somewhere in texas, the mortage payments are gonna get made…

Annual trimmin’ of the chicken wings

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And Slint provides the “where to” answer at YourFuckingPollingPlace.com

Breaking from the good news desk- Stream restoration efforts in Oregon have punk fish running roughshod. Hat tip to The Caddis Fly.

A spate of mysterious disappearances of culverts, logging roads and apparent vandalism to private property has officials scratching their heads and young salmon, trout and steelhead running rampant over areas formerly seldom or never frequented by fish. As many as 10 fish-barrier culverts have disappeared in the last month in the Necanicum River watershed alone, allowing new or vastly improved access to for young fish all hours of the day and night to some 13-14 stream miles. Officials have not ruled out extra-terrestrial activity.

“We’re seeing these young punk fish partying and carrying on in areas they never dared go before,” said a law enforcement official on the condition of anonymity. “It’s almost like someone opened the barn door and said ‘Have at it, you damn young punk fish.’ And by God they did. Our IT folks back east tell us they almost for sure have to be using the Internets and these ‘flashmobs.’ There’s just too many of ‘em showing up to explain it any other way.”

I first read Michael Gracie’s post regarding a new way of managing the “Dream Stream” when it was first published last week. I’m usually skeptical of anything titled or modified with a “modest proposal” usually because that is a siginifier that the ideas contained within are anything but. Before I comment, I’m posting the MG’s proposal in its entirety for two reasons; the first being that I think they entire idea should be heard out, and secondly I don’t want to misconstrue or misrepresent his idea.

Modesty and Twelve Gauges

Let’s turn the Dream Stream into a permit-only water. Draw for days, just like elk hunting season. And pay dearly just the same. No poaching, no guiding, and no cheating. Guns drawn and off to jail with you if you disobey.

Think of the fees it could generate for protecting those fish. Imagine how those fish might behave with significantly less pressure on their poor souls. $50 per day to park in the lot between May 1st and August 31st. And then, say, a $150 per person rod fee during the spawns – February 1st through April 31st and September 1st through October 31st – would allow those fin finned friends to breed without undue harassment. I suspect the populations would explode, and the need for stocking would be significantly reduced too.

Catching wild fish on an extraordinary stretch of water. One now named after a luminary lost. What would Charlie think about this?

By the way, the same could be said for the Taylor, Frying Pan, and probably a few other sections of water too. Raking the reds with a three fly nymph rig for a digital hero shot? I think you should pay out-the-ass for such guilty pleasures. 

When I first skimmed over it, early in the morning and definitely pre-caffinated, my first reaction was “WTF- another let’s ‘privatize the resource’ and make a shit ton of cash in the process and call it conservation”. Later, I went back and actually reread the idea. I won’t make any specific comments on the rivers in particular, but the idea is worth chewing on. I think it is a valid idea and not at all like my first, coffee deprived, impression. There may be some other ways to accomplish the same ends.

Here are some half formed ideas:

1.  I think a smarter approach would be to close the season, or those sections of known spawning streams / rivers to all angling. We already have good mortality data on C&R and can project the impact on the population even in C&R only waters. Closing those rivers down during the spawn removes that stress from population, although this will be as popular as a fart in church to the headhunters.
2. Perhaps an education campaign about the negative impact targeting spawning fish will have. It didn’t take long, especially in cultural terms, for C&R to go mainstream and although there are still a fair number of bank apes out there, conservation is more in the fore than the old subjugate the wilderness mentality.
3. If the route of extra fees and lottery draws are decided upon, there should be some no shit scientific study of how many “tags” should be issued, etc. Big game management is usually executed well in that the lotteries and tags available usually track to the amount of hunting that a particular population can sustain. There would be a similar need for management of fish stocks which raises all sorts of questions- can it be done for a reasonable cost for instance. If it can’t, and the tags are issued based on throwing darts in a dark room, then maybe alternate management methods should be considered.

Again, I’m an amatuer at this and I think MG raises an interesting question that is worth thinking about. Over to you in the comments.

“Bad weather always looks worse through a window.”

- Tom Lehrer

I find myself asking this question when faced with any major life junction.  Considering that I’ve put off most “serious” life decisions for the past decade in the interest of wearing wet waders and not worrying abut the condition of my beard, they’re starting to stack up.

I’ve been fired from exactly one job in my life. I was once the lowest tier manager at a reasonably successful restaurant, they fired me on my 25th birthday because I missed too many meetings. I missed the final meeting due to a 48 hour stint on the Snake that was only supposed to last 24. While the meeting came to order in a musty basement office, I shivered slightly beside the resting embers of an early morning firepit, trying to rekindle the flame of the previous night. When I finally returned to work my next shift (in my defense, I only missed meetings, I never missed work) I was told that I was no longer needed. Instead of looking for more work, I spent the next week camped beside the Missouri with my dog and a marginally employed buddy. Happy Birthday motherfuckers.

Now into the fourth decade of this whole breathing business, I’ve come to realize that the channel I’ve chosen to take has it’s drawbacks, despite what current fishing media would have you believe. I’m tired of being broke, single and odoriferous. I’ve started to take steps, work on finding some balance. I put graduate school applications out into the ether of academia, but only to schools in VERY close proximity to favorite rivers. The woman I moved in with a few years back, when I was a part-time boyfriend, absent four months of the year, has started making less-than-subtle references to a marriage that I should be smart enough to propose. I sold my truck and bought a Subaru for the savings in gas consumption, but made sure to get one that could still easily tow my boat.

Of my close group of high school friends (maybe a dozen people), four are now attorneys (ONE THIRD! holy shit, do you think there are too many lawyers out there?). Two remain unmarried, and  half have spawned multiple times. There are three of us who don’t already own homes. As for my dirtbag fishing buddies? We’re all stagnated in a state of intermittant contentment puncuated by stretches of abstract melancholy. None are married. We’re all broke and without equity (except for the ones with trust funds), and have chosen employment based on flexible schedules and low commitment rather than personal fulfillment. We toil in custom seat-cover factories, restaurants, fly-shops, bronze foundaries, or night-shift sex-shops and never because we give two shits about the job but because the job allows us the flexibility to take off when the call comes in saying “The chrome is in the bucket, I repeat the CHROME IS IN THE BUCKET”.

There has been a lot written lately about the “fishing bum” moniker. There have been movies and stories and articles glorifying the grand lifestyle of the bum. There have been counter-points made to mention that true “bums” push shopping carts full of bartered or cast-off goods that they treasure, and are often homeless and mentally unstable. I would argue that I have spent a good deal of time with fishermen who nearly fit that profile. No one has made any movies about these guys. Guys who honestly live in their cars through rocky mountain winters so that saved rent money can purchase gas, hooks, feathers, tippit, and gas station burritos. Guys who have bartered their way into top quality gear without spending the sort of money one pays for Hodgeman brand neoprene. I can also tell you that it is not nearly as glorious as it has been made out to be. It’s a lonely, uncomfortable and smelly existence. That said, those friends of mine who followed the mainstem flow make sure to tell me how covetous they are of my back-braid shenanigans. How can I tell them I spent the last evening in fuzzy slippers on a soft couch eating homemade soup, holding hands beneath a blanket and watching Olympic ice dancing? Even more difficult: how can I tell them that I ENJOYED it?

I don’t know if it’s possible to walk a line between these two seemingly opposed modes of existence, but I’ve decided to give it my best shot. Doubtlessly, there will be sacrifices on both sides. I won’t be able to drop everything and chase that Skwala hatch on six hours notice. But neither will I have to lay in my tent in the rain (or snow or hail) listening to the vastness of the air around me and spooning with a damp golden retriever wondering how I’m going to make rent when I get back to my crumbling bachelor pad and bare mattress. I can’t help the fact that I view the world from beneath the brim of a battered fishing cap and wouldn’t change that perspective if I could. But I hope that way of looking at things can extend beyond the reaches of rainy-day rivers and skanky Gore-Tex.

g_smolt – tropical disease specialist, sushi chef and bounty hunter – is in the house.  He will be taking names.

You’ve seen the trailer. May be you want to see the whole video. May be you have seen the whole video. May be you should go here to see a little bit of what you might or might not have seen already. Some of it for the sure the latter.

45 minutes of on-stage Fugazi banter…

Since it’s some sort of unofficial last hurrah for summer’s mad knees-bent running about behavior, and also because part of the joy of this weird pursuit is in the characters you meet.

“We had just been invited to join an all day golf scramble and drinking bash hosted by a whole medly of fraternal lodge organizations. Elks, Moose, and Eagles strolled about the first tee. Most of the people were meeting for the first time; our identities seemed secure, but since you can’t be too careful we traded our fishing hats for the fezzes of three staggering-drunk Shriners from Anaconda, then filled out our name cards as Methyl, Ethyl, and Nitrate Blitz.

Not all of the Blitz Brothers were strangers to a golf course. One of them had even played in college. Ethyl had the distance, Methyl the hot irons, and Nitrate, to his bemused delight, found that he could putt. Just like lining up the eight ball for a bank shot, he said. The Brothers for as long as they could maintain their momentum atop the bell curve of enhanced perception were like besotted Jedi knights: the force was with them. The tournament was a scramble, a format ideally suited to their condition.

On the holes that ran with the wind the Brothers were absolutely splendid. They birdied the first and third, then Nitrate drained a thirty-foot putt for eagle from the fringe on the par five sixth. First prize was two hundred dollars, and the Blitz Brothers had already decided to spend it all in one place – like maybe Idaho. Then, on the eighth, Methyl was driving the cart in the rough searching for a hooked ball and lighting a cigar when he should have been watching where he was going. All three brothers hiked the tall weeds to the car, then stopped at a drug store, bought a postcard, drew a map to the cart and signed it with a sketch of a scuba diver, then continued fishing toward the Big Hole River, where it was deemed by popular acclaim to be cocktail hour, and time to switch to gin.”

-from True Love and the Woolly Bugger by Dave Ames, 1996

Dirty Dave Wells with a little dink he picked up on the South Fork of the Snake recently…

from the same gig… awesome….

It’s true that there is no accounting for taste, but this thing looks like an alley cat puked on a Phish t-shirt, tofu burrito stains and all. Will there be a “Rainbow Rod” to go with it?

Even worse, by portraying it as a “limited edition” version, they’re trying to create a fetishistic lust for something that looks more like a production mistake they didn’t catch until they’d accidentally cranked out 175 of them:

It’s all yours, Moonbeam.

*Another wholly unbiased Buster gear review, free of charge. And corporate fly fishing still sucks.

Via http://www.wildsalmon.org  and Wingnut : 

WE NEED YOU! Salmon and fishing voices must be heard! WE NEED YOU (WITH YOUR BOAT if you have one) TUESDAY MORNING IN PORTLAND! PLEASE FORWARD THIS WIDELY TO YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY, BLOGS AND LISTSERVS!

http://www.wildsalmon.org

PS: Look – we know this is really short-notice! We just found out about key details of this trip by these high level Obama Administration officials. We need your help to send a strong message on Tuesday. This is a REALLY important opportunity. Thank you and see you there

this seems to be in super reduced ultra drunk-o-vision, but it still pretty cool…

and…