No Table Manners and the Appetite of a Glutton

I’ll go out on a limb and suggest our sport could use a few pedigreed opponents with both table manners and appetites of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. 

I’m thinking selfishly naturally, but think of all the knick-knacks we could remove from our vest, the words – like “gossamer” or “refined” we could purge from our vernacular, and the Jihad we could embrace as we rose to defend all the little kids and sunbathers frolicking at the beach …

I met one of those yesterday, and only managed to fight him to a draw.

Now I’m nursing the bruises and teeth marks, the line burns and the wounded pride that comes with knowing that had I hooked up with a real Striper I might have suffered the same fate as Jonah, swallowed whole by a great fish.

The tides were favorable the last couple of weeks so I tried Sherman Lake twice on Thanksgiving week. The Tuesday of that week was great weather and no fish, and the following day featured gale force winds that pushed the fly line (and sharp 2/0 hook) into the boat, while pushing me and my craft towards the rock jetty. Choosing between being skewered and a watery grave made the remaining option –  a hasty retreat back to the launch area, the only viable alternative.

Fish 1, Me Zip ..

This week promised a return to calm air and a continued spate of middling temperatures, so I returned to the waterway on Tuesday in pursuit of my first fly-caught Striper.

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I don’t know which of us was more surprised, him … as he’d swallowed a fly that was half as big as he was – or me, who was expecting a Pikeminnow or small largemouth. The sure gluttony exhibited by my new pal gave me pause, as he had swallowed a 6” White Whistler… completely. (I had to remove the fly with pliers quickly – as I feared it would be digested before I could release the little Beast.)

This encounter got me thinking of the overall sport – how the evolution of the Genteel Angler; the woodsy Plaid shirts, and Pipe smoke of the Crosby era might have fared with silvery T-Rex’s inhabiting traditional Trout turf. Would we have been so eager to wade knowing the carnivorous little beasts could knife through your Seal-Dri’s and take your leg off at the knee?

Finally, this … was an adversary worth killing.

My thirteen inch nemesis whetted my appetite for additional carnage, and I continued flinging my six inch offering at anything that looked promising.  As the tide came in I had two more brief flurries of activity, a good sized largemouth ate the fly before losing the hook, and what I assumed to be another 13” glutton slammed the fly before also coming unbuttoned.

I returned the following day to fish this same general area; the northern edge and the three islands at the entrance to the Sacramento, as well as part of the northwest shoal of tules and floating water hyacinth.

As there were a half dozen boats in the center of Sherman Lake, I assumed some fish had been caught recently – half appeared to be bait fishing and the balance were casting lures and plugs of some sort. I had a lone fly fisherman roar up to my side and we both drifted with the incoming tide towards Antioch.

I was flinging my usual fare, 2/0 White Whistler, whose hook I had touched up to razor sharpness, when I was slammed by another Striper, this one a bit bigger. As I was out of sight of most of the boats I didn’t mind the noisy complaint from my old click-pawl reel – as I knew I was out of earshot of the flotilla jockeying in the center of the waterway.

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After towing me around a bit I managed to boat the Glutton and retrieve the offending White Whistler from his maw. Apparently my comment to the smaller fish,  “…and return with your Big Brother!” had been followed to the letter – and while a 6 pounder is not a big fish, it was the prettiest thing I had seen in some time. I smuggled him off the deck and back into the water without commotion, hoping to remain unobserved.

Most of the small fleet of boats had left the center of the lake and moved either north (to the Sacramento) or south (to Big Break) and I was in sole possession of the area. I have a theory that the amount of horsepower present is indirectly proportional to attention span, and their owners tend to hop about making use of all those carbon credits – to the detriment of their fishing.

I managed to catch a largemouth and another 13 inch striper while pedaling in the area. The fact that every species will eat the same fly is a real treat.  Fly fishermen are quick to change fly if the fishing slows and it’s nice to simply face the mathematical odds of a fish being able to see your fly, and no activity means no fish, versus something more sinister like the wrong phase of insect or it’s abdominal color.

I swapped sides of the lake and fished down the rock jetty portion and landed a third Striper similar to the first.

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To say I was ecstatic is an understatement. These fish are brutal fighters capable of towing my small craft in the ensuing tussle. I am rethinking a bit of my tackle in preparation for meeting the larger fish common to the area.  Currently I am tossing an 8 weight 10’ Echo on a WF floating line, but may need to increase capacity a bit to allow for additional brutish behavior should the fish be in excess of 10 pounds.

Towed into the center channel of the Sacramento would be thrilling until the first freighter appeared …

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As I have an overabundance of Yellow NYMO thread, the Whistler’s tied above are tied with a few random changes. The classic is a white-red-white layering of the wing, but I also tie the fly with the red on top. I suppose some years I feel “extra bloody,” and some I adhere to the classic dressing.

In summary: The fish are starting to show but are not yet in great numbers. I have managed to land a Striper on a fly rod  – which was a Bucket List item, and while I’ve caught numerous Stripers on conventional tackle, am really impressed at their fighting ability on a light fly rod (and smallish fish).

Angling Conditions: Water temperature 58 degrees, ambient temperature 65 Degrees. One fish caught at low tide, one caught on incoming, one caught at full high tide.

Somewhere between a Float Tube and an Evinrude

Contrary to what you think of retirement, the reward is not being able to watch Saturday morning cartoons uninterrupted, rather it’s fishing  on weekdays while all the drunken Meatheads embody cartoons as they crowd the launch ramp on weekends.

After 30 years of toiling for CALFIRE, we parted on good terms and I took some  accumulated time on the books from pressing emergencies and late-night phone calls – and gifted myself a “Yak”, or fishing kayak,  and the ability to wield it in retirement whenever the mood suits me.

Fishing kayaks require a lot of thought and configuration to suit  fly fishermen, and I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t. How to optimize storage, how to NOT carry everything with me, how not to lose it all when I flip the boat, and more importantly – how not to leave anything on the deck without thinking about the coils of fly line underneath and how the kinetics play out when I release the cast …

Hint: Sploosh.

I’ll elaborate on my final configuration and more importantly – how to fish out of these shortly, once I’ve got enough hours to be a credible source. Fly fishermen have little experience fishing from boats that move  while casting –  and pedal powered kayaks allow both  versus having  to wield a paddle to move. Float tubes are stationary objects and prams bob contentedly in place but if your boat is moving while the cast is in the air a mess ensues as you have new things to snag with your line and new gods to invoke while swearing mightily at great puddles of fly line being run over by your boat.

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This week was the California Delta, and the pursuit of Striped Bass – which like every other gamefish I’ve targeted – gleefully thumb their nose at me despite my new “water-legs.”  While my pedal kayak and angling pastime has now been blessed as “heart healthy” by all lab coated professionals, the Striped Bass remained unimpressed and likely pirouetted around me while I pedaled around the confines of “Sherman Lake” and Sherman Island proper.

“Sherman Lake” is just a wide spot in the Delta at Sherman Island, and is a popular spot for duck hunters, striper and sturgeon fishermen (in the main channel), and hosts the occasional wind surfer or kayak angler. It is about 1.2 miles across and has five or six miles of bank ranging from rock jetties to dense Tule mats. With pedal power I can cross in about 15 minutes – but have to factor in drunken boaters, waves caused by wind or tides, and everything else that haunts a navigable body of water.

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I did find seventeen new ways to penetrate my fat frame with really large and sharp fish hooks. All wounds were aided by bead chain eyes (Whistler), lead hourglass eyes (Clouser), and anything else capable of being lashed to a fish hook and able to turn a timid false cast into a lethal weapon.  Most involved  hastily applied tourniquets and a great deal of swearing, which may be why the bird watchers gave me a wide berth.

Kayak fishing in a heavily trafficked waterway is not for the faint of heart. Boat wakes and the boating curious can send enough water in your direction to give your small craft a fit if you’re not paying attention. Stability dictates your bisecting the oncoming wake with the bow of your craft, versus getting hit broadside by the wave, and the unwary angler can be sorting a tangle of running line, or netting a fish, unaware of the new threat and a little too much lean coupled with the arrival of the swell can lead to a rollover.

… which is why everything of value has to be tethered to your craft or should float unaided. Fishing vests are no longer an option as you need to wear a life jacket, so storage of all the little things; tippet dispensers, hook hones, and fly boxes has to be rethought as well.

Petite flies and the gossamer fly rods of stream fishing are replaced by those capable of hurling an entire chicken saddle or bucktail with ample lead. Casting skills are essential as you’ve got to impart lift to a rapidly descending Clouser Minnow, a fly which shares the aerodynamic profile of a paving stone, and with only a single double haul or you’re going to wear the fly instead of the fish.  Rods and flies are heavy, and casting them all day requires minimal “air” time; one roll cast to bring them to the surface, one false cast to get them aloft, one double haul to impart momentum – then fling the accumulated mass as far from you as possible to avoid injury.

Despite all of the environmental and platform changes, all of the rod and fly differences, and despite the vagrancies of migratory fish and tides, it’s comforting to know that my ignoble pal, the Sacramento Pikeminnow, is a delta resident – and while not as showy as a Striped Bass, has also been sucked South due to all the lawn irrigation in SoCal.

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They’re quite a bit bigger and silvery versus the yellow variant in my local creek. The Good News is they retain their aggressive nature and swallow a six inch Clouser with as much gusto as smaller flies. It was a welcome grab given how much water I covered and how little I had to show for all that effort.

The first day I crossed to the West side and fished the Tule mats, with a lone Pikeminnow my only seduction. The second day I drifted the rock jetty on the East side and caught both Largemouth Bass and Pikeminnow but no Stripers. I saw a few fly fishermen in the main body but the frequency of their movement suggested their luck was identical to mine, fish scarce and Stripers scarcer.

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I’ll continue to investigate the area as the tides permit. The fish are typically here most of the Winter, but tides determine the useful fishing hours and many occur too early or too late to fish.  Most folks familiar with the area insist on fishing the incoming tide but others like any tide movement, both incoming and outgoing. This is consistent with all the Striper fishing I did in San Francisco Bay – as the fish were active on any tide so long as it was moving.

Trip Log: External temperature 70 degrees. Fished the incoming high tide until slack tide. Water temperature 58 degrees. Flies used: assorted experimental ribbon yarn streamers, Flo Green Clouser, Shad Clouser, White Whistler.

Not Much Left Other than Fish

It’s been a month since the LNU Lightning Complex fire was contained around Lake Berryessa, and with no change in the status on the Bureau of Reclamation’s website, I took a run up there to eyeball what had burned and determine if the webmaster was simply lazy – or whether the infrastructure impacts were as bad as expected.

While I hoped for the former, it appears to be the latter ..

BerryessaLNU02020

The above picture (taken between the dam and Markley Cove) shows how the fire burnt down to the water’s edge and apparently burned hot enough to wipe the area of most of the vegetation.

The upper slopes of the lake faired even worse, as the surrounding hillsides were much drier and burnt much more completely, leaving their slopes completely featureless. The below picture shows the mountains above the Markley / Pleasure Cove area.

BerryHillsideLNU2020700

Roads in the area of the dam are choked with debris due to an aggressive hazard mitigation effort. Charred Oak trees and Digger Pine are perched precariously on the steep slopes above the highway and crews are removing the worst of the trees by skidding them  down the hillside into waiting trucks or stacking them into the available parking turnouts.

BerryLogging2020700

Because of the narrow roads and large equipment both flag men and delays are commonplace. Logging and the heavy equipment associated with handling the debris have reduced the road to a single lane of traffic metered by guide vehicles and punctuated by numerous stops.

The Markley Cove store is no more. The marina and launch facilities appear intact, as do the numerous pleasure craft moored to the floating docks, but boat launches are forbidden and the area closed.

MarkleyStore2020700

Above is all that remains of the Markley Cove store. Access to the launch ramps are currently blocked by security (due to a combination of the bureau’s closure of the lake and the need to protect the remaining property from gawkers and looting).

What’s apparent is the appalling amount of lifeless dirt and rock that’s exposed to the elements and the potential for erosion once the rains start. As the entire lake was surrounded by the LNU Lightning Complex, and it burned to the water’s edge in so many places, there’s little chance that significant mitigation  can be completed in time for Winter.  Spring runoff will deliver a big slug of sediment into the lake and its tributaries, and it’s likely we’ll see numerous road closures due to unstable banks and periodic mud slides .

Putah Creek is liable to suffer a similar fate.

Putah Creek drains Berryessa, and being the closest bonafide trout stream to San Francisco, commands frequent visitors and much vehicle traffic. While the Putah Creek campground and resort facility were spared, much of the drainage below the campground was burned severely. The fire charred the banks of the wide portion of Putah (dubbed Lake Solano), and the area between it and the resort was burned worse than I’ve seen it in past fire seasons. I would expect sediment issues in the creek itself as the far bank and its vegetation was largely obliterated.

In short, stay away.

Until the roadways are restored driving anywhere near the lake is a steady dose of idling waiting for a pilot car, or threading your way between a chipper/shredder and a parked logging truck. I’d guess the stretches with trees will be cleared rather quickly, and the areas with destroyed structures will remain problematic as they attempt to dig out what remains and the truck traffic associated with the debris removal will remain high for the foreseeable future.

Loon ERGO Serrated Scissor Review

The pandemic has accelerated my conversion from trout fisherman to bass fisherman  due to  the unknowns associated with food, lodging and travel. I’ve shelved all the gossamer and petite gear needed for trout fishing in favor of  Styrofoam, hair,  rubber legs, and hooks capable of severing your Carotid artery with an errant cast.

Loon Ergo Hair Scissor640

Tying flies for bass is the “Widow Maker” for most marriages, as the production of a dozen 2/0 poppers involves half a deer hide, acres of marabou and brightly dyed Grizzly hackle, most of which winds up clinging to your lap or blowing about your tying room at the whim of your air conditioning.

I keep reaching for my “trout” scissors to cut bead chain eyes and saw through Stinger hooks and realized they were better served staying in the drawer given their delicacy.  Unable to find my old serrated edge heavy scissors, I picked up a pair of the Loon Outdoor Ergo Hair scissors to replace them. At $15 per pair, these scissors are priced well considering the potential for destroying them while restocking your fly box.

Tying big deer hair poppers can shorten the life of traditional delicate scissors as there are additional pressures that go hand in hand with larger flies.

Volume: Large bass poppers require many times the materials of smaller trout flies. That translates into cutting larger volumes of material with each cut of your scissor. As leverage plays into the physics of scissor cuts – the longer the scissor the more force is applied to the fulcrum area, the small screw holding the scissors together. Stainless steel is a “soft” steel (compared to others), and the screw steel is typically “harder” than Stainless, which ensures this excess force  will eventually deform the screw hole and loosen the scissor over time.

Obscurity: Tying big lumpy hair poppers means you have an enormous wad of hair lashed to your hook prior to trimming the final shape. As the majority of the hook is hidden , it’s very easy to close the scissor on the shank, point, or eye – simply because you couldn’t see it while trimming. Whacking a hook point with your scissors is bad for the tips and for the screw area, as the steel of a hook is “harder” than the steel (often Stainless) used to make the scissor. Hook steel can easily take the points off of a Tungsten scissor, as Tungsten is among the hardest of all steels – but it is also among the most brittle.

Dirt: Carving large amounts of deer hair off of the hide is a dirty business. While animal hides are cleaned and washed prior to being parted up for packaging, there is still a lot of foreign material trapped in the hair. Dirt, debris, dried blood, seeds, and everything else trapped in the under fur will be in the path of your scissors each time you make a cut of hair, and that additional wear adds over time.

Bulk: Cutting through three-quarters of an inch of Elk hair takes considerably more effort than trimming a mallard feather, yet most tiers expect the results to be identical. Cutting large amounts of material with small scissors requires the scissor to be closed slower than when it cuts a small feather – or the screw area will suffer. This is the most common way to deform the screw hole, cutting too much too quickly, and either the handles bend as you close them or the screw hole widens to accommodate the excessive pressure. Scissors loosen as they age, but it’s actually deformity of the screw hole that causes all the extra play – rather than wear.  If you are tying a lot of large flies or the materials are quite tough it’s better to switch to a larger scissor with the backbone to sheer through the material with less strain on the fulcrum area.

Today, Bulk and habit were the root of my problems, as I kept reaching for the fine point trout scissor when I should have used a larger set with serrated blades. Serration is always useful when trimming hair as the fibers cannot slide out of the scissors ahead of the cut, the fibers tend to catch in the serration and ensures everything gets trimmed proper. Note that this is both good and bad, as the serrated scissor will grip and make absolute cuts – and you can remove too much material if you’re unused to them.

The Loon Ergo serrated scissors are a 4.5” (powder-coated stainless steel) scissor with superb tips and a light serration down one of the blades. The large finger holes, hence the “ergonomic” designator, are quite comfortable for extended tying sessions, and there is enough “beef” in the scissor frame to snap them closed without feeling the handles flex – which is a good tell that the scissor is over capacity on the cut.

At $15 the price is really cheap, prompting me to order a second set for use with conventional tackle, trimming braid and heavy monofilament where that serrated edge will prove extra useful..

As my tying room is currently bereft of carpet due to a “slab leak” and having to jack hammer the concrete pad beneath for the repair, I should mention that I managed to drop these scissors on their points and bent both tips in a dramatic fashion. Stainless steel is a soft steel, so I was able to restore the points to their original shape by dragging them across my vise barrel several times. This is not a failure of design or an inherent weakness in the quality of the product – rather this is what happens when good scissors and fine tips meet an immovable object.

Great scissor for a great price – and with the large finger holes even the hammy handed should find these comfortable.

Note: This is an unsolicited quick review of this product. The scissor was purchased at full retail from a shop.

And One to Rule them All

If you tie a lot of bass flies a pandemic is a welcome interlude given how enforced isolation and “work from home” is instrumental in creating the debris field from all those large hooks you stuffed with marabou, rubber legs, lead wire, and spun deer hair.

… and, even better, most of the folks sheltering in place with us have seen us lick our fingers after handling all those dead animal parts, and we’ve got no one pestering us to wash our hands, either.

My last trip afield showed my fly box had more plastic showing than flies, and knew I was overdue for an extended “self quarantine” period with a couple fistfuls of Marabou and a lot of Olive Grizzly hackle.

Fortunately, bass flies are not like trout flies and the typical angler need not carry every phase of insect life, in every color, and in both floating and sinking varieties. Instead bass fishing is limited to Big Things that Float, and Big Things that Sink, and only a handful of colorations are required:  Shad, Crayfish, Frog, and anything that resembles a small child or escaped Chihuahua.

While many thousands of sinking bass flies exist for bass, few can match the  qualities of the Wooly Bugger. The simplicity of construction, low material cost, and seductive fishing action has made it a prominent option at your local fly shop – and likely earned a spot in your fly box already.

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Over the years I’ve had to slim down the volume of flies carried and shift focus to colors instead of patterns. Bass are usually associated with frog, minnow, and crayfish baits, and typically are pursued in lakes and ponds. where depth is always an issue given how fly tackle sinks so poorly. The long shank hooks typically employed with a Wooly Bugger allow us to pack lead, bead chain, beads, and allow us a platform for adding considerable weight – which is a boon in lake fishing.

The regular pulse of marabou has always been attractive to fish, and the palmered chenille front and marabou rear make a reasonable facsimile of a swimming  crayfish (which swim backwards), as well as resembling a minnow when yanked with a sustained retrieve, and in a pinch can approximate a frog – with its thin legs and bulky body, despite the fly not being on the surface – where frogs are found.

As a terrestrial angler wandering the bank I look for flies that can be used in more than one role – or simulate more than one prey, as space in my vest is always at a premium. Bass flies, especially the top water deer hair poppers, are  bulky and ill suited for traditional fly boxes forcing bass anglers to cut back on the diversity of flies they carry versus trout fishing.  The physics speak for themselves, as a dozen deer hair Dahlberg Divers  requires a couple of square feet of fly box space versus the tiny amount needed for a similar amount of #16 Griffith’s Gnat. The Wooly Bugger being one of the few styles that compress well in a fly box, allows bank anglers to carry a lot of them (or more colors) without having to carry a suitcase to accommodate their bulk.

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Many of the flies I carry loosely map to roles seen in traditional bait caster tournament lures, as crank baits, jerk-baits, poppers, worms, jigs, and spinner baits, possess actions that are timeless and have been fished successfully for decades. The Wooly Bugger falls into the “jig” category when weighted, due to it’s up-down dance when equipped with a bead head, and is more of a “jerk-bait” when unweighted – as the hackle and marabou provide no resistance to sinking allowing the angler to retrieve it with a variety of fetching motions that resemble numerous food groups.

Lake fishing requires a lot of weight to sink the fly quickly and the fly’s design lends itself to bead chain, cone heads, or large lead – none of which will affect the fly’s action. Streams or shallow ponds typically require less weight, but most of the Wooly Buggers that I fish are heavily weighted – simply due to the big water I’m fishing of late.

Lastly, the attribute that few consider is how the Wooly Bugger is often taught as one of the first flies learned in a beginner fly tying class. Cagey parents might be able to add a request for a few dozen as part of the allocation of weekly chores. Since the pandemic requires both parents and children to stay at home, what better way to ensure their online education complete – then researching the patterns and colors you’ll need for your next family adventure … after they take out the trash …

While it’s certain your stable of newly christened fly tiers will have a lot of defective product and won’t hold together long, it’s still a good bargain. That fly eating tree limb behind you coupled with the two wind knots in your leader will ensure your goodly supply is less so – in short order.

Marabou is cheap and a few minutes away from Tik Tok is downright patriotic …

Fish and GAME Reschedules Emergency Meeting

The emergency meeting to discuss potential area closures and restrictions on angling has been postponed until this Wednesday, April 15th, at 10AM.

The prior “virtual” meeting was inundated with visitors and participants and swamped the conference capabilities, so it is assumed this new date is more robust and can handle additional folks. The announcement and documentation links follow:

The Commission is rescheduling to April 15, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. the emergency agenda item to consider a regulation that allows the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to suspend, delay, or restrict sport/recreational fishing in specific areas within the state due to public health concerns relating to COVID-19. This regulation would automatically expire May 31, 2020.
The regulation allows for a temporary, adaptive approach to delay or restrict sport fishing based on local government and tribal needs and requests to protect public health and safety from the spread of COVID-19. The regulation itself would not implement any restrictions, but would allow for a tailored approach based on state, federal, tribal and local public health and safety needs and guidance. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has received requests from certain counties, which can be found in the materials at the link below.
We thank the angling community and all our stakeholders in advance for their thoughtful engagement as we work together to help California in this moment.
The relevant documents previously posted for this item are available at http://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=178208&inline.

California Fish and Game to Vote on Possible Closure to Opening Day

California anglers are advised to check the Department of Fish and Game’s website tomorrow, as DFG and their respective Fisheries Commissions  will be meeting  to determine whether there will be partial or general closure of the upcoming trout season.

The issue is straightforward; will the migration of anglers from the Big City to the woods due to the Opening Day of trout season bring the COVID-19 virus from the urban centers into the relative pristine of less populated counties?

Nationwide this issue is being debated by many states. Ohio has ceased selling out of state licenses, Alabama, New York, and Pennsylvania have insisted fishing is fine – so long as distancing is observed, and other states have suggested it prudent to stay indoors and not fish – but have no specific prohibition against the activity.

Some states have declared fishing to be a “non-essential” activity and shut down lodges and guiding as an industry. Any angler considering of an out-of-state angling venue should check on the status of both their ability to get a license and whether lodging, guides, fishing, and facilities will be available.

Hardcore anglers have always been isolationists – so the general public is relatively safe from us congregating in any form, it’s the more social amateur fishermen that the state is concerned about. Opening Day is an excuse for the casual social types to drink to excess, blow daylight through living things, four wheel into prohibited areas, and kill without limit, and all of these social graces likely to spread the COVID-19 pestilence.

If fishing is permitted this year it is prudent to check on the availability of camping – as many of state parks are already closed due to COVID-19, and it’s possible that motels and commercial options will be impacted as well. All of the National Parks are already closed, including Yosemite and Yellowstone, and it’s unclear when they will reopen or whether angling will be affected with additional restrictions.

It’s a drought year, so if you setup a spike camp in the woods, please watch that fire ..

A Good time to book a guide date or buy a fly rod

ClosedWith small businesses on the ropes, what makes you think your fly shop will survive?

Fly fishing is a niche business within the already shrinking group that crave the out-of-doors experience – and are willing to fish for anything.

If we use restaurants as a parallel, fast food and fast-casual chains will survive as they are fluent in the take-out business and can double-down on delivery (GrubHub and the like) to ensure revenue is coming through the doors. The fancier eateries haven’t any skills in the repackaging of their entrees, and their exquisite plating and ambience don’t play well with brown bags and Styrofoam cups. Many of the better quality niche players will vanish, as they don’t have the resources and cannot modify their business processes fast enough to survive.

Dining within the confines of their establishment is several months away. Someone will sound the “all clear” and the public will dash outside causing a few small spikes in infections – which will be nursed by the news channels to make us all run back inside, and we’ll be shut-ins for another couple of months until the next brave fellow ventures out and lives to tell the tale.

Fly shops and fly fishing guides are like those high quality niche restaurants. Most lack the mail order business large enough to keep them afloat, their guides depend on the shop’s ability to book vacationing clients to put food on their table, and with the public a no-show for the next six months, many of these small shops will not survive.

Depending on where you live you might actually have two fishing seasons per year. This is the bifurcation of the fishing year caused by the hot summer months, where the best fishing occurs in Spring and Fall – with summer reduced to a morning and evening bite with doldrums in between.

Four or five months means the Spring season will have us hip deep in face masks and irate housewives, intent on keeping us indoors. This may actually be a blessing considering anglers have issues with social distancing on the best holes already, and if we were suddenly required to maintain a proper distance, all hell would break loose …

At best that means you might be able to sneak in some fishing this Fall, so you might consider the following (if you haven’t lost your job already):

  • This year, DONT buy your tackle from Amazon, even if it is cheaper.
  • Book a guide date with your favorite destination shop, for a Fall venue
  • The profit margin on rods largely sucks, so you might want to buy a reel and line and a handful of flies too  …

A lot of us will lose our jobs and find new employment when things are more normal. Until then we’ll be more concerned with mortgage payments and food on the table versus luxury items like new tackle or a guided fishing trip, but this too will pass  …

It will be doubly important for us to support the small shops in our neighborhood, the restaurants and vendors that make our Main Street unique –and our fly shops and those quality destination shops that will be suffer so horribly without clients.

I don’t care if it’s a dollar more at my local retailer, it’s time to ensure those precious local resources don’t get lost to the few larger retailers with the resources to weather an economic downturn.

Buy local … it’s time to give Bezos the extended digit.

Use that COVID-19 induced idleness to prep for trout Season

Shelterinplace300It’s likely your supervisor sent you home with an ill defined “work from home” edict that was hurriedly dumped in his lap from corporate.  For most  of us that amounts to “checking your email” coupled with online meetings as our only obligation.

With trout season a short month away, and your boss hoping you won’t show for the next couple of weeks, what’s a home bound self-reliant angler to do with all that extra time?

Shelter in place, hopefully.

As cataclysms of this magnitude are never foreseen and rarely welcome, one thing is certain,  sitting at home mesmerized by the plummeting value of your 401K is neither pleasant nor entertaining – and while a bit of idleness may be welcome, this is hardly what you had in mind for an ersatz holiday.

As “shelter in place” comes with numerous restrictions our normal angling time wasting pursuits of womanizing and drinking are off limits. Not because we’ve lost interest or suffered a sudden moral imperative … they involve people and are therefore ill advised.

Rather than fixating on the Stock Market or chewing fingernails over the prospects of future employment, focus on all those tackle related housekeeping chores you gleefully ignore each Winter, and get your vest and its contents ready for any opportunities that show them selves over the next couple of months.

Even if the COVID-19 virus is short-lived the economic effects will take awhile to work themselves through the world’s economy. It’ s likely numerous disruptions associated with all that supply-chain upheaval may keep you at home for the Trout Season Opener, so it’s an opportune moment to focus on some of the small pleasures that remain – instead of all the horrid news streaming at you from every device.

THINGS TO DO WHILE UNDER HOUSE-ARREST

Check all backing knots and retie them

Most of us haven’t caught anything bigger than fifteen inches in the last couple of seasons and the last time your backing knot saw daylight was the day you tied it. You’ve been promising to check all your terminal tackle for the last decade and always “shine” the responsibility, now that you’re enjoying some enforced idleness why don’t you peel that floating line off of your reel, test the backing, retie the knot, and reel it through a damp cloth with a dab of silicon gel.

The result will be about six additional feet with every cast, which may be enough to reach that enormous trout that surfaced in midstream …

Unbox all of your flies and touch up the hook points

It’s prudent to pull all of your flies out and check for rust, moth damage, and dull hooks, and while you’re at it, inventory the lot. COVID-19 is likely to disrupt the fly tying centers; India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia – and may cause some fly patterns to be in short supply. Now may be the time to inventory and assess what’s missing, so toss all those that are rusting badly, and sharpen what remains.

While you’re at it, pinch all their barbs, as you’ll lose a few when the entire point cracks off –and can replace them now before the rest of us realize we’re light on #16 Adams.

Read that book you bought and wanted to read

Over the last couple of decades fly fishing has dwindled to a few time-tested techniques and a couple of new ways to cast. Exacting imitation has given way to attractors, and many of the tools and techniques we’ve enjoyed for the last hundred years lie dormant – while we “high stick” or spey-everything.

Chances are you’ve got a couple of books tucked away that may reacquaint you with Flymphs, wet flies, the Leisenring Lift, or any number of hoary and ancient techniques that still work wonderfully. “Mini-jigs” and articulated awesomeness are just fine – and so are many of the simple things that don’t involve Tungsten or 11 foot rods.

Learn how to tie flies

I learned to tie flies from books – which is a fate I would not wish on and enemy. With Youtube resources and Internet-ready big screen TV’s, learning how to tie flies is easier than ever.

Fly tying is the next best option to fishing, but it’s akin to buying a house if you get overly enamored. Chicken feathers cost considerably more than a 20 piece Kentucky Colonel, so you’re trading up for the skills but the price for all that dry fly dander can be truly breathtaking.

Practice casting and rid yourself of that tailing loop

Most of us practice casting while fishing, instead of warming up those skills prior to the season Opener. As fly casting is both hazardous to those behind you as well as yourself, now is the time to work out those kinks in the safety of your backyard, rather than waist deep in your favorite trout stream. Considering how much time is spent unsnarling the knots caused by tailing loops and the flies lost by an ill-timed forward cast, it pays to practice prior to your first trip afield – rather than repeating all that unspeakable horror when armed with a sharp hook.

I’m sure you’ll opt for “none of the above” but at the minimum, start exercising those leg muscles so you’ve got options once you’re waist deep in the current. The distance you’re able to travel from the parked car will determine the population density of your competitors and who’ll will have to cough to clear a spot in the pool …

Classic Bamboo GETS New life as Chinese imitate Tapers

tonkinWhile the Trump administration’s negotiators fence with their counterparts in the Chinese delegation, the issues under discussion may be closer to home than we suspect. Intellectual property and copyright infringement are hot topics as American companies protest copycat products flooding markets and brands suffer accordingly. Fly fishing’s high priced rod market  may be the latest victim in the trade war as a similar blitz of products may be aimed at the classic bamboo fly rod market …

The fishing industry has seen cheap imitations before and they’ve made little headway against our classic rod smiths, but this time may be different, as they’re copying all the classic tapers from the Grand Masters of bamboo, and are pushing them onto eBay at a fraction of traditional costs.

On the one hand, if the tapers are identical to the hoary and ancient bamboo master of antiquity, this gives us the opportunity to cast and fish something potentially quite special, and as the finished product is only $150 per set of dual-tip bamboo blanks, makes the experiment really affordable.

On the other hand, knowing the avaricious nature of many of those wishing to exploit an already high priced market for classic fly rods, we’re likely to see these show in the restoration market, given how easy it would be to pass a newer blank of a classic rod, “… refinished Payne, it’s a steal at any price!” – and only the experts in bamboo construction able to identify which is the contemporary milled blank, and which is the bonafide article.

Currently eBay is hosting bamboo blanks for Thomas & Thomas 7’6” 2/3wt,  H.L. Leonard (Taper 804) 8’ 4wt,Phillipson Pacemaker 8’ 3” , F.E. Thomas 7’ 6”, H.L. Leonard (Baby Catskill) 7’ 2/3 wt, P. Young (Parabolic) 8’ 5wt, Orvis Midge 7’ 6” 3/4 wt, and Orvis Superfine  6’ 6” 5/6wt, Payne (Taper 97) 7’ 4wt, Garrison (Taper 206) 7’6” 4wt, Winston 8052 8’ 5wt, Heddon Black Beauty (#17) 9’ 5/6wt, and many more tapers and makers including Hardy and Powell.

Each set of bamboo blanks range from $95 to about $150, so cost is negligible compared to contemporary pricing, and only the product itself remains unknown. With friendly feedback so easy to manufacture it’s prudent to eyeball what’s offered, yet purchasing the blanks without confirming construction, tapers, and quality, makes this purchase fraught with risk.

There’s not a lot of detail on the seller other than their location  (China) and past sales, and from their feedback log it appears the blanks have only been selling for about one year. Prior feedback mentions feathers, boas, and a sprinkling of wooden items, so the tie to the fly fishing industry remains, but with a different suite of products.

While the geography is friendly to the notion these are Tonkin cane, the pictures offered aren’t of high enough quality to confirm any of the claims of the seller. so caveat emptor remains the watchword.

Classic rod collectors would be wise to study up on which glues and finishes are consistent with old rods – and what methods exist to detect animal glues from modern epoxy, as any recently restored classic will resemble the Chinese imitation in all but hollowing and construction … all of which are hidden in the final fit and finish.