Tag Archives: fishing

Your choice of sides being handgun and adrenaline

KFC_Science200You snorted in indignation when I mentioned it the first time. Abandoning our loser enviro-lobby whose message is not at all effective at stemming Global Warming, and out of touch with youth and their growing Enviro-Apathy, and cough up the last of our bucks so the scientists at KFC can save our sport.

… that’s right, the K-e-n-t-u-c-k-y C-o-l-o-n-e-l saves fly fishing …

Scientists are coming to the realization that all of us that inhabit the seven continents are losing their culinary identity, and are opting to eat the same fatty, breaded, deep fried, artery-blocking crap we love so dearly.

While that’s no call to arms by any stretch – what is a growing problem is that fatty-breaded and deep fried needs specific climates to grow in abundance. Think burgers and beef – and piles of shredded cardboard and sawdust McDonald must feed them prior to making them a Hamburger. “Cardboard and Sawdust” isn’t necessarily as plentiful in Antarctica as it is in Colorado, and if everyone requires the same type of climate to ensure their supply of burger … we’re talking WW III and the Big Thermonuclear Cook-off.

Species of any kind being extincted makes any scientist blanch, so increasing the vitamins and nutrients of the fatty & breaded would is  preferably to deploying a few dozen armored divisions to secure the grassy steppes of Mongolia.

“More people are consuming more calories, protein and fat, and they rely increasingly on a short list of major food crops, like wheat, maize and soybean, along with meat and dairy products, for most of their food,” said lead author Colin Khoury, a scientist at the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which is a member of the CGIAR Consortium. “These foods are critical for combating world hunger, but relying on a global diet of such limited diversity obligates us to bolster the nutritional quality of the major crops, as consumption of other nutritious grains and vegetables declines.”

excerpt from PhysOrg, March 3rd 2014

… and what they’ve validated by fiddling with the DNA of wheat and other crops have them poised to fiddle with the double helix of damn near everything that graces wax paper…

So, I’m thinking …Trout are tasty.

There are a few modifications I’d like to see. Heat resist would be good, eats Didymo and craps saddle hackle would be better, larger breasts, increased muscle mass, big fuggin teeth …

… line snapping, air leaping … survives in warm, cold, or raw sewage, capable of taking a man’s finger off at the joint, kind of fish …

The frail nature of our existing foe has removed the woodsy nature of us Outdoorsmen, leaving us prone to infiltration by latte swilling Metrosexuals. A slimy and dangerous opponent would revitalize the sport, allowing us to add matching high caliber side arms, metal mesh accessories, and we could sweep the decks of Puce polo shirts, the apres-fishing latte, and most of the “Ralph Lauren” crowd that have weakened our ranks.

The Brass lining of what is likely be a journal of a drought year

snagged_lureWe had a brief taste in the Seventies where the drought became so all encompassing as to draw a halt to most outdoor pursuits, and 2014 is looking dire for California anglers.

Only about sixty days remain of our Winter, and this weekend is the first moisture we’ve seen since August of last year. We’ve had a few light sprinkles of a couple hours duration but nothing that hints of our historic norms.

The Sacramento River shows about 15 foot of bank, meaning both Shasta Lake and Oroville were deeply drawn down last summer to ship the water to Southern California and the Kern Water Bank, and “The Big Gamble”, hoping  Winter would be wet enough to hide last year’s massive transfers has failed, with accusations of water-philandering making headlines and leaving Northern California cities parched and dry.

The Russian and American will be closed shortly, along with a dozen other coastal rivers. Folsom Lake has a mile of exposed bank you must traverse to get to the water’s edge, and sunken towns have emerged from the depths, and what few salmon spawned earlier in the year have had their redds trodden underfoot.

Remembering the drought of the Seventies has me scouting the odd water, staying away from natural watercourses and hiking along canals that move water south. I’m betting what little fishing is offered in my area will be in waters that convey liquid elsewhere, figuring tomatoes will get theirs before fish get more than a droplet.

It’s a dim view to be sure, but these are about to become exceptional times.

My memories are the season will be abbreviated and our options quite small. Those that backpack or camp will be reminded that drought is both the absence of water and the threat of fire. The Park Service and US Forest Service will likely implement restrictions of fires in the back country; no open fire pits, exposed flames, and gas stoves only, followed by a full prohibition and closure if the fire danger becomes extreme.

Boat launching will be nearly impossible given the many hundreds of yards the ramps will be from the water’s edge, and anyone with more than fifty pounds of boat or gear will be changing their plans if they forget to call in advance for conditions.

All the Big Bugs that fly fishermen lust over will have hatched before Opening Day, and anything past May will fish like August – a bit of morning and evening activity with stressed and lethargic fish for the balance of the day.

But it’s not all bad. You’ll have a once in a lifetime opportunity to map the contours of your favorite lakes, and armed with a good camera and a GPS unit you can mark brush piles, old streambeds, rocky points, sunken cars, and everything else that offers cover and shade.

More importantly is the Pirate’s Treasure of Kastmasters, Mepps Black Furies, Anglia Minnows, Super-Dupers, and the acres of rapidly oxidizing purple worms available, punctuated by weights and jig heads beyond counting.

While some out of the way timber may resemble Christmas trees with their dangling monofilament and gaily colored Rat-L-Traps, the truly big scores come from a source not so obvious to the opportunistic angler. Wander the high traffic shoreline alert for tree stumps within casting range or parking lots and fishing piers.

Anglers will reel their rig back towards the shore snagging the far side of the stump. The lure remains firmly attached until the hook rusts and the lure body falls to the base of the stump. Years of sediment and algae will hide the trove under now-dry dirt, when disturbed, will yield dozens of lures from the same mound.

Armed with a box of small kirbed single hooks, snap rings and silver polish and you’ll be able to refurbish everything you find back to original factory gleam. Once refurbished they can be used lessen the pain of a family outing, as sharp hooks in unfamiliar (small) hands can place considerable strain on Poppa’s wallet.

She waved in the general direction of the Hot Pink Shoe Goo

What was a working theory is now a confirmed fishing axiom. Only suffering while fishing begets great fishing. Actual knowledge of fish, flies, or casting has nothing to do with the outcome.

It started with the blown seam in the heel of my hip boots and the obligatory pants leg of lukewarm creek water. Anyone who’s spent any real time afield recognizes leaks aren’t real suffering, it’s part of the larger woodsy experience. Waders full of water only cause real hardship when it’s the other fellow’s waders and the long walk back to the car turns swearing and misfortune into an incessant whine.

To be bemoaned at his every retelling thereafter, naturally.

Not_Suffering

Rather, real suffering starts at the Big Box sporting goods franchise, where you’re ignored by the high school girls staffing the premises, and when approached glance at you distastefully while you pantomime what fishing is … followed by your asking whether there’s any repair adhesive on the premises …

… and while their drying fingernails prevent them from actually checking the rack, they wave in the direction of the Hot Pink Shoe Goo hoping that will make you go away.

There’s little sense getting worked up at this inhumane treatment. Next time retaliate by asking where the Speedo’s are … then emerge from the dressing room wondering aloud which color makes your gut look smaller.

That’s sporting goods retail suffering, of the highest order …

Real suffering is patching those waders and crossing the creek dry, where your elation dissolves in a wave of sour and stale coming from the field above. The rich smell of blood caused by last week’s tomato harvest replaced by the thick musk of upwind fertilizer. Dry enough so you no longer fear stepping in it, but as off-putting as it’s fresh variant when spread over a couple thousand acres.

… naturally it’s the thousand acres lining the creek, and temperatures flirt with triple digits.

That’s suffering.

While the fish don’t mind and the fishing is actually quite good, you cannot help contrasting the new hole sprung in the toe, with the cool trickle coming in from the heel, and the normally welcome breeze insisting on sharing Dung from One Thousand Cows, and think of the Pristine with sudden fondness.

AlsoBass

But I know that all this pain is for the best. I recognize that soon, somewhere, I will be rewarded for all my suffering. It’s a simple matter of endurance.

Waders Bamboo Rods and Radiator hoses

Rescue Tape RollsFew items are as indispensable to fishermen as duct tape, but it too may have succumbed to advanced helical technology and high modulus with the debut of Rescue Tape.

• Incredible 700 PSI Tensile Strength!
• Insulates 8,000 Volts per layer!
• Withstands 500° F Degrees of heat!
• Remains flexible to -85° F! (-60° C)

Wader Repair will never be the same, with its ability to insulate me from lightning, climate change, and the hoary Northern sub-zero temperatures, my only complaint is it doesn’t taste like red licorice.

… hell, I can even tie flies with it.

Application is child’s play, merely wrap your soggy tuna sandwich in six or seven feet of Rescue Tape, and if you break a rod, spring a leak, or need a quick tourniquet, discard the sandwich and take a half dozen quick wraps around the offending limb …

tags: wader repair, rescue tape, radiator hose, fishing, sandwich

Weather and temperature conspire, but at least I remembered the rain parka

Nothing like a three day weekend to come face to face with wanderlust. One day to do something responsible, one day devoted to NFL debauchery, and the last to piss away adventuring.

That’s my new “politically correct” term for walking around with a flyrod hoping that something other than exercise is on the menu.

A break in the weather afforded me the opportunity to check on Sacramento steelhead fishing; from the bridge I’d assumed a cluster of fellows waving flyrod’s meant something with fins was on the menu, none were in evidence, it was a spey casting clinic put on by a local shop.

I was afforded the rare luxury of watching unfortunates arse deep in too-cold water flinging stuff at even colder water, now I know what I look like to the casual dog walker.

The blue sky ran for cover, taking me with it

That’s the reoccurring theme in all my fishing of late, weather and temperature conspires to keep me fishless, with only the burn in calories to show for all the legwork.

The Little Stinking always offers a good hike, in expected fashion the weather held until I was 3 miles above the vehicle, then the rain started. I hadn’t seen a fish during the entire journey and had the foresight to take the rain parka so I meandered back to the car without mishap.

That’s my Pikeminnow, dammit

I had to examine the film I shot with the same care as the “Zapruder” footage, but I had seen a fish without knowing it. The Merganser armada was fighting over one of my treasured Pikeminnow, I couldn’t hold a grudge as they burn far more calories keeping ahead of me than I do keeping up with them.

At least somebody caught something.

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If you want me to pat you on the Arse, then the suffering had better be commensurate

It’s like hiring someone else to do your fighting for youI like the idea, but it smacks of a “gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” ecological balance. It’s nice that these issues are slowly being acknowledged, but passing the burden to someone else isn’t deprivation, it’s just making the minimum payment on a credit card.

I’m not an ecology zealot, I still have to drive somewhere to fish and I don’t  blink at the consequences, but if I did, the suffering must be immediate to be rewarded.

The way I see it, there are no points scored for extincting a couple dozen species then feeling bad about it, you don’t wait until they’re all gone to change, if you’re sincere about the issue you have to endure hardship, as anything else is lip service.

So, to offset the effect of the fishing tournament on global warming, its promoters are buying carbon mitigation credits. Previously, after calculating the carbon footprint of the annual Gator-Seminole football game, NWF sponsored the planting of 158 acres of trees that will take 10 years to offset that one game’s carbon output.

On a humorous note, I wonder whether them scientists calculated for the obligatory “jawbone” session post-contest. If you’ve endured a group of anglers reciting feats of prowess, you’ll realize there’s more carbon released in the parking lot than the entire sailfish fleet at full throttle.

Maybe that’s the penance we’re seeking, the immediate carbon payback needed to cleanse ourselves of guilt, us fishermen have to tell the truth – the planet depends on it.

Goddamn scary thought…

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A Sailor would blanch at the string of epithets I launched

Here's three more of them It’s editorial prerogative to have “moments” – a fit of pique that prompts you to hurl a magazine across the room,  vowing never to buy another. It wasn’t the magazines fault, it was the vendor advertisement that was the source of my ire.

Two fellows in a drift boat with the appropriate wading ensemble:

WHAT YOU SAY

I don’t care how many fish I catch, it’s just great to be out here on the water.

WHAT YOU MEAN

I’ve hooked seven and you’ve only hooked one.

Once it was the sport of Earls, Dukes, and Kings – now it’s just another counting exercise followed by a reason to tailgate others on the freeway. We’ve covered the counting issue before, as has the Trout Underground, but is that all that Madison Avenue can glean from the entire experience?

I find some guy I don’t particularly care for, take him out far enough so his Blackberry phone has no coverage, then piss on him about his skills until he slugs me?

…I probably have to work with him come Monday, so in addition to getting him burnt by the sun, not sharing the good flies, depriving him of Starbucks, and living off of Chicken Fried Steak cooked by teenagers, I am going to sum up his entire existence and find him wanting?

Pals can piss on each other with impunity, but these lads sound more like they’re dating.

Hey Mister Fatuous, obtuse, know-it-all, metrosexual, pissant – your idea of the Great Outdoors is throwing your dog’s crap over your neighbors fence, and hoping he doesn’t notice. You understand NOTHING, and a majestic panorama, an arrowhead, a glimpse of a real bear, a sunset, a solitary quail call, none of this will you comprehend, none will give cause for thought or pause your march back to your BMW.

I bet you put Ketchup on Steak.

…well, we covered the guy that thought up the ad, now about them guys in the boat…

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It’s OK you didn’t miss a thing

In stream structure, the biggest fish prefer GM products thoughFor them as resolved to do more fishing in 2008, you were slow getting out of the sack and I beat you to it. You missed nothing, although it was reminiscent of a scene from “I am Legend.”

Thick layer of frost on the ground at 0600, colder than blazes (for California) and I had to let the windshield defrost enough to be function before hitting the road. No humans on the road, nothing stirring at all, just the way I like it.

Another fishless prototype I had two dozen experimental flies to test on fish, mostly copper wire creations, as I had received 18000 feet of 36 gauge Ultrawire from an electronics supply house. I always liked the “Copper John” fly, and made up some caddis and mayfly imitations using mostly copper wire.

I’m testing a theory, actually just confirming some laziness on my part. Rather than make a “bead head” version of a traditional pattern, I wanted to see the aerodynamic and fishing qualities of using a traditional pattern and stringing the bead on the leader – not attaching it to the fly at all.

Seems silly to have to tie the same flies twice, once with the bead, once without – and being a minimalist (lazy) by nature, it seemed like a hell of an idea.

He figured the Mice may be slower after so much celebratingI hadn’t been downstream in a couple months, and figured my battle with “Old Nondescript” could wait another week, there was still about 2 miles of river I hadn’t seen between my access point and another further down.

Nothing stirring, no fish activity of any kind. I could see an occasional fish huddled on the bottom unmoving, so I flung copper stuff at branches and headed south.

I’ll spare you the picture of the dead goat in the middle of the river, and the floating tabby cat (who had seen better days), it just served to remind me how “below the bridge” is the debris field for everything that doesn’t sell on Ebay.

The “strung bead” theory works fine, it casts just like a beaded fly, seems to behave well underwater, so that was a happy conclusion to the physics portion. I still hadn’t raised a fish so my copper flies were still in “beta.”

I covered the two miles down to the other gravel elevator with nary a nibble. The fish were asleep and I started heading North to the car. I found a couple of nice pools and saw nothing in them, so I took the hint.

Outside of “Corky” the floating feline, the only live critter was a monstrous owl that sat in the tree above me, giving me that vaguely disinterested look as it puffed itself into a round ball. It was too cold for him as well.

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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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I’m talking America’s Fly, not the unzipped kind

A couple of presidents and a beer I never had a problem with the Dallas Cowboy’s until someone started calling them “America’s Team,” then I started to dislike them. While loyal to their cheerleaders, it wasn’t enough to remain impartial.

Now we get “America’s Fish” the Largemouth Bass. I always thought the largemouth was an entertaining and noble fish, now I’m going to be forced to hate them too. I’m assuming that since the Feds posted the statistics on fishing, some canny fellow has determined that we spend more money on Bass fishing, therefore it’s everyone’s favorite.

Good idea, but a poor application of statistics. That would make the Toyota Camry, “America’s Car” and Microsoft Windows, “America’s Most Reviled Operating System.”

I think the problem lies when someone tries to think for me, I get my hackles up and start dragging my feet, the object then takes on a sinister form,  a conformist’s merit badge.

But that does beg the question, despite your involuntary shudder, is there an “America’s Fly ?” Based on the traditional Japanese “bubble pack” assortment it would have to be the Coachman, Yellow Sally, or the Parmachene Belle. Not a bad lot, but methinks it short of the mark.

It’s hard enough thinking like me, so I won’t think for you. If I was guessing, it would likely be an Adams. Steeped in nobility; two presidents, a biblical figure, and a pretty fair beer shares the name, not a bad choice.

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