Tag Archives: COVID-19

Hand Weights and Bicycles

bikeWeightWith another drought plagued, fire prone, and unseasonably warm trout season headed our way, it’s time to jettison the fly tying gear and double down on weight lifting and increasing the morning bike ride.

The hand weights and sudden fitness kick aren’t to sculpt my sagging frame into something attractive to local cheerleaders, rather it’s to mitigate what I know is coming this season; low water and unseasonably dry conditions will force us to fish further from the parking lot.

With California’s snow pack was at 55%, and only a sliver of Winter remaining, it looks grim for the coming season and little increase can be expected from existing levels. Continuing drought ensures that our creeks and waterways will be scrawny – and pools that would have supported a couple of anglers for a couple of minutes, will fish a single angler for a handful of casts.

Moving frequently due to the “skinny” water will put additional strain on aging muscles and require us to be in better shape to handle a full day’s fishing.

Lakes and impoundments will act similar. Walking the banks will prove easier as low water offers few obstructions other than accumulations of driftwood and plastic water bottles, but what was shallow last year will be dirt this year, and we’ll be forced downslope to find the water’s edge. That means climbing upslope on the return and having to negotiate all that loose cobble enroute to the parking lot.

Those of us unfortunates that will be lugging a 105 pound kayak, will have to drag the Beast an additional 100 yards to get to the water, and on the return, will have to pull it upslope to get the boat back to the truck. Wheel assemblies make this easier, but the uphill slope and uncertain footing will make boat recovery much more arduous than negotiating a paved launch area.

… hence the emphasis on increasing the legwork and overall tone needed for our preseason workout.

Each of the last couple of years have proved devastating in terms of fire severity and impacts – and this year will be no different. The back country will likely be under additional restrictions (based on COVID and fire weather) so we should plan on issues associated with feeding, housing, and campfires.

I lost access to my local fisheries for most of the 2020’s summer due to fires and the debris field that followed. 2021 is likely to be a repeat as the ground is parched already and what didn’t burn last year is ripe for a dropped cigarette butt or lightning strike.

The Pandemic also resulted in a questionable boon to Fish & Game as an 11% additional folks bought or renewed their fishing license this year. Frequent lockdowns and being stuck at home means outdoor activities are the only approved flavor of social interaction. We may see a small uptick in traffic to the Piney Woods as a result.  Restaurant occupancy and motel / campground availability may also influence by demand, so it’s appropriate to factor into your trip  a few additional bodies attempting to get fed and housed.

These pesky COVID variants offer the remaining wild card in the outdoor mix. Should their increased virulence cause an uptick in the caseload, we may have existing restrictions persist throughout 2021 – despite the boon of vaccinations. Most of California is still bound by the Governor’s Tier Structure, with dining and lodging subject to local county issues, so plan on camping,  and washing down that Beef Jerky with a little branch water … should accommodations prove to be in short supply.

Fish and GAME Reschedules Emergency Meeting

The emergency meeting to discuss potential area closures and restrictions on angling has been postponed until this Wednesday, April 15th, at 10AM.

The prior “virtual” meeting was inundated with visitors and participants and swamped the conference capabilities, so it is assumed this new date is more robust and can handle additional folks. The announcement and documentation links follow:

The Commission is rescheduling to April 15, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. the emergency agenda item to consider a regulation that allows the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to suspend, delay, or restrict sport/recreational fishing in specific areas within the state due to public health concerns relating to COVID-19. This regulation would automatically expire May 31, 2020.
The regulation allows for a temporary, adaptive approach to delay or restrict sport fishing based on local government and tribal needs and requests to protect public health and safety from the spread of COVID-19. The regulation itself would not implement any restrictions, but would allow for a tailored approach based on state, federal, tribal and local public health and safety needs and guidance. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife has received requests from certain counties, which can be found in the materials at the link below.
We thank the angling community and all our stakeholders in advance for their thoughtful engagement as we work together to help California in this moment.
The relevant documents previously posted for this item are available at http://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=178208&inline.

California Fish and Game to Vote on Possible Closure to Opening Day

California anglers are advised to check the Department of Fish and Game’s website tomorrow, as DFG and their respective Fisheries Commissions  will be meeting  to determine whether there will be partial or general closure of the upcoming trout season.

The issue is straightforward; will the migration of anglers from the Big City to the woods due to the Opening Day of trout season bring the COVID-19 virus from the urban centers into the relative pristine of less populated counties?

Nationwide this issue is being debated by many states. Ohio has ceased selling out of state licenses, Alabama, New York, and Pennsylvania have insisted fishing is fine – so long as distancing is observed, and other states have suggested it prudent to stay indoors and not fish – but have no specific prohibition against the activity.

Some states have declared fishing to be a “non-essential” activity and shut down lodges and guiding as an industry. Any angler considering of an out-of-state angling venue should check on the status of both their ability to get a license and whether lodging, guides, fishing, and facilities will be available.

Hardcore anglers have always been isolationists – so the general public is relatively safe from us congregating in any form, it’s the more social amateur fishermen that the state is concerned about. Opening Day is an excuse for the casual social types to drink to excess, blow daylight through living things, four wheel into prohibited areas, and kill without limit, and all of these social graces likely to spread the COVID-19 pestilence.

If fishing is permitted this year it is prudent to check on the availability of camping – as many of state parks are already closed due to COVID-19, and it’s possible that motels and commercial options will be impacted as well. All of the National Parks are already closed, including Yosemite and Yellowstone, and it’s unclear when they will reopen or whether angling will be affected with additional restrictions.

It’s a drought year, so if you setup a spike camp in the woods, please watch that fire ..

A Good time to book a guide date or buy a fly rod

ClosedWith small businesses on the ropes, what makes you think your fly shop will survive?

Fly fishing is a niche business within the already shrinking group that crave the out-of-doors experience – and are willing to fish for anything.

If we use restaurants as a parallel, fast food and fast-casual chains will survive as they are fluent in the take-out business and can double-down on delivery (GrubHub and the like) to ensure revenue is coming through the doors. The fancier eateries haven’t any skills in the repackaging of their entrees, and their exquisite plating and ambience don’t play well with brown bags and Styrofoam cups. Many of the better quality niche players will vanish, as they don’t have the resources and cannot modify their business processes fast enough to survive.

Dining within the confines of their establishment is several months away. Someone will sound the “all clear” and the public will dash outside causing a few small spikes in infections – which will be nursed by the news channels to make us all run back inside, and we’ll be shut-ins for another couple of months until the next brave fellow ventures out and lives to tell the tale.

Fly shops and fly fishing guides are like those high quality niche restaurants. Most lack the mail order business large enough to keep them afloat, their guides depend on the shop’s ability to book vacationing clients to put food on their table, and with the public a no-show for the next six months, many of these small shops will not survive.

Depending on where you live you might actually have two fishing seasons per year. This is the bifurcation of the fishing year caused by the hot summer months, where the best fishing occurs in Spring and Fall – with summer reduced to a morning and evening bite with doldrums in between.

Four or five months means the Spring season will have us hip deep in face masks and irate housewives, intent on keeping us indoors. This may actually be a blessing considering anglers have issues with social distancing on the best holes already, and if we were suddenly required to maintain a proper distance, all hell would break loose …

At best that means you might be able to sneak in some fishing this Fall, so you might consider the following (if you haven’t lost your job already):

  • This year, DONT buy your tackle from Amazon, even if it is cheaper.
  • Book a guide date with your favorite destination shop, for a Fall venue
  • The profit margin on rods largely sucks, so you might want to buy a reel and line and a handful of flies too  …

A lot of us will lose our jobs and find new employment when things are more normal. Until then we’ll be more concerned with mortgage payments and food on the table versus luxury items like new tackle or a guided fishing trip, but this too will pass  …

It will be doubly important for us to support the small shops in our neighborhood, the restaurants and vendors that make our Main Street unique –and our fly shops and those quality destination shops that will be suffer so horribly without clients.

I don’t care if it’s a dollar more at my local retailer, it’s time to ensure those precious local resources don’t get lost to the few larger retailers with the resources to weather an economic downturn.

Buy local … it’s time to give Bezos the extended digit.

Use that COVID-19 induced idleness to prep for trout Season

Shelterinplace300It’s likely your supervisor sent you home with an ill defined “work from home” edict that was hurriedly dumped in his lap from corporate.  For most  of us that amounts to “checking your email” coupled with online meetings as our only obligation.

With trout season a short month away, and your boss hoping you won’t show for the next couple of weeks, what’s a home bound self-reliant angler to do with all that extra time?

Shelter in place, hopefully.

As cataclysms of this magnitude are never foreseen and rarely welcome, one thing is certain,  sitting at home mesmerized by the plummeting value of your 401K is neither pleasant nor entertaining – and while a bit of idleness may be welcome, this is hardly what you had in mind for an ersatz holiday.

As “shelter in place” comes with numerous restrictions our normal angling time wasting pursuits of womanizing and drinking are off limits. Not because we’ve lost interest or suffered a sudden moral imperative … they involve people and are therefore ill advised.

Rather than fixating on the Stock Market or chewing fingernails over the prospects of future employment, focus on all those tackle related housekeeping chores you gleefully ignore each Winter, and get your vest and its contents ready for any opportunities that show them selves over the next couple of months.

Even if the COVID-19 virus is short-lived the economic effects will take awhile to work themselves through the world’s economy. It’ s likely numerous disruptions associated with all that supply-chain upheaval may keep you at home for the Trout Season Opener, so it’s an opportune moment to focus on some of the small pleasures that remain – instead of all the horrid news streaming at you from every device.

THINGS TO DO WHILE UNDER HOUSE-ARREST

Check all backing knots and retie them

Most of us haven’t caught anything bigger than fifteen inches in the last couple of seasons and the last time your backing knot saw daylight was the day you tied it. You’ve been promising to check all your terminal tackle for the last decade and always “shine” the responsibility, now that you’re enjoying some enforced idleness why don’t you peel that floating line off of your reel, test the backing, retie the knot, and reel it through a damp cloth with a dab of silicon gel.

The result will be about six additional feet with every cast, which may be enough to reach that enormous trout that surfaced in midstream …

Unbox all of your flies and touch up the hook points

It’s prudent to pull all of your flies out and check for rust, moth damage, and dull hooks, and while you’re at it, inventory the lot. COVID-19 is likely to disrupt the fly tying centers; India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia – and may cause some fly patterns to be in short supply. Now may be the time to inventory and assess what’s missing, so toss all those that are rusting badly, and sharpen what remains.

While you’re at it, pinch all their barbs, as you’ll lose a few when the entire point cracks off –and can replace them now before the rest of us realize we’re light on #16 Adams.

Read that book you bought and wanted to read

Over the last couple of decades fly fishing has dwindled to a few time-tested techniques and a couple of new ways to cast. Exacting imitation has given way to attractors, and many of the tools and techniques we’ve enjoyed for the last hundred years lie dormant – while we “high stick” or spey-everything.

Chances are you’ve got a couple of books tucked away that may reacquaint you with Flymphs, wet flies, the Leisenring Lift, or any number of hoary and ancient techniques that still work wonderfully. “Mini-jigs” and articulated awesomeness are just fine – and so are many of the simple things that don’t involve Tungsten or 11 foot rods.

Learn how to tie flies

I learned to tie flies from books – which is a fate I would not wish on and enemy. With Youtube resources and Internet-ready big screen TV’s, learning how to tie flies is easier than ever.

Fly tying is the next best option to fishing, but it’s akin to buying a house if you get overly enamored. Chicken feathers cost considerably more than a 20 piece Kentucky Colonel, so you’re trading up for the skills but the price for all that dry fly dander can be truly breathtaking.

Practice casting and rid yourself of that tailing loop

Most of us practice casting while fishing, instead of warming up those skills prior to the season Opener. As fly casting is both hazardous to those behind you as well as yourself, now is the time to work out those kinks in the safety of your backyard, rather than waist deep in your favorite trout stream. Considering how much time is spent unsnarling the knots caused by tailing loops and the flies lost by an ill-timed forward cast, it pays to practice prior to your first trip afield – rather than repeating all that unspeakable horror when armed with a sharp hook.

I’m sure you’ll opt for “none of the above” but at the minimum, start exercising those leg muscles so you’ve got options once you’re waist deep in the current. The distance you’re able to travel from the parked car will determine the population density of your competitors and who’ll will have to cough to clear a spot in the pool …