Bahamian chicken, landscape design element, ceviche, erosion control, take out the critter before you put one in your duffel, key west football team, gastropod mollusk, fried rubber bands, campy tourist train, erotic to some, yankees pronounce it con-chuh, souvenir, ralph wanted it, chowder, eat the worm and make your pecker stiff, authority, blow it like a horn to start your luau, simon has it, tie it to a stick and hit somebody, symbol of an island republic, protected in los roques, hear the ocean, country station on big pine key, slow like a glacier, paint one on a coconut, got piggy killed…fritters!

I’ve cut back on my own tracks. I haven’t done that before, moving back to place I left previously. Last spring I moved back to Florida and in so many other ways, I started right back where I was a few years ago. I came back for a job and a future I thought I could predict. I have the job, but the future, as it will, has changed from what I thought it would be. My wife and I split up and I’m moving out. I’m rebuilding a life from the bottom up again and wondering what I’m doing half the time. Eight years ago, I was in the exact same spot, and there are times where I lay awake and wonder how I got here again. I have some great friends, one in particular, who has been there for me through this whole experience. There are times where I don’t know how I’ll ever say thank you in a way that conveys the depth of that appreciation. That particular friend is now going through her own hard time. I’ve tried to be there for her and tried to offer the same support and help that she has offered me. In the end that is all we can do for each other. Be there with a hand and a kind word and an open ear. Sometimes I feel like I am stumbling around, not sure of what I’m doing. I’m about to turn 35 years old, and I don’t know anything more than when I was 5 years old.

Austin, how about you?

Tulsa, that’s a nice place. Driven through there a couple of times.

Nope. Going fishing.

Really? Never fished the Kenai but I’ve heard of it.

FIFTY pounds? Wow, that’s a big one.

Nope, never done that.

Mostly fly fishing.

No, with flies.

That would be tough. Hard to cast an egg sack with a fly rod.

No, no problem. I’ve got plenty of room.

Want some gum?

No, seriously, I’ve got a whole pack.

No, your breath’s not THAT bad, take one.

You’re welcome.

No, it’s an iPad.

Yeah, pretty cool. Great on long trips.

Mostly reading books and watching movies.

No, haven’t seen that one.

Nope.

Nuh-huh.

Yeah, didn’t like that one. Not much of a Will Farrell fan.

The Road.

A father and son after the apocalypse.

The end of the world.

Excuse me?

No. I don’t have extra headphones.

Because there’s only one headphone jack.

Probably so I wouldn’t have to share my movie with a meddlesome bait-chucking Okey with foul breath whose walrus ass is hanging over my armrest and taking up half my damn seat.

Remain vigilant. Seems to me, though, that this should be easier for fisherfolk than for others. Assuming everybody’s lying, I mean.

Punchline: it’s also the trout opener in NY. Set up your own joke, you’re so damn funny.

“…in France, those who are fooled on April 1 are called the “Poisson d’Avril” (the April Fish). A common prank (especially among school-aged children) is to place a paper fish on the back of an unsuspecting person. When the paper fish is discovered, the victim is declared a “Poisson d’Avril.” While it is not clear of the origins of fish being associated with April 1, many think the correlation is related to zodiac sign of Pisces (a fish), which falls near April.”

A paper fish. On your back. Haha jerk, now you’re an April Fish. Yeah that’s hilarious.

It’s sort of a sketchy approach in between the RedNeck Ride and the crab pots, but as long as the neighbors don’t berm up the street we can probably get up enough speed to clear the back fence.

Little more of a lip on this bad larry and we’re home free.

Simple.

Define “trash fish.”

Go.

(submission to “Vans Trash Art Contest” by Rodney McCoubrey. Learn more here.)

Sunny and 75° is a pretty bitchin’ forecast, unless you live around a bunch of glaciers.

The lack of rain in the last week or so has shriveled up the muskeg flows into mere trickles, shadows of their former selves. A few of the smaller ones look like urban footpaths now, except for the flyblown humpy carcasses and the lack of little blue bags covering the omnipresent piles of bear poo.

The glacial systems, mostly larger rivers with a network of little feeders, are in total shock. Spewing out meltwater like brown blood, most of those aren’t gonna be fishable for WEEKS.

Damn.

While driving through the rainless rainforest one day – in shorts and a wife-beater tee – I had a song from a decade or so ago pop into my head, and I’ll be damned if I can get rid of it. Hopefully, the forecast of rain will bring some change to the brain radio and I can forget about burning a pig on an old mattress.

I wonder if jayj has holes dug all over his backyard…

Zane Lamprey is a hometown boy with a travel TV gig called “3 Sheets,” and with a name like Zane Lamprey, he really oughtta be a fisherman. Zane gets to travel around and get drunk for the show, and it occurred to me in the course of reading this that it’s really not all that different from most fishing trips. This interview sounds like almost every riverside campfire conversation I can remember, and I can only assume it’s because you’re all a bunch of demented drunks.

Dear Asshat Who Low-Holed That Sweet Tailout From Under Me Yesterday: Yes, you’re a pinner, and there’s no doubting the effectiveness of your floaty toy and sac antics. But you’re also a thoughtless inconsiderate slob of a toolshed no matter what gear you’re using. As for not being thrown in the drink, you’re welcome, but I hope that when your wife picked you up later she promptly punched you square in your stupid face. She looked like the type. Anyway, now your backside gets to enjoy a moment of interwebs fame with a juvenile bit of Photoshop fun. Here’s the original, have at it, savages (you can post yours in the comments using html, but keep them under 800 pixels wide, or you can send them down the email hole).

Just cuz you’re in a drifter doesn’t mean you can’t do a little motorboatin.’ Jamie Briscoe unveils a new creation on the Madison.

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.

Tomorrow’s the next chapter in the saga to restore balance between timber and conservation, and redefine Greatest Permanent Value in Oregon’s Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests, home to the last remaining ‘healthy’ returns of wild salmonids on Oregon’s North Coast. If you’ve got the time, it’d be hella cool if you showed up and stood with us in defense of clean water and wild salmonids as we testify, once again, to a Board who has shown no signs of listening to the public they’re bound by law to serve.

In a nutshell, the Oregon Board of Forestry is largely stacked in favor of timber [with Board members that are mill operators (Phillipi), big-timber owners (Guistina) and building a personal fortune off the pillaging of our commonwealth resource], and they’re pretty pissed that whole endangered species/spotted owl thing’s preventing them from cutting down and profiteering off of Federal Forests (despite the fact that no one’s buying timber in this economy), so they’ve ramped up the cutting in the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests to mitigate for that loss of cash to their greedy pockets. This decision to up the cut was made by a board that was split. Previously, Board decisions had been done by consensus, once again proving this Board’s willingness to break any rule necessary to line their pockets with the public’s cash.

Last time, more than 100 anglers and conservationists took a day off of work in the shittiest economy in years, drove who knows how many miles to Salem, OR despite the current gas prices and spoke up in support of clean water, salmon anchor habitats and essentially, we asked for nothing more than a peer review of the science behind the Boards decision to increase the cut, full well knowing the best available science would legally prevent the Board from increasing the cut.  Those 100+ citizens were ignored and anecdotally, a few of us saw one Board members’ assistant reading from a pre-prepared recommendation to increase the cut BEFORE that Board member ever listened to the public’s testimony. Said Sierra Club volunteer Donald Fontenot “The Board of Forestry showed its allegiance to the timber industry by steamrolling over the public, ignoring the best available science, and making a political decision to prioritize timber production rather than looking out for best interests of our state forests and the public who owns them.”

A formal petition has been filed by the Sierra Club, the Northwest Guides and Anglers Association, Pacific Rivers Council, Wild Salmon Center, the Association of Northwest Steelheaders, Coast Range Association, Native Fish Society and the Center for Biological Diversity that asserts the board violated the Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) for Forest Management Planning, which states that “plans shall include strategies that: Manage forest conditions to result in a high probability of maintaining and restoring properly functioning aquatic habitats for salmonids……..” In the Dept. of Forestry’s review of the plan revision they stated: “there is a low probability to enhance watershed function…” and “low probability of maintaing or enhancing hydrologic function…..”

The groups’ petition also charges Chairman John Blackwell violated the Board’s own rules regarding transparency and openness at its recent meeting to discuss the decision, failing to disclose letters of opposition at a hearing and allowing only 30 minutes of testimony.

No response to that petition has been given yet.

This is the same issue you might have seen covered in the Scuttlebutt section in the last Drake magazine, and effects the legendary rainforest rivers draining into Tillamook and Nehalem bays. Again, if you can spare some time and good karma, we’d sure appreciate more people making noise at tomorrow’s meeting. If nothing else, pay attention, get the facts and let yourself get pissed enough to join the fight because tomorrow’s just another chapter and diligence will be key.

Freely admit we’re none-too-big on schilling for the man, but in this case that man’s holding the keys to a badass week of the above. On the house, in trade for your email address.

On the menu: Big kings on the swing. Or silvers on poppers, or giant rainbows on mice, dollies, grayling or chum and there’s not much we wouldn’t do for any of that hot, sexy action. Seriously, folks. Seven days and six nights of fully guided fishing at Alaska West with all the food you can eat. All you gotta do is get yourself to Quinhagak, AK (which you can do for free, as well, with 32,500 Alaska Airline miles) and tip your guides well (which you cannot do for free unless you are a female).

Figured seven days of permafrost permawood might be something you junkies would be into, so scoot your eyes on over to Deneki’s blogsite, concede your email address in trade for their weekly newsletter (which is a pretty badass read anyway) and you’ll be entered into a drawing for a free, laser awesome week so laser awesome you’ll think of an even better word to describe it than laser awesome.

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

and…

I’m writing this standing up because it still hurts to sit down – the distinctive pain that only comes from that unique combination of deep chafing and bruising of the posterior. The day began with a sense of optimism I haven’t felt in way too long. All winter, actually. A feeling of fresh beginnings, of rebirth, and of…well, to be honest, a certain amount of innate confidence that at this point in my life, I may not be a pro, but I at least have some idea of what I’m doing. Hell, I didn’t even pack that nymph box. “#&^% that,” I told myself, loading up in the morning – a firm, fist-in-the-air affirmation of my dedication to take ‘em on the surface, or rip heavy, seductive meat, or not at all.

We put in below the dam, after spending a few minutes watching a dead moose get recirculated in the wash below the wall. It’s fur had already been mostly Maytagged off the flesh, leaving a pale, bloated sack of skin with limbs akimbo going around and around….in retrospect, we should have taken it for the disturbing omen that it was. Still, the first few miles were a casual, no-pressure cruise; that first time back in the boat this season amongst good friends. But then, so slowly we barely noticed, it morphed into something else entirely. It became a matter of having to put thought into what we were doing – to analyze it, break it down, switch tactics, switch again, vary the retrieve, switch the size, switch the color, forget the banks and work the middle of the river….and yes, eventually to dig out a bobber and offer a selection of cheap, fast foods – and rest assured dear reader, we plied them with the sub-surface  equivalent of Funyons, Hohos, and Slim Jims, to no avail.

50 yards from the take-out, the defeat sinking in and weighing heavily, a large fish cleared the water and slapped down, right in front of us. This last taunt wasn’t “cruel,” nor “ironic. No, those words are far too gentle, to genteel. This was more along the lines of having a size 14, steel-toed logging boot inserted swiftly and forcefully right up into your lower intestine, sans lube.

Just the other day, a doctor friend was telling me that researchers have verified the antibiotic properties in saliva, and that therefore, it actually is beneficial to lick your wounds. I didn’t think much of it at the time.

Another fine offering from Married to the Sea:

From the “Shouldn’t They Be Handing Out Free Copies With Every Wonder Boner?” files comes…

FLY FISHING THE WORLD!!!

“Join ESPN’s John Barrett and celebrity guests like supermodel Niki Taylor, Oscar® nominee Liam Neeson, rock legend Huey Lewis, and “The Fonze,” Henry Winkler, as they fish the most bountiful waters the planet has to offer in pursuit of bonefish, trout, redfish, and dorado. From the remote Arctic regions of Russia, to the southern stretches of New Zealand—the British Isles to the Bahamas, John and his guests explore the culture, wildlife, and unforgettable waters of each area they visit as they go Fly Fishing the World.”

Celebrity Guests:
Niki Taylor • Huey Lewis
Les Claypool • Henry Winkler
Liam Neeson • Merlin Olsen
John O’Hurley • Denis Potvin
John Havlicek

No, we’re not providing a link to this. Sorry.

“I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.”-W. Somerset Maugham , The Moon and Six Pence

Who’s more likely to suffer an undignified and thoroughly goofy death at the bottom of a river with a chicken bone in his larynx – Buster’s pal Nofoolin, or Hammer’s dog Henry?

Consider: Henry is less than one year old.