manager decide to lengthen the club’s ponds (with a bit of Fourth of July pyrotechnics) to accommodate a Spey class…

… but to merely give it back to the law, that’s a waste.

The damn environmental element isn’t mad enough yet to understand that what you tracked onto the kitchen linoleum with your contagion-bearing felt soles could soon be the least of your environmental worries.

Here’s hoping you all listened closely.