Just the Feathers, Ma’am. You can cook or bury the rest

Even a muppet gets careless In traditional ass-biting fashion the Trout Underground  has done me “Short Cast” dirt, flinging our entire editorial staff me under a bus for the quick chuckle, not realizing that I would be horribly offended at the notion of any woman assaulted by a frozen furbearer.

“Road Kill” now somehow synonymous with the “Singlebarbed Experience,” versus our association with any of the finer elements of our sport; like finely honed titanium, polished nickel silver, or the fine micrometer taper of a weak-walled, hollow Asian grass, that when dried was flamed by craftsmen scared to inhale … as they weren’t Man enough to flex Carbon fiber …

conservationist … given that my worst offense would be breathing new life into something crushed, lifeless and a rapidly bloating eyesore – should’ve bought us martyrdom versus the “hyuk-hyuk” bull’s-eye on our rear. Making it doubly painful knowing those whose aberration includes running them over repeatedly until tender and eating the remnants are, “conservationists” instead of blogdom’s laughingstock.

‘I used to cut up dead animals to see their insides and when I did all I could see was fresh, organic meat …”

Burgeoning ax murderers from the sound of it, and my worst merely skinning it downwind of its former owner – without permission, and without last rights, naturally.

I figure living in that mansion on the hill, overlooking his personal trout stream – and knowing I was travelling lent him courage …

Brown water conservation, rags to riches in a single season

My mysterious benefactor appears to be the apron work on the bridge upstream. The source of thousands of fish my little creek is suddenly burdened with – as well as why it’s still flowing in October when it should’ve dried up in July.

It's a dog's life, especially in the front seatIt’s a sudden embarrassment of riches, hundreds of fish in every pool, visible largemouth bass – when they’ve always been a rarity, and oodles of hyper-aggressive Orange finned Bull Trout outracing both Bluegill and Smallmouth to the fly.

Sophistication is a hint of sparkle with a marabou tail – a recipe befitting a hundred fish day, assuming you don’t mind most being six inches or smaller.

Given the creek was barren in the Spring, and with only four fish counted in as many miles and I’m thinking the hell with trout fishing, where a couple of degrees temperature or a few milliliters of toxin denudes most of a watershed.

If we ever stopped to add the millions spent in care and feeding, all the  restorative spawning gravel planted, alder and willows to shore sagging banks, and substrate that can’t abide the press of an angler’s feet. Parking lots and paved roads, flush toilets, guides and drift boats, fancy flies and gossamer tippets – and all for a fish that’s mostly shat from a pipe after being fed Twinkies …

Hard to believe I ever doubted this creek’s survival, given its history of tomato tailings and fertilizer. Seeing this plethora of gamefish in a single season makes a fellow eager to spend his precious conservation dollars on a fishery showcasing hardy warm water species, that welcomes invasives, can tolerate a couple degrees of temperature increase, and can live off a diet of benthic scum and crushed water bottles.

Agressive as hell and expects no quarter 

Us fly fishermen have backed a freshwater loser these last couple of centuries, and the knowing is suddenly tough for me to swallow …

Pikeminnow Unlimited wouldn’t need yearly dues nor memberships, unless we opted for starched uniforms and well dressed lobbyists serving aged Cubans and Homarus Americanus to uncaring politicians.

… nor would I care much for what your soles were made of – as most of the locals know, it’s what’s on them that matters most.

Is it really Whirling Disease, or did we just make the entire batch spin to the left?

oOPSIe, we didn't know Until recently fisheries biologists have seen the adipose fin as largely superfluous, and have clipped it to visually distinguish planted fish from their wild cousins.

Now they’re not so sure.

Recent studies suggest the adipose fin is crucial to fish, aiding it in navigating turbulent water.

With the tiny fin removed, he says the fish need to use much more energy to maintain position and speed in the water.

– via CBC News Canada

Given that the practice is especially prevalent with salmonids, which re-enter fresh water when it is most turbulent, it may have been one of many reasons why hatchery fish have never adequately replaced indigenous populations.

Makes you wonder whether we’ve been our own worst enemy, accidentally even. 

The Cyprinid Finger, How Stupid Big Fish continue to ignore me

There’s a point where swear words are completely ineffectual and only  snagging can express your true feelings for a balky adversary. With small fish it’s the thrown rock that creeps unbidden into your psyche – but with the big brute measured in kilos, only a large treble can restore lost honor.

Watch my latest offering pass unmolested

While most of you have some small traces of scruples, I do not.

I spent the early part of Sunday hidden in the tules lining the bank making casts to large, fat, fish in excess of 15 lbs. After failing to even make a fish pause, I ransacked my collection of itty-bitty flies for a 4/0, and finding none – mentally calculated whether it was possible to construct the equivalent with dried grass and a couple hundred #8’s …

It was something primeval … old school, and had nothing to do with conservation. I’d release it after I was done, but only after hitting it a few more times with a rock.

So much for the carp fishing, I matched wits with them yet again and came up fishless.

I moved further up and did quite well, hooking and long-lining a nice smallmouth, and landing the first big fish of the season -  a super aggressive Pikeminnow with a taste for his master’s boot …

Some shreds of composure returning, by my standards, you see it as further depravity

… and we caught the rare “Orange Finned Bull Trout”- popular among those that fancy adipose fin photography …

The Orange Finned Bull Trout

Especially popular amongst the unfortunate anglers whose primary quarry gave him the Cyprinid Finger, despite pockets full of test flies and sure things.

Note: I’ll be doing extensive work related travel between now and Christmas, so posting will be shortened and brief, and only part of each week. This gives you a welcome breather – and allows me a bit of time off from the relentless invention of news that you would as soon do without.

You can blame Bin Laden for your lack of felt soles

He's restored us to greatness One of the great frustrations of fly fishing has been our collective hope that the rest of the planet would view our small hobby as something larger, perhaps embracing it as a way of life, or reason for a conservationist Jihad …

… how through us society would stop tossing empty water bottles into the creek, how we would adopt sustainable fisheries by letting a few small ones go, and would restore the reverence for Mother Nature, rather than letting industry blacken both the bitch’s eyes instead.

We were ignored with little fanfare, so we played the invasive species card; with us merry band of outdoorsmen alternately infecting or defending all comers from Green Slime – and the spectacle of your city streets coated in slug tracks while your women were hunted by multi-armed creatures with eight eyeballs …

Still they yawned at our quaint, yet “fringe” message, given their offspring were tatted as to be indistinguishable from the Alien Menace, and their womenfolk were already hunted by nearly everything able to carry a beer … cold or otherwise …

But to restore us to prominence is the news that we’ve regained the Holy War label, now that its been revealed that the World Trade Center was merely a diversionary raid by Al Qaeda – and Bin Laden was after bigger payback, infecting the nation’s food supply …

… or infecting McDonald’s, which is pretty much the same thing.

Dozens of foreign insects and plant diseases slipped undetected into the United States in the years after 9/11, when authorities were so focused on preventing another attack that they overlooked a pest explosion that threatened the quality of the nation’s food supply.

At the time, hundreds of agricultural scientists responsible for stopping invasive species at the border were reassigned to anti-terrorism duties in the newly formed Homeland Security Department – a move that scientists say cost billions of dollars in crop damage and eradication efforts from California vineyards to Florida citrus groves.

– via The Huffington Post

In another couple of months this will be blamed on the Democrats or the Republicans, but we’ll know what really happened …

Was I CalTrout or Trout Unlimited I’d have a dozen lawyers filling out grant requests for defending the borders in the absence of all those Ph.D’s allocated to something else …

What do you call a girl with two black eyes, other than moth bait.

Now they want the soft hackles We call it “Teardown Wednesdays” – where midweek shows and no massive oil spill has occurred on your favorite waterway, no invasive species is blissfully munching its way through your garage roof, and your daughter appears interested in an egghead for once, versus “SPaZ” the class psycho-killer …

… and you breathe that long sigh of relief knowing that the weekend is close, the home team is 4-1, and you might just eke out the remainder of the week as a 99%’er without suffering further…

Which is why we delight in grinding those rose-tinted spectacles underfoot, as we showcase the demise of your feather collection knowing greed will architect the demise of your soft hackle stash, given the speed you’ll pile these onto eBay.

It’s the next fashion menace designed to have you at war with Momma and the entire feminine contingent, which you know you can’t win.

kirk_by_your_side

Now that the premium saddles have been purchased for the next couple of years the unscrupulous have entered the market with every other feather, selling everything from bundled goose biots to Turkey blood feathers, and the howls of the duped are as loud as those glimpsing Two Girls, One Chalice …

It’s a great way to unload all those freshly discovered moth infestations. Just empty all the eggs out of the bag, smooth over the chewed part, and call it hair awesomeness …

Where we adopt more downtrodden orphans and get them all muddy and foul smelling

I was reminded that my recent trip to the woods failed to include all my pals and therefore some proof of kinship was in order. All them road miles leading up to my “whang-leather” hardened-frame had not been shared with other road-conscious neighborhood residents and somebody was owed …

Some-thing was owed … and mightily …

bad_Doggy

As he’s a product of a “broken home” whose owners flit about the Northern Hemisphere slurping aging grape juice, ignoring any real responsibility, which is the hallmark of the true Californio, given we only tinker with Sushi so we can amuse tourists…

… and as Little Meat lacks any real pals to play with we did the Mud Junket, only this time absent any real supervision …

live_crayfish

So we spent most of the day catching fish and making crayfish swim so we could capture their silhouette accurately. The gaily colored “mud bugs” being lightning fast swimmers, and appear only as a set of claws being drug behind the body, with no other movement apparent.

Except the jaws on Little Meat, who finds them quite the treat when they’re exhausted …

… and outside of the week-old flatty cottontail we met on the trek into the creek, offers an opportunity for the rare roll should we find them already deceased and upwind.

Now that I’ve properly tuckered his fuzzy little arse out, I’m permitted to boast of our outing …

When two tips is good, and three tips would have been better

Last week’s trip to the Pristine was the first I’d used my RISE 9’ #4 as the main rod while relegating the lightly injured Sage LL 905 as my backup. The Sage reel seat epoxy had given up the ghost last season and tightening the reel seat occasionally results in the rod butt removing itself from the wood insert.

Which is it? I’ve been lazy given the repair is easy enough. I just need to find something with a fine point to spritz a little epoxy under the rear hood to make the problem go away.

While the RISE rod performed admirably under the steep, rock-hopping climb of the plunge pools, it didn’t like the back of the truck much – and after a small tangle at the tip between a partially strung rod and a fly imbedded in a fishing vest, I lost the top 3” of the tip without having a chance to defend it.

It’s not a defect so much as the odd leverage of the tangle, and while I’m still unsure how it happened, I was thrilled at the prospect of owning a second tip. The next morning I’m back on the water blessing that choice of foresight and frugality, and with a march ahead of me I put the rod together, but saved stringing the rod until I got closer to the water.

You sure? It’s one of the things I learned as a guide, what you think may be on the water never lives up to reality, so I hike down from the parking area to scan the water versus force feeding fish with my best guess.

/beginrant

I’ve not been a fan of the trend in four piece construction – mostly because every ferrule deadens the rod regardless of how light the material is, and figure most rod makers are victims of their own press, which assures us that four thicknesses of graphite when mated flex like two.

As they’re no longer asking us anglers what we want, three ferrules must be better than two, which is why a nine foot rod is now broken into four 27” sections, even though there’s no need.

/endrant

… and as I’m parting the bankside willows, ensuring I creepy-crawl slowly to blend in with the foliage until I can scan the water for working fish, I suddenly realize that the top 27” of my rod is missing.

Hell, I made it easy for you While working through the willows, something had hooked one of the guides and pulled the tip right off the rod, and now I’m on hands and knees looking for a two foot length of brown, amidst a lot of brown things.

This didn’t end well. A 27” section of brown rod tip resembles every willow twig imaginable, and there was no chance of my finding the missing section.

I learned an important lesson given that it could of been much worse, and the car and my backup rod weren’t close by. Always string a four piece rod – even if it’s the end of the evening and you just broke off your fly, and can hardly see.

Reeling all that line into the reel is the expedient thing to do, but 27” of your rod tip can be removed without your ever knowing, and that fly line is the only clue you’ll have about being hung in a branch.

That last hunting trip with your buds

If you’re still intent on impressing your pals that you’re foreswearing jobs and responsibilities, wives, and all other forms of material constraints – how it’s all about the fish, the woods, and damn little else – I’ll call that bluff.

There’s little to fear, as outdoorsy trials go you won’t have to do much other than sign a piece of paper now …

holysmoke

Later it may not be so easy, but at that advanced stage of the game, who cares?

Perhaps a grand sendoff for an old retriever – who spent the last couple of seasons licking his balls by your fire …

… or now that your spouse, who bitterly resented the time spent on your outdoor passions and both your rod and gun collections, has finally passed this mortal plane, you can spread her ashes complements of 10 cases of shotgun shells – containing everything from teeth fillings to wedding ring …

… and when the warden complains of  steel shot only, you can get all tearful about how it was her last wish, to use them gold fillings and gall stones to take out an entire V of geese – when the lighter steel merely rattled off the wing coverts.

And when you march up to St Peter at them Pearly Gates, you can do so knowing that the wife and kids are looked after – as the last thing some interloper will see is you coming across the living room at 900 fps …

We left the beads at home, enjoying the spectacle of “weightless” fishing for a change

Nope, there’s no gaudy beads or feelers, no articulated body parts or rare materials to keep you from owning these killers immediately …

… although there is that trust thing …

Nor will I mention the hair extensions you’ll have to tear out by the roots, or the groans of the feminine members of the household as they watch fashion disappear into the firm grip of your hackle pliers …

Yes, the Boys of Summer – the top killing flies of my recent trip – were all dries.

Silver_Creek_Dry

Most of the fish killing was the result of my earlier experimental the “Hovering Predator.” Little surprise given that it has the mayfly upwing when dry, the downwing of a caddis when wet, and as much deer or elk as a full dress Humpy or Elk Hair Caddis.

The fish above gave it about a microsecond before inhaling the beast deeply.

Fiery Hovering Predator #16

These are so much quicker to tie than a Humpy, and uses only about three turns of hackle per fly, relying instead on all those trimmed deer hair butts to give it a high floating three point stance. I doll it up with floatant to preserve the mayfly silhouette in slow water – and fling it without regard for dampness in the faster currents.

Hat Creek Yellow Sally

Second best was the time honored Yellow Sally I was introduced to at Hat Creek. Bright yellow body and scarlet egg sac, natural elk tips and ginger hackle complete the fly.

The Little Yellow Stone is a summer constant in the Sierra’s – and anything yellowish is sucked down with great glee by fish used to seeing it flutter by. In low light and with old eyes, it’s a welcome spot of white that can be seen immediately, and makes us geezers on equal footing with the younger crowd.

I tied all my dry flies on the fancy barbless tournament steel for the last two years. Not so much a preference as it is research in progress, a future article that may aid you in calculating their value to the casual angler.