A better mousetrap is not without cost

Wanting something more than what’s offered on the shelf is understandable, but bringing that vision to fruition can be hell to pay.

Six months ago, after a particularly dismal showing at the local shop, I’d resolved to enter the dubbing market utilizing all those techniques and foibles learned in youth, drummed into my head by the legion of old guys I looked up to …

… who didn’t mention anything about what happens to your living room, how the neighbors whisper and draw away when you hail them from across the street – nor the visitations by animal control officers, and the sexually transmitted diseases … which was my surprising initial diagnosis based on the symptoms.

Even less well known is the absence of automation to assist, how you have to make due with Momma’s food processor until she’s spitting guard hairs from a smoothie – and spitting mad moments later.

If you really want to make a difference you’re busy listing all the qualities your stuff will possess that the current fare lacks, then start the slow and methodical search for materials that won’t drive the price upward, are readily available, and can be coaxed, shredded or dyed without violating zoning laws, wastewater treatment permits, or turns your backyard into a superfund site.

That’s your first inclination you’ve bitten off far more than anticipated, and the enormity of what a hasty vow in the parking lot really entails.

As most dubbing products are synthetic, or just rabbit, and monochromatic of color, all the easy stuff is taken. So you range far afield of fishing and acquaint yourself with industries that use fur, threads, yarn, synthetics, and anything resembling hair – and wind up with an education about how car upholstery is made, who makes it, and why it’s unsuitable for flies.

Then you start ordering test snippets by the ounce, pound, or boxcar, hoping in all of that wallet-lightening one or two gems will emerge. They don’t usually, so you’re on to the next vocation hoping their materials are softer, longer, or doesn’t melt when you add water.

A sample arrives and hold plenty of promise. A stiff synthetic fiber that has a nice sheen and would offer wonderful texture to nymph dubbing, as it doesn’t slim down when damp. The fly you proportion in the vise would be same dimensions when fished – instead of resembling a drowned cat when it’s removed from the creek …

Naturally I dye about eight or nine pounds into 20 colors, and my new neighbors are peering over the fence line wondering when the rest of the Gypsies show…

… and I’m not at all bashful when displaying my stained tee shirt, where the rust red slopped over the lip of the pot and I threw my body between it and the linoleum …

… intercepting most of it from neckline to mid torso. Now that my “slasher” outfit was complete, I turn to the curious folks on tiptoe at the fence and shuffle toward them woodenly moaning, “ … mmm, Brains …”

The sliding glass door snicked shut – and I heard the muted sound of a bolt closing on a Remington.

Indoors I’m torturing and mixing the dampened mats – teasing them into 96 colors, of which nine are indispensable, 43 are questionable, and the remainder should be husbanded only because no one else has them.

Monday dawns and I’m back to real work, but can’t help noticing the occasional itch at the waistline or below. As I’m wrappered neatly by a desk I scratch as needed …

A couple days later, I’m thinking … fleas? … or Crabs? Entomology being a strong suit, it’s the only thing I can imagine that’s possibly biting – yet small enough to remain undetected. Monogamous or not, you can’t help but have your life pass before your eyes. How do you pose the question to Momma, much less explain their presence in light of complete chastity?

… all this suffering, just to make a couple fly tiers happy? As with any new material, half the fellows will think their familiar standby is better, the other half will tinker with a pack and shrug, and the last two fellows will think it’s worth purchasing a second pack.

It was neither critter as you might suspect. Texture is a desirable quality, but wrapping the synthetic equivalent of fiberglass insulation around thread and the itching that results is just not worth it.

Rinse and repeat.

Natural fur allowed me to resume my acquaintance with the new neighbors. Each weekend featured all manner of stuff dripping gaily from the clothesline, yet most days I was semi presentable and hailed them while dumping a big bag of shorn animal skins into the trash.

“Hi, my name’s Keith, do you fish?”

“No, I golf.”

Golf. Sigh. I’m determined to make the fellow less twitchy and ease his fears a bit, “Ah, well neighbor, welcome – and if you need dogs looked after or the stereo’s playing too loud, feel free to bang on my door.”

“We’re cat people.”

I notice his gaze fixated behind me, I glance around to see what’s so compelling, and realize that red fox tail has been shorn to resemble a medium tabby – just the right length draped outside of the garbage can to give the fellow real drama.

The garage door slams shut, and I hear frantic whispers then silence.

I return from work to see the crowd in the street huddled over something. I walk up to the onlookers and inquire, and they’re pointing at the “flatty” in the road.

A victim of automation is the way I see it. When the truck emptied my trash into the back, one of my fur donors had slipped out to lie spread-eagled on the roadbed, and shaved opossum can resemble Siamese if the light is right …

The fellow across the street joins the crowd holding the “Missing” poster from the mailbox, “… it might be the same cat” – and while the crowd cranes forward in forensic inquiry, I ease back into the safety of my house – wondering whether it’ll be pitchforks and swords, or just searchlights and SWAT.

… and while I’m close to the final prototypes, with just a bit of adjustment necessary before picking the primary color selection – from napkin to product there is a lot of more than meets the eye.

Marker bulk dubbing, fly tying materials, fly tying humor, do it yourself, opossum, red fox tail, fly tiers, blended fur, capitalism

Are you predisposed for fly tying?

Dark Humpy

–via R.M. Buquoi Photographics

Which do you see?

Three deer.

One deer and two fawns.

One deer, one fawn, and a mess of Dark Humpies?

OK, don’t answer …

eyechart

See the last row clearly?

Congratulations, you are now a management trainee, guaranteed a heady career with minimal supervision, long hours, and low wages.

Marks / fly tying vision, fly tying humor, dark humpy, Horner deer hair, goofus bug

His ringtone the sound of a thousand foraging nightcrawlers

We can only assume a similar mechanism exists in fresh water, innocent fish lured away from the safety of fallen logs and deep pools to the shallow end where they can be caught.

After developing for weeks at sea, baby tropical fish rely on natural noises to find the coral reefs where they can survive and thrive. However, the researchers found that short exposure to artificial noise makes fish become attracted to inappropriate sounds.

All that’s really needed is science to isolate the comfortable sounds of field and brook, the bell like tones of hammy feet on cobble, and the sigh of a million mayflies sunbathing. Plug those into our cell phone ringtone, turn over some rocks, rake the bushes of prey, then wait for Mom to call summoning our hapless prey …

Dr Simpson said: “This result shows that fish can learn a new sound and remember it hours later, debunking the 3-second memory myth.”

As there are laws protecting invertebrates, a couple handfuls of mashed pet shop meal worms spray painted to resemble caddis, and we can create the association between sound and meal, taming an immense cadre of intensely hungry fish, all within casting distance, who seek only us.

It’s a recipe for a “guy” romance, if’n you ask me.

In noisy environments the breakdown of natural behaviour could have devastating impacts on success of populations and the replenishment of future fish stocks.

– via Yubanet.com

Were I to bust through the brush and discover some other worthy occupying The Spot, I’d move a respectable distance downstream, and then denude his sport with my siren’s call – saving untold fish in the process.

Marker – pied piper of salmonids, sound and fish, aquatic invertebrates, caddis, intensely hungry fish, fly fishing humor

The Demise of Animal and the rise of the Big Box Small Shop

The other day I was in one of the better shops, and my non fly tying buddy asked me why the Whiting neck was $85 and the J. Fair Saddle was only $20. My explanation was overheard by the smiling fellow behind the counter and he stopped to correct me, “ there’s over 30 years of genetics in J. Fair chickens … “

With my best devilish grin I exclaim, “really? Is that more or less than Foster Farms?”

I was expecting an answering chuckle, but all I got was a furrowed brow and “… will that be Mastercard or Visa?”

We had good reason for our unwavering loyalty to the local fly shop, it being a niche sport and offering a marginal income for both owner and staff. Prices were often higher than the big stores, but there was value in convenience and speed, the ability to run over at lunch to resupply our dwindling pink hackle.

Being a regular had benefits. Usually small; the ability to help yourself to coffee from the stained pot, be the first to paw through the Metz or Hoffman shipment before it went onto the shelves, or to just stand around jawboning with kindred spirits and the owner.

Shops were intensely individual in those days, the mixture of staff, expertise, and brands gave each store unique talents and inventory, but what really distinguished one from the other was their “stockroom animal” and his ability to conjure rarities on a whim.

“Animal” was the guy that could produce anything given enough time, and if you were on first-name-basis you got access to items you’d read about in books – fabled stuff that you’d never seen, always wanted to own, and carried a prison term if caught.

The fly tying section was a mirror of his personality and preferences. It contained what everyone else had, but had Grizzly necks dyed for the local specialty patterns, the occasional uncommon brand of hook because he swore by them, and rarer colors of the standard fare geared to local flies and nearby watersheds.

When the discussion turned to seal substitutes, he’d produce the real thing so you could judge yourself whether Sealex was better than Angora goat. And while visions of sugarplums increased with your proximity to rare exotics, he’d regale you with tales when substitution was unnecessary, as the real thing was cheap and commonplace.

He used his powers to assist in your quest for greed and avarice. He knew the fellow managing the plucking service at the pheasant club, where the pen raised birds had tails of brown and purple, the whole tail and not just the edges…

His minions pillaged the feathers from the gut pile at the bird refuge, yielding bronze mallard, blue winged teal, gadwall, and sprig – whose tips were intact and feathers oily, resilient and well marked.

He was the Scrounger, aka James Garner in the Great Escape, possessed with a web of contacts and shadowy pals that fed a steady stream of hard to find, high quality, and dripping treasures into your hands.

Every shop had one, and we gladly went out of our way to high grade what each was best at – be it elk hair from Montana, Metz and Hoffman capes, or hand dyed materials whose colors you couldn’t find anywhere else. We gladly paid the price as our loyalty was repaid in kind.

It has been one of the most sacred tenets of fly fishing, unflinching support for the local shop, coupled with dropping a double sawbuck on consumables at the destination equivalent, ensuring both remained afloat.

But Animal is gone, along with the coffee pots, the custom materials, and the table where regulars held court.

In their place is the plain and vanilla. Pegboards with tidy little rows of glassine bags each emblazoned not with the shop name but the out of state jobber who sells it. The rarities left with the animal, whose position filled by a retiree or fresh faced youth that are interchangeable with neighboring shops, as they look like each other, act like each other, and offer little to distinguish one retail experience from another.

The backroom is well lit, the linoleum swept and sterile – and the treasures they once contained are long gone.

The underpinnings of the entire support-your-local-shop idea has always been based on their merit and uniqueness, the quality of their service, the hale fellow well met, and the fellow in the back room and his legendary horde.

When the Internet absolved us of sales tax, yielding an immediate 6% – 8% savings, we were in a horrible quandary and our loyalties divided. A Sage rod or Hardy reel was the same in California as it was in New York, and unlike a chicken neck you didn’t have to inspect it to select the best one. Merely pressing a cheek against the glass was enough to determine the size needed – and the search for the best price a paltry two clicks distant.

It’s time to reevaluate our loyalties and ensure our continued support is warranted. With UPS and FedEx a couple days away, is a Wapsi or Spirit River pack of tungsten beads really worth the extra expense?

I no longer think so.

I will always support the destination shops, as they provide the hard fishing intel as part of the purchase. Where are they, what should I use, when should I fish, is a component of that value-add and lost individualism. The destination shop with their proximity to fish and constrained by short seasons are largely unchanged and worthy of my diminished dollar, my shortened vacation schedule, as they continue to provide value beyond the simple sale.

The local shops are another matter. Many have slipped into that “Big Box feel” in their uniformity and inventory, and their staff are no longer memorable enough to distinguish one shop from another.

Most are too neatly coifed to make me feel at home. The surroundings sterile and businesslike belying the earthiness of the sport. No one cursing or sweating over a balky reel, and no coffee stains from the forgetful fellow that parted his hands to show how big the fish was – and forgot the mug they held.

I don’t feel I should linger, and when the coffee pot left, so did the sweaty welcoming crowd that knew me by name.

The animal could tell me things about feathers that I never suspected, stemming from a couple of decades dyeing, grooming, bending them to his will, or haggling over them. With him went the odd merchandise as well as the connection to the local materials and merchants.

Whatever the jobber sells comprises most shops entire color spectrum, and despite hot pink being the money fly for local fish, an out of state vendor dyes and stocks what’s in demand from all their distributors and doesn’t cater to local demand.

Fly selections are in similar shape. Where once they reflected a blend of local talent and offshore volume, now they’re delivered by jobbers and largely uniform. Managing local tiers is nightmarish, what with the drain on materials supplied and with delivery always in doubt. The presence of those flies assisted in differentiating the selection, customizing it to local conditions and utilizing the talents of local anglers.

Those locally tied flies were just as important as the custom materials, they drew the non-tying angler just as the fly tying materials drew me – out of my way and in proximity to the register.

The Elk Hair Caddis purchased at the Cabela’s Superstore, Orvis showroom, or my local shop are all tied by the same hands, why shouldn’t I seek the best price?

There are plenty of skilled fishermen, and even more skilled customers, making it incumbent that sales advice and council walks a razor’s edge lest it appear strident and opinionated – and risk offence. A fly shop isn’t Home Depot, where the cute orange vest and name tag makes you a plumber.

The old days and older ways weren’t better, just different. It was appropriate to insert formal business plans and professionalism, just to slow the hemorrhaging of shops started with the best of intentions, and little head for business.

But professionalism didn’t need to eliminate customer value, or chill what used to be our only outlet for “girl” shopping; where we poked, prodded and flexed, daydreaming that we possessed the disposable cash to own one.

Tighten the operations, introduce the concept of business plan and mission, use the broadening base of the Internet to expand sales beyond the township, and insert a capable manager, rather than a hopeful and underfunded owner.

The coffee pot and table consumed aisle space but translated into long term loyalties and longer term dollars. It gave the shop a welcoming and palpable presence – something that assisted us in husbanding our precious funds and ignoring the brusque big box experience and their savings, from our longer term allegiance and support for the little guy.

Instead we have successful yet chill commerce, a polite greeting when we enter, and a farewell when we exit, and damn little betwixt the two.

… and while I’m happy to refresh my tippet each season, picking up some thread or minor item needed, it’s the Internet that receives the bulk of my purchases, reward for those nimble enough to exploit technology.

Certainly, it’s impersonal, but the UPS driver always greets me by name.

Test – the big box small fly shop, Internet, Elk hair caddis, Wapsi, Spirit River, J Fair, fly tying materials, fly tying animal, Cabela’s, Orvis, Sage, Hardy reel

Once it can swim 40 miles an hour will we quibble about whether it is a fish or not

Some suggest the Mecha-Fish might be used for the forces of Good, leading schools of fish away from oil spills, or other form of toxic calamity.

As we aren’t among those silly do-gooders, I’d suggest a haversack full of AA batteries, red lipstick smeared fetchingly on the front, then released to bring that school of voracious stripers within casting distance.

… then it can go get tuna or salmon.

At minimum we could replace those static rings used by tournament casters and see how they fare against moving targets …

I’d pay money to see Steve Rajeff deliver the Han Solo line, “Good against remotes is one thing. Good against the living, that’s something else …”

Once all the real fish are relegated to seed banks and test tubes, the Mecha-Fish might be our only adversary. Purists will insist it’s capable of carrying invasives and decry its use in anything other than a swimming pool, but once it’s capable of melting a Hardy – will any of us really complain?

With all those fancy fish finishes already decorating large arbor – add some injection molded latex embellishment and we’ve got game.

Test – Mecha Fish, Bluetooth, Steve rajeff, han solo, fly fishing humor, tournament casting, fly fishing purists, asterisk

33% more Golden Pheasant, Free

The only way I can figure it is there must be two demographics for fly fishermen; the starry eyed fellow that approaches the counter with an eight hundred dollar rod and asks, “what else do I need?”

… and the mean old penny-pinching codger poring over the fly tying materials alternately swearing and grasping his chest like it’s the end of his world.

Last year we broke the thousand dollar rod barrier, and debuted a $12,000 titanium fly reel, so why is it that fly tying materials grow smaller with each passing season?

Fish hooks went from 100 packs to 50 packs and the price remained about six bucks, begging the question why didn’t they remain 100 packs and the price rise to $12?

The boxes were sized the same, ditto for the labels, so why couldn’t they just double the price and tell us to endure?

Guys like the Roughfisher could snort a 24 pack of Tungsten beads, chase it with his room temperature ghetto malt and have no ill effects. Twenty four beads is a warm up, it’s a snack – it’s not a “supply” or even a goodly amount.

With Whiting necks and saddles approaching the ninety dollar mark, fly tiers are used to the same price increases as the rod and reel crowd. We’re not going to unlimber a hog leg and start popping caps at the fellow behind the register – we’re aware of the steady drain to our pocketbook, as is the rest of the retail crowd, but outside of hygiene, we’re gifted with similar social skills and patience.

Material packaging is beginning to border on the unrealistic.

… contains approximately 1/2 gram per pack.

I need teal flank and find 12 feathers in the delicate glassine envelope. Three of them were damaged by gassing the plumage per USDA specs, the fellow dyeing them didn’t bother to pre-soak so the remaining feathers have brittle tips from a too-hot dye bath … I mash one getting them out of the baggie and find eight feathers of which three have the markings necessary.

What am I supposed to tie with that? My vacation is a week long and I get three of the “hot” flies to last me?

… 12 feathers per package

If I need more I incur the wrath of the fellow at the register. I plunk down the entire store selection – perhaps ten packs of teal, and he’s looking truculent because the Boss is going to make him restock.

Mostly because he’s only got ten fingers and these are twelve packs.

There was no sudden outburst of gunfire when fluorocarbon tippet rang the register at $15 per spool, about three times what the prior tippet du jour cost – and fly tiers being fishermen as well as craftsmen, bore the burden in silence or didn’t buy it at all.

With all these price-records shattered, why don’t you give us a quarter ounce of the feather, priced however much you want, so we don’t have to come back tomorrow for the rest of your inventory?

Even the beginning fly tier needs plenty of materials to learn routine procedures. With all the mishaps and rejects, his fur and hide cuts should be at least 16 square inches, feathers need to be at least a quarter ounce, and if he’s shell shocked by 50 or 100 packs, we’ve done him a favor by weeding him early.

Test – fly tiers, fly tying blog, fly tying humor, fluorocarbon, tungsten beads, Hardy titanium reel, Whiting necks, bulk fly tying materials

Fly fishing and fly tying have always been costly, but can an employee discount replace a misspent youth

I’m the fellow that leaped off the couch signaling a “wave off” … frantically gesticulating while your diatribe continues unabated …

“Yea, it’s great I showed the shop some of my flies and they want me to tie for them it’s great I get a big discount on all my stuff 40% off on rods and waders and tippet and books and my wife can’t say sheeet!”

“Yea, but …”

“…and the thing that is really cool is I’m tying these twenty dozen wooly worms and they’re fast as hell and I’m making all kinds of money and it’s going to be great ‘cause the IRS don’t know sheeet!”

“Yea, BUT…”

“ …don’t harsh my buzz ‘cause I’m a machine cranking these bad boys out they wanted five dozen peacock and five dozen brown and five dozen purple and five dozen grey so I’m unleashing some serious bucks and you’re trying to rain on my parade ‘cause they didn’t ask you and you can’t tie sheeet!”

“Yea, that was just the first order Meatloaf, new talent always gets training wheel flies to draw them in, and now your new boss is contemplating which miniscule hell he’s going to unleash on your second order.

In fact, I got a dollar that says he wants #16 and #18 Henryville Specials, with the little spray of lemon wood duck between the quill wings, better yet I’ll go lobster dinner if I’m wrong.”

A week later I get the pitiful-yet-defiant voice on the other end of the phone, “I finished that order for wooly worms.”

“Yea, and ….”

“I picked out the Sage rod I’m getting …”

“ … and …”

“ … and the prick wants me to tie 100 dozen Quill Wing Royal Coachmen in size 18 and another hunert dozen in 20.”

“ … and which Sizzler was you taking me to?”

My first order was from a family friend, fifty cents apiece for two dozen #14 Adams. I was about 15 at the time and that was all the money in the known world.

Ditto for the second, third, and fourth orders. Brindle Bugs in size 6 & 8 – only they had to look exactly like the specimen provided; thirty years mashed in a fly box, dampened and dried countless times, bleached by sunlight, then handed over with complete reverence.

Even at that tender age I knew he meant it.

It was bad enough the solution involved lining garbage cans until Poppa offered to drive me to Mecca. That was Creative Sports Enterprises, Andre Puyans, and the giant crate of fifty cent India capes, the only establishment that offered hope of finding a Rhode Island Red that had been pawed over and bleached by incandescent to mimic Rhode kill.

… and the hooks were no longer made, so the hangers-on at the cash register tried to get rid of me with the standard fare, then endured my critical regard for the Mustad’s he offered before I lit him up, “limerick bend small barb, 2X long, bronzed, tapered and looped down eye, steelhead hook … these are model perfect bend and forged, what else you got?”

… even Puyans raised an eyebrow at my steely tone.

I pocketed eighteen whole dollars at the cost of nine. Two weeks of arduous labor to complete three dozen, and the proceeds were a princely sum … for the Sudan or Somalia.

I eked out a small subsidence wage pimping tiny dry flies to school children, until the American Casting Association needed 60 dozen tournament dry flies with trimmed hackle.

Months later, Ma was still sweeping the dander from yellow saddle hackle out of the living room … and I was approaching the dollar-an-hour barrier, which like the speed of sound was something mysterious, theoretical, and largely mythical.

Now that I was big enough to peer over the counter, as I pawed through smuggled Chinese capes at the local shop, mentioned that I “had vice, will travel” … and the portly gentleman manning the register figured he could run me off by demanding to see my letters of marque.

Samples. Lots of them.

… and while he pawed through Caddis and mayflies in assorted shapes, sizes and colors, confessed to an immediate need for Umpqua Specials, size 8, “bring ‘em until I say stop.”

Steelhead stuff was easy money, and as the Umpqua Special was a standard pattern and didn’t require yellow saddle, I was a budding entrepreneur.

“Gray thread? Who told you to use Gray thread for the head on an Umpqua Special?”

I was caught unawares, and while the guilty party was likely Trey Combs or AJ McClane, assisted by a grainy photograph, I realized us commercial fly tiers were not chosen for our artistic tendencies nor innate sense of fashion, commercial flies were “acne” – black heads on everything.

…until he ordered Light Cahill’s, where I heard similar, “Black Thread? Who told you …”

The Devil was always detail. Never leave the establishment without a sample, failing that, never guess, never embellish, and absent a hard sample, lock in the thread color beforehand.

I was an animal.

I started the day brushing teeth and memorizing fly patterns, and while the other kids were at lunch, rifled their desk for the brass tubes from ballpoint pens, drained the ink and made barrels for tube flies. Homework assignments were works of art, their content marginal, but the margins festooned with Trichoptera, mating Odonata and dancing mayfly nymphs for the late assignments.

My pals talked carburetors and valve timings, and I responded with metatarsals and pronotum, both parties nodding sagely at the other’s comments – entirely ignorant of their meaning, but multiple syllables being smarter than singles, whatever he’d said was surely profound.

They discovered posi-traction and I learned their interior was navy blue chenille, and how vinyl fuel line in small diameters makes a great sleeve for a salvaged ballpoint enroute to salmon greatness.

I was “Neo,” The One. The kid that answered strange phone calls from desperate anglers, from Captains of Industry, where black limo’s swooped to the curb and neatly folded brown baggies were exchanged for wads of cash, stock options, or smuggled exotics from far continents.

“Hello?”

“Can you tie a fly called a Green Highlander, and could you have three dozen 4/0’s done by Thursday?”

“Sure, you want that in traditional full dress, or low water, tube-style, hairwing, reduced, original Kelson, the Scottish or Irish variant, spey style, Dee style, on a Waddington shank, or tied on a Salmon double?”

“Shit, I don’t know, they just told me to bring those!”

“I’ll need a Dun & Bradstreet, your last two years of Income Tax returns, and the name of the river you’re going to fish – or you can smuggle an ounce of baby seal back through customs and I’ll waive the fee for the Lady Amherst and Silver Monkey hair.”

“D-d-de-Deal!”

Smuggling was part and parcel of the enterprise, as a trip to Tasmania meant you could afford the surcharge for “real” Tasmanian Devil fur, Newt eyelash, or whatever indigenous species the locals raped for their flies. Upon your return or via anonymous post you sent the plainly wrapped endangered species to a pre-arranged safe house.

Mine. Mostly.

The basement dumpster of the US Customs Office yielded a current copy of the regulations and prohibitions, and offshore vendors were thrilled to label the forbidden package, “Commercial synthetic samples, not for resale.”

Despite all those federal agencies and sniffing canines, there was only one guy at the airport that knew what sawdust in the fiber meant, only one guy that could recognize a Grey Jungle Fowl – and while the dogs pawed through the luggage from Bogota, intent on valises stuffed with white powder, Golden Bird of Paradise just looked like a drab chicken by comparison.

There weren’t any pastel tee shirts or cigar boats in my future, no gold chains – and while my pals had discarded crankshafts and blowers for girls, I was battling moths.

Safely in college, yet broke due to reinvestment of all proceeds, I memorized war movies and naked celebrities. A decade of breathing Naptha and licking arsenic off your fingers meant the daylight hours were spent in class sleeping, and the evenings were tying flies for cash.

Stuff started hurting, first your backside from all those late night cram sessions involving unsteady chairs and great gouts of deer hair, whose hook points were invisible to mashing fingers until you exerted enough for a clean through-and through. The drone of the war movie in the background while you focused on upright and divided, until the soundtrack cued you that the platoon was going to get raked by gunfire, or the point man dismembered …

Ditto for celebrity skin, craning forward to ensure the post on the parachute was just tall enough, only to glance up for the obligatory disrobing scene, followed by three turns of Ginger and a whip finish.

The fly received that – Ginger got what broadcast TV allowed, then faded to commercial.

By then I was “Little Dry Fly” – a rare find for a shop, as the less talented were assigned duties and the Indian names corresponding; the “Zug Bug Guy” or “Balding Hare’s Ear.” None of us were referred to by name or with any real human courtesy – we were commercial fly tiers with clever sounding Indian names, distinguished by our always being late with the order, always short, and when un-chaperoned – always elbow deep in your Metz necks.

We were calloused, hardcore, and harder to find when the order was due …

… the only thing harder than us was getting paid, as every proprietor had visions of retiring to a fly shop and little knowledge of how to run one.

Like hired guns, we’d occasionally cross paths – often when reaching for the same tuft of marabou or grizzly neck – standing hipshot in the thread aisle talking war stories, “… he ordered 400 dozen #16’s? Dude, that’s depressing, count backwards or something so it seems like you got more done …”

Flies didn’t exist singly any longer. Your fingers had a will of their own, and only dozens counted. A bright idea for an experimental, and you’d glance down and there’d be a dozen finished.

New thread?

You blink and there's a dozen

… another dozen. New dubbing color?

and another dozen

A bronze olive accident in the dye pot and … you guessed it.

everything results in a dozen

You’re at the height of your craft, mind whirling with combinations and permutations and fingers follow without conscious thought, everything looks fishy, all of them edible, only your fly box is full.

… so is the second one you carry, and the reject box you pretend to leave out for your kin to pillage, and the steelhead box, and the coffee can next to the varnish spill.

… double for the big box you bought for dubbing, and your sock drawer.

… and all those tungsten and copper beads, lead wire and cone heads – are not so much selection as death warrant, and the inevitable header cataclysmic – akin to a Polaris class sub in full alarm dive.

If you’re lucky you’ll leave an oil slick and floating debris, so the widow can toss a wreath at the spot while inviting your pals to paw through all your accumulated Precious.

One day you look back on all that misspent youth and misplaced ardor and wonder – did you ever take possession of that discounted Sage rod, or does the sumbitch still owe you …

Test. Sage rod, commercial fly tying, dubbing, steelhead, bead head, cone head, thick head, fly tying humor, fly tying blog, fly fishing, Green Highlander, baby seal, U. S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, captains of industry

Sure doesn’t sound like guts and entrails

Sure it’s morbid, but knowing all of the scientific hijinks involved haven’t you wondered what they were going to call it?

… a leading producer of functional, sustainable Tilapia biomass …

With the Food & Drug zealots insisting it has to respire to be called “fish” – and the animal welfare crowd insisting it has to have a heartbeat to be an animal – and hence possess a soul, and with consumers adamant that it has to be boneless to be real food, Madison Avenue has to come up with some catchy new phrase to describe the contents of fish-like substance.

On the surface, it’s brilliant.

Note how weak it sounds when added to, “ %$#@*, that noxious bath of chemicals you’ve leaked into the water has nearly destroyed the Tilapia Biomass!”

Widows and orphans don’t exist with “biomass” – as it sounds too much like, “eww, hope I don’t get any on me ..” Now we can stomp life out of whichever species tastes best, without mourners or anyone protesting.

Love it.

Test: tilapia biomass, widows and orphans, real food, madison ave,

Some medicine comes with fins

Ankle deep in a big water year August colds lack the trappings of their wintertime cousins, luring a fellow out of bed prematurely so he can wheeze and wilt under summer’s heat.

Two weeks without wheels and I was desperate enough to risk the mile and a half to the body shop to claim my chariot. Nearly expiring in the process, another 24 hours alternating shots of Nyquil and orange juice emboldened me to attempt the local watershed, knowing it was still recovering from last year’s dewatering, and probably felt as healthy as I did.

The healing properties of brown water are well documented, whatever remained of the cold bug gobbled up by legions of voracious Ecoli, and like Popeye making me stronger with continued exposure …

… and invulnerable should I slip and take a header.

Given the continued high water the last thing expected was to see the bones of the Old Girl exposed.

Little Stinking Aug 2010

The flow is only a third of the old normal, which is consistent with the acres of green tomatoes still in the field. The draw on the creek has extended into August as the harvest has been delayed by the wet weather of Spring.

There’s ample fry evident in the “frog water” – mostly Pikeminnow, but I did find largemouth spawn in the deeper water, and fingerlings up to 3” in size.

Most of my beloved creek was ankle deep however.

At least one pair of beaver survived the Purge, moot evidence of why their reintroduction into the UK is a hotly debated topic. Terraforming being part of their nature, and while both fish and fishermen are appreciative of new cover, the land owner is often less so.

This hole will get a new name

I rested on the bank watched for signs of fish life, but all the commotion was the result of fingerlings growing fat on tiny Trico spinners.

At the Siphon Pool, I managed to wake something of the brood stock, lean and sinewy – a Fedayeen who’d survived on a handful of dried dates all winter to plant a Stinger in the path of a Soviet Hind, or so he thought. A holdover from past seasons that had escaped suffocation, the both of us surprised and winded by the violence of the ensuing tussle.

It might be a tarpon, or a Rainbow

Perhaps through the miracle of a rare shot, you can glimpse them as I do, noble in their own right, burnished by early morning light and worth every droplet of sweat necessary.

Puts a lightness in a Man’s step, sorely needed when faced with the slow regeneration of a dead creek, and a couple miles of burning streambed cobble between him and his beloved Nyquil tit.

Test: Sacramento Pikeminnow, fly fishing for coarse fish, brownlining, Nyquil, largemouth bass, august cold

Introducing the Salmon Pout: Why fly fishing for Carp is the new Purism

In our Bold New World department comes a Salmon angler’s dream, an Atlantic salmon that eats year round, reproduces like a New Zealand Mud Snail and grows twice as fast as real salmon.

The only problem is the damn thing has to be taught how to swim.

Ocean Pout or Conger Eel

You grab a gene from a Pacific Salmon, add a couple more from the Ocean Pout (or Conger Eel, at left) mash the syringe into an Atlantic Salmon egg, and watch the magic happen…

Once you cull the progeny for misshapen ogres and hunchbacks – and fillet what’s left, you’ve doubled your seafood production and the consumer is none the wiser.

As the FDA faces unthinkable hurdles trying to regulate these test-tube fish, producers exploit loopholes in food laws with great glee.

But AquaBounty says FDA cannot legally obligate the fish producer to label the product as anything other than Atlantic salmon. Anything else is voluntary.

–via AOL News

On one hand I’m not so sure anglers will lose out in the mix. At some point a couple of extra genes may produce a scrappy opponent that will provide great sport when planted illegally in a backyard pond, or even the kitchen sink.

As most fishermen rarely eat their catch, we won’t care too much when some lab coat wads a big needle up Mother Nature’s finest, we can no longer afford the outpouring of cash for a weekend-long pilgrimage to the Pristine, or the gear necessary.

AquaBounty says it has launched a “blue revolution,” which brings together biological sciences and molecular technology “to enable an aquaculture industry capable of large-scale, efficient and environmentally sustainable production of high quality seafood. Genetically altered trout and tilapia are the next to be offered up to the nation’s fishmongers.

Once trout hits the aquaculture cross-hairs we’ll see some plaintive bleat from our conservation organizations and the IGFA, but they’ll be steamrollered into quiescence because of the larger issue, world hunger.

If we know we’re headed down this path, the next Theodore Gordon may be the fellow that grows a boutique fish purely for the sporting crowd. Throw a little bluegill genes into some Bluefin tuna, and squeeze the result into something colorful, yielding the Gangsta Trout.

Able to swim at a reel screaming 40MPH, can sheer a seven weight in a single jump, and feeds on Asian Carp, Zebra Mussels, and small children.

Lipstick on a Pig Trout

In light of what is about to occur, I see the Carp crowd having the last laugh, “sure, the water is tepid and the fish have Roman noses, but at least they don’t share any genetics with a Snickers Bar…”

Genetic salmon, Ocean Pout, Conger Eel, Heath Ledger, gangsta trout, asian carp, IGFA, bold new world, aquaculture, fish genetics, carp, fly fishing

Singlebarbed

Fly fishing the Unloved & Unclean