Tag Archives: anglers

Where we fish from the shores like Gentlemen

tweedWith little to fish for and the only hatch forest fires, I’ve little to hone my skills than science.

“Neovison Vison” is Latin for our pal the Mink, and a study released on the biological implications of Didymo diatoms spread via animal agent has recently concluded in Patagonia, Chile. Mink, like waterfowl, are able to travel much farther than smaller waterborne animals (up to 10 KM overland), making them a poster child for diatom spread given the damp and humid environment their fur represents.

… and how anything liable to rub onto felt soles is likely to do similar when in contact with a Mink’s arse …

Anything immersed in water and coming into contact with damp substrate can carry diatoms, but waders and shoe uppers are an unpleasantness anglers only talk about in hushed circles. We know that were we to point fingers at others with greater fervor would bring into focus our remaining unclean habits and our hypocrisy, and would force us to cast from the shoreline like proper gentlemen.

It’s my opinion our beloved pastime and its many pundits continue to ignore issues associated with waders and wading shoe uppers, having performed their “due diligence” by pointing the finger at felt soles, and ignoring the larger issues of us being the vector for a lot of watershed ills.

Unfortunately true concern for the watershed may have us ensconced in a placental plastic membrane, or Tweed and Deerstalker, as science is proving reluctant to condone anyone or anything’s feet in the water …

“.. wildlife vectors may limit or negate the efficacy of biosecurity measures focused exclusively on the human role in dispersal (e.g. ‘check, clean, dry’ and gear washing stations) to date, management of D.Geminata has not considered wildlife vectors (Reid et al. 2012) a key oversight in terms of conservation planning and efforts to contain or exclude D. Geminata”

Factor in the omnipresent nature of waterfowl and their intercontinental migration patterns, and should diatoms live within damp duck down as they do in Mink fur, they’ll be viable for sixty days flight time, akin to our damp wading gear, yet instead of drying in our garage, landing nightly in a new watershed, and spreading diatoms with each immersion.

Geese were also mentioned as having direct interaction with D. Geminata (swimming, feeding, or touching the bloom).

The article has not yet been released into the public domain, and is available only as a paid download, and therefore cannot be redistributed yet.

IT concludes that 23 mink sampled in two rivers had on average about 3000 live diatoms rinsed from their fur after capture (capture was on dry land), and the kind and type of diatom found roughly matched their occurrence in Nature.

Animals captured near heavy concentrations of D. Geminata had more cells on them than those caught in rivers of weaker diatom density. Which is not surprising at all, and is consistent with common sense.

While humans are one of the animal agents that spread algal cells, and our jets and boats and vehicles make us especially well suited in doing so, our simplistic notion of “our dirty feet” being central to diatom spread and subsequent bloom is growing more holes than a good Swiss cheese.

Dissolved Phosphorus controls the presence of Didymo “bloom” and most of the continents have their own subspecies of the diatom – and have hosted it for some time.

Of particular interest to me is the article’s mention that salmonids are also able to spread D. Geminata. To date we’ve enjoyed an egotistical notion that we are the root of most watershed evil, but even migratory fish scrub the occasional rock – and carry diatoms further up or downriver.

Rainbow trout were mentioned specifically, with a sample of 20 fish having been scraped of mucous yielding no live D. Geminata cells, but Chinook salmon were mentioned as having a better likelihood of harboring live cells in their mucous, but are as yet untested.

This notion I find completely fascinating and potential humorous, given how us anglers flock to salmon streams during migrations, and how our feet may have been blamed coincidentally for spreading the plague our quarry brought with them …

… that ought to bake your noodle.

Harry Potter’s wand would be hexagonal or quadrate

magicI called it “selective accreditation,” as it is frequently employed by parents to point out despite paying for your college education, next to their life-long accumulation of wisdom – you are still an infant.

Fishing, thankfully, is loaded with similar magics and credentials of convenience.

While fishing at Lake Berryessa, before my ill fated rib mash, I found myself pondering how fishing, science, and magic shared an uneasy relationship, how credentials are granted and just as quickly taken away, and like the movies, a contemporary angler must suspend disbelief to ply his craft with a straight face …

… and as I scuttled around the edges of the lake watching for fish and snagged lures, I encountered the familiar five ounce tuna cans – all of which met their fate at the hands of a knife wielding sadist.

Tuna being an easy chum agent, given its ready availability and oily nature. When stabbed repeatedly with a knife and thrown into the lake will dribble its oily goodness and purportedly draw fish to the area.

At least that’s the scientific reasoning. The movie-magic-disbelief relied on gelatinous ground, as if scent of the oily Tuna is the draw, and tuna being a blue water fish found only in the ocean, and this being fresh water, how is anyone sure it’s attractive to freshwater fish?

An average trip to a supermarket can produce a half dozen edible items that smell to us like rotting something-or-other, gym socks, or much worse. Considering neither chum nor quarry has crossed paths with one another, who’s to say we didn’t accidentally pick the Limburger of oily scents?

… and if five ounces of chum is able to draw fish, what about the gallon of fuel leaking out of your bilge, the cigarette butt you flung idly into your wake, or the ounce and a half of room temperature beer you poured into the water prior to cracking something colder?

Toss in all the asphalt-fossil-fuel scent that washes into the lake when the roadway above is rained on – the oils from transmissions and crankcases, the little bits of humanity jettisoned out of car windows that with each downpour edge closer to the lake, and scent … suddenly gets really muddy.

Five ounces being enough to draw fish closer, but how does that compare with a couple hundred pounds of brake dust, powdered radial tire, and a thousand other manmade scents entering the lake via the rivulet behind you?

I’d like to buy into the science, but I think even the science depends on magic.

I’ve never seen a saltwater fisherman filch a big knot of Powerbait onto a 3/0 stainless and fling the combination into a school of stripers, nor have I seen the pier fishing crowd use salmon eggs for perch, so why isn’t the converse true? …

… and if the pier fisherman chuckles, insisting “ … that’s silly, perch ain’t ever seen a salmon egg …” can’t we make the same case for a landlocked pen-raised trout?

Historians agree that science and magic play a role in the maturation of society, which is why both are found in every society on every continent, however remote. Science is the ability to explain natural phenomena, and magic (often called religion) explains all else.

For anglers, science is boring and egg headed – which is why we skipped Biology in High School, and why should the pendulum swing too far towards the explainable, we flock to the indefinable. We know our sport is steeped in magic, and we know it to be the true source of fishing’s awesomeness.

Anglers use the term “luck” to describe that which cannot be explained, for us “luck” and magic are the same.

Magic is why we believe fiberglass is better than cane, as the science can’t give us a convincing rationale. Why graphite is better than glass, boron is better than both, and if it’s ribbed with titanium, or the blank has unsanded scrim, or is light, heavy, long, or short, has raised the performance bar yet again …

Unfortunately even with rods that cast themselves we fail to let the rod practice during the off season and tie the same wind knots regardless of the boons of technology.

Science follows along obligingly and reminds us that Boron is a metal filament (and what idiot would wave that in a lightning storm), and we skip  those pages in the Fly Shop catalog to find the next unfounded rumor – GMO modified cane that excretes carbon filaments as a byproduct of photosynthesis.

Eco-friendly awesome, until we realize Monsanto holds the patent …

Fishing stores have pandered equally to science and wizardry. They delight in selling us snake oil in as many flavors as colors, and do so with the same rhetoric used by drug dealers; merely providing a service to a clientele that would buy from someone else if not them. While many items will prove unfounded and silly a few years from now, retail’s role is simple pimpage, and as sales and “hotness” are proportional, science provides them empty spots on shelves to stock some new eye-scorching magical goodness.

Science suggests that were you able to devote adequate resources to research and were able to explain all phenomena each angler would be successful on every outing. Anglers know should science gain an ascendancy over magic and we were consistently successful we’d despise the sport, as our successes were now ordinary and no longer a testament to suffering and Manhood.

“Matching the Hatch” gains a brief upper hand for a couple of decades, until mottled and natural becomes ordinary, and the pendulum swings back to married snippets of swan and Indian Crow, and iridescent opalescent, and the colorful magics take over.

Thankfully.

And when the latest periodical insists I dump everything for its Ultra-Violet imbued equivalent, and I confirm that scientists have yet to decide whether my quarry has rods or cones, semi-receptors, or is blind as a bat, my thoughts turn to eBAY and how I’ll slurp your castoffs as if by magic.

Ensuring that despite Sirens attempting to lure me to one camp or the other, I trod the path of the balance and avarice, ensuring my hoard of laughables are buried under a stack of recent purchases and no longer visible.