String Leech

And...its dead

2011-11-21T15:26:00.001-08:00

I think the leech is officially dead. I am leaving it up for as long as google or whomever regulates such things will allow. I suspect to someday return to the mental place that allowed me to ramble on such topics as those previously covered. But for now I am far away from that place, far far away indeed.

Until then, trust not your senses, for they will lead you astray....and the rest is up to you.

not a year

2010-10-15T10:36:00.001-07:00

i cannot believe it is six days away from exactly one year since my last post here. i don't think i have even come to the site for 5 months.

i will be back more often.

there is shit in the river!

2009-10-21T18:38:00.000-07:00

damn. i tried really, super hard to fish this weekend. really. and i "fished" but didn't really feel very fishy about it. see, first there was saturday, after finally getting over my guilt about leaving my wife and baby to go fishing (this subject will someday have its very own post) for a half day, i set out for a river at about 1 in the afternoon. a 40 minute drive, 10 minute stop for a license and dark at around 7 means 5 hours fishing MAX, plus steelie is along which cuts at least another 30-60 minutes out for dog management. i hightail, get there and see lotsa no parking signs at planned stop #1, stop #2 has plenty of access but i see the river, or lack of it, and realize my odds are low...at least i brought the single-hander. all that aside, i still got to fish and caught a decent trout, but that wasn't the point. it felt like a bust, much like getting amped up for a porterhouse and getting a cookie cutter feed lot grease burger instead...edible, but barely.

sunday. ahhh yes, good ole sunday. no more worries about the whole guilt thing cause kari and elsa were coming with. we got rolling at about 11:30, which, all things considered was pretty damned solid. when we made it to the river we had to spend a little time getting elsa prepped, rods strung and the dog under control, but it went well. the water was a little dirty but very fishable. kari sat down on a nice log seat to feed elsa and i went upstream to fish a greasy little tailout fulla boulders and the like. i got about ten casts in and kari gave a holler and a wave. so i reel up, head down and see the milk that is supposed to be ingested, was outgested, all over elsa's clothes and kari's waders. oh well, not a big deal, we'll go back to the car, re-group and head upstream to the original destination a little further from traffic. about half-way there i look at the river and it is a fucking mud slide, like literally, this shit was one part per million away from being mud.

we hit the highway for plan b, get ten minutes down the road and i lose all electrical power in the car, all the dash gauges are out, radio is out, heater fan is out, etc. this isn't a great thing, i thought, battery? alternator? hmmm? and then the power was back on, then off again, then on again and off and on. the whole time the car ran great, but with a 2 month old in the rig it was probably best to try to make it home. and we did, but barely. the car finally lost power at our exit, we made it up the ramp doing about 30, and i thought we were gonna have to hit the ditch, but when i pushed the clutch in and sat at the stoplight for 30 seconds i got all my power back, everything came back on. wtf? ever since, the problem has not come back, but my wipers are still slow and some other weird shit is going on so the beast is going to the shop tomorrow. hopefully, next time we try to go fishing, we will be able to fish. that would be great. wish me luck fools, i need it!

three weeks ago

2009-10-09T20:48:00.000-07:00

forgot to post this...it was good, one night of camping, a day and a half of fishing, and three less hatchery pukes to dilute the wild genes. all removed via long rod, floating line and small fly.

Ahhhhhhhh......

2009-09-16T21:29:00.000-07:00

I took my own advice and went fishing. It was most superbly awesome. We saw no fish, but something did make a pass at my pink leech. I was fishing for Coho and it felt like a trout, but Coho are known to sometimes be very light biters, so you never know. Nonetheless, the real highlight was that the whole crew came along. Kari put Elsa in a little sling and we hiked in to a spot mostly off the beaten path, we had a big stretch of river to ourselves and soaked it all in. We were out from about 1-7 and Elsa proved herself to be a champion of the riverbank at a mere 17 days old! Hopefully this is foreshadowing things to come...I have high hopes :) ...on to the pictures already!

Deep thoughts, by the leech

2009-09-09T14:03:00.000-07:00

This whole parenting thing is throwing my mind for a loop. I don't have a journal, this is sorta my journal, so I am writing this here even though it is sure to piss a couple people off.

Additionally, parent how you want to parent and I will do the same, but this is my blog so I'll write what I want......feel free to criticize, I'll let you know if I change my mind.......

People's cynicism and skepticism is mind-boggling. Anything that so much as presses a finger to a wall of the happy box of existence is chastised. Where did common sense go, was there ever any? You would assume, evolutionarily, that common sense would be universal...do you think it ever was, and in which case, systematically dismembered, starting at birth, for nearly everyone? Or do some people just have it and others don't?

Having little Elsa around has, for me, renewed thought about these questions, and many more. For example, there is an obsession in our society to "control" our children, right from birth and I found myself acting out these hidden traps culture has set. Like feeding the baby on a schedule, what the hell sense does this make? If you were really hungry and someone had your next meal, but withheld it because you just ate 1.5 hours ago and they thought you should only eat every 3 hours...isn't that some form of torture? Yet I found myself pacing the house shushing and bouncing and swaddling the baby to calm her because I thought she should wait another 45 minutes for her next meal, even though she was obviously ready to feed again. It teaches your child, right from the start, that communication is worthless! Her only methods of communicating are showing restlessness, sucking hands, rooting behaviors (searching for the nipple) and finally crying, when we ignore all of these the reinforcement is that communication is completely useless!

I am very pleased that we realized this as soon as we did and not when we had a 12 year old on our hands that wouldn't talk to us because from the start she learned communication was pointless. Instinctive parenting makes sense. Also, if the goal for everyone was to create an open-minded, thinking, communicating, caring child, rather than an "obeyer", would the whole world not be exponentially better?

(note: I clearly need to go fishing.)

Bloggers: Meet Elsa Ann

2009-08-31T09:36:00.001-07:00

at the leech we think population growth is good, as long as your DNA isn't stupid.

here is the newest fighter for the rights of native fish everywhere!

A beatdown with leftovers

2009-07-24T19:14:00.000-07:00

I spent last weekend on an epic Oregon summer steelhead river. As expected I came home thoroughly skunked. It was a solid getaway though and much needed. It's a goofy time of year for summer steelhead in any river, as ultra hot, sunny days are generally unfavorable and it was certainly ultra-hot, and sunny. Nonetheless it was quite nice to get out on a full weekend, solo expedition...likely the last for the forseeable future. A tip, if you want to fish a lot don't buy a house and have a baby due in two months! Kinda more important things than fishing to do, and as f'ed up as that is, it's truth. (I had to re-read that last sentence at least 4 times, it kind of surprises me, but in a mostly good way).

Digress, digress, digress. I brought Steelie along for his first trip to unsaid river. He did quite well, stayed away from the road, didn't turn into a total whiney bitch when I occasionally left him in the car to fish a quick run and otherwise performed well. And even though I didn't catch a fish, the trip did leave me with lasting memories......memories still very vivid in mind, as I try not to itch the gotdamned poison oak remnants on my legs! Drats.

In Memoriam

2009-07-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

I found out my paternal Grandfather passed today. It was expected for some time as he has been battling a pretty ferocious cancer in his spine and brain. I am writing simply to pay tribute to him as a person who treated me with utmost kindness, love and respect. I can't really speak to who he was before my memories begin, I don't really know how he treated his children or his wife or even my own siblings as they are considerably older than I. But I do remember most of the times I spent with him and he was not the type of old man to tell you what you did wrong, but one who emphasized what you did right. He always had a hug and a smile for me when I came to visit. He was always genuinely interested in the events of my life and was elated at my choice in a wife, he would always say, "you've got yourself a real keeper there, you've done well". He would say this with a fairly intense seriousness, which he didn't use often. Mostly I remember him being humorous and very quick witted. I am happy that he was able to live a full life, only cut short in spirit by the passing of my grandma 15 years ago. But from that he recovered, believing that he would meet her again when his time came. That time has now came and went and I wish both of them eternal happiness.

For Grandpa Les, 07/02/09

a weekend in pictures

2009-06-04T20:56:00.000-07:00

wipe down of the mental slate

2009-05-15T18:32:00.000-07:00

i swung flies for a couple hours today. it was fantastic. i even ass hooked a sucker. i stopped to take a picture of the steelie dog rummaging in the flooded brush, when i started to strip in the slack there was the no-nonsense (read: "nonsense") tug (read: "sally throb") of none other than the mighty asshooked sucker. i thought about preserving the fine specimen in a photograph, but had just re-cased the camera, and it was a sucker, hooked in the ass.

anyways, it was sunny and 75 and it didn't matter that my waders leaked and there was little to no salmon for the dog to get poisoned by and the screws i put through my wading boots to hold the soles on held, bonuses, all.

ticky tacky

2009-05-14T23:37:00.000-07:00

we are looking for a house. given the low(er) prices, we thought we would be able to afford a nice house in really nice neighborhood, or a really nice house in a nice neighborhood. we drafted an offer a couple weeks ago, but when we got home, kari said "something's not right". so we double checked our budget....ooooops! forgot daycare! needless to say we had to withdraw the offer. so we regrouped, relooked, and its looking more like a sorta nice house in a nice neighborhood, or a nice house in a sorta nice neigborhood. this makes for a much tougher decision. we will only need daycare for 3 days a week, the "reasonably" priced (not high buck, not low buck) daycare charges 800-850 dollars a month for an infant, 3 days a week. pretty sure i followed the wrong career path. (edit.: after re-reading, i am also very glad i didn't try to be an accountant.)

anyways, we put in another offer yesterday and will know if we got it tomorrow. we aren't expecting anything, but it would be nice to be done with the madness. plus, we lowballed the hell out of 'em, we'd be sittin pretty :)

on other fronts, i went fishing about a month ago with n^2, i went 2 for 2 plus a grab and the n^2 went 1 for 1 with 2 grabs. i am savoring that day of steelheading for as long as humanly possible, which i've surpassed by at least a week. additionally, we built a trailer, just in case i finally win the powerball and can afford a shuttle, i might be able to float!

two big finds

2009-04-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

one.....

two...

i almost forgot

2009-04-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

i suppose i should also update on the subjects that were left hanging prior to my sabbatical....

1) i got a job!

2) some mother fucker stole my trailer the day after i called the dude that hit the trailer and told him to give me some money...suspicious, no? can't prove shit and i'm out a trailer...

3) the bloodied up hatchery steelhead pictured in the previous post was caught two days after the january 21st post in which i was pissing and moaning about not catching shit! the same week i got the job...a good week, indeed.

i'm baaaaccckkkk

2009-04-13T18:06:00.000-07:00

i feel it is time to start writing again. i almost changed blogs, or at least re-named this one, because one thing i can guarantee you, there will be much less fishing coverage here in times to come. string leeches do more than just fish though, i mean, you need only look at its very beginnings to see that, assuredly all string leeches (at least those tied proper, with the wasckly wabbit) start their lives hopping around some pen, then go for a ride, and most then end up in a vat of dye...i could go on, but i think ya get it. i suppose i am trying to say everything is a journey of some sort. i started the blog to write about fishing and mushrooms mainly, but now find that fishing and mushrooms occupy, relatively, much less mental space than they did a year ago. first there is this....

apparently we decided the dog wasn't nearly enough responsibility, so we went and did this....

i probably don't have to explain any further...but just to prove that expectant fathers aren't all the home ridden losers they are oft made out to be, i would like to submit the following evidence....

(yes, the black line on the fish is a string leech, remember, the string leech abides!)

to sum, if you don't want to read a guy beaming about his child to be, yapping about his dog and occasionally telling about his outdoorsly exploits...then don't come back, ya hear?!?!

udder randomness, mostly

2009-01-21T18:45:00.000-08:00

I told you some of this shit would turn around, didn't I? The dude that hit my trailer stopped by the house this evening. He lives down the road, and apparently within the neighborhood gossip chain, cause he heard my AXLE (I now realize I used the figure skating spelling in the last post, oops, my bad) was bent in the mayhem. He's broke as shit, which makes me feel a little bit bad, but he's gonna pay up anyway, cause I'm more broke as shit than him!

There has also been movement on the job front. Nothing firm, but something better than nothing.

The steelhead, however, continue to fucking evade me. I even had the boober and jig out this weekend. The pisces of shit now officially own my mind, again.

One more thing, hail to the chief!

Nice gettin to know ya George, not. Have fun in Texas, hope your a steer. Love, the leech

turn this shit around, shall we?

2009-01-14T13:34:00.000-08:00

i can't believe it's been over a month since i've posted here. a whole bunch of shitty stuff has happened with regards to fishing, which is probably why i haven't wrote. first, i didn't get a job yet and i'm quickly approaching way too fucking long without work. second, i got skunked hard in december on the swung fly, but picked one steelhead up plugging on a cold day with good friends which was nice. third, while i was away for christmas some jackass hit my trailer which was parked out front sans boat and chained to the curb. the lock is broken, the wheel cover is bent into the wheel and the axel has a very unnatural bow to it. the neighbor saw it and got a license plate # but i just talked to the cops and apparently it was not correct. the number i gave the cops is on a car, not a truck as the neighbor described, and belongs to a couple that was in missouri when the shit went down. fuck hole, suck hole. but thats great, see, i have all this money lying around and i needed something like a fucked up trailer axel to use it on! bingo!

anyways, i hate whining. i am kind of whiner though, which sucks for me. but alas, i can feel the tides turning. soon i will have a job, and my trailer will be in working order and i will bury the hook deep into the jaw of a big fat chromer. you just watch.

a zoo of people

2008-12-06T17:29:00.000-08:00

holy hells bells. went to the river today with kari and steelie (the no longer good luck dog) and shit was hitting the fan. i apparently didn't get the "everyone, go fish!" memo that went out last night. if i had i probably would of considered a different river option, one that say, wasn't within 30 minutes of a million or so people. it was a good day for exploring though, so we did some hiking, looked for new bank accessable water and almost found it, we were but an impossible wade away!

gladly i was able to find a little tailout that fished well and called for some line hurling. this i was seeking out cause a good friend was kind enough to let me use a burkheimer 8134 and i wanted to see what i could get out of it. it did not dissapoint. with only 15 casts or so worth of launching called for it didn't get the extended test, but i was able to find a good groove in a hurry and only botched a half handful of them. the stick performed indeed. given the state of the stock market i'm thinking i should cash out my 401k, take the tax rape like a man, pony up and get one fer myself. maybe...if i was smart i would, but i'm sort of a tight ass so i'll probably just leave it be. i do have one thing going for me though, i'm kind of a prick, so i will see how long i can overstay my welcome on the rod lend.

anyways...stay the course ye faithful reader! there will be chrome again, i promise! (someday)

shit hole

2008-11-26T12:58:00.000-08:00

Citigroup got something like 320 billion dollars of bailout money. Now they are spending 400 million to the naming rights for the new NY Mets stadium. And still planning on laying off some ridiculous number of employees. How does that shit work? I want a bailout, bitches, and all I need is 60 bucks for a Washington fishing license and another couple hundred for gas. Where is my pie?

CORRECTION!

2008-11-23T16:44:00.000-08:00

i saw the photo of the fat ass steelhead (picture below) on the sweatywaders blog. the first time around i wrote that the dimensions were 45x20, when in actuality that pig ass is 45" x 25". don't want to short change!

tragedy brewing on the homefront

2008-11-22T12:33:00.000-08:00

I received new information today about the status of riparian protection on BLM lands in Western Oregon. I don't understand how this shit gets to the Governors desk without anglers hearing about it, but that is precisely how those behind this move want it.

I'll make this easier on your eyes and give you a link to a much more readable discourse on the subject than I could come up with here. My only request is that, even if you reside outside of Oregon, you follow the link at the bottom of the write-up and send that message to Oregon Gov. Kulongoski. This is much more than an Oregon issue, if you don't believe me now, you will in ten years when you try to buy a fillet of fresh fish and all you find on the seafood shelf is Soylent Green (spoiler alert: "THE SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!").

go, now: http://tinyurl.com/5gsnf4

ultra-egregiousness

2008-11-20T13:11:00.000-08:00

received from a friend. his friend is pictured. face removed to protect from the myriad of things sure to come out of the mouths of viewers. 45" x 20" on the swung fly, good on you man with no face, good on you.

ps - clickety the picture for ultra hi def porn view

more good news

2008-11-20T09:47:00.000-08:00

Uncle Ted conceded his senate race yesterday, I heard it on the radio on my way to swing flies for the first time in a good while. Needless to say, it was a good day.

In other news, my miracle braid (shooting line) broke yesterday. There was a small knot in the line, usually remedied by pulling the line on both sides of the knot to pull it out, this time it broke. Thankfully the skagit head wasn't lost, but it was a bit of a gong show when I tried to repair it. Most of the gong was due to my inability to recognize that the fix was easy and I tried to make it about as complex as possible. All that was required to make a new loop was an overhand knot, i.e. surgeons loop. For some reason I thought this knot would slip and spent about 45 minutes on the bank attempting alternatives. I had one decent fix that took 20 minutes to construct. I really didn't want to lose my skagit head so I cranked on it pretty hard to test the connection, breaking the line again and nearly severing my pinky finger in the process. Thanks to the cell phone and a sweet run with coverage I dialed someone who probably had some experience with the situation and he said "just throw a surgeons loop in it, you don't want to waste fishing time." As I said, I had been on the bank for 45 minutes, I probably shoulda busted out the phone a little sooner. Even with that fiasco on the books it was still an outstanding outing, the line launched proper with the big heavy stuff, the run swung magically (I'll be back soon) and, as I mentioned up top, Ted "series of tubes" Stevens is finally out after 40 long years of shitting on the environment and blowing big oils man shaft. Cheers to that.

some good news

2008-10-29T12:22:00.000-07:00

First, Ted Stevens was found guilty of fraud on all seven counts. He faces up to 35 years in prison, but he'll probably get no time. Either way, he is officially tarnished, which is good.

The next bit of news is much more directly related to my well being. I had Steelie out hunting for the first time yesterday. I can't afford a license so I brought him along with a couple buddies for Quail and Grouse in the coast range. Mainly I just wanted him to get comfortable with guns blazing. When we started I kept him 50 yards or so from the guns and had them shoot, then moved him to within 20 yards, then within 10 feet. He barely flinched when he was up close, his ears were up and he was looking around trying to figure out what was going on. Then I threw a pheasant wing that I taped to a stick (for distance), he got all fired up and pretty much stayed that way the rest of the day. At the last spot we walked we flushed a covey of about 15 quail. 5 shots were fired and he was staring at the birds the whole time. The bank was a little steep for him to be comfortable on, but I brought him up anyways so he could see the downed birds. One of them did the dead bird wing flap and that spooked him a little, but he recovered quickly. When we were back on the road I threw the bird for him to retrieve and he did, flawlessly. Before we headed home we stopped at a spot we had seen birds in earlier. There was one quail on the road that ran into the ditch and flushed too fast to get a shot. Steelie didn't see the bird, but when he got to the scent he got super birdy and I could barely call him out of the ditch, he was determined to find that bird. All in all, an awesome first outing for a 4 month old. He is amazingly controllable already and I'm pretty excited to see how he'll hunt next season. Til then, I'll keep him busy as an alarmingly effective (so far) good luck charm for steelhead.

"Steelhead!"

2008-10-26T23:13:00.000-07:00

Upon review of my last two posts, it was determined that I needed to go fishing. So a fishing, we did go. The camera took the day off, the lazy bastard. But that did not interfere, for the steelie dog was here (there really). Now I'm enjoying a grizzly and a stomach full of steelhead. Clearly, life is good.

sorry...

2008-10-24T23:56:00.000-07:00

but i just can't help myself. with a big move coming up, there has been no fishing to speak of. so i've been keeping myself busy surfing the tubes. i give you a word from mr. strang.

"Steve Strang, publisher of Charisma magazine, a Pentecostal publication, titled one of his recent weekly e-mails to readers, 'Life As We Know It Will End If Obama is Elected.'

Strang said gay rights and abortion rights would be strengthened in an Obama administration, taxes would rise and 'people who hate Christianity will be emboldened to attack our freedoms.'"

this is very illustrative. but first, i don't hate christianity at all, i just don't agree with it. however, when obama is elected it will not embolden those of us that don't agree to attack freedom of religion or any other freedoms that you have as a christian. it will, however, embolden us to stop the government from turning christian beliefs into law therefore imposing them on the rest of us and taking away our freedoms. i really hope those days are over.

again, my apologies. this is supposed to be a fishing blog, kind of.

impending cranial implosion

2008-10-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

This election needs to happen already. Every corner of the internet's tubes are clogged with McBama. Ted Stevens is probably turning in his grave, errrr, I mean defendants chair (note: Stevens' movement may also be accounted for by the attempt to relieve pressure on his hemorrhoids, a terrible case of which he has, from being Big Oil's bitch for soooooooo long).

Happy 14 days to go!

steelies and chanties and coho, oh my!

2008-10-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

Its been damned busy around headquarters lately...I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

well fuck me, it happened

2008-09-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

Sometime ago, maybe 10 years or so, I heard that steelhead take dry flies. At the time I didn't really believe it. See, back then I barely believed that they would take a fly...only under strict and rare circumstances. But this is the common mind of a Great Lakes steelheader, especially one fishing North Shore Lake Superior tribs. For me the game was spawn bags, until a fateful day which saw my brother outfish me using a size 10 hare's ear nymph. I started playing around with it and realized that steelhead would move to the fly with some form of regularity. But even then, dry flies and steelhead were only a pair in the science fiction section of my mind. Then some years passed and I happened to move some great lakes fish to a streamer (prior to this day it was nymphs only for me), it was a big olive conehead muddler and I outfished a super fishy group with the fly by casting up and across, throwing a downstream mend and giving it some action...the steelhead hammered that fly. Dry flies and steelhead that day moved from sci-fi into fiction, a shift toward the believable.

A couple more years passed and I found myself living in Oregon, a friend from back in the midwest set me up with a two handed rod, gave me a casting lesson and a quick one-day course in swinging flies for steelhead. I asked him about steelhead and dry flies and there was no hesitation in the "fuck yeah, they take 'em" reply. Well that would be my mission then, get a steelhead on a dry. I spent some time my first and second summers fishing dries with limited confidence. Then, fishing the Deschutes with a wet fly, I watched a steelhead make a bonafide rise. The wet was planed out on the surface and a steelhead came out of the water for it and smashed it, he missed most of the fly on the first pass but sunk the fly in his boil. Then I saw his tail come out of the water and thrash around, simultaneously feeling the big tug. This was the first time I'd seen any part of a steelhead come out of the water for a fly, it was the first reality bender. On the same trip I had one fish take a riffle hitched muddler, but the fly was in the glare so I wasn't sure if it was on top or not, it was a grab and go but a confidence builder. More trips, more dries swung, one big toilet boil flush under the fly last summer, one head-tail rise in smooth water this summer, but still no fish hooked on the dry.

This past week that friend from the midwest called and asked if I could get out for the weekend. I could and did, there is a big camp on a big river this coming weekend and we wanted to get a headstart, get a program going before all the dudes show up...I think there will be 15 guys, all badass sticks, in the camp so a program going in is key. We went and found some new water, re-affirmed likes or dislikes of "old" water and found some new opposite bank access on known-to-produce runs. One run in particular doesn't get fished much and has a serious penchant for giving it up like a 5 dollar hooker. The first morning we went in the backside and being the generous dude, he let me go through first. When I got to the bucket a fish came up and plucked the dry hard, two casts later on the other side of the bucket another fish came up and missed. I was thinking that was it for the trip, I've fished this river several times in the past and I essentially get two shots per trip...tops. Needless to say I was in disbelief when, three casts after the second fish, I saw a dorsal and tail of a steelhead sharking my fly that was waking downstream. Time slowed way the fuck down, my window of reality was a 5 foot square around the fish and the fly. I'm an atheist or agnostic or whatever the fuck you are when you don't believe that praying works, but I'm pretty sure I was praying anyway when the fish and fly dissapeared and went under and stayed under and stayed under and stayed under. It was probably 2 or 3 true seconds, about 5 minutes in my head, until it came tight. According to the witness "I've never heard a grown man scream like that, it was sorta girly". The fish wasn't big, and I didn't get it in my hands, but got it up real close and the hook popped out. Given that it was most likely a native it's better that way, especially since, given my state of mind, I might have hugged the fish or something...and he thought the scream was girly.

Anyways, thanks to he who let me have first pass through the money bucket. The moment fulfilled a huge goal of mine and has certainly changed my fishing self, in the best of ways.

Dear The Drake,

2008-09-23T11:07:00.000-07:00

I am astounded that you, once again, somehow trapped me into reading you cover to cover. I will say that compared to the first couple editions the trend is away from the little bank-eddy pockets and towards the main flow, a slight dissapointment, but if thats what it takes to keep you on the shelves than so be it. My favorite bit this time has got to be Jean Bie's letter to the Editor reprimanding Trask on his filthy language, a great touch, this is the stuff that makes The Drake, The Drake. For those of you that don't have a perscription, see your doctor at www.drakemag.com and get one. Oh yeah, The Drake, I do have one request...NO MORE CHEESE DICK UNDERARMOR ADS!!!

Thanks,

the leech

something you should know

2008-09-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

From the Statesman Journal:

Following the report released by the National Marine Fisheries Service that identified 37 pesticides that pose risks to salmon and steelhead, Oregon state officials are moving ahead to set new safety benchmarks for seven pesticides of priority concern.

A team from the Oregon Water Quality Pesticide Management Program identified seven priority hazardous pesticides: azinphos-methyl, chlorpyrifos, dacthal, diazinon, endosulfan, simazine and ethoprop, based on water-quality monitoring in five Oregon watersheds, including the Pudding River near Salem, as well as the Clackamas, Yamhill, Hood and Walla Walla watersheds. Three pesticides, azinphos-methyl, diazinon and chlorpyrifos have been detected at concentrations that exceed federal aquatic criteria in the Clackamas River Basin (See report here: http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2008/5027/ ). Chlorpyrifos was detected at maximum levels more than twice the federal standard.

The National Marine Fisheries Service report on the ecological damage associated with pesticide use reveals “overwhelming evidence” to suggest that 37 pesticides, including these seven, increase the chance of extinction for protected salmon and steelhead. See this report at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/pesticide_biological_opinion_draft.pdf
The state is now turning to its own team of experts to set stringent benchmarks based on existing research on these chemicals of concern. Generally the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged with developing water quality standards as part of its registration process, however a significant time lag exists between the time the product goes on the market and the setting of final in-stream standards.

According to Kevin Masterson, the agency toxics coordinator with the State’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), a pesticide might be on the market for 20 or 30 years before the EPA’s water division finishes reviewing its effect. For example, the final in-stream standard for diazinon- one of the seven pesticides detected- was not set until it was already banned for household use because of risks to humans, birds and fish. Diazinon is still cleared for agricultural use but could still face restrictions.

“The EPA and the states around the country don’t have standards for the majority of current-use pesticides. More standards exist for drinking water, but there still are more pesticides without standards than those with them,” Mr. Masterson said. (that is fucked up. even better...nobody knows what effect, especially long-term, a majority of current-use pesticides have on people.)

Despite the time gap for water quality standards, states are encouraged to develop benchmarks from a list of pesticides of concern. Unlike EPA standards, benchmarks do not have the enforcement power or require public review. These benchmarks will be designed to help state agencies better understand and explain to the public and pesticide applicators when there is a problem with pesticide concentrations in surface and ground waters. An example of a benchmark can include: 10 parts per billion concentration [of named pesticide] in waters can lead to salmon decline or increase the risk of cancer.

“You can do all the monitoring in the world, but without benchmarks, it doesn’t mean much,” said Steve Riley, an Oregon Department of Agriculture water issues specialist and team member.
Once benchmarks are established, the team of officials will begin working with farmers, nursery growers and other pesticide users to reduce pesticide runoff starting with a pilot project in the Clackamas River Sub-Basin near Portland, Oregon. The program is also evaluating a list of seven relatively newer pesticides such as 2,4-D and glyphosate for possible inclusion in the list as part of an ongoing evaluation of pesticides. The state’s DEQ is also increasing the number of pesticides it tests for in Oregon waters and lowering the level at which they register to give an even clearer picture of what pesticides are showing up at potentially risky levels.

Beyond Pesticides has long criticized EPA’s flawed risk assessment process that does not consider all aspects of potential harm to human health and the environment and that allow dangerous pesticides to be registered without having met all of their data requirements.
Aimee Code with the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides applauds the team’s approach to educate pesticide users to reduce runoff rather than replacing one pesticide with another. “There have been wonderful collaborative efforts around the state to solve these problems,” she said. “It’s a wonderful step in the right direction.”

McStain

2008-09-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

this is pretty good...nothing earth shattering, but pretty good.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c

Backlog

2008-09-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

Steelie squared occured, and the world is still here. So, we're safe for now. It was barely a steelhead though, and when the first chrome winter hits the bank the total level of good will be much higher and therefore, who knows what will happen.

Went crabbing last week, only got 2 keepers but a dude on the dock had one and gave it to us, a definite bonus. Just cracked 'em and boiled 'em and ate 'em with butter...superb.

a trick

2008-09-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

last night kari decided steelie should learn how to rollover....

paradoxical, man

2008-09-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

steelie might meet his first steelie this weekend, so if the world implodes you'll know why...too much good in one place.

tall boys

2008-09-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

spent my birthday proper this year.

proof.

a photo essay, of sorts

2008-09-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

As promised.

this is a big ass hive under a bridge

glacier np

more glacier

just outside glacier

that was unintentional

A Memo

2008-09-01T15:02:00.000-07:00

Hiya, just got back late last night from 12 days in big sky country. Unfortunately we didn't find as many big trout as normal, but we certainly found more. Steelie is a badass fishing dog. Saw a shitload of water including, but not limited to, Rock Creek, Blackfoot, Flathead (didn't fish it), Bitteroot (can you say, fuck yeah?), E. Fork Gallatin, lower W. Fork Gallatin, etc... Kari hooked the biggest fish of the trip and it may have been the biggest MT trout I've ever seen...huge, on a hopper. The fall is late, the hoppers weren't really working (despite the previous sentence) and they were all small, like 10's instead of 6's like I've seen in the past at the same time of year. Nymphing produced the most consitently along with a good ol' Adams in 14. And of course the beetuljula slayed. I was popping the beeteuljula much more than normal and drew loads of strikes doing this, especially popping it downstream, oddly enough. One of said strikes was the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen while trout fishing (disclaimer: there are large mouth bizass and pike in the lower bitteroot, but we were 30-40 miles upstream of there, no barriers but cold water), the cast was to the bank down and across and drew a really good boil but no take, the re-cast landed tight behind a big stump and got popped hard, the big foamer acted like a bass popper, and the take was an explosion, like a 15 pound pike in attack mode. I have to believe it was a trout, if it truly was it was a fucked up, 'roided out thing that I really wish I could have seen.

That was a sorta long memo, but you can deal. Pics to come...soon, maybe.

A Must See!

2008-08-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlenads!

you gotta go check out my niece throwin down the crazy charlies on Snake Guides aka "Brotha E's B-Log"... follow the link over
there ----------->

Missed one steelie today...

2008-08-15T20:55:00.000-07:00

but landed another, my best ever......

meet the leech's partner in crime, presented here for the first time, i give you, Steelie.

A Note on Athletic Domination: Genetics Helps

2008-08-14T11:18:00.001-07:00

Regardless of the sport, when an athlete shows total domination it's pretty badass to witness. Given the unprecedented asswhooping Phelps' has delivered thus far I've been wondering, whats the physical-mental breakdown...in other words, is he a genetic freak or is he just that confident in himself? In his bio I found a partial answer...

"At first glance, Phelps might look like a typical swimmer. But several of his physical characteristics seem genetically tailored for swimming. His 6-foot-7-inch wingspan is three inches longer than his height, providing him with unusual reach. His torso is long compared to his legs, enabling him to ride high on the water. And his flexible ankles, combined with size-14 feet, allow for a powerful kick. Add to that more than a decade of high-intensity training, and you get one of the fastest swimmers in history."

Freak it is!

My apologies...

2008-08-11T20:09:00.000-07:00

political again. dunno whats got into me.

from the AP:

"The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants."

this just sounds like a really good idea doesn't it? revamp the endagered species act, good, make it weaker, especially since the US is abound with flora and fauna. who cares if we lose the polar bears or columbia river chinook salmon, there are tons of other fish and bears all over!

how the administration gets this shit past all the other branches of government is wayyyyy beyond me. i remember, back in 9th grade civics class, learning about "the system of checks and balances". did we, like, switch to a new system since then or something? i'm confused.

Backyard tenants

2008-08-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

For the past month or two we've had some subletters in the backyard. They were exceptionally lax this morning, so some photos were in order. I also have a video of some triplets playing tag just up the road, it's of poor quality but still pretty cool to see.

In the canyon...

2008-08-08T17:37:00.000-07:00

As aforementioned we recently had ourselves a 4 day float trip down the D. It was my first overnighter with the boat and my first big water rowing experience...badass and badasser. I am going to mostly let the photos speak, but have a couple observations:

1) Jet boats are pretty lame, but not quite as bad as I suspected.

2) When you set up a camp, and a floatilla of 3 rafts lands at your site, you should run down and defend it. I didn't and when we got back to camp we had two tents within 20 feet of ours in either direction, and a radio blaring shitty fuckin music and several drippy douches acting like 4th graders...Seriously, we pulled the stakes on our tent to move down a couple hundred feet and as we were walking away one of them said "See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!", fuckin circa 1993 and shit. Prolly shoulda punched him.

3) I fuckin love the tightline summer steelhead grab and go, it almost can't be beat.

4) 25 inch steelhead have heart too. I got my ass handed to me, literally almost had to break her off due to a shortage of backing, she went wayyyyyy deep into the reel (a reel not built for a 6/7/8 windcutter). She hooked herself, jumped once, hit the water and took off on the most incredible reel blisterer I've ever witnessed from any species, and didn't stop til it was almost all gone.

5) Bring more beer.

On to the eye candy!

A Partial Digestion

2008-08-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

So I've wrote nary a word on the North Umpqua trip and I figure I should probably at least get something started. I didn't have a camera, so no eye candy...though in terms of fish very, very little eye candy was available...for me anyways.

Overall the trip was a success, much more for some than others, or I should say, much more for one than the rest of us. See, one guy that was in camp is a bit of a yoda on that river. He knows it, well. And it was clearer to me than ever how far river knowledge can get you. But certainly that was only part of the massive gap in contact with steelhead. 9 out of 10 of yoda's casts were perfect, good loops, no tails, and the fly snapped straight out at the end, landed and was fishing instantly...about 1 in 5 of my casts could make the same claim. Prior to this trip I was very pleased to be in the "pretty casts don't matter" camp, but now I've learned that "pretty casts" are also "fishy casts"...especially in the summer and especially on that river, with clear smooth water and a lot of fishing pressure. Likewise, every cast that fails is one less cast to catch a fish with in a day. I paid attention to this and realized I was wasting on the order of 30 minutes minimum every day in bullshit casts, this was an extremely frustrating epiphany. When fishing is tough and one fish every two days is really good and that one cast that might have caught a fish lands in a big pile...well you get the picture. You never really know if it's real (a failed cast causing a missed fish) but you can't help wondering.

By day 3 I was thinking it ought to happen. Yoda had already landed 4 fish and brought one or two more to the fly, the rest of us (3) were fishless. Just after noon I was fishing over a suspected steelhead, he had risen once to a dry in the morning and grabbed a wet a half hour or so before I went through. After 4 or so attempts I finally got a cast to mostly straighten out over the lie, there was a big belly in the line and it was dragging through the juice pretty quick. Then it stopped, I swept the rod low and slow proper but there was a lot of slack and all I got was about 3 or 4 slack line head shakes. I couldn't decide if I should be elated for finally touching a fish or pissed cause I farmed the one chance I had...see with all that slack, low and slow wasn't proper, I shoulda wailed on that fucker.

3 full days later and about 3 casts away from calling it a night it finally happened. A little hatchery rat slammed the fly right above the lip of a small rapid in a nice tailout. For a cookie cutter degenerate it put on a good show, clearing the water 5 times in the first 10 seconds or so, but afterwards played the doggy hatchery fish game. Nonetheless at 6 days in I would have taken a tailess, finless pile of puke over continued nothingness. And it ate damn well grilled up over the camp fire, so I can't complain. I rose a fish to a waker the next morning. It didn't stick but it didn't really matter at that point. The fly was only about 25 feet away from me and I got to see the head come out of water, grab the fly and go down in a boil. I waited with maximum patience but nothing happened, the fly just popped back up a couple seconds later. Just seeing a fucking steelhead eat a dry is about the most badass thing in the world for a dude who cut his steelhead teeth on great lakes fish with lead and spawn bags. I need to see it again.

So like I said, all in all a success. It was steelheading at its finest, at day 4 I wasn't going fishing anymore, I was going casting. And like I said a couple weeks back, it's not all about the fish. Somehow, for about 6 or 7 nanoseconds during the trip I actually believed it and that was a fucked up feeling, but one I wouldn't mind finding again. Although if said feeling's attainment didn't include 6 fishless days I would be quite alright with it.

Thanks to those of you who've stuck around through this boring ass stretch of the pictureless Leech. But it is now officially over, Kari and I floated the Deschutes saturday-tuesday and got a new digi prior to departure. The next post will have pics and maybe even some fish, if yer lucky.

The Bad Hair Day

2008-07-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday I was checking out my brother's blogs. Whilst reading about E's trip to northern sconny with bacon and the legendary 17th Allman Brother, D-Pin, E mentioned something about seeing some badass patterns, some of which having a future place in his fly box. So I asked, bad hair day? And not because E is prone to frizzing. No, I knew what pattern struck his fancy before he even said it. So when I talked to him on the phone last night I was curious to hear what he had to say.....to sum:

"When you make a cast and a smally immediately attacks the fly, you strike at it, but miss and then a carp starts tracking the fly, so you give it a few strips, you know to get the carp interested, and right then a pike comes and slams the fly right in front of the carp, your either fishing in the fucking Chicago aquarium or you've got yourself a kick ass fly."

Some of you may have seen it before, but you ought to see it again.

Bacon - if you still read this madness...hope you don't mind I robbed the pic from the VB archives.

Breaking News: Karma Works!

2008-07-29T10:55:00.000-07:00

Alaska's worst enemy is finally getting his. Better think of a new name for the airport.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080729/ap_on_go_co/stevens_indictment

In the good spirit of things, here is an excerpt from his famous "Series of Tubes" speech given in a senate committee meeting.

"...Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday [Tuesday]. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially.
[...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material..."

Well Ted, I hope your series of tubes are ready for "enormous amounts of material" while locked up in Federal Pound You in the Ass Prison. Sayonara douchepump.

Some Badassness

2008-07-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

It is really quite impossible to put words to the collective amount of mojo and trilobal we're going to smear all over the fabled waters of the North Umpqua. I can only describe it now in terms of whats been done and whats been felt, not what will be. For one, I have trilobal under my toenails, really, the shit is everywhere, I think there is even a piece lodged in my choad and I swear I tie clothed. The trimmed deer hair of muddler heads and other assorted spun wakers is much more manageable, but still, everywhere I go, it goes...static is a bitch. My fly boxes have likely never looked this nice, at least not from my doing. I have even started to put the bullshit into my flies that I personally don't think matters, like a piece of wood duck, or some pretty pheasant or a couple polar bear hairs, all done just in case. Just in case the fish really are as snooty as they are in my mind, like they are finning down there behind a rock and a fly comes into their window and they think, "ha, who is this amateur? he subbed schlappen for rhea? no fucking jungle cock? cheap saddle hackle tips? rookie." Really, this is what my mind has done with these fish, it's pretty fucked up since I'm the kind of guy who strips deer hair mice on the middle of a lake during a hex hatch, just cause, or fishes a big ass foam, rubber legged terrestrial through a hatch of sz. 18 BWOs...why, because it works. I am sure the same type of shit applies to the steelhead on the NU as to the trout of sconny, the fish usually don't really care if its ugly as long as its edible...usually. And that is the reason I'm spending 15 minutes a fly instead of 5. It's been this "just in case" reasoning. I'll look at a fly and think, 'I don't need to add the pheasant', then think, 'just in case' and I tie it in. Just in case the fish are thinkers. Weird shit man.

Above and beyond all that is the fact that I will be spending 7 days straight on the river, sunday to sunday. It won't really matter how many fish I move or hook or land. It'll kinda matter though, as much as I tell myself otherwise. The goal is to define the trip in another way, not by numbers of fish but by gained knowledge and the experience. Given the crew I will be spending the days with I can guarantee there will be knowledge to be had, and I'm gonna get me some. And on that river the experience is likewise guaranteed, my casting will improve as will my ability to read and wade that fucked up ledgerocky river. And that, ladys and stains, is the purpose of the post. To remind myself that it's not all about the fish. It's not all about the fish. It's not all about the fish. Though, I should say, my 25 year old mind has a severe issue with those sentences, it says, "then why the fuck do you have trilobal in your choad?" And I have no answer, except that it seems to me almost all the rickety old guys of fishing say or write that very thing...it's not all about the fish...and I have this feeling that there is a whole new dimension of fishing reality if you can get your mind to that place. So, I will try.

Disclaimer: If a steelhead eats my dry fly, the "it's not about the fish" shit will be a lost cause! Check back in a couple weeks for my reflection. peace out fools.

Couldn't make it up if I tried: part deuhhh?

2008-07-16T11:04:00.000-07:00

I don't think I have put any Bushisms up on the blog yet, but this shit is just too good. Apparently after lifting the executive ban on offshore drilling, Bush got drilled by reporters on whether or not that was really the best way to achieve the desired result...less dependence on foreign oil, lower gas prices. I am putting up a couple choice excerpts from a Yahoo!news arcticle I read today...Bush needs to start writing childrens books...or something, he is a fuckin entertainer!

Speaking of the American Consumer:

"They're smart enough to figure out whether they're going to drive less or not. I mean, you know, it's interesting what the price of gasoline has done," Bush said at a news conference in the White House press room, "is it caused people to drive less. That's why they want smaller cars: They want to conserve. But the consumer's plenty bright. The marketplace works."

"You noticed my statement yesterday, I talked about good conservation and — you know, people can figure out whether they need to drive more or less," he said. "They can balance their own checkbooks." (balance their own checkbooks!!!)

This part is my favorite:

“It seems like it makes sense to me to say to the world at we’re going to use, you know, new technologies to explore for oil and gas in the United States … to send a clear message that the supplies of oil will increase,” he said.

“The president doesn’t have a magic wand,” the president added. “You can’t just say: ‘Low gas!’"

Well, there you have it. The president does not, I repeat, does not, have a magic wand. DAMN!

hey! it's a jpeg!

2008-07-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

this blog is useless without pics! someday, lads, i will jump back into society with a splash, start working again and buy a gotdam digital camera, but this day shall not be that day. in the meantime i have a really nice brother who took a pic of the carp fly i spoke about a couple weeks ago. i should, however, issue a statement of partial retraction on the whole "its the fly that matters" thing with the carp. I was back to the spot a week ago and didn't hook a fish. a friend was with and he hooked two, one on a little san juan worm and one on a small rubber legged squirrel nymph. the fly that slayed em the week before got only a few follows and one take. so it apparently isn't as magical as first thought. it is still a damn good fly though so here it is!

there are two small differences between this fly and the one i used...1) on my fly the larva lace is brown and 2) i used rusty orange rabbit for the wing instead of what appears to be hackle fibers.

Couldn't make it up if I tried!

2008-07-09T08:21:00.000-07:00

This is exactly why you should shop at Wal-Mart. I would say there is a pretty decent chance this dude could make some money off of this fiasco.

Wal-Mart customer bitten by rattlesnake hiding in plants!

Golden Bones

2008-07-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

I definitely missed the camera yesterday. Decided to do a little carping yesterday afternoon. There is a little slough pretty close to home that I learned about last year, it was full of carp every time I went last summer but I never actually hooked anything. After yesterday I am pretty willing to blame it all on fly selection. I had this sneaking suspicion that some of the bonefish flies I had tied up for Belize would maybe turn the trick. One pattern in particular looked especially juicy, it has a little wood duck tail, brown larva lace body, rusty orange rabbit strip fir (no skin) tied in as a wing and bead chain eyes. It's tied to ride hook up and the beadchain is pretty light so it will stay suspended with a slow twitch strip. The water was about two feet higher than any other time I've fished this spot, but I think that made it a bit easier. I could wade in the grass and use it for cover, which made it easy to stay pretty close to the fish. I took up a nice casting station about 10 feet from the edge of the grass where there was a nice open casting lane with fish periodically cruising past about 15-20 feet away and several others hanging near the surface within 50 feet. I started with the fly described above and had follows immediately. When I finally got it in front of a likely cruiser the fish turned hard and came right up behind the fly about 20 feet from my position. I could see the fly in front of the fish and gave it a few mini strips, then watched the fish open its mouth and inhale, a strip set and the game was on. This was a very lackluster fight, the carp just rolled into the grass and dogged around for a bit, but I'll take it. I spent 20 minutes more at that spot then made a move about 30 feet down the shore to another station. Shortly after moving I got into another fish, a situation very similar to the first, but the fish fought much better. This crazy carp had only one eye, the left eye looked as though it never developed, it was just a tiny ring of head flesh, freaky looking. I tried some other patterns for about an hour and got nary a follow. Tied the magic fly back on and within 10 minutes hooked and landed another. This was the most satisfying fish because of the distance, it was at 35-40 feet and I couldn't see his mouth on the take. I saw a pec fin flare and the fish rotated about 10 degrees, so I set up and he was there.

One thing I found very interesting in all of this is that the fish were hooked within 50 feet of one another, there were loads of carp (~75) and the behavior didn't change much throughout it all. Since the slough is only about 200x70 feet I was expecting the whole slough to be abandoned or completely shut off after catching a fish. An article I just read in a dirty fly rag by none other than Whitlock himself said something about chemicals released by carp when they are caught causing the others nearby to quit feeding. In my limited experience this does not occur to any extent. I was thinking that maybe since there in a bit of a high profile spot (there was a family on one end of the slough fishing bobbers for 'em) that they are used to smelling the fear chemical so they don't get as bothered by it. Another thought was that there is slight movement to the water carrying the chemical away, so within ten minutes it was mostly gone. Who knows? I did notice that for 5-10 minutes after landing a fish other carp would come over to apparently scope out what the hell was going on. They would come over close, sometimes in groups of 4 or 5 which seemed a little abnormal, they were moving a little faster than normal and wouldn't follow the fly. So maybe this was the effect Whitlock wrote about, but like I said it only lasted 5-10 minutes so it was easy to wait them out. Regardless of carp chemicals, stinky willamette mud, crazy families fishing to eat those pigs and one dead log of a fight, it was a fucking banner outing. First three carp on the fly in four hours of fishing, given the multitude of hours I spent out there last year, I'll take it and run.

Gear Revisited

2008-06-30T12:13:00.000-07:00

Way back, during the leeches infant stages, I wrote about salmon fishing with bullshit gear and half-heartedly vowed to not fuck around with the wrong tools for the job. Like with most dipshits I clearly need more than one self-imposed ass kicking to learn a lesson. As I was rigging the jig rod for a trip down a local river for steelhead I glanced into the gear box to see what was lying around in the way of jigs. I had two, one big ass lead head with no paint and one quaint little pink headed jig, just what I was looking for since I would be tipping it with the ever legendary pink worm. The problem was the hook, it was a sickle hook, one of those stupid angular things notorius for straightening...it has happened to me once already this winter and I watched as it happened to someone else as well. So as I reached down and grabbed that stupid fucking jig, I thought...you really shouldn't put this stupid fucking jig on. But I did anyway. We launched the boat shortly thereafter and as soon as we cleared the bankies, Kari flipped the bobber out. About 15 seconds later the bobber went down, I was sure she was snagged but when I looked back the rod was bucking hard. Then there was a 10 pound CHROMER out of the water. I survey the surroundings, see there is no logical place to land the fish and drop the anchor. The fish came up real slow and calm like between the boat and the bank and I thought...we need to get the fish in the boat before that stupid fucking jig hook bends out. So I grab our net, useless from the boat with its 1 foot handle, and jump into the water. My fat ass does not slide smoothly into the water when I get in, its more like a small astroid impact. So about a half second after impact the fish screams straight downstream and then was gone. Instantly I thought, STUPID FUCKING JIG! I was really hoping the line broke, though I'm not sure if I would have felt any better, but then I saw the jig was still there, grabbed it and what I already knew was re-confirmed. Now, when shit like this happens you know its not the end of it. The image of that straight hook is pretty well singed on the minds eye and you can't really see or envision anything else. This is detrimental to ones mojo. We fished the rest of the day, mostly swinging flies, then we fished Saturday evening on a small coastal stream for steelhead with methods not to be disclosed, then we swung flies yesterday at the river where the stupid fucking jig incident occured, all the while taking the mental beatdown and knowing I brought all of it on by tying on that stupid fucking jig in the first place.

Cacti Country

2008-06-25T18:31:00.000-07:00

Howdy fellers! I been bravin the heat down in Tucson, AZ for the last 4 days. No fishing, not much of much at all. Kari had to come down here for the National Environmental Health Association conference and I got to play tag along since her place of emPLOYment couldn't spare any extras. We are in the Phoenix airport now, enjoying some nice tall Dos Equis before we board for the last leg. I can't fuckin wait to get back and outta this heat, broke a hundo every day, but the humidity was 15% tops, so it wasn't so bad...much better than I thought actually. The desert was pretty incredible, the number of plants and animals able to make it there was astounding, as were the Saguaro cacti...the largest one we saw was about 35 feet tall, with several in the 20-30 foot range. These things are apparently able to suck up over 200 gallons of water in a single day of rain, enough to sustain it for a year, thats strategy at its finest. I saw one little trickle of a stream, the only water...aside from the pool...that we saw in the whole of our stay. The conference, well, thats a whole'nother story all together...if I am feeling bored I will tell ya more about it, but don't hold your breath.

On a much brighter note, I fished a Portland area river last Saturday...swinging again, finally. Towards the end of the day (about hour 9 of 13) I hooked up and landed a little fuckin gomper steelhead, chrome as heyull and about 23 inches long, the smallest Oregon steel yet, but gotdamner he tasted fine! Probably going out again tomorrow, levels on area rivers are finally coming into shape and they've been kickin out fish...I'll keep ya posted.

lunch

2008-06-20T12:26:00.000-07:00

The picture is terrible cause all I have is a cheap ass 1 pixel camera on my phone, but use your imagination and you'll get it. Bottom left: satueed morels and onions with parmesan, bottom right: sauteed king boletes with tomatoes and parmesan, top mid: boletes with fresh onion and mozzarella...all served on fresh local bread, quick broiled and consumed in rapid succession. try it!

troutin' and redneckin' it

2008-06-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

In the past week I've been out twice for native resident cutthroat in small coastal streams. Prior to those outings I didn't think resident cutts over 10 inches were a real possibility, but I stand corrected. The first day we landed four over 10, the largest about 12". On dry flies and little baby 3 weights it was a blast. The second day we caught no large fish, but still managed quite a few in the 8 inch range...fun to be out troutin' again nonetheless.

Redneckin' it, or, doin it dirty mcdirt style: Went to Foster Dam on the S. Santiam two days ago to try to bank a steelhead for the table. The river is finally starting to fall a bit and there are no shortage of fresh fish around, I know this because the yocales slayed on em...unfortunately I live too far from confederate flags and monster trucks to be a yocale myself. I hooked one and lost it rillll quick like, while the boys huckin their 1 oz. bobbers with 1/8th oz. jigs seemed to be raking them in with abandon. Steelhead must like the smell of oil, confederate flag dust and bud light all mixed together.....?

morels and boletes oh my!

2008-06-12T12:13:00.001-07:00

Well friends, the lack of camera certainly was a stinger this weekend. Your lucky I don't think a picture is worth a thousand words, cause there should be about 10 of em going up now and being that there isn't it would take a lotta words to make up for it. So I'll try to keep it within reason.

We pulled into Camp Sherman at about 3 on Saturday afternoon. The campgrounds on the Metolius had a few people in them, but weren't terrible. Still, privacy was not an option along the river. We got to lower bridge, where I wanted to camp, and Kari decided she didn't want any part of 7 AM generators and relatively constant camp company. So we just kept driving, took some backroads to forest hwy 12 and found ourselves a super nice, free and completely empty camp along a nice little creek. We parked and decided to stroll around, look for shrooms and pick out the best site for camp. We were about 20 minutes into our mini-foray when Kari found a morel, a nice natural apparently associated with some young Grand Fir. There were a few nice freshies and some blown out, dried out oldies. I was surprised to see naturals as low as we were and was actually looking for King Boletes when she found that first morel. We foraged for about 2 hours that evening and came back to camp with about a dozen nice morels and 8 nice boletes, even though there was obvious sign that the commercial pickers had been through for the boletes already. That reminds me now of how fucking annoying it was to know that we were playing clean-up the scraps behind the commercials all weekend, everywhere we went. I can't wait to, hopefully, someday find an untouched area for boletes and burn morels, I think it would be quite epic....though I should quit whining, now.

The following day we started with a another mini-foray near camp, got a couple more naturals and one or two boletes. We also flushed a ruffed grouse, the first I have seen in the cascades. It was about 20 feet away in somewhat dense young fir. I had forgot how much I thoroughly enjoy that split second of surprise, with a twist of adrenaline for good measure, that you get when a ruffed flushes...I kinda wished I had a gun because I instantly thought of grouse and morels on the camp stove, but that would be plain old overindulgence. Maybe he could have at least flew into a tree and killed himself, then I couldn't very well just let it rot? Overindulgence would certainly be trumped by resourcefullness and minimization of waste...no?

We spent the remainder of the afternoon in the GW burn, once again playing clean up behind the commercials, but the beauty of the burns are that the commercials can pick and pick to their hearts content and barely put a nick in the morel population. In about 5 or 6 hours the two of us pulled 7 pounds, while finding only three or four individual trees that didn't already have footprints surrounding it - to see the little spots like that, that hadn't been touched, was astounding. Even the areas where they had obviously picked yielded a few beauties right next to bootprints. We tried as best we could to maintain self control and take only the large morels but we definitely took a few minis, it was hard not to do. Imagine stepping around a tree and seeing 20 or 30 morels, all of them too small to harvest, and in the mix there are nice cut stems from the commercials. Do it around about 5-10 trees without finding a harvestable morel and like I said, it's tough not to cut at least one, a morel you would have definitely left had it been standing next to a three incher, but at the same time needed to quell the frustration and boost the moral (cheap pun intended). A unique (to me) observation in the burn was finding them around hardwoods. We were in a pretty boggy area near the head of a small stream and there were what appeared to be big cottonwoods. I had no idea cottonwoods grew that high and am still weary of saying that is definitively what they were, but I spent a lot of time earlier this spring staring at cottonwoods and am pretty certain that is what they were...anyways, there were loads of morels along the root lines. We were balance beaming it along down trees to save us from sinking knee deep in dirty ass fire mud. At the base of the standing trees you could walk around them on the root system, then jump on another down tree and follow the maze to the next standing tree. This yielded A LOT of shrooms and it was pretty fun, except for this one time, I reached what appeared to be a dead end to the balance beam maze and had already come over some really dicey shit that I didn't want to do-over. As I was standing on a down log, part of it buckled and I just about dumped my whole bag (this was at the end of the day, on the way out) of morels in the mud. I got lucky and somehow managed to keep the bag inhand, the morels in the bag and my balance all at once...a disaster very narrowly avoided.

I needed a damn beer after the day in the burn so we made a quick stop in Sisters on our way out and went back to camp. Why we didn't have the beer in camp already is another story. We have been changing our ways lately with regards to camp food. It used to be brats, brats, brats and maybe a hobo dinner (taters and hamburger wrapped in foil, for you out of the loopers). This weekends vittles included....night one: one fresh bolete sauteed in butter for an appetizer, then shell noodles with leek, the first days morels, garlic and alfredo for the main course. day two: breakfast was a big egg scramble with a ton of veggies, lunch was veggie wraps with hummus, dinner was vegetable red curry over jasmine rice, thai style. day three: b-fast was avocado and egg sandwhiches on filone, and lunch was more super duper veg wraps with the previous nights curry sauce. Those of you who know me from my previous life will wonder what the alien has done with Thomas. This is a new leaf and I must say I like it.

Well that pretty much wraps it up. The third day of picking was pretty uneventful, aside from the huge string of relatively non stop expletives once we learned what the flagging tape meant. It was sign left by the commercial pickers so their crews wouldn't hit the same spot twice. EVERYWHERE we went for boletes was flagged, and I got pissed, then I got home and looked in the bags of shrooms we had and realized what a choad I was being. I certainly don't think I own the forest anymore than they do, or at least not by any rationale I am ready to delve into on here, and realize that they are trying to make a living picking mushrooms while I am getting some to eat and share with friends and family. Lets just hope that we're not ruining something else by overdoing it. Maybe the science will actually get done at some point in the near future and they can regulate the industry prior to any major eco-impact. But thats likely nothing but a bunch of hope. And what is hope, but a mind-made concept, anyways? (<--- i told you i would get existential on your asses!)

-SL

fyi - 1307 words, only about 1 and 1/3 pictures worth, thank me for that fools!!!!!

request granted

2008-06-06T12:36:00.000-07:00

Upon the request of thee faithful reader, it is time for a post. My digital camera shit the bed two weeks ago. Seeins' that my writing is, well, my writing, I rely heavily on the photos for content. Without the fallback I've been a little weary of throwing anything on here. Not only are the photos my content crutch, they also tend to keep me on task. So I am heretofore (maybe?) issuing a declaration of certain incongruency.

The out of doors has been fairly uncooperative with me lately, still. I did manage about a pound or two of morels from a burn two weeks ago, with plans to head back this weekend for more morchella and some boletes. But, the snow is supposed to creep down to 4000 feet tonight through tomorrow. 4000 being the magic number I had in mind and previous experience with snow morels has me weighing other options. I know there will be shrooms to be had, so we'll go and see what gives.

Fishing: About once a year I take a fairly substantial hiatus. This is not planned. The only general rule of the hiatus is that it occurs at a time when steelhead are less catchable than most other times. I've been giving the recent break a lot of thought though, regarding the whole catchability issue. The rivers are still high with the snow still in the mountains and all, but said rivers are all dam regulated so while they are high they are almost continuously "fishable" color-wise. So why I haven't gone out and tried is starting to baffle me a bit. Fact is, steelhead are at least fairly predictable, and when the water is high I truly believe there are far-less swingable runs or pockets, which should in turn make fishing the water easier? Sounds right anyways. Regardless of water levels, it is time to go swinging. The involuntary twitches and self-imposed mind games are pretty much in full effect, a true sign that the hiatus must end.

Last time I said something about juicy posts and eye-candy to come. Unfortunately I mustn't make the same claim again, for the eye-candy acquire-er is out of business and the whole writing issue I explained above. This weekend should provide something to babble on about here at the leech, be it shrooms, fish, existentialism, redwingsuckism, or otherwise, I'll try to shave down the size of the post to post time-gaps. Thanks for reading.

-SL

3 weeks

2008-05-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

Sadly, with not much to report in the way of morels and fish, 3 weeks have gone by. The last four morel outings have yielded about 10 total. The fishing has been nearly non-existant, with the snow melt and all. The local locales are flowing in the trees as the dams prepare themselves for the deluge of snowmelt rolling down the mountains. The riparian morels near home are on their last legs and most of the fires are either dried out or covered with snow. But the morels are still finding some favorable conditions in a few burns and the spring king boletes ought to be starting soon as well. This weekend will mark my first trip this spring over the cascades, we will be scouting and, hopefully, picking morels in the burns and maybe some spring kings, if luck is on our side. But the fishing, sadly, will likely have to wait a bit longer. I have been pretty excited to get out the floating lines for summer steelhead, but as I mentioned, rivers in the the trees make things a little tricky.

All has not been lost though, one of the morel trips and a coastal hike yielded my first two batches of oyster mushrooms. I had read some mixed messages regarding the flavor of the oyster. One bulletin board post likens them to bacon, while a book I read compares breaded and deep fried oyster mushrooms with seafood. On my tongue, I definitely got the bacon message, which was surprising. These were consumed sauteed and mixed with veggies and scrambled eggs. We also gave them a try breaded and fried. I thought they tasted like fried mushrooms, hmmmm?, but the texture was reminiscent of some seafoods. Tasty little morsels though, without argument.

I also made my first trip to Silver Creek Falls State Park yesterday. This is a spectacular piece of earth. I highly recommend all who live in or visit Oregon go there. My mind could hardly comprehend how the little stream above and below the larger waterfalls was the same water within the falls. It just didn't add up and seemed like there was a mysterious water addition right at the brink of the waterfall. Words, especially my jumbled prose, will never come close to describing whats there, so just go see for yourself.

With luck there will be much juicier posts soon, with eye candy and the like. Til then, stay upright.

The madness continues...

2008-05-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

It's full blown morel mania on the leech homefront. I won't bore you with all the mushroomy talk, but if your interested go here: http://www.cascademyco.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=658

Last night we had stuffed morels for the first time, we used sauteed morel stems, rice pilaf, chives and leek. You mix all that good stuff with some mayo (a fav of the leech in any dish!) and some cream and some parmesan and anything else your taste buds desire. Stuff the caps with said mixture, saute on all "sides" (they are mostly round, but you can turn them into oval-squares if your careful) and bake at 375 for about 10 minutes. I threw some cheddar on the top of a couple of them and it was magnifico. We pretty much guessed at this recipe and it worked well. A couple variations on the stuffing could help the total flavor experience (most stuffed morel recipes call for crab stuffing, SNAP!), but for try #1 it was a success.

Last Week #2

2008-04-29T13:03:00.000-07:00

Saturday was probably the most recreationally productive day of the week. It was a dissapointing day hatch-wise, we only saw 2 or 3 rises, and it was pretty slow sub-surface as well, but the quality made up for all that....

Last Week #1

2008-04-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

Last week was relatively slow when stacked up against the one before it. However, it was not without highlight. This unemployment thing is great, I can't imagine what it would be like to actually be on unemployment, like I could be getting paid for this madness?

Anyways, tried to round up a few more morels close to home. Only went out one day due mainly to shitty weather, picking morels in the rain gets old really quick. It seems like the blackberrys somehow increase there affinity to my pants, and likewise my pants seem much worse at keeping the blackberrys off my skin. Waaaah, waaaaah. While on the forage I saw a couple noteworthy things, one being this MASSIVE trillium, I don't know how big these usually get but this one dwarfs most of the others I've seen this spring. Granted it is a small backpack, but the flower is about 2-2.5 ft tall.

A little further down the "trail" that I wasn't on I saw this Verpa conica, edible but apparently not too coveted.
Last but not least, a nice fruiting of what I believe are Turkey Tails. I think I've seen more of these than any other mushroom this spring. Always on dead trees, usually dead and down, and sometimes on stumps.

Jackpot!

2008-04-21T18:52:00.000-07:00

Some friends of the leech found themselves knee deep in spring gold! Awesome find!!!

Round 1 of the yearly drying operation here at headquarters, trying a new method this year. Used a dehydrator last year...this batch still has a day or two to go, but so far so good and it doesn't smell nearly as bad as the dehydrator.

Good days....

2008-04-21T08:57:00.000-07:00

Well it got cold. Not cold enough to freeze and whither the morels overnight, but probably cold enough to have restarted the morel season at a certain elevation. Its likely that the low stuff was spared from complete destruction, but probably was slowed way down and anything that had started popping above 1000 ft is likely gone. Nonetheless, we knew that there were morels to be had, so we went and got 'em. Went back to the same place I got the first haul late last week. We pulled about 3-4 more lbs. on Saturday and about 1 lb on Sunday morning (picking in the snow!). We scouted Saturday for some similar locales but found nothing. So yesterday afternoon we opted for some river bottom cottonwoods to finish out the day. We are happy we did!!!

Scouting the coast range

Saturdays take

The blacks on the top half are from the same coastal spot and the esculentas on the bottom are from "a" river bottom (whatever you do, don't ask where "a" river is)

Some art, courtesy of Kari...I wanna eat this picture

So right about now, there are about 7 lbs. of fresh morels in the fridge. Being that it's April 21st and I didn't even find one last year until May 13th I would say that it's looking like a good spring!

Bon Appetit!

Mega...

2008-04-18T01:50:00.000-07:00

Morels today. The shit that needed to align, hath aligned. Gonna try to get more before the weather freezes them out this weekend (let us hope that this doesn't really happen, cause I left a lotta babies out there today).

Here is the whole haul,

my first quad,

and the days all stars, which I may turn into money...hmmm, dilemma.

note: I am not eating (or selling) the raggedy ass curled up one in the bottom right corner, it was just a really cool morel, massive and starting to rot...had to get some pictures of that one. It was growing in a flat spiral under a big piece of fir bark.

Consolation prize!

2008-04-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

Hunted morels for about 4 hours yesterday. Spring was well on its way here, several knee to waste high nettles, lots of old, mangy Verpa bohemica. Everything looked right, but, not a single morel was found. Luckily, I chose this spot because it was very proximal to some good steelhead water. I figured I might get lucky and get an early summer on the swing, if nothing else get some practice casting my new-to-me Sage 6126. I was fishing a type III and a sz. 4 Purple Green Butt, traditional style. I worked one large run and had several trout grab the fly, even landed one native winter steelhead smolt, chrome and fired up on its way to the ocean. I moved down to fish one small tailout before calling it quits and about halfway through, in the middle of the swing I got a great grab and it stuck. It felt like an old winter should, no screaming runs but it did have a lot more power than I would expect for a spawned out hen. She was good sized, maybe 31-32", had some minor wounds on her body just in front of her tail, from digging a redd I'm sure, but was in otherwise excellent condition, especially her fins. I was expecting it to take some time to revive her but as soon as I pointed her in the right direction she was gone with power.

A bonus fish like that is tough to beat!

Holy Money Quote, batman!

2008-04-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

So, I am close to done with my first Haig-Brown book. Several times in the past year I have found myself wondering, why in the hell am I not reading Haig-Brown? I mentioned this to my friend John and he was kind enough to loan me Fisherman's Fall. Anyways, there have been several excellent sentences in the book, but this is one of my favorite.

writing of the sources of peoples' fascination with fishing...

"Highest among them I would place the impossibility, for nearly all of us anyway, of achieving anything approaching complete and regular success, in spite of the delightful delusion that success of this sort is never far away."

Thats good stuff.

Will I ever learn?

2008-04-14T09:43:00.001-07:00

When the time is not right for something that depends on the right time, it is best if you just wait for it. Trying to make it be the right time is not humanly possible, for one cannot feasibly make the last two weeks warmer or wetter. In fact one cannot feasibly do anything to the last two weeks at all, except think about it, which is by definition not doing anything to it, but doing something of it. Nonetheless, I thought by knowing (without really knowing) that there were morels where we hunted them, that somehow one or two would appear. Unfortunately, nature was there to firmly put me in my place.

We spent about 15-16 hours over the last three days foraging river bottoms laced with cottonwood and maple, and a few mini-stands of fir and cedar mixed in, with nothing to show for it, aside from the large mental scar that is left behind. The scar forms slowly, very slowly, and doesn't become apparent until that one moment when you firmly call it quits and head for home. During that moment all the certainty you had that the morels were there winds itself into a mass of misinformed thought in your mind, you try to shrug it off to the "learning curve", but despite your best efforts it instantaneously solidifies during the nano-second of thought in which you accept that you will go home empty handed. The scar that is left behind is all consuming for longer than it should be, you poke it at, feel along its foreign edges for some clue as to how you let this happen. But there is no "clue", just a scar. Learning from the scar is the crucial part, I think. To make sure you come away from it with knowledge rather than a general distaste for its creation is key, in fact it may be the key.

Nonetheless, it was very nice to be out in the woods and it was not without some new experience. For instance, this may have been the first time ever that I mostly lost interest in fishing. There was an excellent trout river within sight or sound all weekend, yet I found myself nary thinking of pursuing the trouts. Instead my eyes were fixed on the duff, looking for a springtime secret to be poking its head out of the fallen leaves, when I did look up it was only to search for the next patch of promising ground, a big old growth cottonwood, or a freshly fallen fir.

To say that the weekend was a total loss on the morel front is a stretch. On the way to the hunting grounds on Friday I noticed a curious shape sprouting up from some mulch under a fence that creates the border of a road ditch and a front yard. Upon closer inspection we found loads and loads of morels had fruited in an apparently new (last summer/fall) area of landscaping. On the way back through that evening we stopped in and knocked on the door. I should say now that I had written off consumption of "landscape morels" for fear of undue exposure to unknown substances (the bark is often treated with undesirables and people have been known to lay down the pesticides in such areas) so my interest in these morels was initially academic. However, after yet another day of finding no true morels in the woods, I thought it would be worth checking into the large fruiting of mulchies that we saw. I was hoping to hear that they used organic mulch and didn't use pesticides, in which case I probably would have harvested the lot of them. However, upon speaking with the residents I learned they used the cheapest mulch available (I must admit, after hearing this I was still thinking of eating some of them) AND they had recently spread a very strong herbicide over the whole area. That pretty much put an end to any thought entertaining ingestion of these treats. So, some pictures and admiration of their akward beauty would have to do. I must say though, this find did nothing but accelerate my sureness that at least some morels would be found, which in the end only led to a bigger, more subtantial scar.

All that aside, these pictures are still very fun to look at! Enjoy!

Excuse my language, but FUCK YEAH BEYATCHEEES!!!!

2008-04-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

got eeeem!!!! first morel of the year has been banked (<---- this is a triple pun!, never mind why, far too advanced for you), and is awaiting ingestion!

DISCLAIMER: eating the mushroom on the right side of the photo is not suggested...the verpas have been known to cause loss of muscle coordination, among other things.

also, for anyone who might care, i found the morel, the conica and another smaller morel that i left behind within about 4 feet of each other. left the smaller one behind, going to get a set of time-lapse pictures, will post here.

oh yeah, fuck yeah beyatcheees!

I did it once, and I will do it again

2008-04-09T19:44:00.000-07:00

Sorry to get political on your asses again, but I just can't help myself. The wolf issue in Idaho is a real shitsandwich. Upon the wolf being de-listed Idaho, Wyoming and I believe Montana as well now have full control over their respective wolf populations. This is relatively good news but assuredly won't last long. Here are a couple money quotes from a CBS News article...

"Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter told The Associated Press that he wants hunters to kill about 550 gray wolves. That would leave about 100 wolves, or 10 packs, according to a population estimate by state wildlife officials."

and from the Govna' himself...

"I'm prepared to bid for that first ticket to shoot a wolf myself," Otter said earlier Thursday during a rally of about 300 hunters."

I would also like a share a brief excerpt from a related article put out by a local news source in Idaho (the "He" in question is the head of the Anti-Wolf Coalition)

"He says it is ruining the ecosystem, and kills wild animals and livestock not just for food, but for sport."

So, apparently, Wolves have sports! I am sure the large number of wild animals and livestock being killed were just a side effect of this years wolf olympics. I guess they hold them on the years with the most dipshits talking about wolves in the news.

Breaking the Hex(es)

2008-04-05T10:58:00.000-07:00

I got lucky this Monday. The first summer steelhead was hooked, landed and harvested on March, 31 this year which puts me about 2 months ahead of last years mark. Apparently, according to a friend, I was "double hexed" (trout fishing = 1 hex, nymphing = 1 hex) but still managed to catch the damn thing. The steelhead juju is on my side, hopefully to stay but I know better, so I will take it while I can. This 29" hatchery hen took a sz 8 possebugger on 4x on the business end of a floating DT6 on a 5 wt rod, definitely the lightest gear I've landed a steelhead on. She cut deep, dark orange and ate like some exquisite french dish I don't even know the name of. Her eggs were minute, about a cup of volume total, and her stomach loaded with small nymphs. She was one of only about 500 fish over Willamette falls, which if you think about it, is akin to a needle in a haystack. There are hundreds of river miles (combining all the possible tribs and the willy itself) that those 500 fish could be in, so I suppose to say I was lucky to find her would be a gross understatement, really fucking lucky would be a little closer to the truth. Anyways...porn time!

Where's Waldo?

Blood in the water = food on the table

The boat's name, forever appropriate (we hope)

You guys need to buy more bandwidths

2008-03-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

Technical problems at buster tonight, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the overgrowth of You Tubery? Dudes, really, less you tube or more bandwidth!!! I want to see more of banknote's fish porn. Thanks.

Boatin' it

2008-03-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

Had the boat on it's first camping trip (with me, sort of) this weekend. Kari hooked her first winter on the swung fly, a most serious accomplishment, with the fishkiller striking again...or the fishkiller getting striked again? The fishkiller is a fly I will have to tell you about later...I digress, again. Anyways, it was a badass weekend on some badass water. I rowed a couple nice drops but not the one in the photo, it looks so quaint in 2 dimensions. The drop pictured was a chew you up and spit you out piece of water that had the potential for serious punishment if the oars were not stroked just right. Given my greenhorness on the sticks, I figured the easy wade down the river right side was a much more life friendly option. Additionally, my dumbass hung us on a rock on some relatively simple looking shit later in the day, if it wasn't for Kari's quick witedness and weight shift we may well have lost a lot of shit...or maybe more. I haven't been as scared in a long time as I was when I felt that tube hang up, needless to say I have a serious newfound respect for the power of water.

In related news, towards the end of the day yesterday I was stripping in my shooting line rather fast and lifted the rod to set my anchor for the double spey, when the fly left the water a fish sharked the shit out of it, but missed, the whole back was out of the water dorsal, tail and all. The fucker would not come back, but it was certainly a moment of awesomeness.

Verpa beotchica

2008-03-24T18:15:00.000-07:00

Damn the man who invented morels that aren't really morels. Thought I found a truly early bird but nature got my goat.

The West End

2008-03-19T10:28:00.000-07:00

We left the Willamette valley on Friday afternoon after an uncountable number of phone calls were placed, primarily dealing with the acquisition of dry wood, brats and PBR. We made the 205-I5 junction north of Vancouver in under 2 hours, the steelhead gods clearly on our side. And when we finally got through Aberdeen and made the turn north on 101 the rain stopped and we thought the unbelievable may be true, that we could put up the tents without them becoming just another sponge for March rains on the olympic peninsula. When we arrived in camp, it was moonlit and the fourth of our party already had the living area tarp up and secured. It was at this point that I realized things were going too well, and I mentally prepared for three days of three good rods on the water with no chrome to show for it. Steve, the fourth member in question, sombered out of the truck after four hours of front seat sleep and gave us the run down. The river had been dropping into shape since he arrived on Wednesday, was clearing up and looked good. He fished the big water for a day and a half and put one full day in on some smaller, clearer water about twenty minutes north, and did it all without even a grab.

The next morning camp water was on my immediate agenda. We fished it hard all morning, talked to a couple boats that had caught fish and then moved upriver for the afternoon. We saw one big trout and one possible steelhead but touched nothing. Sunday started out the same, more camp water in the morning and then we headed to a smaller river for the afternoon fish. Here we found some good, relatively untouched water but it was crystal clear and I was only packing the big gaudy shit, so it felt wrong and the steelhead confirmed.

Back in camp Sunday night we were down to three, the five days of grablessness finally finishing off Steve. We were supposed to leave at 2 Monday, but in camp on Sunday night we decided to leave that decision up in the air. We abandoned the camp water Monday morning and got on a new program, which was flies in the water all day, only in the prime shit, even if it means going through it two or three times. We had found two superb pieces of water in the previous days and stuck with them. Starting off one run in the morning and moving to the next around noon. When we got to the car for the move, the decision was made to send our obligations to hell and fish until dark. This paid off. When we got to the second piece of water it was a little after noon. By 1:30 it was too late to go back on our decision to stay. Right at this moment John had a momentary hook-up and our decision to stay was confirmed. We each worked throught the run once more and felt nothing.

We left to breakdown camp and had about 2 hours to fish. We all agreed on one piece of water, not where John felt the fish but a bigger, even juicier run. I went through the gut first and by the time I got to the end I was sure that we were going home fishless. I barely had the mental energy to reel up and wade to shore, I was defeated. I had a sit on the bank and watched Nate and John fish for a bit and realized that I was fulfilling my prophecy of fishlessness.

The top of the run is narrow, with only about ten feet of soft inside seam that is fishable. I was looking at it with distaste, but knew fishing there gave me a hell of a lot better chance at a hook-up then sitting on the gravel. I started fishing it with little motivation, but quickly fell into a rhythm. I kept glancing at the far side, there was a sharp seam and a couple good sweepers and logjams within a few feet of the seam. It was going to be really ugly to fish it, make a 60-70 foot cast, heave a mend to put the head on the far side of the main current and feed a shitload of line. As luck would have it, I had popped a guide off of my 13' 7/8 St. Criox avid the day before, leaving my whooping stick out of commision. Nate had brought a backup though, a 9149 Burkheimer, by far the biggest rod I have fished with, but a perfect rod to have in hand when attempting to fish previously described seam. So I heaved that shit over there and made a big mend, the feeding line was ripped out by the main current but I was still able to get about 4 seconds of good broadside "swing" at the very end of it all. On my fourth or fifth cast working the seam the last 20 feet of shooting line that I was feeding had a loop knotted into it. I always stop the swing and pull the knot out, but for some reason this time I didn't, I said "fuck it", and watched the loop rip through the guides and out the end of the rod. The loop got about ten feet out of the rod and stopped as there was no more line to feed. The line came tight and I felt it, a soft tug. I thought, no fucking way, then dropped the rod and turned it slightly towards the bank, and the fish was there. We never actually got this fish in hand, but we all got a good look at it and it's big floppy adipose before the hook popped out next to the bank. I took my seat on the bank and let it all sink in, somewhere in the background I heard John say "Well, what should we do?", without hesitation Nate answered "Keep fishing." About twenty minutes later I was awaken from my daze by a hoot downstream. I looked downstream, John's rod was corked and right then I saw a silver bullet launch out of the water. Another nice native, this one landed, a buck of around 10 pounds that took in the soft stuff on the inside in about 3 feet of water. Nate hauled ass back upstream and continued to fish. John and I were sitting behind him on the bank letting the memories of those fish sear deeply into our minds. We were both watching Nate's rod when it bounced two or three times after coming tight to the swing. He swept the rod toward the bank and nothing was there. After running the fly through a couple times, I yelled over the water "Nate, did you check the hook?", as the fly he was fishing had a little sz 6 trailing egg hook. When he got the fly in his hand I watched his head drop and knew the hook had fouled around the front of the fly. A tragedy indeed. He fished out the next twenty minutes and ended up empty handed.

On the walk back to the car John said something to the effect of "Yeah, man, but you touched a fish. I was just as happy getting that grab earlier as I was to catch that fish!" Nate responds "Easy for you to say." I think that this exchange sums up steelheading well. You have to be happy about touching a fish, but at the same time, when you put in nearly 30 hours of fishing in three days, don't touch a fish until the end and that fish doesn't stick because of a fouled hook, it rocks you to your steelheading core. There is no avoiding it.

I've tried to resist....but

2008-03-10T12:14:00.000-07:00

I wanted to stick with cool shit like steelhead and tasty shroomage on this blog, but I can no longer resist the temptation.

This shit is hot off the press.

The headline from the AP:

Tainted drinking water kept under wraps
Many researchers fear public would misunderstand, overreact to disclosure

When water providers find pharmaceuticals in drinking water, they rarely tell the public. When researchers make the same discoveries, they usually don’t identify the cities involved.
There are plenty of reasons offered for the secrecy: concerns about national security, fears of panic, a feeling that the public will not understand — even confidentiality agreements.

“That’s a really sensitive subject,” said Elaine Archibald, executive director of California Urban Water Agencies, an 11-member organization comprised of the largest water providers in California.

She said many customers “don’t know how to interpret the information. They hear something has been detected in source water and drinking water, and that’s cause for alarm — just because it’s there.”

As The Associated Press documented in a five-month investigation, drinking water provided to at least 41 million people living in 24 major metropolitan areas has tested positive for trace amounts of pharmaceuticals.

All that I can say is THANK YOU WATER TESTING PEOPLE! You have really saved me a lot of heartache and stress by not telling me there are detectable levels of pharmaceuticals in my drinking water. I probably wouldn't have known "how to interpret the information" had you told me sooner. I might have even thought it was "cause for alarm"! My word, that would have been a real tragedy. But now I know for sure, since you didn't just come out and say it, that it must be completely safe. It's a good thing too, cause if it wasn't safe those big multi-billion dollar pharmy companies might have tried to cover it up. Its good that you didn't make them do that...errrrr? Wait, you didn't take money from the drug companies to keep this quiet, did you? No, you mustn't have, cause it's safe, right? It's probably really good for fish and other aquatic life too, they probably never get sick cause they are all being treated for everything already! What a great plan. Maybe we should put more drugs in the water, then people won't ever get cancer or disease of any kind, and if you just threw in a little amphetamine and THC it would take care of the illegal drug problem, just like that! All you would have to do is get a glass of water!

Thanks again water testers, for knowing what is best for me. DOUCHEBAGS!

Photo Re-cap

2008-03-06T20:58:00.000-08:00

Well, I always say I am going to put up pictures but never do. Here is a little bonus porn from the past two months. The first pic and the obvious one taken on gear, the rest on the swung fly! I tripled the number of winters I've caught on the swung fly in just two months (I had two total for the last two winters)...all I notice that is much different is that I purposely cast like shit and feed lotsa line to get REAL! deep.

Also, a bonus pic from last year at the end, cause it's pretty much that time again.

I told ya so....

2008-03-04T00:25:00.000-08:00

So I am doing a little reading tonight on the Native Fish Society web page. I was scrolling through a document detailing exactly how bad hatchery fish suck at being fish, and how much there fucking up the lives of real fish everywhere. Then I found the gem I have been looking for.....

Marchetti, Michael, P. and Gabrielle A. Nevitt. 2003. Effects of hatchery rearing on brain structure of rainbow trout. Environmental Biology of Fishes 66: 9-14.

"We find…that the brains of hatchery reared fish are relatively smaller in several critical measures than their wild counterparts. Our work may suggest a mechanistic basis for the observed vulnerability of hatchery fish to predation and their general low survival upon release into the wild. Our results are the first to highlight the effects of hatchery rearing on changes in brain development in fishes."

Well fuck a duck. Hey Kevin, remember that hatchery fish you caught with a wood chip in it's stomach? If I were a steelhead I would definitely want the wood biter to be my mommy.

To sum, let this serve as a reminder, if not an order given by nature, to Kill Hatchery Steelhead.

Check out the rest of the document here:

http://www.nativefishsociety.org/documents/HATCHERIESWILDSALMONRECOVERY.pdf

Unforcing it -or- reinforcing it

2008-02-18T13:27:00.000-08:00

All is right with the world again. After two full days with 4 good rods plying the water (including more than a few drifts with a bobber and jig), saturday afternoon bent over and gave it up. We were supposed to be pulling the boats out right about the time I stepped into one of the best runs in the stretch. I was following through, but grabs were had on the first pass, so the confidence was flowing. I stepped into the head of the run and made my first cast with about 10 feet of skagit head still in the rod. I was fishing a heavy tip and a plastic tube fly, so a small pullback mend was key to get some sink. I made one of those and the instant the line came tight (maybe 2 seconds) I was ticking the bottom, but this didn't really make any sense with the plastic tube and all so I thought I must of started too high in the run and it was really shallow. Then the fish took the fuck off. My drag was loose since I don't carry a loop and on her first run she made quite the tidy nest of shooting line coming out of my reel. Luckily all the backlash came out clean on her second run. She did a little ass shake dance on the surface a few times and all in all put up a good tug, had me thinking she was wild. But it was a dirty little hatchery girl, chrome as hell and cut like complete ass, day old ass even. She did give up a lotta eggs, which now will be catching springers in a couple months instead of polluting the gene pool with garbage, hoo rah bitches.

As an aside, this was the most fucked up winter fish I have witnessed. The fly could not have been more than a foot and a half down, probably closer to a foot, and the line was almost perfectly perpendicular to the flow and the fish fucking schmeared that thing...I will also happily admit that it was one of the ugliest flies I have ever fished for steelhead, but it did look pretty good in the water.

if the any of the photos are decent i'll put em up tonight. until then, GO FISHING, fools.

Forcing it

2008-02-12T13:07:00.000-08:00

So, I have been pretty sleepy around here lately. I am attributing most of this to life. As in, I have been too busy with life to post. By "busy" I certainly don't mean busy!, in fact the meaning is much closer to lazy than busy. But busy sounds better than lazy so I will stick with it. The fishing in fly department has been damned slow of late, high and cold water is a cocktail suited to the dirty mcdirts of the world and I spent too much time drinking that drink early in the winter. Two weekends in a row now I have tried to force it with the fly and while its great to be out (especially in little coastal old growth valleys), its a bit of a bitch to make things happen that don't want to. But things are warming and wanting to change for the better so I got that going for me, which is nice. Nonetheless its gettin kinda bad. I measure my distaste for the steelheading conditions in desire to fish trout, and I am really close to making some plans on that front...this is a fucking tragedy for mid February. I am not supposed to think about trout until at least April 1st, and then its really easy to just pretend its a joke. But now? I must be sick.

Soon enough the shit is gonna line up and get real good and I plan on being there for it. Til then, busy it will be.

Hooky

2008-01-18T10:21:00.000-08:00

I left work yesterday at 11:45. See, N^2 came over two nights ago and lived up to his reputation by making sure to tell me how he was going to fish the following day (yesterday), when he knows damn well I have to work...he is really good at this. Anyways, when I got to work yesterday I got this feeling that I wasn't supposed to be there. So, I called the N^2 and he was damned kind enough to get my gear together (payback for all the times he rubbed all the midweek fishing in my face). Leaving work early to fish when you left home thinking you were gonna work all day is like walking into a high class strip club when you were expecting a low class gay bar (you know like bikers and leather low-class) and you don't realize it until the last second. Fucking excellent. A fine day was had by all and the fine-ness was thoroughly in place prior to landing two steelhead on the swung fly between three guys in just over 3 hours of fishing, that shit was a bonus.

Ode to the Beatdown

2008-01-09T12:40:00.001-08:00

I am sure all of you that have found your way here have also found your way there, but just in case you haven't, go now for it is closing time at the Beatdown. It's too bad that it must shutdown, but it's quite fitting really as it echoes reality and only makes sense. I mean, seriously, how much can one voluntarily beat oneself down before one must stop? Likewise, with all things, you gotta change it up sometimes. As much as I love to swing flies for winter steelhead, there has got to be something dynamic about it from my end (I know the river and the fish are constantly changing), I need to be changing too. Whether I change technique, location or my gear all together, somethings got to give. I would go fucking crazy if all I did was swing the same flies on the same stretch of river, with the same rod, line and tips, week in and week out, year in and year out. I can think of a lot of flies and a lot of rivers, so I am sure I can stay busy for awhile, but like I said somethings gotta give. For example, this year I am not nymphing, not because I think its not fly fishing or some other bullshit reason like that, but because the sight of the yarndicator makes my arm hurt and gives me immediate stress, remembering all those times I looked at a greasy seam on the farside knowing damned well that the monstrous fucking yarn gob on my leader would only allow me to get halway there at best and halfway only if I rollcasted my shoulder out of socket, on my tiptoes no less. So, fuck the nymphing. Instead, I fish gear or swing when fishing for hatchery rats and swing when targeting natives and its turned out very well so far, my best of three winters by leaps and bounds already and its just underway. I guess the point is, the beatdown is calling it quits and its sad and happy all at once. It couldn't go on forever and it was damned good while it lasted, with no shortage of insight, humor and stupidiforia...along with some words about the damned greasy fishing we have out here in the PNW. Props and thanks to you bacon, it was most thoroughly enjoyed!

The Beatdown will remain linked on this page, I will also add a link to Buster, where we will hopefully be able to find the continued ramblings of the bacon_to_fry.

will hoist a few tonight in rememberance

It's about time

2008-01-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

Well, as I hinted at in an earlier post I was sort of waiting for something profound to happen before I started writing about Belize...the permit in particular. That something isn't happening and I am not exactly sure why I expected it to in the first place, wishful thinking I guess. Conveniently, I just wrote an email to a friend who has been asking for a story and pictures of the fish, I will take advantage and paste it in here. enjoy.

This is right after I hooked the fish, at this point the guide was screaming "GOT HIM!! GOT HIM!! GOT HIM!!" (sounding like got eem got eem etc.), clapping his hands and running down the flat trying to cut the permit off from the left side of the flat and push him over to the right where there is less coral, he was not fast enough.

At this point I had just ran to the edge of the flat and in chest deep water with no where to go I jumped up on a coral head and backed all the pressure off the fish so he wouldn't wrap me around the coral per the guides instructions. I was very doubtful when he first started yelling at me to give him slack. I couldn't figure out after 20 or 30 some shots at fish and finally hooking one why I would ever want to "give him slack", but I obliged...well partly obliged, I didn't really ever give him slack until the guide started speeding away from the flat in the boat once I jumped in, he went about twice as fast as I could recover line and I had zero tension on the fish for about 10 seconds or so, this was undoubtedly the longest 10 seconds of my life, except maybe for that time I crashed my car...ahhh I digress.

Here the fish is directly below the boat, at one point my backing was up to my stripping guide with the fish straight down, it was deep and I was apparently extremely lucky I didn't lose the fish to a shark or a 'cuda.
Victory. Notice the sweet battle wound on my left shin. I acquired this little gem while getting on top of the coral. I am not exactly sure how I got up there out of chest deep water, I thought I levitated but the wound clearly proves otherwise.

PERMIT.....ME

In addition, I am not one for gratuitous promotion, self or otherwise. Pick your own poison, I usually stick to. Nonetheless, if you ever find yourself in Placencia and looking for a guide I would quite highly suggest Benji Eiley. I don't think it is possible to find a guide who will work harder to get you into a fish.

Make your own stuff

2007-12-24T13:09:00.000-08:00

I just got done building sink tips for the first time. The last two years I have been fishing three tips, a type 3, 7 and 8 and thats it. Usually this will suffice, but when the water is up it is going to be damn nice to have some t14 tips in the wallet. I even got grimy and built some with intermediate cheaters. What really initiated the event was the acquisition of a new stick. Neighbor Nate (from now on N^2) built Kari and I a sweet St. Croix Avid 7/8 (really probably a 7), a real spicy rod. As soon as we figure out the right line for it, Kari and I will finally be able to fish two handers together and not fight over one rod, this should decrease rock throwing and splashing each other when posturing for the rod.

On an unrelated (mostly) note, I dirty mcdirted a hatchery rat on saturday. I had never fished corkies and yarn and since the water was high, there were dudes everywhere, it was cold, and we only had a couple hours to fish (read: I am turning into a lazy hick), I figured I would try to put some meat on the table with the gear. When we walked up to the run Kari said, "Alright, we are going to get one here.", very matter of fact like. About 15 minutes later the fish was on the bank. Tasty tablefare, indeed.

Comatose, but walking still

2007-12-18T13:33:00.000-08:00

The holidays are shitty, in that you miss out on fishing. But they are good, in that you get to fish more. This paradox has shown itself through recent circumstances. Now, I must say, I use the term "holidays" here rather loosely. It doesn't necessarily mean Christmas or Kwanza or Thanksgiving (it could though), but more precisely means a cause for celebration. So my friends want to celebrate, but I unfortunately am stricken with this condition that requires me to drink just enough to not fish the next day when friends want to celebrate, now I don't get plastered, but drunk enough that I shouldn't be driving until at least 8 or 9 the next morning and also drunk enough so that I will probably sleep til 10 anyways. This is a shitty condition for a fishermanperson. On the other hand, if I can somehow manage to avoid anymore of these celebratory affairs, I have two consecutive four day weekends coming up (thanks to the "holidays") that could very well fill themselves right up with fishing. However, to avoid the celebrations means to alienate ones friends, quite the conundrum really. I have been partially contemplating not having friends except for fishing friends, though this would rapidly wittle my total number of friends down to about 2 (another condition I have is not wanting to fish with a solid 98.7% of the fishermanpeople I meet). I can't decide if this is good or bad.

Anyways, I guess the point is I got too drunk on friday and saturday last weekend to fish (I feel like I should maybe whip myself for saying "too drunk to fish", it somehow goes against previous statements I have made, I just can't figure out how). So maybe the real point is that this has nothing to do with friends or celebrations or holidays, but solely with my own ability to balance activities, although it feels really 90's to blame myself for my problems, this is the 2000's, I should assuredly be blaming this on the government or more aptly on someone else's government. So there you have it, I think I will retract blaming the "holidays" and instead blame the government of South Africa (or wherever the Miller brewing company moved to). See, I think the kegs of shitty Miller would have been cheaper than the PBR if they hadn't relocated, thus the party would have had a keg of shitty beer instead of the sweet PBR nectar and therefore I wouldn't have drank so much and I could have fished. This seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Side bar: Brothers, sorry we can't make it back for the "holidays", have fun and do some fishing (target species unimportant) cause we will be for sure!

Side bar 2: I swear the permit story is coming. I have a lot to say about it, but haven't really felt like typing it all yet, maybe I will just type a little and let the pics talk more...time will tell I guess.

Side bar 3: Nate sucks. He hooked two winters on the swung fly yesterday and locations fully disclosed (to me, bitches!), if my skills ever make it to such a level you can't count on much more pertinent posting!

For those of you that get them, enjoy the long weekends!

On second thought

2007-12-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

So, I no longer blame the cat. I am pretty damned sure it was a coon, due to the scratch marks themselves and a piece of hair. When a cat scratches shit it does it like its on speed or something, taking several passes at the scratching surface with both paws. This didn't look like that, it was about five or six total scratch marks, and they line up perfectly if one were to imagine a big fat coon trying to climb up the tube, slipping a little, and digging in such that one or two claws from each paw scratched the tube. I asked myself what the hell a coon would want to climb up on my boat for, then remembered it was right around the time of the whole salmon, gear, dirty mcdirt, egg goo escapade. I think that fucker smelled the egg goo and wanted a go at it....I also found a piece of hair, suspiciously gray turning to brown with a black bar near the top and a lighter brown on the other side of that. The boat has now paid me back in all possible ways, inflicting pain upon itself even. Point taken, again...and until further notice there shall never be bait in or around that boat again.

Most pertinent Harry quote: "Let's blame the racoons." - this was said right after I told him about the boat, damned guy is like the Nostradamus of the Carribean.

Cat Scratch Fever

2007-12-05T18:55:00.000-08:00

So as most of you know I recently acquired a new used skookum cat from my good friend bacon. I have only had er out one time, which, again, most of you know about. Well she was sittin there in my carport, lookin real good, when one day I squeezed her right tube and it was a little low. "Hmm" I say, a bit flustered, "what the fuck?", I see the cat scratches and get a fever that no amount of cow bells could touch. It was a sad day on the homefront, but only about two days before I left for Belize so I had to forget about, it was a potential trip downer which needed to be put out of mind. A day or two before we came back, I let it start creeping in the back of mind, to sort of prepare for remembering and reliving the sadness. It wasn't as bad the second time around. Anyways, when I pumped it back up yesterday and lathered some soap on the firm tube, I saw no bubbles, smiled and applied aquaseal hoping to avoid a full on patch job. We went bowling (kingpin right here bitches), came back and and the fucker had leaked. I let some air out and tried one more fresh dab of aquaseal but it leaked again. I tried one more time with the aquaseal on a flat tube tonight, I have a penchant for trying things half ass at least 5-10 times before I do it right, I can't seem to shake this. If this attempt doesn't work the patch will be on by tomorrow night, the boat must float with confidence by the weekend.

Oh and E, the permit story (you know the most of it) will arrive on its own time, much like the permit itself.

Boner

2007-12-03T19:40:00.000-08:00

As posted earlier, for the first week of the honeymoon we stayed on Ambergris Caye, at a place called Xaman Ek retreat and spa. They were kinda blowholes, just starting out in the "retreat and spa" business and in need of a little direction. Location was fuckin money though...especially since there were bones tailing about 100 feet from my cabana. The first one I caught (the only one I got pictures of...the smallest one, for real!) was about 40 feet from the "retreat and spa's" pier. I caught four total, but it took me about 4 mornings and 3 evenings to do it...I had a lotta shots. The biggest one a local ate for dinner. He was walking down the beach with a backpack pesticide applicator on, always GREAT to see, and he said "is it a good one?" and that he wanted to eat it, hope it was good.

I don't really know when this happened, but all I did after landing the fish was put it in the hook rest, so I am pretty sure I hooked and landed him with the hook like this. Fuckin genious I tell you.

Hot Damn

2007-12-02T17:34:00.000-08:00

Fuck eh. Is it possible to make a vacation "long enough"? Cause that one felt long, but it certainly was not even in the realm of "long enough". I need to manipulate some photos so that they are more comfortable on the page and then I'll start putting them up here. There is a couple good ones, permity little pictures even.

Harry Quote #1 - "The higher the monkey climb, the more he expose his ass to trouble."

A Lesson Learned

2007-11-14T20:18:00.000-08:00

So I wanted to tie some crabs in a little lighter color, maybe tan or cream olive. The only fly shop within a half hour has no light sculpin wool, so a friend suggested I try bleach. So I put a half capfull in a cup or so of water and let a little chunk of sculpin wool soak for about an hour. The result was a bleached dark olive, not acceptable. I think, "more bleach, more time". Or maybe not.

The fibers on the little piece used to be as long as on the big piece. Bleach changed all that. And it was just liquid remaining. Don't fuck with bleach.

Righteous Writing: Part 1

2007-11-09T10:41:00.000-08:00

As mentioned at the onset of this madness, my writing sucks hairy balls. Thats why it is a damned good thing there are people like Salty, who's writing does certainly not suck hairy balls, in fact reminds me more of scratching a good itch on my own balls...you know that feeling of fulfillment and relief right when you finally hit that itch thats been buried under two layers of capilene, one of fleece and a stout layer of gortex for 13 hours? Well if you don't know it, you should, cause gotdamner its good.

READ IT!

http://busterwantstofish.com/?p=250

Oregon, fuck yeah!

2007-11-08T19:17:00.000-08:00

we're gonna save the motherfuckin day,

yeah.

K - the package goes out tomorrow....don't worry E, you may have to wait a month or two, but you too will get a special surprise.

Honeymooning it

2007-11-08T08:19:00.000-08:00

T-minus 8 days til departure. Two weeks in Belize, we'll be there over Thanksgiving, but something tells me I won't be missing the turkey. For the first week we will be on Ambergris Caye. It looks pretty frilly but........you can supposedly catch bones right off the dock.
We will be in Placencia for the second part of the stay....more to come before departure next Friday.

A Boats Revenge

2007-11-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Alright, I was trying to figure out how exactly to address this with positivity and joy. This shouldn't have been hard, being that it was a joyous and positive occasion, however I now understand that occasions can be both good and bad, all at once.

The first time out in the new ride took me to a local coastal river relatively full of fall chinook, and even more full per unit volume of water given the lack of rain. We launched at about 9 not being in any rush as we were the only boat on the stretch...the new boat goes places others do not. What I failed to realize is that when there is no water, the bankies can also go just about anywhere. To sum, the float was fucking unbelievably fun and the boat a true master of the waterways.....the fishing, another story.

Which leads me to the following conclusion:

NEVER, I repeat, NEVER, take a boat called "Steelheader" out salmon fishing with dirty gear rods, eggs and fucking shrimp oil scent for your first time together. She deserves more on the first outing and needs to be broken in proper.

If you do attempt such a feat, be prepared for the ramifications....some examples may include:

1) you buy a new gear rod combo, string that dirty thing up, give her a flex in the carport (right over the boat!) and the fuckin thing snaps in half...the day before said outing occured. Boat 1, Me 0

2) you get set up on the prime shit that the dude who knows told you to fish, you work that greasy ass egg gob right over the drop off and no sooner three bankies come in, totally fuckin lowhole you and hook approx. 25 salmon about 20 yards below you while you hook one between two of you in about 3 hours. Boat 26, Me -1

3) you get set up in a little juicy hole in the midst of some shitty water for fish to travel in, and you think, "yeah, finally this is it". and then another banky lowholes you...you leave before you are forced to watch him catch the fish that you will not. Boat 27, Me -1

4) as the day winds down, you think, "jesus, i am in a boat, with gear, fish are everywhere and i have not touched a fish, nor is there one in the boat...its gotta happen in the next pool". so you push and push to find water and next thing you know you've skipped your original take out and your still not to the next one when it starts getting dark...not at 7, like you thought but at about 620. The next thought..."fuck, the dark is not going to make me look like a more inviting hitchhiker". Boat - still kicking my ass

5) finally to take out #2, you grab a rod to make it obvious to the drivers that your a fisherman and not a rapist, and begin to walk down the road. when you've walked for 10 minutes and no cars have gone by, you think about your wife back at the take-out and start running - in simms g3's and studded rivertek boots (not recommended). 10 minutes later, your still running and you hear a car coming...SAVED! NOT!...you watch the cars go by and not pick you up and you think "fuck" as thats about all you can muster. then, up ahead, after about 2 miles of walk/running, you see a few cars on the side of the road...other fisherman! you beg for a ride, they agree. then you retire to watching them haul all the fucking huge ass fish they caught up to the trucks. the one that said you could have a ride has dissapeared so you beg another who is about to leave. there is barely any room to sit in the bed of the truck as it is filled with fish and the driver looks like he doesn't want you to sit back there and he says "not much room back there, and i got two rifles in the back seat so you won't fit there either". you are not scared by his stupid fucking rifles and re-insist that you can fit between the empty pop cans and the fish and that you will "just jump out" when you get to your rig. finally, the boat decides it is done paying you back for all the fucking goopy salmon egg cure you spilled on it and you get back to your rig with no further problems. final score, Boat - 9,867,401 Me - back to 0 for not taking that rifle bullshit.

Consider yourselves warned.

signs point to yes

2007-10-26T18:08:00.000-07:00

As most of the readers of this little shithole corner of the intertubes know, I have recently acquired a badass boat from an even bad asser fella, really dude, thanks again. It sits in my carport as of last night and the image hasn't left my mind once for roughly 19 hours 28 minutes and 30 seconds, it is a constant state of fuck yeah.

Along with the boat came a magic 8 ball, this fuckin thing is like a legend in its own right. So I promise her that I will ask her one question and one question only when we're off the water. I needed to know if she was happy in her new place. So I waited until we were alone, slid the 8 ball out of the side pocket and asked "Are you happy with your new home?", damnit I almost shit myself with the anticipation. Then I turned it over...."signs point to yes"

Life is Good.

Gear

2007-10-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

I went fishing on sunday for fall salmon. I went dirty mcdirt style, fishing a shitty 20 dollar spinning reel on a shitty, 45 dollar, 9 foot ten weight (do I get additional dirt points for fishing dirty style with a fly rod?). Anyways, point is, there is a line that needs to be drawn which defines the point at which you shouldn't even go fishing until you get the right gear, or at least close to the right gear.

My main line on the above mentioned rig is 25 lb shitty ass braid, I was using 20 lb maxima leader and my main line broke every time I got a snag. I would have downsized leader, but I didn't have anything smaller along. Chalk up half my fishing time lost to re-rigging. Then I was pulling on one of said snags and I kept giving up line, but my drag wasn't turning. Upon closer inspection I realized that my line was free spinning on the spool, like, the spool to line knot broke and now the whole mass of it spins together. I was partially hoping I didn't hook one because I'd rather get skunked then get close and lose it due to bad gear. A stupid and self imposed paradox, to go fishing and hope to not hook a fish.

Then I hooked a fish. I was back bouncing a big ass gob of eggs, corky and 1/2 oz of lead down a current seam about 4 feet from the bank. The fish took, I set up and the fish gave a couple thrashes on top then settled into the main current, not doing much. Fearing the result of taking the fish down the chute about 60 feet below me I tried to backtrack upstream along the bank to get my net (note: don't leave your net upstream!). I went up and the fish ran out, which was fine, but then it ran straight down and in toward the bank below me, this is a bad place to be, directly upstream of a fish. I was fishing a small hook and was feeling a little worried about the hook set when the fish came to the top, its mouth pointed straight at me, and started thrashing around again. On the third head shake the line went limp. Fuck stick.

Anyone got a salmon bait caster set up they don't use anymore? Either that or I am going to Joe's this week, as I have a date with a fat salmon next weekend, and that bitch will be mine!

A Social Tip

2007-10-19T08:47:00.000-07:00

This probably isn't rocket science, but if you ever play a little game called "Guess what that person does?" and the person or people in question actually talk to you at some point, and you actually ask them what they do, and they ask "Well what were your guesses?". I would highly suggest NOT leading off with "barista", just in case the person has had "ten years of higher education" and owns her own agricultural consulting firm. This is, however, just a tip...feel free to offend, its usually more fun anyways.

Another to pass the time

2007-10-17T00:11:00.000-07:00

the video is of shitty quality, but pretty cool regardless. the fucking spawning bed is like 150x60 ft, thats a lotta salmon sex.

Winner: Couch

2007-10-16T12:50:00.000-07:00

imagine that.

Slacker

2007-10-15T09:01:00.000-07:00

If I get off my lazy ass tonight and plug my camera in, there will be cool shit to look at on this blog, so keep your eyes peeled. But no guarantees, as the couch is far superior to the computer chair in comfort.

I will offer up a little love though. See the tidewater chromer that arrived on my screen via data packets. Sleazy neighbor nate shows his slyness and otherwise penchant for big, greaZy fish. Can you say ClouZer? Once again, nicely fucking done.