Leave it to Roughfish-Hugger Singlebarbed to put us on the trail of a unique opportunity to fly fish - and get paid for it.

Sure, you could become a guide and get paid, but everyone knows you’re not fly fishing when you’re guiding - you’re simply holding the hands of people who can’t fish, but have more money than you.

Besides, guiding’s a one-way ticket to an advanced degree in body piercing, courtesy clients who can’t cast.

No, my little Undergrounders - your path to professional status comes via the Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery, a power-company funded attempt to preserve Salmon and Steelhead in the Columbia and Snake rivers.

Sure, a few nattering nabobs will say that controlling predators across an entire ecosystem in an attempt to bolster a fading species is a one-way ticket to the environmental equivalent of the fiery abyss, but I’m pretty sure they’re just jealous eggheads who couldn’t catch a Pikeminnow if it jumped into their hands.

From the Pikeminnow Sport Reward Site:

In the 2008 season, we will pay anglers for fish 9 inches and larger. The reward will remain the same at $4-$8 for each northern pikeminnow caught in the lower Columbia (mouth to Priest Rapids Dam) and Snake (mouth to Hells Canyon Dam) rivers. This year’s qualifying tagged fish will be worth $500.

Lemme see: if all the Internet stories we read are true, then most Internet Experts Who Couldn’t Catch a Non-Virtual Fish fly fishermen could clear a couple hundred a day.

For some, that only covers the daily cost of cigars hookers and booze, but for rugged individuals knowledgable in the ways of the wily Pikeminnow (like the grubstake-seeking Singlebarbed), it’s a plan for retirement in five years or less.

I say we quit our jobs en masse and establish a Pikeminnow Bum camp on the Columbia.

It’s Friday, most of you have started drinking already, so who’s with me? (Pumping fist in the air, fight-the-power style.)

I say we can’t miss.

See you at the Pikeminnow check-in station (and I’ll be rich), Tom Chandler.

pikeminnow, pikeminnow sport reward fishery, singlebarbed, fly fishing guide, fly fishing, fishing, professional fisherman, drinking on Friday

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Here at the All Things Bamboo Trout Underground fly fishing blog, we support mainstream, traditional fly fishing values - like making up flattering stories about your fly fishing prowess after you return home.

And we’ve found just the thing to do it with: The Bamboo Tornado 51:

At $40, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than a bamboo fly rod (and doesn’t use those sticky ferrule thingees).

Plus, a bamboo fly rod only makes you cool in the eyes of other bamboo fly rod users.

This little baby will help you write the outright lies ever-so-slight fabrications that will elevate you to true Master of the Craft (if not Internet Fly Fishing Expert).

After all, a bamboo fly rod’s only useful if you can cast. If you can write (and who can’t), you can be the bestest fly fisherman ever.

See you making shit up writing, Tom Chandler.

bamboo fly rod, bamboo pen, fly fishing, fishing lies

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• Will Didymo smother eastern streams? Scientists holding breath: http://tinyurl.com/57o7md #

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As [name redacted] said when he forwrded it to me, stories like this you can’t make up.

The writer was on his way back from a fly fishing trip; the rest we’ll let him tell you:

Big Hole River Journal » Blog Archive » Nice Kitty Kitty

When I was on the way back she was still there and in the same position. I drove slowly by and just about past and she yelled at me. I stopped and she came over to the jeep and asked if I had a pair of heavy gloves. I told her I think I do in the back but why do want them? She explained to me that she was in the process of moving to Butte and had her two cats in the cab and her large tomcat panicked and got wedged under the brake pedal. I looked in side and sure enough there he was. She put the gloves on and tried to get him out with no luck. I offered to try (stupid move) and put the gloves on with full intentions of getting that hairball out of there. He got in so he should get out. I went to get a firm grip on him and a couple seconds later pulled out the shredded, claw ripped, bitten gloves. I turned to her and said I have a gun in the jeep, (just kiddin of course) She gave me this serious look and said “get it”. I told her I was just kiddin but she was serious.

The writer wisely left after learning the woman had sent a message to her son… to bring thicker gloves and a gun.

The Underground stands speechless.

It’s said that money almost always wins, and sadly, in the case of Alaska’s Ballot Measure 4, it appears it was true.

Ballot Measure 4 (Mining Initiative):
- No: 95,615 votes, 57.14 percent
- Yes: 71,722 votes, 42.86 percent

Measure 4 was aimed squarely at preventing the Pending Pebble Mind Disaster by enforcing water quality standards for fisheries.

Mine proponents (most of whom were handsomely paid for their efforts) confused the issue to the point that most voters had no idea what the measure was really about.

“This will close all existing mines” was a common - and wholly misleading - refrain, and a long list of other misdirections were similarly broadcast.

This is hardly the end of it; the Pending Pebble Mine Disaster still has a lot of hoops to jump through, and while this ballot measure may have failed, we can still keep the pressure on.

See you at a political knife fight, Tom Chandler.

pebble mine, measure 4, bristol bay, bullshit

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Poetry isn’t a staple here at the Trout Underground, and if my high school English teacher was right, it’s because I lack the genes needed to correctly interpret it.

Still, when I posted (long ago) about David Fraser’s Killing Trout and Other Love Poems, I was interested enough to dip my beautifully manicured manscaped toe back in poetry’s metaphor-rich waters.

Fraser’s a fly fisherman and outdoorsman, and not surprisingly, the outdoors occupy a high profile in most of his poems.

Interestingly, this collection of spare, direct poems were compiled over several decades, and in places, you glimpse the progression of Fraser’s life.

The result is a collection of sharp, all-literary-encumbrances-removed poems that reminded me of John Gierach’s little-seen, pre-Trout Bum Signs of Life poetry collection.

Fraser doesn’t burden his poems with overripe metaphor or literary pretense. His is the art of carving away all that isn’t essential, and the result is a series of visceral glimpses into a life lived largely outdoors:

In Canoeing After Midnight, Fraser:

There are moments under
the full moon when there are clouds
and trees, and Octobers
and warm south winds

and the broad river
kicks up and everything else
is subdued but the sounds
and I point the canoe into the wind

and I am challenging the wind
and the river when I should be sleeping.
a fool again, with one paddle, huddled
in the reeds on the far side of the river,

always traveling to that other side to rest.
always knowing there will be no rest
until I get back, the bow cutting
through the bullshit and the boredom

Killing Trout’s 35 poems range from fun to darkly observant, and a few truly stand out.

Poets and poetry fanatics will want to lay their hands on this volume - as will anyone interested enough in poetry to have dug up Gierach’s first book of poems.

This book is also the first from an independent press largely powered by its online presence, and frankly, that’s a trend I’d like to encourage.

Speaking as an absolute novice in the field of poetry criticism, I’m giving Fraser’s Killing Trout & Other Love Poems two fins up, if only because I “got” it. And liked it.

See you in the coffeehouse, Tom Chandler

killing trout and other love poems, book review, poetry, killing trout, david fraser

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• American Fly Fishing Museum honors artist Ogden Pleissner. See paintings at: http://tinyurl.com/6ed8mf #
• Mikey Weir produces college outreach video for Trout Unlimited California: http://tinyurl.com/5v44q8 #
• Looks like Anti-Pebble Measure 4 is losing in Alaskan election results. Damn. http://www.adn.com/election/story/507096.html #

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In yet another example of the Kind of People Who Probably Should Be Watching American Idol Instead of Visiting a Park, the Underground brings you the Biggest Wildlife-Related Non-Story since Bambi was released on DVD:

TOWNSEND (WATE) — A huge snake that was swallowing a fish whole startled swimmers and tubers at the Townsend Wye last weekend.

Teresa Wood tells 6 News the snake was laying on the rocks near where her family was swimming in the Little River.

Wood says “it’s unbelievable” how big the the snake was and her family won’t be going back.

What’s “unbelievable” is that a water snake - which had the gall to actually eat a fish in its own habitat (”whole” - as if a snake can eat any other way) - warrants news coverage.

Even better is the we “won’t be going back” response by the victims. I mean, who would have thought they’d find real, breathing wildlife in the wild?

As always, the snarkatorium floor is yours, Undergrounders.

wildlife, bambi, really dumb people

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• Milltown dam breaching leads to more sediment transport than originally predicted: http://tinyurl.com/6cruy2 #
• Cool and windy on Upper Sac. It’s only August, but it’s the first taste of fall up here. #
• Just off the phone with the Canon service rep. Despite owning Canon Camera since the late 70s, will I ever buy another? Not bloody likely. #

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There are days when you go fishing for fish, and there are days you fish for the fishing, and sometimes you don’t know which you’re seeking until you’re actually on the river.

Yesterday evening - in the grip of some irritating work details - I found myself headed for a stretch of water where the rocks were big, the rock-hopping hard, and the trout very small.

There I’d meet the absolute minimum of humanity (which was sort of the point).

Tiny flows, little trout, zero civilized veneer.

The beauty of fly fishing is that life recedes; at some point it becomes just you, some water, and a few trout, who may or may not have any interest in what you’re doing.

That’s a far simpler equation than what you experience in your everyday life, and it might explain the hold this sport has over some of us.

At this time of year, small-stream trout are spooky; the low water levels mean they’re extremely vulnerable to predators, and the “wander up to a bubbling run and catch a trout” stuff that worked in the spring is a sure-fire recipe for an unslimed fly by late August.

Two things I like: Parachute Hare’s Ears and classic fly reels.

My two best fish came on casts made from my knees - casts you’d normally say were far too long for a small stream.

Since I made them and caught the trout (a pair of 7″ fish - big for this tiny stream), it’s a story that nicely illustrates the relativity of phrases like “too long.”

Small freestone streams tend to strip away all of fly fishing’s civilized artifice; you do what you have to catch fish, and sometimes that means duck walking behind a boulder and dapping the fly from the tip of your $500 fly rod.

In other cases it means making long casts from your knees, and the trout judge whether you got it right or wrong - not some writer sitting in an office a continent away.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

fly fishing, fishing, small stream, trout

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I’d love to fill this post with a hard-hitting, Hemingway-esque fishing story, but in truth, Sunday’s plans for a Brookie trip fell hard to an intestinal virus whose effect I am not going to describe here.

And no, the disease isn’t connected to the slaw dogs consumed Saturday night at the Trout Underground/Man Cave World Headquarters by a handful of locals. They are above suspicion.

Sadly, even the innocent suffered the effects of the bug; Wally the Wonderdog was denied a tongue-hanging-out-happy hike to a brookie lake - a highlight in his tortured, lay-around-on-the-porch life.

Wonderdog ennui: Wally deals with the disappointment.

Still, even as a sicko, the Underground continues to forge ahead on the work front, and relatively soon (a week, hopefully), the Underground will (hopefully) be fishing more and explaining less.

The State of the Upper Sacramento

It’s the time of year when the Upper Sacramento slips into what folks call the Dog Days, becoming a largely morning-and-evening game until the weather cools.

Guide Wayne Eng scoured the river on Saturday and caught fish, though he admitted working pretty hard for them. Good bets are fishing the lower river with a Zebra midge (or other blackfly larva imitation), or tapping into the very localized evening hatches (often of #18 PEDs).

This is the time of year when broad, sweeping pronouncements about the river invariably make you look dumb; you could stare at an empty river all evening, hike back to the car, and find out the guys who hiked a quarter mile upriver caught a dozen trout working a decent hatch.

Then there are the rumoured Tricos, whose existence I’m going to deny because every attempt I’ve made to fish the hatch has ended in ignominy.

Thus do I refute reality, and substitute my own.

Two Things Remain True

I will point out a couple of truths; the Upper Sacramento is actually a tailwater that fishes like a freestoner, and while the hatches can be slow, the water’s certainly cold enough to support them. The trick is finding them.

Second, there is still plenty of good fishing around here, especially in those out-of-the-way places you’ve never been to but can find with a little map work (or the help of a long out-of-print guidebook).

See you in the outdoors, Tom Chandler.

fly fishing, fishing, upper sac, upper sacramento river, wally the wonderdog, slaw dog

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A while ago I ran a “Short Cast” story about New Zealand’s new law banning the use of felt-soled wading boots (a hedge against the spread of invasive species).

It turns out the legislation wasn’t signed by New Zealand’s Prime Minister, so felt is still allowed, though showing up in a dirty pair of felt-soled boots might earn you a less-than-welcoming reception from New Zealand’s guides and other fly fishermen.

As Bill Klyn of Patagonia points out in this comment to the story (on the Angler’s Passport blog), felt sols are hardly the whole problem, though doing away with them is probably a good idea:

In reading multiple stories about banning felt sole wading shoes and adopting newer generation rubber soles to prevent the spread of Aquatic Nuisance Species, it should be noted that this is a good first step. But it is still not the solution. Didymo, NZ Mud Snails, Whirling disease can still attach themselves to laces, shoe materials and even in between insoles and foot bed of wading shoes. Clean, INspect and Dry had been the adopted procedure by USFWS and other groups working to stopping the spread of these species is a good one

When California’s Fish & Game folks tested the hitchiking capabilities of the New Zealand Mudsnail (currently infesting Putah Creek), they sent volunteer anglers on a short wade, discovering that mudsnails adhered to laces, gravel guards, boot tongues… pretty much everywhere.

In other words, putting on a pair of Aqua-Stealths doesn’t rid anyone of responsibility. It’s just a good first step.

According to California Fish & Game, cleaning and freezing gear remains the best way to prevent the spread of species like Mud Snails, Zebra mussels, Didymo, etc (click here for more information).

I posted a pair of reviews about my switch to rubber-soled wading boots, and figure the die is cast.

As the economic impacts from invasives are felt in tourist economies, it’s likely the felt sole will fade from the scene - by legislation or simple peer pressure.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

new zealand mudsnail, invasive species

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