I really do fish in water and muck, wear waders, and fall in

airgill_shirt I took the commission without really thinking it through. I’ve never had to justify my extreme utilitarian sense of wardrobe, designed mostly to remove any fun out of shopping, with notes of Johnny Cash Black, and preference for solid colors so you can’t tell how many days I’ve worn it, or what that stain really is …

Columbia Sportswear had asked me to try a fishing/outdoors shirt, and as they were the maker of my prior shorty vest, worn some twenty years and recently retired, I agreed without thinking.

A few years spent guiding in hot weather had framed a pretty solid idea of what makes a good fishing shirt.  It had to be long sleeved, as a long sleeved shirt can be rolled up for cooling, or down for additional SPF rating, there would be a tee shirt under – so the exterior fabric wouldn’t stick to flesh if its owner was wet or sweating, and it would be a light neutral color – partly to blend in with surroundings, and partly to reflect sunlight.

Columbia’s latest iteration in outdoors fashion being the “Airgill” shirt, designed to keep the angler well ventilated and cool via numerous “gills” crafted in panels on both sides and rear of the garment.

The idea is sound, given how we move – and the nature of a light synthetic fabric worn loosely, but in practice what we do and how we do it prevents the shirt from achieving that goal with consistency.

 

Most anglers fish wet, with waders up to their chest and a fishing vest containing their flies and terminal tackle, and while I’d like it to be otherwise, in that configuration the Airgill shirt is pressed tight to the body and has no ability to ventilate.

If worn in a tucked in and belted configuration, one-third of the rib gills are obscured by pants and belt, and offer no ventilation at all.

In all I wore the shirt six times in three configurations; loose with nothing over the top, with fishing vest over the top, and the hot weather configuration – loose with vest and hydration pack.

You can guess the outcome.

Loose and unfettered was the coolest configuration, as it allowed all those technical panels to let in breeze and pass it across vast expanses of sweaty flesh.

Bound with a vest, or sealed at shoulder and mid chest with the straps of a hydration pack, removed almost all the cooling qualities of the gill areas in sides and the back, and made the shirt an ordinary long sleeve shirt.

It’s difficult to suggest the design is flawed, but ignoring the presence of waders, nets, lunches, and all the connective straps of waders and belts, suggests the designer was enamored of his technical vision, and ignored entirely what it is that fishermen do.

Perhaps if I had my tackle lying in the boat, and was stalking a fish on salt flats in an effort to get closer, with some guide whispering encouragement – this may be the shirt needed. If I’m looking to cut a rakish and technical figure in my flip-flops while embracing a pre-dinner cocktail, this may be the shirt … but if I want my monies worth on all that carefully crafted stitchery, I don’t see how that’s possible given the way we fish.

There were a number of issues with the product that I liked:

The fabric was light and absorbed almost no water. If an angler was to get the garment wet, a simple hand-wringing and the shirt would be dry to the touch. Really excellent choice of fabric, given how frequently an angler takes a bath unbidden.

Nice technical touch on the arms, allowing a rolled up sleeve to be secured to the arm in the rolled-up position. A small loop and a eyed segment of cloth inside the sleeve allows the sleeve to roll up and be secured in that position. Useful if you dip the arm in water (wading deep)and all that rolled up sleeve loses its integrity, flopping wetly against the arm while casting.

Tight weave on the cloth ensures a high SPF rating. If you feel you’ve had your limit of sun and roll the sleeve down, the dense weave ensures you won’t bake further. Manufacturer claims the weave to be SPF 50 (see commercial).

Size of the garment was true to label. With most garment manufacturers off-shoring most of their business you can sometimes get different ideas of what Large, Medium, and Small, can be – especially so given the prevalence of the metric system in many of the manufacturing countries, despite the wearing public living in foot-inches. The sizes were accurate and matched with other quality clothing.

Shortcomings of the shirt are limited to price and function.

Obligatory Vendor Sermon …

With the uncertainty of the economy, an unreliable body politic more interested in posing than accomplishing anything, with 10% of homeowners either underwater or mailing in the keys to their homes, and with 10% of the workforce idle, now is not the time to buy extraneous $80 shirts …

Why? Because clothing is always the bastard child of the fishing industry, with big city stores stocking great gouts of stylish fabrics and colors, and destination shops limited to tee shirts – the only constant being that after Christmas you can buy all of it for 70% off …

If my luggage didn’t follow me to Bogota, I’ve got an issue … but saving that, I’m not buying “fishing” shirts because with all the austerity measures I’ve taken, the pending Christmas sale coming, and my spouse’s ever-present worry about whether we’ll have jobs tomorrow, there’s no reason to purchase anything not absolutely critical to the success of the trip.

In the meantime, I’ll buy some nice long sleeved cotton shirts that lack all the technical functionality, yet just .. simply .. work. I’ll save a few bucks for the Christmas sale, but likely I’ll be sidetracked by a reel, or extra line.

Without the garment being designed for fishermen, by a fisherman, it loses much of the technical functionality it boasts – making it just an expensive long sleeve shirt for me – and a technical statement for the fellow that growls by in a bass boat, flanked by bulging tackle boxes and bigger ice chests.

Summary: I actually liked the shirt when worn outside of fishing. It was light, comfortable, and worked well in the blistering 105 degree temperatures. It’s not a “fishing shirt” however, as once you expose it to fishing conditions with vests, waders and everything else – it’s just a normal shirt.

Full Disclosure: Columbia Sportswear graciously provided me with sample shirts to wear, and has been a good sport about the endeavor given the prior article I wrote (link above) and my initial reactions to the color provided.

I have since turned down another clothing vendor as my lack of fashion sense and my inability to make small talk at cocktail parties, coupled with the fact that I really do fish in water and muck, wear waders, and fall in – makes me a poor judge of clothing.

Insensitive to food and fashion

Millions of impressionable school girls casting themselves onto railroad tracks or off bridges knowing the lack of animal remnants and the cold, bolted door of the salon – means they’re doomed to uncool, where even the prom is in doubt.

That’s PETA’s plan, who apparently doesn’t mind condemning a few hundred thousand gals to tears, in favor of saving a few scrawny chickens. I figure its a clear-cut case of age-typing, where anything over 15 has bound to have eaten McNuggets and therefore is collateral damage.

PETA_Feather_Hair_Extension

PETA’s official response to the entire hair extension phenomenon, is “a scrap of ribbon and a magic marker is the same thing” – proving that all that Vegan brainwashing has made them completely insensitive to both food and fashion.

THATSSOLAMEDUH.

Now it’s only a matter of time before a bunch of skinny guys wearing ski-masks rush The Whiting Farm’s barbed wire – hoping the press of their numbers gets them through the claymores.

Big Oil will need a couple of lodges just to house all them VP’s

A few thousand gallons of crude down the Yellowstone is merely a drop in the bucket compared to what that area may be facing. It’s called a lot of things, but “oil shale” is about the best way to describe the discovery of oil deposits that may dwarf those of Saudi Arabia … within the confines of our territorial borders …

… at last count enough to power the US for years, and might go much more, we’ll know once the latest seismic estimates are completed some two years from now.

A McDonald’s worker earns $15 an hour, given the manpower shortage, and North Dakota has no housing troubles, nor unemployment woes, as they’re in the midst of the biggest oil discovery this century, with the eastern half the state and northwestern Montana having both the Bakken and Three Forks shale formations, likened to one big gusher sitting on top of a second. Exhaust one and drill a bit deeper to tap the second …

Bakken Oil Formation

The downside being how vile and nasty all that “fracking” of native rock will be – given that petroleum recovery uses enormous quantities of water to be pumped down the well along with sand to force the oil out of all that prairie.

Continental has developed a new drilling concept it calls Eco-Pad to exploit both reservoirs. One rig will develop a 2-square-mile area by drilling eight wells—four into the Bakken layer and four into the Three Forks. Each well goes down two miles, then horizontally two miles through the reservoir. Using explosive charges, the drillers will make hundreds of holes (called “perforations”) in the pipe of each well. Then comes the hydraulic fracturing— where the well is injected with 1.8 million gallons of water and sand that props open tiny fractures in the dolomite rock to let out the oil. The “Eco” in this Eco-Pad concept? All this work on eight giant wells gets done from one spot, causing less surface impact.

– via Forbes.com

Given the West is already water-starved where’s all them new gallons coming from? More importantly, where are they going afterwards, given the post-frack oil-water mixture will be intermingling with the native groundwater and will play hell with farmers and anyone else with the courage to drink all that oil tainted brew.

Which leads to an unwelcome conclusion, just how many of them Yellowstone area rivers will be surviving un-dammed in the face of hordes of thirsty SUV’s and a couple of states renowned for voting for a lot of partisan, asinine, stuff?

The current estimates of the reserves are at 12 Billion, and while guiding and the wilderness experience offers considerable revenue, it’s most likely ends in an “m” than a “b” .

Now that North Dakota has the fastest growing economy in the Nation, like Texas and Alaska it’s probable they’ll take a shine to Stetson’s and big cigars, given they’ve got one of the smallest populations of voters – most of which are almighty thankful someone tossed a bone in their direction.

Which brings us to the issues of a couple thousand gallons of crude during high water. All that oil located in out-of-the-way locales require an enormous amount of plumbing and pipelines to move all that Black Gold to them as wants to refine and burn it.

Which’ll lead to pipelines headed in all directions, under and over rivers, and will bring most of that petroleum to the population dense markets.

It’s already the largest construction project in the US today, imagine what it’ll be shortly.

… these being the Good Old Days …

I got the message Sir, I shan’t be found wanting again

I'm in deep trouble I’m reluctant to confess that in all my collection of angling tomes, I cannot find an author admitting he was skunked completely, exploited savagely, or simply ignored by the fish despite all efforts to the contrary.

My altogether too brief visit to the piney woods – the one where I was chased out of them self same woods by some vengeful icy jet stream from Alaska, without catching a fish, while everyone else around me caught their fill effortlessly …  that was a message.

This being unfamiliar turf, and given the hoots, catcalls, and finger pointing of my dearest companions, I’ve been struggling all week on whether I should confess outright or play it coy.

I could do so publicly, where I’ll need to wordsmith all the incoming name-calling and vitriol into loving support, or privately, where I resolve to do better and then as would you fail to live up to my end of the bargain.

Fly fishing being one of many imprecise sciences, largely spiritual and not really a hard science despite the many stern faced fellows that say otherwise, rather it’s a collection of mysteries, each related to one another via mosquitoes and sunburn. Being all squishy and subject to interpretation, I can only assume that after devoting the last forty years to its practice, and after fishing three quarters of each of the two dry days allotted with nary a bite,  I’ve offended God hisself …

It weren’t flies or their presentation, nor was it the hand twist retrieve versus an overhand yank, and it wasn’t #12 being a bit too big and a #14 would’ve been the better choice.

Fishing having only one truly similar comparison, and that being our nation’s beloved pastime, baseball. Whose players respect both the mystery and superstitions that goes hand in hand with streaks and slumps.

Crash Davis: I never told him to stay out of your bed.
Annie Savoy: Yes you did.
Crash Davis: I told him that a player on a streak has to respect the streak.
Annie Savoy: Oh fine.
Crash Davis: You know why? Because they don’t – -they don’t happen very often.
Annie Savoy: Right.
Crash Davis: If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you ARE! And you should know that!

I figure it was the grunt necessary to pull on them wading boots, and despite an angling devotee’s ability to fold space and time, the sodden midsection of a disgusting fatbody whose given up smoking being too dense to compact further and therefore resists his efforts to fold, ensuring he can’t tie his shoes without holding his breath…

Gasp. Wheeze.

… and no amount of Pendleton’s or firearms, no armload of cane tackle, no wicker creel laden with fresh cut ferns and damp fish, no welcoming fire in a log cabin can erase the stain of that sound.

Should I post a bit less, or simply be a bit scarce, that’s because I’m doing the Lord’s work … er … streamlining things.

A change of heart is fine, just drop the shoe price by half and we’ll like you again

vibram As mentioned this morning in Angling Trade, SIMMS has apparently pulled the plug on its self imposed felt ban, and will be making all manner of felt soled wading shoes for 2012.

Naturally we’ll assume that’s it’s the suddenly decreased threat of Didymo that’s the root cause of this change-of-heart, or it may simply be the recognition that angler behavior is the key to invasive species spread, and like prostitution, it’s tough to legislate morality.

Me, I think their holy oath resulted in being spanked smartly in the retail aisle, given any discussion on rubber soles amongst anglers brings great froth, dissent, and much vitriol over their efficacy. Adding additional burden has been the lack of reliable information from shoes owners, given that the same boot is mentioned both as slippery, useless, and wonderful, depending on who’s doing the pontificating.

One industry insider said it best, “Simms tried to score green marketing points at everyone else’s expense, and after they largely succeeded, now want the brown dollars to go with them…”

Nothing like the potential for a downward slide of the sales graph to make folks rethink their commitment to the Pristine.

“We know felt is not the only material that has spread invasive species and disease,” Walsh said, “but felt is surely part of the problem. At Simms, we’ve decided to be part of the solution.”

The SIMMS “solution” being to orphan your current shoe, sell you a new rubber variant that is less reliable in slime, then have a sudden change of heart, hoping us anglers follow blindly and buy another set?

Fat chance of that happening, you’ve mortgaged what faith your public had already, Lumpy.

I say SIMMS should drop their shoe price by half, allowing us anglers to purchase two pair, which will allow us to be less infectious as we can swap wet for dry, and potentially restore some of that good will we once had toward vendors.

You can get some good will…  I love SIMMS already – due to the panic caused by their earlier announcement, I scored three sets at $40 when the shops unloaded all that tasty felt  …

The return of the Tenderfeet, and how the Piney woods is saved

The San Quentin Suite Outdoor Life taught them as did every hoary sporting rag stacked in the dentist’s office.

Mark Trail lectured us from the funny pages offering woodsy advice ranging from trapping and skinning the neighbor’s cat, to shelter and fire construction; yet despite all the accumulated lore and it’s many sources,  you never passed on those skills for fear your kids would ignite the garage and hillside behind, and never realized that slapping snot out of Junior whenever he was in the same room with matches might make the poor lad a food group.

Instead, you left his education to me and mine …

Madison Avenue confused us all about the woods, equating skills and lore for carbon footprint and “green” – so you gifted the kid a Prius instead of teaching him which end of the match to scratch on the box. Now that “Lumpy” is at the mercy of the elements and unable to navigate a stack of scavenged timber and cold fire ring, have you given thought to your role in his lack of knowledge of the woods, and the paltry outdoor legacy you’ve left him?

He’s neither predator nor Hunter-Gatherer, he lies wide eyed under the stars fearful of every noise …

Somewhere among the countless hours of Babysitting via Nintendo should have been the audiobook for “Two Little Savages”, by Earnest Thompson Seaton, which would have been greeted by a curled upper lip, then hurled into some dark corner of the closet in disdain. Now that the manly arts and a cold fire pit are all that separates your seed from a hero’s welcome in the warmth of his hastily erected tent, at the bosom of Miss Impressionable Youth, whose physical attributes are rivaled only by a sofa cushion stuffed with marshmallows, whose starry eyes are only for you and the quickly congealing bag of fast food at your feet … and as them giggles slow you know all that’s required … the only thing necessary …

… is to light that log …

And after three days of watching the contents of a national park fumble with matches, showers, uprooting trail signs to burn, keeping themselves fed and the pursuit of relaxation, I can honestly say we’ve no longer got to conserve anything, if we can just keep a couple of fish wet past this generation, we’re good … live humans won’t exist in woods much longer.

I can’t say us trained woodsmen are faring much better, or at least the California contingent of that fast disappearing lot. While the campground host greeted us like long lost relatives, knowing he could count on us sharing woodsy niceties like firewood and a dry match, it didn’t leave much time for chasing fish – given the number of tourniquets applied, knives and spoons loaned, and terraforming necessary to keep the closet cabins from cannibalism.

We pirouetted like gazelles in the lake, righting sunken kayaks and rescuing drowning children, while munching on canapés and Korean Seaweed dusted with Wasabi powder, a Californio woodsy tradition. We counseled the untrained on the merits of going without showers, and how the “five minute rule” for dropped food goes double in the woods.

What with our Registered Professional Forester bringing two year old kiln dried Walnut to burn, aged Scotch, bathtub Gin, and 8 flavors of beer, and our private Chef smuggling Sweet & Sour Stew and homemade Oatmeal Raisin cookies, accented by gourmet space food whose bags contained pellets of C-4, that would ignite and heat the meal merely by rubbing the wrappers together …

Suddenly, the outdoors is cool again, and as Miss Impressionable quits her stream of complaints, as youth no longer needs coaxing to take part.

Unfortunately it’s too late, the great adventure never to be repeated, your child’s grandiose plans of seduction and heroism dashed against cold granite, and colder womenfolk, and his next conquest will be at the beach. Which is every bit as cold as the woods, but he’s forgotten his earlier defeat based on the gal he’s spied in #14, and the arms folded harrumph he’s getting from what was once your daughter in law.

It was Big, Awkward & Black last year

As SMJ so eloquently reminded us Monday, “… where them fuggin antz at?”

I have the luxury of fleeing the fishless and flooded creeks in my area for our traditional twice yearly pilgrimage to Manzanita Lake. It’s become ritual at this point; once to mark the opening of the season, once in the fall to mark the close, and the fish always playing second fiddle to the real prize of a year’s worth of bragging rights.

… and with all well known lakes and the best laid plans, it always comes down to “mystery meat” that determines the Victor…

… the puff of breeze that dislodged all them awkward carpenter ants, or the hot midge color is florescent orange (even though last year it was Chartreuse), and while most of the day you’re flinging or dragging everything you thought would be there, the perversity of Mother Nature means every day becomes an episode of Monty Hall’s “Let’s Make A Deal.”

I’m dating myself surely, but as every episode ended he’d glance down at the Grandma squealing in her clown suit and say, “I’ll give you $500 for every clothespin you brought in your purse … Two? Okay, I’ll trade your thousand dollars for what’s behind door #3 …”

A Lifetime of Cheese slices or …

… and has you scrambling for the darkest recesses of your fly box hoping you can cut up something normal to make what you really need.

…kind of like Granny felt when she paid a thousand bucks for a metric ton of CheeseWiz.

 Black_Double_Humpy

A fistful of moose hair tied in and double folded in both front and back to make a comely lump, with the remnants pushed upright and wrapped as a parachute. Moose being tough allows me to dress the fly on a #10 hook without a single fish tearing everything to pieces.

After a couple of fish I should have the rough look necessary, broken fibers trailing under the fly to simulate legs.

Ants are always accompanied with a stiff afternoon breeze, and with the water surface roughened nicely it’s a rare opportunity to fish the dry with OX. Typically by that time you’ve got a few scores to settle and are less mindful of hurt feelings …

Are we back to them scrawny Chinese capes?

Plucked Chicken A single sentence sent me gasping in apoplexy, but I’ll save the tantrum until I get another corresponding data point.

I’d suggest you do the same.

Denver’s WestWord News mentions in today’s article on the feather trade, suggests Thomas Whiting of Whiting farms has stopped selling feathers to fly shops …

When demand for his feathers intensified, Whiting initially held off on selling to the fashion world, preferring to save the saddle feathers for his regular clients. But then he discovered that many fly-fishing outlets were buying his feathers at regular prices and then reselling them for crazy sums; those $40 to $80 packages were going for $300 to $500 on eBay, while hair stylists were (and still are) selling feathers at anywhere from $10 to $40 apiece. So Whiting, who had been selling the feathers wholesale for twenty cents each, stopped selling to the fishing stores altogether and began raising prices for the fashionistas.

Non fishermen and certainly non-fly tiers can be easily confused by the reserved words and phrases of our craft, it’s likely the author has taken the quote from poor context.

It’s not surprising that Mr Whiting would want to cut the fly shops out of the loop, especially those that might have been early to the fad, assuring him they were selling to the fly tying public – and were stuffing them onto eBay as quickly as shipments arrived. Most shops vended the capes with the shop account, which would have been obvious to someone browsing feather sales.

Given the economic turmoil, it’s not surprising. In either case let’s hope this was a bit of exaggeration. If Keough Hackle has already sold it’s 2012 harvest, and Whiting removes his roosters from play, you’d better learn to love nymphing  … and quick.

I’d craft a few for the box your pals don’t grab

JSON stonefly nymph At some point we all flirt with the individual fibers, knotted legs, and artificial or synthetic everything – mostly because the flies look much too delicious to ignore…

… about our third fly we begin to wonder about synthetic reality and whether something that takes forty-five minutes to tie can outfish something made from a lumpy dog ear and owl feather.

About the half-dozen mark we’re willing to go back to the imprecise impressionism that is the Royal Coachman Fanwing, and we’re the luckier for it …

Not this fellow, I admire his work very much, and admire his resolve even more ..

He’s got quite a few videos as well as the wing burners and tools to speed the realism, always worth an eyeball.

Will Dan break with his prior creed, strict Catch & Release?

The Daddy CatchHarlequin Romance, you tawdry little strumpet, when did you come of age ?

From the back cover:

Jess Cofer isn’t fixing for a fight. All the single mom wants is to run her fly fishing shop and preserve unspoiled Phelps Cove, Florida, for future generations. Too bad Dan Hamilton doesn’t see it that way. It looks as if the tall, dark and sexy surgeon is in favor of handing over the endangered habitat to greedy developers!

Dan would love to get on his gorgeous new fishing instructor’s good side—if she has one. But he can’t throw away this opportunity to fulfill his dream to build a safe haven for foster teens. Dan knows that when it comes to the truly important things like love and family, he and Jess are on the same side. Will she forgive him when she learns what he’s been hiding?

In a word, Dan, No goddamn way.

Miss Jessie knows that limp grasp of yours was never meant to hold anything longer than a dessert fork. You take longer in the bathroom than she does, and them big male fingerprints in her moisturizer suggests you’ve got greasy skin and pluck your eyebrows. She noted your girlish squirm when she mentioned eating what you caught, and knows  its not Catch & Release that makes that fillet unpalatable, rather it’s your inability to stomach anything not smothered in Room Service.

Fly shop, greedy deviant developers wanting to destroy Nature, Doctor Dan the MetroSexual restoring his male dignity … Hot Damn!

The reality of all this remains bleak, but the idea that something might want to bask nekkid on hot streamside cobble will bolster your flagging spirits for another couple of seasons …

… despite “Leigh Duncan” being a truck driver from Des Moines, with two day’s growth of beard, and smell to match.