Reader’s Digest feels the sting of a war on two fronts

paperboy The print media continues to struggle in the face of the combined onslaught of economy and Internet. We get mighty few clues on how the fishing press is faring as so few are publicly traded.

With Reader’s Digest filing Chapter 11, swapping debt for equity with its lenders, and numerous newspapers opting for digital only, it’s plain the effect is significant.

Even so, Reader’s Digest, the iconic monthly magazine founded in 1922 as a collection of condensed articles from other publications, has been searching for a new niche as the Internet upends the magazine industry’s traditional business models.

… and for each magazine shuttering its doors we have an electronic startup of the likes of This is Fly, Fish Can’t Read, or Catch – which by comparison enjoy miniscule costs and produce equal or better quality.

If I was a collector I’d be disappointed in the slow but steady transition from print to digital, but as each site archives their past issues for ready access I find it much easier to find the article I wanted to reread – or the pattern I wanted to tie – and they’re not cluttering my tying bench or causing domestic issues when I discover my dog eared trove tossed in the trash.

They won’t always be free – the coming revolt with the “per click” revenue model will be short and violent. Until then they’re best consumed hunkered in your cubicle with a soggy sandwich chaser.

Tags: Fish Can’t Read, This is Fly, Catch, Reader’s Digest, ezine, Chapter 11, debt for equity swap, Web 2.0, online angling magazines, per click revenue, redirected eyeballs

Fresh from a town hall debacle, Obama may have been a bit sensitive

The press made short work of our president’s trip to the piney woods. While the political pundits battle each other over details and implications on the national stage –  the question foremost on our lips is, “whose rod, and what fly did he use?”

A relative in the NSA isn’t always a bad thing, especially when I get to SCOOP the entire angling world and reveal the flies the President used – and the current location of the guide that recommended them …

As the papers relayed, President Obama was merely introduced to fly fishing and not a practiced angler. The outfitter supplied most of the flies and included a couple eye catching local variants along with the usual drab Montana lot.

Goldman_Sachs_Fly1

Everything was fine until the President lined a really large fish and while waiting for the water to “cool,” inquired about entomology and how flies represented the various aquatic insects flitting about…

Apparently the Secret Service screened for outright hostiles and Republicans – but missed humorists in their profiling.  The brief dissertation on fly names and entomology earned His Saltiness a double escort to Marine One – with only the President emerging when it touched down near Old Faithful.

The guide is still unaccounted for – but sources tell me that Guantanamo received a shackled prisoner, whose face was shielded by an iron mask. An uncanny resemblance to dumbass, er .. Dumas …

The “Golden Sachs” was sketched on a rumpled napkin, and thrust under my doorway in a plain envelope. A hasty inscription mentioned the President stung two smallish fish before connecting the name with recent events.

201K

Fishing the reduced dressing of the “401K” likely went over with  a thud. I would’ve mentioned its rare hooking capabilities and drawn attention to a local flavor of Lepidoptera with long spindly legs…

… anything to avoid the steely grasp of unsmiling brutes.

What does the most powerful man in the Western Hemisphere wave in anger? Only the most popular rod ever invented, a Shakespeare UglyStik, 8’6” for a #6 line.

But you guessed that one already.

(Full Disclosure: I am a life long Democrat – and completely unapologetic.)

Tags: Obama fishing, President fishes in Montana, Golden Sachs, reduced 401K, Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas, Montana outfitter, Shakespeare UglyStik, Secret Service, Marine One, Old Faithful

Where I come face to face with the Spider Demon

I was acting on a tip. A friend of a friend had heard I was chasing inferior mouths in grimy drainage ditches and had marked a large “X” denoting an unknown ditch overflowing with fish.

I always take these with a grain of salt, as folks that use regular tackle can fish a much greater range of water than I can. It was close by, so I risked the pre-dawn bumper-tag with loaded tomato trucks while sliding precariously in their wake.

The Spider Slough

It’s the height of the tomato harvest, and the cool of darkness allows workers a respite from the 100° daytime temperatures. Harvesters clank away in the fields scraping the tomato plants out of the ground, where their sorted and the undesirables are mashed underfoot. A steady stream of trucks rumble out of the fields spilling tomatoes on every curve, causing the entire county to smell of blood; a cloying mixture of rotting fruit with a hint of the ketchup twang.

I finally found it – technically it was a slough, one of many that feeds the lower Sacramento river, the progeny of countless tomato fields and rice paddies, a toxic plume too deep to wade – and too opaque for flies.

Each body of water, clean or dirty, has its individual style or flair – and despite all the hideous things I’ve stepped in or waded through, this place turned me squeamish.

It’s not the color of the water or the odor therein, I had to face a personal Demon, a special form of Kryptonite that sends me screaming back to the car – something rabid dogs, an angry landowner, or bloodthirsty gangbangers could never do.

Big Man Eating Spiders

Big Man-eating Spiders, thousands of them….

As big around as a half-dollar, and every break in the foliage had 10 or fifteen of them idling in the breeze waiting for some sweaty fisherman to take a face full of creepy crawlies and expire in terror.

My unique flavor of mild arachnophobia is typified by tolerance … until I see the eight-legged SOB, and then his arse is lipstick. The surrounding countryside and my house may belong to “Sir Charles” at night, but come daybreak he’d better dig a deep hole…

It’s an uneasy truce, “don’t see, don’t mash.”

Fortunately all the migrant field hands were at distance, because even though I backed away slowly, the involuntary shudders transformed my normally masculine stride into something a runway model would envy.

Spoken to no one in particular, (A couple of octaves higher than normal) “Nope, no fish there, not worth stringing the rod, Nope.” 

(… cue the squealing tires and spray of gravel …)

I had once heard that Japanese anglers have a custom of entering the water on the sight of a spider’s web – as it means no one has fished there recently…

… which neatly accounts for the skeletons I saw.

Tags: arachnophobia, spiders, personal demon, fly fishing, slough, lower Sacramento River, tomato, Sir Charles, Kryptonite

Bandals, the next great stride in outdoor wading gear

While the crowd eschews felt soles and impresses each other insisting, “I wore rubber back when rubber wasn’t cool “ – note we’ve gone back to the drawing board to re-invent “no-tech” wading…

Gone are those silly laces that neatly strain invasives into your uppers, ditto for the lace eyelet area that traps all the critters, and we’ve reengineered the felt sole to dry faster and grip better with the debut of the Bruce Lee Kung Fu® “Fast Drying Featherweight Sole.” The special Fast Drain© Open Toe design allows you to leave the little bastards where they found you, rather than hosting unwanted hitchhikers.

SB_Wading_Shoe

It beats conventional hi-tech, hi-cost wading shoes as they lack the light weight and positive adhesion offered by the Kung Fu® gripping surface, and are conspicuously absent the deft accent of alloy buckle and fetching faux-leather strapping system.

Mine are so comfortable I wear them around the house – and judging by the many looks received from passing motorists, I’d say these will rival Crocs as the next great stride in outdoors chic.

Big unkempt knobby toes not included.

Tags: Bandals, Crocs, wading shoes, felt soles, Kung Fu, Bruce Lee,

The Rose goes in front, Sweetpea

slurry For all the promise of the Internet and the billions spent on ecommerce, I still got jilted at the alter…

There’s only a half dozen phrases in the English language that should never be uttered – most involve women and drinking, but despite all efforts to the contrary I got one of them yesterday:

“Your waders are on back-order.”

Getting a boot full of body temperature toxic slime is a professional risk if you wander amid vegetables and stagnant creeks. The rest of you must endure the unwelcome icy chill of the Pristine, which is nearly as bad, but lacks the flesh eating bacteria of the Central Valley.  A slide down the bank followed by an unwelcome trickle at the knee or calf is typically shrugged off as fate.

Any gum-chewing teenybopper clerk should know that waders are always a last minute purchase and should never be back-ordered. We swore we’d replace them after the last trip – and blew that task off as the next outing was inconceivably distant; now we’ve got 24 hours before our next adventure and need replacements yesterday, dammit.

… now we’re staring “bare-assed” in the face and it’s all his fault.

My fault really, another reason I should’ve sprung for the Simm’s Headwaters Pants versus the Hodgman Wadewell II – despite their cost, the fellow at the shop would’ve been a little sympathetic …

Foul oaths, fist pounding rage and generous dollop of thumb-sucking in the fetal position. Eventually you find the four ounce tube of Aqua seal and “toothpaste slurry” every seam and surface abrasion.

Out comes the spackle knife and you cover everything else for good measure – hoping it’ll dry by morning. All the while you know it’s not going to do any good – other than to reduce the interior diameter to the point you have to roll them on like lace stockings.

… which can be titillating to be sure, but damp thigh-highs aren’t as comfortable as a couple of well drinks would make them appear ..

Tags: Aqua seal, leaking waders, toothpaste, toxic slime, backorder, ecommerce, Simm’s Headwater pants, Hodgeman Wadewell II, Internet

Nuke them from orbit, Willy-boy!

I’ve always been jealous of the really good social issues, having some neo-Jesus like Bono or Sting whispering in the President’s ear is guaranteed to fast track aid to the starving millions in [insert_name_here].

Us fishermen have endured the conspicuous lack of Tier 1 entertainment talent advancing our issues with heads of state, or immortalizing us in the lyrics of a tune that’ll haunt us from tinny elevator speakers – whose instrumentals follow us down the vegetable aisle.

It’s why we can’t get our agenda past the wooden-faced secretary – and we’re carted out screaming before the network news arrives.

All that’s changed now.

Fresh from saving the entire human race, and specifically saving the planet courtesy of a stymied fish god, we’ve got the porcine William Shatner chatting up prime ministers to save the last six or eight Pacific salmon.

Kirk and Salmon 

Eat your heart out hunters, all you can muster is Ted Nugent…

Mr. Shatner has petitioned the Canadian government to remove all the salmon farms that native fish must pass in their return to fresh water, otherwise he’ll ignore the Prime Directive and lay a three second phaser burst on Calgary, or possibly most of Quebec …

Tags: William Shatner, Captain James T. Kirk, Canadian salmon farms, pacific salmon, celebrity influence, fishing celebrities, tier one pandering, wild salmon, phasers, Bono, Sting, vegetable aisle, elevator music

Fraser River sockeye run is missing

sockeye Anyone seen 9 million missing Sockeye salmon?

It seems that 90% of the Fraser River’s sockeye have vanished in a single season, with locals completely mystified as to the cause.

Salmon farms and their sea lice infestations are among the explanations – but no one suspected an issue until the meager return.

Alexandra Morton, who several years ago correctly predicted a collapse of pink salmon runs in the Broughton Archipelago because of sea lice infestations, in March warned the same thing could happen to Fraser sockeye.

If true, then farming operations will take on the aspect of the Exxon Valdez, sinister – responsible for an ecological disaster of enormous magnitude.

It’s much too soon to point fingers, but an international summit is being called with the US and Canadian governments to hash out issues and identify potential causes (if any).

Tags:Fraser River, salmon farms, sockeye salmon, Exxon Valdez, sea lice infestation, US and Canada summit,

Cosmetic surgery for fish could mean an extra Sage for an unscrupulous fellow

The idea has tremendous potential for us coarse fishermen. The absence of prying eyes will allow us to add prosthetics, paint, and minor cosmetic upgrades like fangs or pincers.

Applying lipstick

Throw a monstrous shark fin on the top, airbrush the beast with the signature camouflage of the Great White shark – then release him after the anesthetic and super glue dries …

… just above the interlopers in your riffle, naturally.

Assist the subterfuge with a panic call from the safety of the shoreline – pointing at the three square feet of gray painted shark fin headed in his direction – and watch the ensuing rout.

You may even get a couple of free fly rods after you recover them downstream …

Great White and Yellow

“Th-th-thanks, if you hadn’t yelled, the SOB might of ate me … I thought they were only in sa-salt water?”

“Naw, once the Salmon were all gone – the bastards have been coming here for years… Get’s really bad around dusk, friend of mine lost his Lab just last week …”

“Shame about your rod … looked like a “Tom Morgan” Winston from here …”

Tags: Great White Shark, cosmetic surgery for fish, Koi paint, airbrush, fly fishing humor, coarse fishing, angling subterfuge, carp, Salmon, fly rod