Tag Archives: angling

Making Hell a Few Degrees Cooler

No parallel exists in fly fishing, and it’s another of the reasons I’m celebrating the differences between trout and bass and the lore and ritual of each.

Summer doldrums for trout fishing means a brief flurry of activity in the morning, and similar in the evening, with midday spent drinking or womanizing. With reservoir fishing for bass, it’s a bit of activity in the morning, lot’s of physical activity during midday, and a nap come evening.

Terraforming is part of my work for next year’s fishing. Building structure into an area that sees a lot of fish already, that will give them ambush points and cover to linger and become residents. Nothing beats knowing what you’re fishing over, and where the big fish sleep at night…

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I put in two walls after the morning grab, about 25 feet of rocks and timbers about30 inches tall. As I visit this area each time, I’ll add to the walls and add a few additional walls further along the shoreline.

This makes a known fishy area able to retain more fish, gives the bait and the predators more places to hide, allows me to cancel my gym membership (next time bring gloves), and makes the midday hours productive instead of walking around blind casting.

… and it makes me feel a whole lot better than sending a check to an angling organization hoping they don’t spend most of it on the chairman’s salary. Improving fish habitat yourself means I get better fishing next year, and I’m making amends for a lifetime of torment I’ve inflicted on my finned pals.

The idea isn’t mine, there’s evidence of a lot of terraforming going on by bass anglers. Rings of Christmas trees roped together and anchored with concrete, rock and brush piles on the banks, it’s plain that the boating fraternity (and tournament crowd) don’t mind getting their hands dirty for their fishing.

Me, I’m simply hoping the ring of Hell I’m headed for is a few degrees cooler than it might’ve been, nothing noble about it.

If the choice is sex or fishing, the fish will get screwed

Ask your average angler whether he’s contributing to the steady decline in fish numbers and you’re liable to get a supersized serving of righteous indignation.

Most fishermen agree that hooking and landing fish generate some  mortality, but they’re just as likely to rationalize the money they donate to conservation organizations, licensing, and taxes paid on outrageously expensive terminal tackle, more than make up for it.

Likewise for the angler that eats fish. As fishermen are keenly aware – our sporting fraternity is among the few groups anxious to see fish propagate, and while we admit to our kill (although understandably quiet about what is freezer-burned and tossed), we’re just as apt to quote similar avenues of compensatory dollars that lessen the impact of our hammy feet on the environment.

Unfortunately those dollars are outweighed many times over by the angler’s yearly outlay on Doritos, Ho-Ho’s, double-decker Bic Mac’s (dripping with plasticine GMO Cheddar), greasy Chili Cheese fries, great slabs of charred red meat, and the butter necessary to slide of that mass down his gullet.

While anglers protest with a pathetic bleat, “… at least we get a little exercise,” – the reality is that we’re fat, and growing fatter by the minute.

And as a by-product of all that questionable gastronomy, our collective diabetes medications are accelerating the feminization of male fish downstream of every sewage outflow.

Estrogens from birth control medications in wastewater treatment plant effluent have been cited as the likely cause, but research has shown that endocrine disruption is not solely predictable based on hormone receptor interactions. Many other non-hormone pharmaceuticals are found in effluent at concentrations orders of magnitude higher than estrogens, yet there is little data indicating the impacts of these other medications. The widely prescribed anti-diabetic metformin is among the most abundant of pharmaceuticals found in effluent and is structurally dissimilar from hormones. However, we show here that exposing fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) to a concentration of metformin found in wastewater effluent causes the development of intersex gonads in males, reduced size of treated male fish, and reduction in fecundity for treated pairs.

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Given that anglers are never prone to accept blame for more than a few milliseconds, and based on what the medical profession insists we do to correct our behavior, it appears as the act of fishing is now a life saving measure, and should be advertised as such to any spouse insisting on lawns being mown or chores being done …

It’s important we do our part to minimize the effects of our diabetes meds mixing with the existing slurry of birth control and female hormones in wastewater. While we can agree to sacrifice an occasional cheeseburger, we’ll waive any chastisement of female additions to wastewater, as we can all agree if the choice is between fishing and “tail” to save a watershed, the fish will definitely get screwed.

Hell, we tried lawyers a dozen times, maybe a fisherman would bring some marketable skills

It ended his election, he should've driven a Bass boat It’s officially an election year, and we’re about to be courted by all the candidates and their apparatchik. Each campaign has a smartly dressed fellow with a overly stuffed briefcase methodically checking off the the important voting blocks each candidate has to acknowledge.

We’ve seen it in prior elections; a baseball cap doffed in Iowa, a tank driven in Michigan, a Hummer valet parked in California – each photo opportunity carefully crafted to appeal to some minute segment of society, “Vote for me, ’cause I’m like you..”

Fishermen are one of those demographics that will get addressed later in the year, the larger blocks of voters get first “dibs.” The question for us is “exactly what does a fisherman president bring, that a non fisherman wouldn’t?”

I’m not talking about the obvious stuff, the Right to Arm Bears, or any of the controversial nonsense, I’m talking about character.

I’ve fished with most socio-economic levels, professions, and all four sexes, so I was mentally comparing common traits, a good president doesn’t need to be a fisherman, but there are some innate talents anglers have that’d be beneficial for a senior statesman.

Whenever they renegotiate the next SALT treaty, I’d rather have a fisherman at the table, as he can mention that we’ve got a space based death ray, and can do it with a straight face. Fishermen don’t see a small exaggeration as lying, and that’ll come in real handy.

The Republicans appear to be beating each other over the head with the immigration issue, a fisherman president would solve that in a fortnight, as over-limit may be embarrassing but it’s still a good thing.

Vote I’m thinking the federal deficit would still be an issue, especially if they stock the Executive washroom with Orvis catalogs, and the Iraqi conflict would be settled in a week, as there isn’t any gamefish worth the continued expenditure.

It would be gratifying to have a “rip snorter” president akin to Teddy Roosevelt, them powderpuffs that inhabit the Beltway would have to lobby whilst swatting mosquitos, a welcome change from conducting state business in a Minneapolis washroom.

But don’t expect to see any trout fishermen, “America’s Fish” is now the Largemouth Bass, so we’ll likely see more wake then wading, it’ll play well with them Southern fellows, and we’ll have to determine who can tie a clinch knot via television special.

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