Perhaps we should insist on a waiting period to purchase trout

Idaho Total dollar value for all farmed trout sold by United States growers was $71.3 million dollars, at an average price of $1.39 a pound, down 5% from 2009’s total.

Idaho is the largest grower of commercial trout in the US, accounting for 50% of the nationwide total.

For trout 12 inches or longer, 64 percent were sold to processors and 17 percent were sold for recreational stocking.

Surely it sounds boring and innocent enough, but if trout farms sell 17% of their fish as recreational stockers, it suggests that all manner of genetically manipulated lumpy genomes will be plying our waterways in short order.

Twice the muscle mass and half the brains would be a formidable temptation for some angling enthusiast with a small pond, who wants something other than a traditional warm water fishery in his backyard.

Fast forward to the Asian Carp and a flooded farm pond, whose sudden presence in the Mississippi is liable to rewrite what’s native to North America for the next millennia.

Both trout farmers and salmon growers have insisted genetically modified fish would be grown inland, in restrictive ponds that wouldn’t allow release into the wild, and while much of the recreational stocking is likely state hatcheries purchasing fingerling fish to offset unforeseen calamity at one or more of their facilities, it sets the stage for the accidental towing of the wrong semi to the wrong destination, and suddenly that airtight glove of security is so very porous…

Remember, it’s Infidel yellow

WASHINGTON Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, 20, a citizen of Saudi Arabia and resident of Lubbock, Texas, was arrested late yesterday by FBI agents in Texas on a federal charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction in connection with his alleged purchase of chemicals and equipment necessary to make an improvised explosive device (IED) and his research of potential U.S. targets.

The affidavit alleges that on Feb. 1, 2011, a chemical supplier reported to the FBI a suspicious attempted purchase of concentrated phenol by a man identifying himself as Khalid Aldawsari. According to the affidavit, phenol is a toxic chemical with legitimate uses, but can also be used to make the explosive trinitrophenol, also known as T.N.P., or picric acid.

Dear Khalid,

Heard you were in some legal difficulty and figured to offer a bit of advice to your legal team. Virgins being in such scarce supply here in the US, I thought you’d trade a couple of those 40 you’ve been promised, should I do you this solid …

… besides, think of all the caterwauling and drama them gals would be capable of and the impact to your book study on how to use cell phone primers and lay det cord.

Can you say Green Highlander?

You might want to try the “I was only going to dye a lot of yellow saddle hackle for all those salmon flies I use in Lubbock”, but that’ll require a sympathetic judge – certainly one that fishes regular.

Your lawyer likely has a big dossier on all the federal circuit judges and can play fast and loose until you are promised a favorable venue, so I wouldn’t worry too much.

(… unless the trial is held within the boundaries of the state of Texas, in which case your ass is lipstick and you don’t know me.)

What I’d do is get a spare copy of Kelson’s off the Internet and study which of the old mainstays need the deep yellow picric acid provides. In a pinch, I’d refer to it as “infidel yellow” that way the interested parties listening to your testimony can discern the difference between your “cursed yellow running dog of an infidel” versus regular Banana yellow …

In fishing, a couple shades difference in color could mean the difference between frying fish, and frying like a fish – something them idjit Texicans are all too happy to introduce foreigners to …

Hope this helps.

Apparel promoting a lifestyle of sustainable beer drinking

The concept is sound, I donate 99% to the care and feeding of your lifestyle, you return 1% to something that allows underprivileged kids to kill even more fish…

Is that what you meant by angling charity?

My Inbox is a steady stream of anglers whose high dollar sunglasses perch fetchingly on carefully rolled curly-brim, who insists that membership in their company dictates I should be more green, more ecologically sensitive, more caring, and more demonstrative …

… with my paycheck, naturally.

In typical fashion, some well meaning Montana angler is concerned about the environment and invents strike indicators of corn yarn, which degrades nicely in water, is green as hell and absolves the brotherhood of  explaining why bobbers are necessary to catch trout given that their bright colors bob in the bankside grasses and line most of the landscape.

Knopp creates the indicators by cutting the yarn into lengths and tying a loop into the middle. Then he coats the entire product in an organic paste to help it float. The final touch is coating the loop in beeswax. He plans to package them three to a bag and sell them for $10.

That “lifestyle” tag is going to blind me to the fact that 100 yards of the corn yarn is $8, or that plastic bubble-style floats are five to the pack and a third the price of corn?

… and we daren’t mention we took bread out of the mouths of babes – corn being a foodstuff and better used as aid to some drought stricken province teetering on the brink, versus floating some fly down an expensive resort river, with that doubly expensive guide hovering over your every move.

So why is it that the “Green” idea always has to cost more at the register, can’t we feel strongly about the environment and undercut the bobbercator price versus always doubling it?

Jesus only requires 10% of your get, can Mother Nature be that much more in tune with inflation?

I’d love to limit my studies to insect lifecycles and ignore the faded Miami Vice pastel tee shirts at $25 per, each labeled with a fetching Catch & Release logo that I’ll have to explain to my girlfriend, who’ll think me a poor risk to be her baby-daddy and dump me before I can release her…

I recognize that Sesame Street filled your heads with the expectations that you’ll get some cookie too, but it appears that boat’s sailed and isn’t likely to avoid any iceberg.

As you skipped over history and aren’t likely to recognize real fishermen when you see them, here are the necessary qualities of an angling lifestyle …

lifemag_oldfish He gets an angling lifestyle …

Big bulbous nose, skin like a potato, foghorn voice, broken knuckles, thick clothing to keep out the constant chill, and enough broken veins in the nose to suggest a bottle close to the tiller …

… that’s the “steering wheel” for you lifestyle types …

 gaddafi … as does he.

… but only because all those protestors sprinted past his “line of Death” and he was forced to flee with most of the treasury in tow.

A few goats, a small cottage, and a leaking old boat should fool both the Mossad and the CIA , until the NSA cops to his ratting out Osama and their blanket protection. All the while the Montana legislature is falling over themselves to  rezone the Bitterroot to accommodate a log palace, given that “Mr. Gad-daffy” has elected to pay in uncut diamonds.

Anyone wearing sandals, a ball cap, or pastel shorts isn’t entitled to an angling lifestyle. You’re just avoiding real work, and lack any real flair for guiding or fishing outside of attempting to separate your client’s daughter from her underwear.

Sure there’s one born every minute, but not in this industry. There are few 401K’s and fewer health plans at fly shops, guiding is a young man’s game whose allure will wear off of all but the most gifted and diligent. The rest of us are college educated and at all levels of the real workforce, not the type to be easily impressed that you were able to roll out of bed before noon.

Should you acknowledge that some of us did all this before you graced the planet may make you understand why there are so many lawyers, bankers, and public servants … and so few successful fish bums.

A River of Ciggies and Frappachino runs through it

I’m thinking the only difference between the Trout Underground and my rag, besides his being able to spell, punctuate, and show real wit, is that TC is under 50, suggesting he’s victim to the occasional hormonal surge …

… so we get the occasional flash of round and bouncy, suggesting the gal might exist and sport an unnatural passion for portly and balding – versus my side of the Internet which simply dashes your spirits without the brief uplifting preamble …

… or the flash of skin. Age and maturity does that to old pricks.

Brit_SPears_Guide

Worse is the effect on the rest of the angling crowd; Dick Talleur and Sylvester Nemes exchanged looks before simply checking out permanently. Both were hanging on for the sequel to A River Runs Through It, now that Miss Britney is manhandling the script, greener pastures beckon.

The only good news is that in Kentwood, La – fly fishing contains ample Sonic burger and bait, and the white bucket ain’t for sitting on unless you’re binging or purging, or both.

Cutips or backhoes, we’ll mine the goodie

It must’ve been the Alaska Gold marathon running all weekend in my living room, companion noise while I hacked, chopped, and ground up most of the fur bearing animals resident to North America.

By Monday evening all the bearings in my grinder sounded oval, but she still gnawed away noisily at anything I wadded into the blade area. I could see the big seam on the inside had filled up nicely with tiny fragments of everything fed it in the last couple of weeks, and while my heroes were emptying sluice boxes and nugget traps, I was busy scraping the mechanism collecting the rarest of all fly tying colors, “Ear Wax Yellow.”

ear_wax_yellow

… like white being the sum of all colors, it’s a relatively indescribable yellow, possibly even a light olive, but once you’ve given it a name you see it in a different light – it being the sum of a thousand buggy colors, and how it takes on any shade your whim imagines useful.

EWY_Nymphs

Add a little brown thread rib and it becomes a darker hue – like a true chameleon using the colors of the environment to make itself less stark or obvious.

The tail may wag this dog

Now that my likeness on your post office wall has been eclipsed by Edward Rist and his takedown of rare and exotic birds, and while my accidental brush with depravity rings hollow – compliments of a couple of gifted song birds and an imaginary affront to Audubon, the only way to reestablish myself as some form of natural history anti-Christ would be find something twice as rare and make flies with it.

Us fly tying degenerates being a vain crowd, proud of our hardscrabble hoarding nature, and determined to accumulate enormous collections of shoeboxes that hide the grisly remnants of odd fauna frozen in death. Unfortunately the competition is becoming fierce, with Jeffrey Daumer and Edward Rist making it tough to one up the competition…

We feel we may have rose to the occasion. It’s much tougher when there’s only one available, but it makes a sturdy and handsome tail …

Beard of the Prophet

… given this week’s callousness, it’s Hell I’m headed for surely, but which remains unknown. Hopefully Salman Rushdie has brushed up on his classics, as we’ve got a couple millennia of small talk coming .

To be safe we may want to nuke it from orbit

rotenone-pyrethrins I finished my read of the Yellowstone Lake plan the Park recently published for comment. In it they specify the need to remove invasive Lake Trout and restore the native Yellowstone Cutthroat.

Sure enough, our pal Rotenone coupled with gill netting will be the preferred fish killing method, gill nets deployed by a vendor in the lake proper, and follow-up chemical work for all the tributaries that lack some natural barrier to upstream migration.

I find it surprising that Fish & Game hatchery theory is predicated on us happy anglers killing our limit, but whenever they need to lay waste to a watershed – they never invite us to help ..

Rotenone effects both fish and invertebrates in largely the same way, especially prone are gill-bearing insects that derive oxygen from the water via beating of gills. Naturally that includes everything trout eat, so when the florescent green nasty finally is dissipated by a couple of sacks of Potassium Permanganate, it’ll leave a stream or lake mostly empty of life.

Despite Rotenone having been our chemical mainstay for fish killing for nearly 50 years, but very little science exists on the effects of rotenone on surrounding flora and fauna.

Some of that science is bubbling up unbidden given its linkage to Parkinson’s Disease. Likely making a lot of fellows at fish & game nervous and thinking of transfer from the chemical division back to enforcement …

While that topic is hotly debated, what papers we could find on Rotenone suggests that years are necessary before a stream returns to its historic insect populations, and some streams never return to their pre-poisoning levels.

Why is it so important? Because its use is on the rise given that we’re having to defend both shores and the interior from invasives. Running a multi-day slug of toxic killing agent through most of the tributaries and canals hosting an invasive critter is liable to intersect with drinking water and kids splashing merrily, and if they haven’t baked all that science thoroughly we all could be walking through Love Canal too – the Sequel.

The good news is that now that we no longer care about spotted owls, we can always park some Claymores around the last drizzle of water containing Tricorythodes … then camp in the fast water insisting we won’t budge in between fits of our teeth chattering.

The Unbearable Lightness of being a Rod Engineer

I’ve always thought lightness was among the most misunderstood qualities of fishing tackle. Manufacturers tell us how much better it is to have it, but I’ve always chalked that up to the engineer’s zeal – as it has little or no bearing with fishing.

I’ve heaved 12’ surf rods and a six ounce pyramid at striped bass for most of a day, and I’ve flung a 7.5’ #3 until darkness made me quit, and by day’s end both rods weighed heavy.

The lightest bamboo rod is still heavier than a graphite, a bead head nymph is heavier than its regular counterpart, a fly line can be a half size heavier, and while there are thousands of opinions and zealots that swear by one over the other, none will tell you that lightness outweighs the merits of what they prefer most.

… and if he’s fishing all day, no matter whether it’s saltwater or fresh, regardless of the terminal tackle being a nine weight or a five, all rods are heavy come twilight – especially so if there’s an uphill climb to the parking lot, or you’ve been skunked.

“Lightness” is something that engineers grow turgid over, while us fishermen look the other way and sigh.

with an ounce and an eighth added for balance

Knowing that the next ten days had forecast rain, I met up with a pal to see if we could find some fish. While I’m fiddling with my rod I glance down at [anonymous_meathead’s] weapon and spy three 3/8 ounce lead sinkers attached to the butt.

Images come unbidden, how that engineer rushes into his boss’s office out of breath, exclaiming, “Boss, I got this new resin made with superlight stuff, it appears as if it doesn’t screw up the existing stuff, so we can charge double for our stuff even though it’s half the weight of their stuff!”

… naturally the boss rushes to the elevator so he can tell his Boss in like frenzy …

Then how the marketing manager puts a handkerchief over his handset so he can call all his sales cronies at the other rod companies and claim, “your kung-fu is weaksauce, ‘cause ours is way lighter.”

Which later translates into a litany of superlatives used by hairdressers and chefs – to describe a good soufflé or chocolate mousse, but has little to do with fishing as the addition or subtraction of an ounce is something we do simply because we feel like it …

The fly tying equivalent of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

He looked both ways before passing me the baggy, and being as it’s California I didn’t leave it out in the open for prying eyes, quickly tucking the goods into a breast pocket, before returning to the truck whistling innocently.

I might have been less eager if I’d known more about songbirds and whether you’re even allowed to keep one, let alone how many in possession and which warbler gives the electric chair without the luxury of trial.

Once the evidence was tucked into the freezer I did a little unrefined search to determine that I was now in violation of most fish & game legislation, both federal and state, and in addition to tempting fate with my “salvage” of three dead birds, the next knock on the door is liable to be the National Wildlife Service in full body armor.

Your cats can keep killing birds with no threat of legal reprisal. I don’t think that you can be held responsible, unless you have the feathers in possession. A few feathers in your backyard probably won’t get you into trouble. You, however, can’t legally even pick up a feather that incidentally falls off of a protected songbird. If it isn’t a game species, you probably can’t legally keep it. This is what we have to do. First, we need a federal “special purpose salvage” permit from US Fish and Wildlife. This give us the right to pick up dead migratory birds, as the feds have jurisdiction over migratory birds. Second, we need a state salvage permit as all songbirds are protected. In addition, I must keep detailed records as to what is done with every bird that comes into my possession. That is, is it turned into a study skin, disposed of or released. Finally I have to have a federal permit for any federally listed threatened species and another permit for any bald eagles. That means a separate permit for each specimen. Then there is a state permit for all state listed threatened species. What does this mean if you come into possession of contraband material without the above permits? Basically that you should leave it there, or dispose of it.

Assuming I was gifted the alleged animals, and my sense of utilitarian overcame my traditional adherence to the law, besides the five to life without parole, there’s a right way and wrong way of receiving some dripping lifeform your buddy, or circumstances, presents at your door.

First and foremost the legality of the affair, whether game animal or otherwise is always in question. Second, is the amount of time that transpired before that car bumper intersected the flock of dove, and whether you’re on the fresh or odious side of the bell curve.

If the corpse bounces to a stop at your feet, consider toeing it into a bush, given that there is still plenty of livestock on the creature, none of which will be leaving until the body begins to chill. Tomorrow would be much better to collect your booty, given you can bring gloves and a sterile baggy, versus carrying the bleeding SOB in your shirt pocket …

As did my mysterious benefactor, a couple of days in the freezer ensures that everything living on the host isn’t – and pretty much leaves a scentless little ice cube of sparrow, warbler, or linnet, or finch.

One or two is plenty, and given the wonderful soft hackles they possess, you’ll be gripped by this selfsame dilemma at some point. One or two only because most of the bird resembles every other songbird on the planet; a dull drab brownish gray top and a few gaily colored feathers on the breast or near the tail.

In ice cube form a couple of delicate pinches will remove most of the useable – too big a pinch brings the skin with it, which is undesirable as it’ll add moisture and a hint of decay into whatever drawer is utilized. Small pinches will remove only feather – and due to size there’s only about five pinches of feather worth having …

It_Was_A_Gift

I’d guess these are some form of finch or sparrow, as they have little in the way of color to identify them. As I often wander the owner’s field picking up turkey tails and flight feathers in the fall, my appetite for feathers is well known.

Small birds have small feathers, which is exactly what our traditional materials like Partridge and Grouse lack. Other than using a distribution wrap or something similar to reduce the flue length, soft hackles are often wildly disproportionate to hook size … which isn’t necessarily always a bad thing …

The issue is that small feathers can’t be wound or gripped by hackle pliers, as our hammy fingers lack the finesse to avoid breaking them.

Tiny hackle inserted into dubbing loop

I use them by throwing a quick dubbing loop, inserting the hackle into the loop with my fingers, then spinning the loop to reinforce the stem with thread. As long as the hackle is not tied onto anything, either by its tip or its butt, it will not break.

We've created a tougher stem

As the feather spins with the thread it will shorten, which is why neither end can be attached to anything. The feather will spiral about the thread and consume some of its length in those wraps. Two lengths of thread give it a real “stem” and we can attach hackle pliers and wind the hackle (while brushing it backward).

Olive Yellow Flymph

Note how the hackles are in proportion to the hook size. These are not stiff like Partridge fibers, they’re actually so soft and mobile that I’d characterize them as marabou with a hint of spine. Breathing on the fly will make all the hackle move to the far side, making them incredibly lively in the water – more so than the traditional soft hackles.

I’d recommend not using any head cement. Like marabou the fibers will soak any slop instantly, making them much less effective – and ruining the fly.