It makes for a superb fish story, but as someone who’s had a similar experience, it’s the last thing expected and can certainly send an unwanted shudder through your frame.
Kid thinks he’s hooked fish, reels in human foot that comes off the hook just after it’s recognized, triggering search for remainder of body …
Nine hours later it’s revealed to be a Halloween prop, only the kid has emotional damage and swears off both Mickey Dee’s Fillet O’ fish and Tuna forever.
I’m a sucker for the dim view, given that economics and temperature mixed with apathy and the potential decline in size of the US government adds up to be the worst scenario, not the neutral agent others envision.
The short version is that a panel of 11 scientists from Colorado State University, Trout Unlimited, the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, have released a study of four trout species that suggests we’ll be losing half of all trout habitat over the next seventy years.
Most of that loss will be attributed to rising temperatures and global warming, and depending on which warming model is chosen – will dictate how much and how fast – and determines whether we care whether girls use saddle hackles or mule dung in their hair …
Congress is adamant the size of government must be reduced, given we owe most of the GDP to those countries still able to buy our debt, and depending on how much we decide to divest, will be eager to prune wasteful dollars funding watchdog agencies and trout planting – areas that hinder industry from creating millions of jobs, or serve only the privileged few … us fishermen.
Trout Unlimited and every privately funded conservation group added together couldn’t save a single river, especially so due to the waves of genetically-superior invasives outcompeting historical residents. Carp might be able to survive a couple of decades longer, but standoffish salmonids have no chance whatsoever.
Mostly because you guys balked when AquaBounty insisted they could insert the gene for sharp teeth and claws – which would’ve allowed them to go toe to toe with all those foreign regiments climbing out of the bilge water.
Instead you left their fate to boards of directors filled with well meaning retirees gashing themselves over “how come they let them trout’s die,” whose wailing lent wings to global warming.
This being the age of Tea Parties, Beauty Queens from Alaska, and indistinguishable political parties, who’ve got no reason to keep industry in check, or slow their exploitation. Well meaning types weakened by foreclosure and the enforced idleness that comes with 24 months of unemployment, are likely to let down their at the lure of lasting and permanent jobs. Most of those will be cleaning the Pristine because BP fracked it, or something equally poisonous.
That’s more than likely the causal agent of most of the habitat loss, only the body scientific is reluctant to confess and endanger additional grants.
Should the globe warm a couple of degrees as science is predicting, that’ll clear both coastline and interior so they can pave and erect great glass edifices proclaiming our victory over Nature; how we booted Bambi from crapping on all that real estate – and gave her a spacious suite at the Zoo as reward …
They’re hurting, these men of a certain age. Losing their livelihood isn’t the only “transition” they’re going through. Dr. Jed Diamond, author of Surviving Male Menopause and The Irritable Male Syndrome, calls it a “double whammy.” The first: “a change of life, hormonally based, affecting our psychology and emotions from 40 to 55.” The second: unemployment. “It’s devastating. The extreme reaction is suicide, but before you get there, there’s irritability and anger, fatigue, loss of energy, withdrawal, drinking, more fights with their wives.”
– from Dead Suit Walking, Newsweek Magazine
Newsweek calls our demographic the “Beached White Male” (BWM), suggesting the real casualties of the recession being middle aged college educated white boys. Add in all them guts spilling over waistlines and the Type II Diabetes epidemic that’s about to leave the streets paved in corpses – and our generation will have destroyed most of the tillable sections of the globe, as well as eliminated any need for (non televised) sports, the out of doors, and John Wayne …
… then paid the price in one spasmodic orgy of cholesterol.
Which I find strangely appropriate, proof that despite all the advances of science we’ve never listened to anything other than our reproductive organs and our gut – settling the whole issue about whether we read it for the pictures or the articles …
I keep thinking of the scene from Rocky where he’s ordered to become “greasy fast” by chasing chickens …
… and why there’s liable to be enough young girls running around chasing saddle hackle that their caterwauling will rival the Beatles appearing on the Ed Sullivan show …
I tried to book a flight, figuring thirty or forty saddles still made it a paying proposition, and what few that were captured by hand would pale compared the chickens run over, shot, stabbed, or euthanized by wardens, but was elbowed aside by a Girl Scout troop, who promptly commandeered the aircraft …
The trade magazines are busy writing odes to guides, how they’re an underappreciated yet potential sources of much retail trade, waiting to be exploited by a canny fly shop management team …
I wind up scratching my head a lot at the prospect, wondering how once per year makes for an indivisible instructional bond between client and guide – and why fly shops and fly clubs aren’t talked about in the same breath.
Then again, fly clubs and free instruction in nowhere near as sexy as being a qualified professional, and while I might agree that guides are troubled souls whose mettle has been tested countless times, whose heroism is worthy of a credential akin to an M.D, most are addled by too many blazing summer days with too little hat – to be the poster child that clients would want their daughters to marry …
These trade-centric pieces suggest guides are key to an untapped retail juggernaut, that can only be realized when vendors and larger industry players seek amends with red carpets and acres of free schwag. The instructional nature of the guide-client relationship and the sacred bond that forms being pointed out as an underutilized path to the client’s pocketbook.
I’ve worked with guides. Mostly making their life easy by fixing lunches and assisting clients, tying flies and making sure licenses were packed in wallets, and ensuring everyone knew where to be at what time …
… eventually I joined their ranks for a half dozen seasons, learning enough to be really impressed at the grueling schedules, the countless hours baking in hot sun, how picky fish can be when least expected, and how bone weary all that hard work can make a fellow. How they sustain an unending supply of good humor – despite pissed off clients, alcoholics masquerading as anglers, and tolerated all those sharp objects buried in their extremities while they taught clients to cast, set hook, and distinguish a mayfly from a caddis.
Only they never talked like those magazine articles said. They didn’t see themselves as the key to anyone’s retail ambition, and while they were partial to brands (as we all are) were respectful enough to suggest six that would work well, three the shop carried, ensuring the owning shop got its due, and the remainder available in the client’s hometown, should the client wish to spread the cash around. Despite their profession these fellows loved fishing, and the ability to fish for a living in a job that had both good and bad days, same as ours …
… only their office window beats ours all to hell.
I don’t think they were overly eager to exploit the client’s pocketbook even if they were a partial beneficiary. It was only one more thing to get in the way of the Experience – and even charging for extra flies was something the shop insisted on and most guides ignored. The best were still uncomfortable being tipped – yet gave us junior guides tips aplenty, “… you’re young still, stay in school and get a real job“… or … “get outta the business.”
Most were retirees, and had another sources of income given the surrounding areas were largely depressed, whose seasons made anything other than waiting table a six month career.
A destination fly shop has similar retail woes of its big city counterpart, and can reliably employ a couple of full time guide-contractors, but usually relies on a stable of part timers to flesh out their guide roster. Management is often reluctant to beatify guides – not because of their unwillingness to part with a dollar, but because guides are often unprofessional, two-faced, and an asset that shop owners often drink themselves to sleep over, something they’d just as soon not have to manage.
Issues with local talent versus imported “flatlanders” like college kids, most of which could care less about guide politics and would give an extremity just to be able to fish daily.
Issues with clients being a middle aged Big City professional and more at ease with someone of like background. Requiring shops to be on the lookout for non-partisan sophisticated talent, the piney woods being home to many woodsy characters, but not all were suitable for public display.
… especially with the high roller crowd – where shops often bent over backward to accommodate urbane clients, often bringing families, and insisting on a handler with similar tastes and education.
Client shenanigans are the source of the greatest tension, given their well meaning attempts to curry favor with guides often angers shop owners. Attempting to book directly with the guide on subsequent outings puts guide and shop owner at loggerheads, as the client was originally introduced via shop booking, and owners expect to see some loyalties or recognition of their drumming up that business in the first place.
Guides frequently run their own side businesses, using shops to flesh out the season with bookings during traditional woodsy holidays. Most feel that a booking via their phone service makes the client theirs – with no allegiances (or money) owed the originating shop.
Naturally, every owner is scratching his chin wondering whether all those shows and speaking engagements done during the winter, incurring all that travel and expense in an attempt to drum up business, might have limited returns given his guides may be siphoning his paying customers at the first available opportunity.
… and while he’s got no issues with cutting a guide in on the retail generated, is that street “two way” or is he really being played as a patsy?
Which is the real reason guides and shops have a sort of “don’t ask – don’t tell” relationship, and why owners are often perplexed as to their loyalties and relationships, guides being Ronin, Samurai for hire and fiercely independent.
And as I sat there wrapping sandwiches, listening to a parade of shop owners describe their on-again-off-again relationships with the local talent – it dawned on me why management was so interested in getting me trained and guiding. The owner need not fear me, I was only in it until I graduated, which meant I respected the client-shop relationship completely – I had no designs on leveraging it for my own ends.
Before owners and guides ascend any Golden Retail Staircase, they’ve got to define their relationship and the limitations each faces to ensure both exist for many seasons. As only when the suspicions ease, will both parties gain respect for each others needs and predicament.
… which isn’t likely anytime soon.
Orvis has pre-empted that instructional-bond with their Fly Fishing 101 classes. Each neophyte that breaks his wrist at the casting ponds will require twenty years before he’s sophisticated enough to want more than the Orvis catalog offers – and that’s pure retail gold.
It’s the casting classes and time at the ponds that equals the unbiased and unsolicited gear recommendation. Why the big named vendors have ignored the clubs and their organized public events is beyond my understanding. Local casting clubs see a multitude of visits from those interested in learning, where a guide sees a customer only rarely – and only if the water or access is scarce.
Disclaimer: This was not meant as an exhaustive treatise on the client, owner, guide, issue – only as a perspective on the relationships that I saw, and the issues I worked through while guiding for three destination shops. Guides work really hard and are deserved of accolades, but until they understand the shop ensures their mutual survival, there will be no rose petals cast before their feet. Your experiences may differ dramatically.
I had fish porn show up in my Inbox this weekend. Some stalwart abandons both family and responsibilities to fish the Eel River for an hour, and gets a welcome tug …
Resulting in a nice specimen of the California’s “Golden Salmon” draped on the bank.
Naturally I was intensely jealous – accusing him of stomping it six or seven times, or at least punting it back in the water … but this lucky angler couldn’t be swayed from his story.
Hat’s off, Gent’s, there’s ample heft draped on them rocks …
Tackle Trade World has a small article outlining the rapidity by which European salons adopted hair extensions and the demise of Europe’s stock of Grizzly hackle (PG 46) – due to the hair extension craze. The only real news is the article documents that which I’ve feared most, they’ve moved from saddles to necks …
“Turrall has received a surge in enquiries for Metz necks worldwide, with individuals wanting to buy thousands of capes. Metz’s hatchery reported ample stocks of most neck colours and grades on June 15th. Thirty days later they were gone.”
Quick to capitalize on the meteoric price increases, and counting on the split-second attention span of the fashion conscious, fly tiers and shops have recovered from their initial outrage-disbelief and intent on unloading their extra Whiting saddles for the $400 plus bounties paid in tertiary markets, like eBay. 
While it’s perfectly prudent to offload extra materials at usurious prices, what they’ve actually done is blur the line between “old timey loyal fly tying customers” and those horrid interlopers, the beauty salons.
Everyone is out to make a buck … and Keough and Whiting know it.
As a result both Mssrs. Metz, Keough and Whiting have the luxury of ignoring their former audience, simply because BOTH shops and anglers are cashing in on what few feathers are sent through traditional channels.
“We are conscious of preserving the interests of individual fly tyers as well as our own production, but it has become really hard. We have tried to ration supplies to our dealers to look after fly fishermen but we can’t police the final use.”
Unfortunately, absolutely everyone is going to get burnt, given that the vendors will be enjoying a couple years of enormous profits, and will quickly become used to the additional coin, both to grow production and pay off existing debt.
When the fad ends, the prices will likely remain high – possibly remaining near current levels, given there’s no competition in the market, and all vendors need do is cut production to match the increased demand as shops replace empty racks, and fly tiers restore those empty dry fly bins back to flush.
The economy has shown them exactly what the market will bear, and without new companies entering the field to keep prices low and competitive, and with most of the anglers having to substitute for their favorite flies – there’ll be no reason to return to former prices.
Those of you who fish dry flies nearly exclusively should bear this in mind.
Naturally if I see a big splash of bright color and “Used by the Armed Forces,” I’m thinking Delta Force or Seal Team 6, and how the murmur in the parking lot will be all the fellows wishing theirs was extreme DEET, just like mine …
… then again, were I to round a darkened boulder come dusk to see a fellow angler crouched while applying a generous spritz to both hands, I might be thinking something else entirely …
Remember that especially gentle and reassuring voice I used when I mentioned, “don’t fear dyeing your precious fur and fibers, as everything is useful for something …”
Boy was that a windy.
I’m pawing through a drawer full of goodies and see that dusty plastic bag scrunched under all that marabou, and naturally figured it had to be those long lost bucktails I simply knew I had …
Rather than the burst of bright colors I was expecting, I get the Color that Cannot be Used, a reminder of my greatest fur mistake …
I’d spent the better part of six months higrading all the shops in San Francisco for their best bucktails – each with hair damn near six inches long, as I was prepared to tie a big fistful of striper flies.
I needed a dark olive layer for the Anchovy imitation I had in mind and tossed three-quarters of those tails into the pot with a brand new dye and too much heat …
… which yielded shrunken pumpkin orange bucktail with olive tips. Twenty years later I’ve not found a use for a single hair – despite fishing fresh, salt, and everything in between.
I know. You’re sitting there saying, “CRAYfish …uhm, STONEfly dry …uhm, no …uhm, WAIT …”
Just like I did.
Given the volume of invasive species and how quickly they’re encroaching by both land and sea, at some point you throw up your hands and cease keeping score …
The Little Stinking just started its third dunking in raw herbicide for some 250 known outbreaks of intrusive grass. Its banks still covered with faux bamboo they attempted to eradicate last year, and the sprayed green outlines of the erosion preventing brush CalTrans introduced to protect overpasses that wound up enveloping the native fauna instead.
Reminiscent of some of the disarray shown in some conservation organization’s trout plants, wherein they wad rainbows or browns where Cutthroats and Brookies live … only to Rotenone everything year’s later in an attempt to restore native stocks.
So many self inflicted wounds and botched attempts at eradication that you can’t help but wonder, “… if you persist on doing this why am I supposed to drop everything and express outrage over something else that’s entered the country unbidden? …”
The herbicide sprayed around the creek to control plants is done so with no regard for water quality, and the green silhouettes of invasives left on the ground by overspray is testimony to what’ll be on the large sign telling me – were I pregnant I shouldn’t even be walking below the high water mark, let alone eat something from there.
It’s tough to imagine not doing anything about all of this, but as each government appointed czar tells me they’ve declared war on something smaller than me, I have to ask, “…is this to be a stand up fight or another bud hunt?”
Given the War on Drugs has been going for a couple of decades, and the effects are noticeable in most California neighborhoods. Before we had to walk to the street corner to score reefer – now the vendor is mid block, and a subsidiary of Wal-Mart.
… and with global warming in full swing and the Pristine slowly baking in slightly higher temperatures year after year, it really is no surprise that the Jewel of California, Lake Tahoe – issued yet another horrific finding, how they’ve discovered Smallmouth Bass in the lake.
That on the heels of finding almost everything else swimming in the slowly clouding SOB, including largemouth bass, invasive mussels, and Jimmy Hoffa.
Despite the Republican candidates insistence on clamping down on illegal aliens, I’m thinking most of the federal funding that’s aiding states in combating foreign biologics will be drying up soon. Victim of the trillions of dollars in cuts we’ll mandate as part of a balanced budget amendment or something similar.
Oddly enough a piece of me is beginning to think that may not be such a bad idea. We called ourselves “Native Sons” if we can trace our roots to the Revolutionary War, which at last count was only four or five generations from our current coddled flavor …
We may want to rethink all this costly suppression and just admit that anything we can’t eat to extinction is granted native status, making us and our declining environment all the hardier. All we’ll have to do is come to grips with Lahontan trout having ate all the Coelacanth, and what a shame that was.
We were always fighting symptoms rather than the problem anyways. The lack of a mid-Atlantic or mid-Pacific ballast purge ensures everything can get here quickly and with no ill effects, and with airline travel and pressurized cabins absent a placental barrier, it’s only a matter of time before each continent enjoys the same complement of “native” flora and fauna, thanks to the efficiency of the jet engine.
WUSS, you’re nothing without those precious nickel silver ferrules kept limber by red deer fat …
… especially since Hardy extincted the supply many years ago, and what few are left are stalked by flute playing sophomores with a penchant for re-enacting “Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
One of many treasures recently unearthed from the pile of unwashed laundry and fly tying materials in the Room That Has No Name.
I carry it on the outside chance that someone will forget butter and I’ll need something to flavor my Grits while they’re being rendered lovingly in the camp fry pan.
… Nose grease being right up there with Crisco as a potential substitute, unless BP has a well in the area and you can simply dip your ferrule in the creek …