With cutting edge carbon technology

The process wherein you become your father is long, memorable, and completely horrifying. One day you’re dutifully changing your oil at 3000 miles, only to be reminded that no one does that anymore.

… or your painfully enduring some meeting that’s prolonged by the speaker feeling it necessary to answer his smart phone at every ring, holding the balance of the table a yawning captive.

The phone may be smart, but the SOB using it has the IQ of a cucumber.

What was once  the childish wide smile with face pressed against the fly shop glass has become the “Bah, Humbug face”  – worn only because you own everything good already, and the only thing missing is new, which may or may not be good.

Once we broke the fifty-bazillion modulus barrier, we listened patiently to the superlatives and dismissed ownership out of hand, we’d fallen for that lure back when we could achieve modulus at the mere sight of a sale, or just a fistful of red saddle hackle. Now that we’re in our dotage it isn’t cutting edge carbon technology we’re seeking, it’s just a quiet moment on the john.

And if it has a remote, heated seat, hidden bidet, has quadraphonic stereo, and has the suction power of a Death Star’s tractor beam, including all air in the bowl treated by carbon filtration, the price is goddamn academic …

After a lifetime of icy duck blinds, frozen limbs due to prolonged immersion in icy steelhead water, suffering all manners of discomfort and poor sanitation, handfuls of leaves that prove less so, I’d consider dumping six grand on a bonafide engineering marvel.

The touch screen controls may not have been such a good idea, at least not for us fisher-types.

… and whoever said “Crime doesn’t Pay” wasn’t a fly tier

HandfulofSaddle Those of you old enough to remember Dan White and the Twinkie Defense are about to make bank, but only if you can hold a straight face while being pummeled by Gendarmes and hairless screaming females …

No, we’re not interested in a mundane purse snatching, we’re about to score acres of free 12 – 15 inch saddle hackles that we can turn around for obscene profits on eBay.

US citizen Edwin Rist, 22, who admitted burglary and money-laundering at a previous hearing, was described as a James Bond fantasist by his solicitor.

St Albans Crown Court heard he acted on his “obsessive interest in birds”.

The court was told that Rist suffers from Asperger’s syndrome. His prison sentence was suspended for two years.

Our museum loving “poor little rich boy” has evaded jail time despite stealing 300 pelts from a priceless collection and then parting them out to his buddies overseas (to the tune of about $30,000). It appears the jury bought the tale of misspent youth, video games, and James Bond, which along with Pop Tarts, coerced the lad into a lifetime of antisocial behavior with a hard on for Macaw …

That’s okay, for Dan White it was Twinkies and Coke that made him blow daylight through Mayor Moscone, Harvey Milk, and anyone else that got in his way.

Now that we recognize that I’m showing the symptoms of “an obsessive interest in birds” – and after a lifetime of watching Wiley Coyote fail to capture the Roadrunner, I’m liable to be set off by the sight of dyed saddles, and grab an entire fistful of hair in one big wrench …

… followed by falling prone, curling into the fetal to protect the jewels, enduring the beating while babbling about pyramids and tin foil.

Fishless fishing streak broken abruptly, as were all the Opening Days jitters

It wasn’t overflowing its banks, it was mostly transparent, it was largely wet, completely private and I managed to commit most of the Opening Day sins on my tackle to exorcise me of later demons.

While the first fishable water of the season made it feel like Opening Day, and the jitters that come with throwing your first cast in anger added to the growing body of evidence, Opening Day isn’t till next weekend, where the rest of you will feature all these same highlights hundreds of miles from your home …

I shipped water into my waist highs, right about the crotch area.

I bollixed a cast badly enough such that it combined with the feathery weed it gathered on the return, required me to cut away everything and start over …

I imbedded a fly in a soft and flaccid area of my frame – that can’t be rubbed in public.

I added color to both face and pallid forearms. Bright red.

Peeled a tick off my neck … and had to eyeball every square inch of gross fatbody for fear I was hosting creepy crawlies. I peeked between clenched fingers, recoiling at the doughy expanses of blindingly white flesh that were proof of winter’s excesses.

… and left most of a double sawbuck in bankside vegetation. Which was required of me.

I got ate which was the important thing

But I also got ate. Which breaks one of many long and dour spells, where unruly weather makes finned prey the scarcest photo on a supposed fishing blog.

Moore_Siphon

The creek still has a couple of weeks to wait. While the color is returning it’s not the placid little drainage I remember, nor can it be crossed at any point, as the bonafide white water confirms above.

I’m getting eager to walk it given that the mouth was open to the Sacramento for a full two weeks. There’s no telling what might have poked its nose into my quiet little backwater.

.. and if it doesn’t belong there I may have to start a fish rescue …

Sure I offered to help … myself

If they’d only let me know I’d have been happy to help. Now that all the rain swollen creeks around my place are starting to recede, it’s revealing all the navigationally challenged animals that climbed out of the murky Sacramento and attempted to ascend my beloved Brownline …

brownline_monster

They intercepted this rare Green Sturgeon just shy of the mouth of the Little Stinking, and when I asked could I borrow it, they got all huffy and short tempered. The idea of six foot of prehistoric prey attempting to melt aluminum being irresistible to me…

There were quite a few salmon, striped bass, and sturgeon stranded in the Yolo Bypass upstream of me, the above scene was Fish & Game attempting a rescue – given that once the water dried up, everything would perish.

Maybe next year I’ll wade down there and fling a Ghost Shrimp on a 6/0 treble, just to see what breaks first.

Rock Snot merely “visually unpleasant”

Didymo_MotherConnecticut officials side with US Fish & Wildlife scientists in the belief that the once fearsome Didymo, or Rock Snot as it’s more commonly known, is largely harmless to both insect populations and fish in infested streams.

It’s a win for the fish regardless of whether you believed rubber soles exonerate us of all sins or no …

Didymo has had a negative effect on water bodies in New Zealand, creating large mats on the bottoms of rivers and affecting the food chain. Although the algae has been found in the Northeast, the same effects have yet to be seen in New England, Aarrestad said.

“Colleagues [in Vermont] have assured me that the devastation was not what they’d seen on the other side of the world,” Aarrestad said. And in New Zealand, “there is no scientific evidence demonstrating negative effects on trout populations.”

*Peter Aarrestad, director of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection’s Inland Fisheries Division (and those are my boldings)

All of which makes the articles in the Maryland media that much more humorous. My personal favorite skipped the wading issue entirely, suggesting Didymo was spread by angler’s feet … which suggests the Missus will insist we keep our socks on while in bed.

Now all that remains is for the two groups to get their stories straight, as the US Fish & Wildlife article was written by New Zealand scientists who claim they also saw little damage to their insect populations contrary to the Connecticut excerpt, above.

It’s certain that no one wants to alter any of the watersheds visually or otherwise, but someone in the conservation community needs to alter their sensationalist fear message to match the the facts as they emerge …

For a more formal treatment of  “Didymo as potentially benign”, see the always wonderful Turning Over Small Stones .

There’s a good reason we’re the last of a dying breed

With reality TV performing introductions of the couch-bound to the great outdoors via cracked crab and icy trawlers, or featuring some suicidal dimwit paragliding into inhospitable terrain and doing without Twinkies for a week, I think we’re all a bit tired of network TV’s insistence that the out-of-doors is only for crazed adrenalin junkies and the idle nitwit that gets lost and runs out of gas.

Outdoorsmen

… and when the magazines wade in with the “who’s the bestest” competition, they’ll opt for making it family-fare, suitable for prime time – and in so doing eliminate all the real outdoorsmen.

It’s called the “Total Outdoorsman” Challenge for a reason. We’re not interested in finding the hunter who can shoot the tightest groups, or the angler who can catch the biggest bass in the lake. We want the outdoorsman who can do both. And then some. Like cast a fly rod into a stiff wind. Or thread an arrow into a tight spot. Or bust clays with a side-by-side. Or maneuver an ATV in the mud. Can you do all of this…under pressure? If you can, then we’ve got a $25,000 check with your name on it.

All you’re going to get watching some fat-arse roar through a forest floor on an ATV, is some fellow that isn’t capable of humping his dinner up the canyon, can’t cook the sumbitch once he gets there, and likely couldn’t get a fire lit if he was issued a couple of waterproof matches.

Them guys use drive-thru, mostly scratching their head and pointing at the pretty pictures …

Real outdoors contests should include; how many days can you wear the same tee shirt without bathing, how many beers can you drink yet still cross a creek on a log, how many times can you blow daylight through a fleeing forest animal as it dashes through the parking lot, can you double the size of your fish with a straight face, do you carry single malt or blended, and which kind of leaves should be avoided when wiping your arse below the high water mark …

Those SOB’s are outdoorsmen.

The last thing I need is a gaggle of fly fishermen – or some equally effete rich SOB that breaks clay with a couple thousand worth of finely engraved over and under, or some dandy that insists on getting bow tags -when steel belted radials work all year …

If I’m going up to the piney woods, I’m going with the crowd that appreciates it. I’m tired of telling the ATV guy that he has to pack his bottles and cans out …

We’ve got Black Ants that size, but they float

Fly tying is a mixture of the two Invariably someone asks me, “what’s the hardest thing in fly tying?”

Most expect me to mention the multiple hours it takes to complete a fully dressed salmon fly, or a knotted leg attempt at realism – involving lots of glue and much effort, but those are simply mechanical tasks and may be time consuming, but are easy once you’ve done them a couple thousand times …

What’s the hardest thing in fly tying?  … giving up your reliance on other people’s patterns, showing a little confidence in yourself and your own critical eye.

It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise if you think about it critically, but fly tiers and baseball players are the last bastion of weakness and superstition – the only difference between the two, is that one carries a rabbit’s foot for good luck, and the other dismembers rabbits and carries all four should the good luck run out …

Fly tiers will invariable take some form of instruction to get them started and then rely on books and magazines, or the Internet, to continue the learning process. Over time they learn never to trust a photograph and always refer to the text recipe – knowing that lighting and focus can change the hue and color of the fly, making the components less recognizable.

Lacking all the printed materials in the pattern means the finished fly is damaged goods. It’s Awesome*, worthy of mention with Barry Bond’s steroid enhanced home run record.

Flies worthy of publication have magical properties, each having killed thousands of fish – and therefore chosen by editors for their killing qualities – not to be tinkered with by mortals, or anyone else having just finished an Intermediate class.

It gets in our head early, and lies there like a leaden weight.

As the seasons whiz by we’ll occasionally venture out and develop a bug for some favorite venue we’ve fished for years. When someone spies them they’ll be a lot of pursed lips and raised eyebrows, once their origin is known, and we’ll get a half hearted shrug before they move onto the brightly colored monstrosity in the next compartment, whose pedigree includes magazine covers, the latest synthetics, and an offshore source requiring a new rod, new leader, and the reflexes of a Cobra to fish it …

Yet the lackluster was our fly, it was us, the sum of our deduction and science merits only a raised eyebrow and a shrug.

… and as our flies begin to look like the magazine flies, and we start to surpass them in quality we’re emboldened. We select a handful of prophets, whose flies and articles resonate with us and we mimic their work and science.

At some point even that’s cast aside and we’re no longer following the rest of the crowd. Magazine flies are revealed to be nothing more than some fellow’s anthropomorphic idea of what a Damsel fly looks like – and it’s tied poorly to boot.

Now a fishing trip becomes a snack food; you’re swept up in all the dark nymphs that worked so well on the last trip, and how we’ll invent new dark nymphs just for the occasion – and we’ll marvel that they outfish anything tied from a magazine and anything commercially available in the store.

…and with that discovery, you’ll realize that fly tying is many years of learning different fly styles and their construction, whose colors are not set in stone like the picture – but are waiting for you to enhance and define.

Now that you’ve mastered the AP style, the standard dry, the cripple, the big stonefly nymph, the leech, and parachute, only now does science, art, and fishing come together, and your muse is a tuft of dander, or a clump of sparkle.

Those anglers that don’t tie flies wish they did. All of them, without exception.

They’ll learn the same truths as tiers only it’ll take them longer. They have much less to chose from then the rest of us, and little to unbalance their loyalties to the commercial giants; Adam’s, Humpies, Zug Bug’s and Elk Hair Caddis. To them a black nymph can be the AP Black, or the Black Martinez, and nothing else is possible in black and size sixteen.

Probably why the average age of the beginning fly tier is nearer forty-five, and the stray kid is taking it because his dad is trying a second time. A decade or so of fishing ensures those same truths, newly self evident, means without an indentured servant for supply, art and science will compel him to submit to moths and head cement, and the hardest thing in fly tying will be the easier.

Similar to Radioactive wastewater only different

As aquaculture is still in relative infancy the scientific community is just coming to grips with issues posed by the commercial aspects of so many fish in such a dense cluster. While most of the focus has been local environmental issues and effects to native fish, as the industry matures and we eat whatever wild fish remain, we’ll have to plan carefully as enormous densities of fish may have far reaching effects that eclipse what’s currently attributed to them.

Recent simulations of the effluent plume from a large fish farm suggest the chemicals, fish feces, and uneaten food aren’t dispersing as originally thought, and their taint can follow the coast for some distance.

Sea Lice, and issues with flabby gray flesh, escaped domestic stock, the genetic permutations of triploids and semi-sterile have received quite a bit of press. What’s recently come to light is all that fish pooty in the water is much more concentrated,  doesn’t dissolve very well, and as a result your kids will be drinking it, frolicking in it, and coating themselves and everything else by swimming in it.

While most of the fish yuck is drifting offshore, the dye model presented above suggests the stream of effluvia given off by farming operations will be a complex issue as the industry matures and farm densities increase to replace collapsed wild fish stocks.

Even more of an issue when drinking water sources are used to grow vanished freshwater species.