Tag Archives: fly fishing humor

If you peed enough Bacon would trout want a pork chop?

wastwater3It started with the discovery that hot flashes and night sweats lead to wastewater rich in estrogen and other hormones, making everything downstream of our treatment facilities female and completely irrational near a shoe sale.

Now our worst fears are becoming scientific certainty, anything we eat, drink, and pizzle, dips our watersheds and its many residents in a chemical cocktail of human excesses.

That which is excreted by us is swallowed by them. “Them” being fish both common and noble, insects, tadpoles, frogs, newts, and anything else that buries a muzzle in the creek to drink.

As anglers we’ve limited our outdoor competencies to the lifecycles of fish and insects. Entomology is used as the only device to explain both angling phenomena and our good fortune. Everything else, the lack of fish, the presence of Didymo, the absence of trash, the color of the water, its opacity, are all Mysteries of Nature – marginally understood and endured as part of the outdoor discipline.

Bugs and fish alone can’t explain much of what we witness, yet we use them as the “Lee Harvey Oswald” of angling; the guy they caught and hung, and chemically charged sewage ripples through our watershed undetected like a sniper cloaked by the shrubbery of the grassy knoll.

If the essence of everything we eat and drink are marinating fish, the difference is our visual recognition of them as food and conscious choice. We knew what the chili-cheese fries will do to our colon and eat them despite the pleas of the medical profession. Fish are not so lucky, they enjoy the same clogged artery endorphins we’ve released upon completing our sodden meal, but lack any knowledge of the source of this obscene pleasure.

If our excreted chemicals are part of the watershed then its residents are filled with unexplained cravings, unfulfilled deep-seated needs, and both fish and insects hunt for oddities they’ve inhaled but never seen, hoping it’s a Caramel Macchiato, cheese burger, or nicotine-rich cigar butt.

While afield we’ve seen countless fish dart from cover to inhale some current-borne morsel and being dependent on bugs science have assumed it to be a tumbling mayfly or caddis that caused this feeding behavior. Not surprisingly fish behavior has always been attributed to bug theory, and the reality may be our incessant pizzle of hormones have given them all seven cardinal sins; wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, and the real motivations are akin to our own.

Flick, Schweibert, Swisher & Richards, all join a Human history full of ardent prophets whose outlandish theories were proven wrong after they were burnt at the stake.

Now that our sport struggles to free itself from its classical roots, and real scientists struggle with the role of human diseases, sexual aids, and dietary shortcomings as they pour into our watersheds – it may be time to rethink our dependence on bug-minnow imitations and upgrade our selection to include flavored and scented patterns that imitate the chemical essence of an Egg McMuffin.

Now that artificial sweeteners coat our stream bottoms and antibacterial soaps are denuding our watersheds of life-giving algae, it’s becoming obvious that the next century of anglers will be mastering sewage-sitology, the predation of innocent hosts using effluent based triggers.

It’s not really that far fetched, as it’s possible all of the great fly fishing mysteries remain so because insect science has never been able to explain them fully …

Why do fish prefer one fly pattern over another?

Entomologist: The #12 Royal Wulff more closely resembles the Ephemera Guttulata, and the trout mistakes the artificial for the real insect.

Sitiologist: The trout cannot recognize a cheeseburger by sight, yet it has inhaled beef byproducts in its water supply since it was an alevin. The Calf Tail emits a faint odor of cow flesh and the trout inhales it, knowing it to be a natural.

Why do bead headed flies work?

Entomologist: We’re not sure, but it sinks like a Son of a Bitch so it must be tasty!

Sitiologist: Normal insect imitations look like real bugs that live in the creek. Real bugs hide under rocks, burrow in the bottom, or simply fall in the water by accident. Despite their origin fish know they taste like shit compared to a Twinkie.

The addition of a big shiny copper bead makes the insect imitation something novel and new, therefore they eat the beaded fly to satisfy their craving for Twinkies (which they’ve never seen, and hope this is). Fish are optimists and something new may be that human thing they crave, yet cannot attain.

fivehourWhy do large fish feed at night?

Entomologist: Large fish are wary of predation and feed on smaller fish which are wary of big fish, and therefore unavailable until black dark.

Sitiologist: Large fish have been in the river far longer than smaller fish and therefore have inhaled a great deal more Five Hour Energy, Starbucks, and Rock Star effluent and have considerable trouble sleeping.

Without much else to do they prowl around for smaller fish that are quietly sleeping so they can bully and eat them.

 

Insect theory suddenly showing itself as quite porous in light of the above …

Unfortunately for the wader industry it appears  front zippers are doomed based on the Fish & Wildlife’s concern about chumming …

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.

And like everything else we hold dear, we’ll screw this up mightily

PictureScience suggests that with most arable land under cultivation and with the world’s oceans under duress, the only unexploited source of food remaining is insects.

By 2050 meat production will have to increase by 50 percent. Considering that we already use one third of croplands for the production of animal feed, we will have to look for alternative food sources and alternative ways of growing it," she said. Her suggestion for alternatives is in the form of a domestic appliance that can make protein food out of black soldier flies.

Which for fly fishermen should evoke mixed emotions; we’ll eventually find issue with wanton over-harvesting of Ephemera Guttulata, and we’ll insist on drone strikes on the fleet of Asian factory ships perched off the Columbia, Mississippi, or other local waterway …

But not before spawning a bevy of neo-prophets insisting we, “ …think like the trout, eat like a trout, BE the trout.”

… which will drive an outpouring of wellness-centric, nouveau cuisine,  dry fly recipe books where someone insists, “ … and with a hint of garlic and white wine, Baetis Burger is reminiscent of Chicken …”

The best part being all those YouTube videos we’ll watch featuring well known anglers postulating why a #16 Adams is the “go-to” dry fly … “Well Bob, if you were a fish which would you prefer, that Olive damselfly which tastes like a Chevron station urinal cake – or the Hex – which sucks up all those toxins while it spends a couple of years in mud? ..”

…  and like everything else we hold dear – we’ll screw this up mightily.

First we’re liable to turn our nose up at anything other than “wild bugs”  – which we’ll loosely define as “any insect clinging to a turd so long as its host dries above 7000 feet in elevation” (the notion of Pristine Bug).

Secondly, as all fishermen hate the taste of fish we’ll throw that same blanket over most of the six-legged stuff we currently mash into the gravel underfoot. Opting instead for large fries and some unknown buglike substance served in a greasy wrapper by some pimply teen at the drive thru.

Lastly, like the caste system of India we’ll have the Untouchable’s; any insect that was used as bait back when steaks were plentiful. This’ll ensure maggots, grasshoppers, and meal worms aren’t likely to make our sandwich anytime this century …

… just ask a fellow fisherman if he wants to split a can of sardines with you, note the involuntary shudder.

Of course there will be the occasional off-putting variant. Likely something on sale your wife brings home, so you can discover that Rhyacophilidae needs to be deveined – and even then tastes like chicken liver with a side of beach sand.

Bold New World coming, practice your smutting rise …