No, the Other Brown One …

There’s the fellow tasked with bringing all the cooking implements, the canisters of propane, the lanterns and mechanical vestiges of civilization, if he forgets something it’s a round of good natured ribbing and a bit of improvisation, like beans warmed in the can. Then its the guy tasked with the victuals; the ice chests bulging with steaks and cold libations, dairy products and lunchmeat, and if he screws up it’s a trip to the store, or salmonella, or both.

But the most feared responsibility is the stalwart supplying the flies. A bit of inattention and the whole purpose of being is lost, a nickname results, and most of the beer consumed while everyone lounges about waiting for your return from civilization and the closest fly shop …

You’d think after fishing the same lake for nearly twenty-five years I’d make this easy on myself. Ear mark a couple of weekends and bang out what worked last year without modification, despite recent lackluster reception, and should anyone disturb my lake-side communion with questions about their validity, feign outrage with the “Candyass” retort…

“Dammit, these flies work fine. Most of the problem is that Candyass rod you’re using, with its Candyass limp butt, complicated further by a stiff breeze and that Candyass open wrist you develop every afternoon.

Try some of the brown ones … Meat.”

This being the second year in a row that everything fit to hold water is swollen to the gills with runoff, we’re retiring to the safety of the Sierra’s and the millions of lakes that will be full – where we can remove the furrows from our brow dallying in the deep end – armed with floating sofa cushions and breadcrumbs for the ducks.

… and while the rest of the fly tying world plays stop-action with the phases of mayfly, we’ll focus on fast sinking, sinking, and Black Hole of sinking…

Three guys, three days, and one beginner. I figure eight dozen to cover the losses; broken branches, busted tippets, and the balance to be loaned long term.

Red_Butted_Leech

Brass cones, kirbed hook, red for blood and dark purple for great silhouette at depth.

Peacock_Rust_Leech

Not as big as the Red Butted, but equipped with a similar heavy bead and lead.

Green_Leech

Most importantly is to have plenty of leech style flies the same color as the weed growing up from the bottom, how else to imitate the hide and seek nature of the local chow.

Green_Damsel_thing

The latest in a long line of damselfly imitations, size 11, the real thing being a large morsel for a fish gaunt from ice out.

Calibaetis_Thing

… and for the almost sinking, semi top water, you’ve got to have a handful of Calibaetis nymphs should the midday emergence finally come to fruition.

Little_Rainbow

Small trout fry in case nothing else works, slim profile and nothing to impede sinking and stripping past a cruising fish.

Predator_Calibaetis

If we’re lucky we might encounter some Calibaetis, here are the “predator” flavor of that self same bug.

I’ve got the initial five dozen cranked out this weekend in between largemouth bass and bluegill, which’ll cover the other fellows nicely – yet save all the batter-dipped scented experimentals for my box and the secrecy of open water …

Huh? I got it on the brown one like I said …”

Live by the Sword and so shall ye arteries perish

White bread has also been commonly used as a hook-bait for centuries and is even referenced in the fisherman’s Bible The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton in 1653.

It’s well known that successive generations of anglers have lowered their expectations over the outdoor experience and game fish in general. As our beloved quarry is diminished in both size and numbers, we’ve been forced to ignore those qualities that made them great, and widen the available prey by adding the less genteel and outright untouchable into the game fish ranks.

Magazines that once talked about fish as, “…like a startled silvery gazelle, spinning in midair …” now rarely mention anything other than “wallow” , “snag” or “slugfest.”

With dams as plentiful as instream cobble, our once agile opponent has become some panting porcine slob that comes to heel when we whistle, disgorges its most recent meal into our palm from overexertion, poses for the camera in familiar “Gasping Fatty” cover pose, and must be coaxed back into the water. A far cry from our father’s “silvery greyhound – product of thousands of generations fighting miles of uphill currents.“

Sure it’s our doing. Ensuring the genetics of those lean and muscular fish are no longer viable, via selection for fish small enough to negotiate a live turbine – or fat enough to maintain their place without swimming.

Reducing our beloved sport to releasing some bloated softbody that eats your fly hoping you’ll shove its flaccid ass a bit further upstream, clearing some shallow spot blocking its next meal ..

The Bad News is that in addition to selecting fish whose belly drips through all but clenched fingers, you’ve  imprinted your eating habits on young and impressionable game fish, whose biopsies suggest that Type II Diabetes in fresh and salt water fish roughly mirrors the human populations nearby.

… your midday meal being such a nutritional wasteland that it’s a toss up whether your lunch provides the bare necessities to keep you alive – or whether your wife packed it with every intention of killing you dead.

If you had any sense, the thought should give them jaws pause. If the fish shouldn’t eat it there’s little doubt that you’re destined for a fiber-less haymaker delivered to the knotted remnants of your colon.

Hard to believe that in a couple hundred short years, we’ve destroyed most of the known fisheries, and corrupted even the bait used to tame all that Wilderness.

More Freebie Scissors for fly casting clubs

scissor_spiderI’ve got additional defective scissors to dispense should your fly casting club wish to assist prospective students in defraying their new vice …

… yes, vice. You didn’t think it was possible to promote immoral behavior with such innocent intentions, but by urging them to tie flies, and given their well known propensities for spiraling out of control on any fishery-based science – the coveting of the neighbor’s tabby, and frittering away the child’s college fund follows, means you’re peddling sin.

Those that participated in the last round of freebies will remember it’ll be a mixture of stainless and tungsten styles, all will be operational, some may open or close a bit rough, may have one tip slightly longer than another, or a defect in visuals – but all will serve a student well.

My mail contact information is on the “About” link at the top of the page, drop me a note with your club mailing address, and I’ll get the packages out this weekend.

This will be a first come, first serve queue.

Can you flippinbelieveit ?, Palin says “Dig Dig Dig” on Pebble

With 24000 pages of email from the Sarah Palin regime just released to the public, I figured none of our guys would wade into all that puffery to glean how the Pebble mine fared, as that’s asking way too much of us action-oriented types … palinmail

Meanwhile the press is focused on the next extra-tasty history rewrite, or something scandalous. The Pebble Mine hardly garners a shrug given the possibility of secret love children sequestered away by shadowy housekeepers, paid with hush money. Given the torrid state of affairs of our politicos, little wonder the issues take a back seat to gossip.

There’s about five pages of email on Pebble and plenty of side-bar banter about similar projects as Miss Dimwit holds court with her closest aides.

Keough’s 2012 harvest is mostly committed, no word yet from Whiting

It’s a simple question really. Given that Grizzly hackle is critical to most western dry flies, bass bugs, saltwater streamers, and most minnow imitations, just how long can you last on your current stockpile?

… or are you waiting for the saddles to breach the $500 per barrier on eBay, before unloading while the market’s hot …

While I’ve chided you many times in the past about, “seeing a good deal and jumping on it with both feet,” this is liable to be the first such shortage felt by this latest generation of fly tiers – where the idea of hoarding and stockpiles get mulled over while you survey what storage remains in the man cave …

Hair tinsel, 410 degrees melt point = polyester, same as ours

Us older tiers can remember when Belding-Cortescelli phased out Nymo thread, and how we bought every spool we could scrounge in advance of that dark moment.

It appears we’ll be left with the more expensive neck hackles, which may or may not be a suitable substitute, and we’ll still get plenty of Chinese saddles (6” – 7”) in Chinchilla (currently $70 for 18 feet strung), but it’s looking like the genetic saddles will be MIA for a goodly spell, much longer than first anticipated.

Hana Johnson, president of Hair Flairs, a Florida company that distributes feathers and other beauty products to salons in the United States and Canada, said she has sold a million feathers so far this year. That compares to 3,000 in 2010.

“We’ve been spinning our little feather wheels like hamsters since day one,” she said.

Hair Flairs has already bought the bulk of feathers that will be produced in 2012 by Bill Keough at Keough Hackles in southwest Michigan.

– via Reuters.com

There’s about 20-50 articles on this phenomenon going to print daily, worldwide. I scan them all to dig out new developments. Every facet is being debated, from the euthanizing of chickens, the squeals of new owner’s delight, the finger wagging of us fly fishing types, and the sudden interest on ramping production of those vendors torn between profits and angry phone calls from more traditional customers.

Practitioners are on record adoring their flexibility and temporary nature, they can buy multiple colors to match multiple outfits, can add and remove them at will, so they can mix, match, and amass collections, and the chicken farmers and fly shops adore them for it.

Suggesting everyone but us is happy, the fad has legs, and we’ll have to make do with less. I would expect most fly shops will soon be taking a back seat to better funded salon merchandisers like Hair Flairs, especially if they’re buying an entire year’s output at a go.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed that Keough or Whiting doesn’t sell the farm and retire outright.

Just a gentle nudge, the chicken you save may be your Adams

mindcontrol Dammit Goebbels, I read your book!

at least the part about how to bend society to your will using a mind deadening mix of rumor, fear, and alienation, playing up the perceived differences between the splinter group and mainstream.

My quarry frequents the Tofu aisle. Impressionable vegetable radicals intent on turning lead into gold, planting a couple of electrodes into curdled bean juice and zapping up a couple flavorful steak facsimiles, it never happens but we do love their optimism.

Just outside of view I taped a handheld recorder under the lint shield at the local Safeway, playing low volume Rebecca Black interspersed with the sounds of a thousand roosters getting their heads separated from their “hair extensions.”

Figuring that as soon as most of the “extension-eligible” realize harvesting a chicken is synonymous with decapitation via dull bandsaw, they might rethink all this fashionista crap, allowing us to pocket thousands of precious hackles tossed unceremoniously in dumpsters – free for the taking …

Actually things are getting out of hand now that screaming teenagers are running over the birds intentionally, in public

My efforts appear to be yielding fruit, a hint of  anti-extension propaganda beginning to show, and the promise of much more, based on a couple of manila envelopes tucked under the door at PETA, who were horrified that an entire generation of young folks assumed them feathers grew only on the chicken’s nugget.

In order to save Whiting from a very profitable demise, I’d suggest each of you add a bit of misinformation to your spouse’s favorite beauty forum. All them feather lusting fashion noobs have millions of questions which you can provide much needed answers …

You should warm quickly to their patter as they’re similar to the Drake forums, but with a lot more f-bombs.

Just a little nudge

Nothing hostile or degrading, just a nudge  …

Save Bristol Bay so we can keep picking on little guys

smallfish I suppose the good news is that none of us has cracked under the pressure and sent pictures of The Family Jewels to some anonymous campus sweetheart, but that’s coming.

Looking down, I think I’ll be safe enough, given that I haven’t seen mine in a couple of decades, but the rest of you concern me.

With societal censure clinging to us outdoorsy types like a dark cloud, issues like Catch & Release, invasive species, trespass, the despoiling of the watershed with our two and four wheeled gas guzzlers, planted versus wild, and the delight we show in blowing daylight through the arse end of anything exhaling CO2, have painted a bright target on our backs.

Now all them fellows we teased in school roam the halls of science and are determined to blame us for undoing millions of years of genetic selection, how all the small fish is our doing.

After studying data going back to 1943, Kendall has discovered that the average length of a (Bristol Bay) sockeye salmon is now 14 millimeters (0.25”) shorter than it used to be. She also discovered that the number of sockeye that spent two, instead of the normal three years, out at sea before coming upstream to lay their eggs, had increased by 16%, suggesting Mother Nature was trying to make up for losses incurred due to fishing.

via PhysOrg.com

While nets and the size of their mesh is doing the bulk of the selection, our squeezing the life out of the big fish so we can show Ma, thumping the SOB as its bigger then most, or bouncing Fatty off the rocks while the guide gets pictures 62 through 74, has to play some small part.

What took thousands or even millions of years of evolution to accomplish, has been undone in just a couple of centuries of human fishing practices.

Just a reminder that you guys suck.

It couldn’t have been me, all I ever catch is dinks …

Real Anglers wipe the Goo on their pants leg

Flo-Green Artificial Leech I can finally ditch the expensive gear and G-suit necessary to keep arm, rod, and line in the same dimension. Shortly, I’ll be donating a Semi worth of rotting pelts, feathers and synthetics to the local casting club, along with my collection of waders and never used, newly illegal, felt soled wading shoes …

… only because I’ll be jettisoning the company of you grim and overly serious fly fishing types for the company of wide-smiling, truly genteel folk.

Sweaty, happy fellows that welcome you with a hearty backslap and firm handshake, insisting your lawn chair scoots in as close to theirs as is possible (makes passing chips easier), and are smart enough to stay out of the cold damn freshet in the first place.

That’s because real men can hit the other bank from where they’re sitting, and if there’s any goo left from filching goody out of a jar, that’s nothing a brisk wipe on the pants leg won’t fix …

That whole “lean and predatory extreme angler” bit kicked to the curb in favor of “extreme buffalo wing eating”, or “extreme bankside alcoholism”, complete with “X-treme tossing of empties” over that fleshy shoulder.

Now that I’ve left the priesthood, I’ll be able to hold a steady relationship with a female of the species, I’ll be able to catch and gut stomp anything edible, and I can finally fill that lonesome freezer humming in the garage without fear of reprisal …

yellow_nightcrawlersBecause Bait fishing is Cool again …

We’ll leverage the secret food that makes worms take on fluorescent colors, tinker with the DNA so science dubs them both single and ©Artificial, allowing me to skirt most restrictions (rubs hands together), and lay waste to your favorite corner of the Pristine.

With my new Artificial Fluorescent Leeches® you’ll be dumping all that wasteful and expensive ostrich on those Intruders, opting to spin some EcoGreen® fibers instead … their constant wiggling a bit of a distraction initially, but that’ll soon pass …

… (especially when your buddy just blanked …)

I can’t imagine not adding a bit of refried bean to the current chow, inducing flatulence and the Dry version of the worm floating leech®.

Absent all them secret handshakes, the knowledge of thousands of useless fly patterns, most dating back to the Pharaohs, and me no longer alienating some splinter cell with every comment spoken, it’ll be fishing as it was meant to be, simple and pleasant.

Dare I say, even Born Again?

… and we stank, and Dad scored a couple of Hot Dogs … and …

Before bamboo, before graphite, long before we learned to curl an upper lip, before we could distinguish light and heavy, spinning from bait casting, and fly – prior to swearing off the Unclean Thing – and back when everything  was mystery, fear, and wonderment, there was this fishing stuff…

Dad mentioned it, and we assumed it was fun due to the change in Poppa’s face and tone when he rehashed it with his liquored up buddies around the kitchen table. We were ordered off to bed, but it sounded like a big thing; a place where Ma feared to tread, whose practitioners returned home bearing nasty stuff that stank.

We adored nasty stuff that stank …

… until Ma mentioned it was dinner.

We were all there once

Before we got all know-it-all, before we argued whether a bead headed fly was still a fly, before indicators were considered dry flies, before we caught everything and claimed double that …

… we were a blank canvas.

… and it was cold, and it was fun, and it was us that was hooked.