So easy a monkey can do it…

Next time you find yourself spending an hour trying to coax an eight-inch brown trout up to a dry, remind yourself that fishing is so easy a monkey can do it. Scientists in Thailand found that, ahem, long-tailed macaque monkeys turn to fishing for food for reasons unknown. The species apparently was only known to be into insects and berries and things like that.

Among the lingering questions are what prompted the monkeys to go fishing and how common it is among the species.

The monkeys are clearly evolving toward the spiritual enlightenment and existential belief we all see in fishing. Good for them.

No word from the Ph.D.’s on how long it may teach them to catch and release. I mean, who has the patience for evolution?

Spring Chrome

A few pics from last weekend’s jaunt upstate for some spring steelhead Lake Ontario trib fishing. All fish were released and are hopefully fattening up in the lake so I can catch them in the fall. Hopefully, they won’t be glowing, either.

Salmon Fishing on the Brink

I was stunned to read this. Salmon fishing is closed. No special regulations, no more studies or political foot-dragging. The West Coast chinook salmon have been so ravaged that the whole thing had to be shut down.

What happened? Well, there are plenty of theories. The Sacramento River in California has the largest king salmon run out west. Some scientists say “ocean changes” are to blame. Others aren’t so sure.

From the N.Y. Times in March:

Fishermen think the Sacramento River was mismanaged in 2005, when this year’s fish first migrated downriver. Perhaps, they say, federal and state water managers drained too much water or drained at the wrong time to serve the state’s powerful agricultural interests and cities in arid Southern California.

There’s plenty of blame, but I point my finger right at the top. Even if federal regulators aren’t completely to blame, they are certainly in charge and that’s good enough for me.

From a dispatch in the Washington Post last fall:

Because of [Vice President Dick] Cheney’s intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

We have two “outdoorsmen” in the White House and they have (with plenty of help, it should be pointed out) sold off public land en masse and been on watch as a fishery choked to the brink.

It’s sad and disgusting. I’m on my way up to Lake Ontario to fish the tribs for steelhead andI can’t stop thinking about this.

(Photo: USA Today)

The Religion of Fly Fishing

“Fly fishing is a setting where God can teach us a lot about ourselves,” he says.

That observation comes from Rev. Mark Wilson, an Episcopal priest from Fairhope, Ala., who organizes a five-day fly fishing/spiritual getaway down south each year. His view might seem a bit more pious than, say, Norman Maclean, but we all know talking about religion and fly fishing in the same breath is more than acceptable.

I admit, I’ve prayed on the stream.

“Just one fish, that’s all I ask. I’ll release it; I swear.”

“Please, where are those blue-winged olives.”

“Make this a steelhead and I’ll make it worth your while in the collection basket.”

God, those things sound much worse when I write them down.

But, I don’t think that’s what Norman or the Rev. Mark had in mind. Like most, I pray when a) it’s convenient b) it’s in my self interest. Surely there’s more to it than that.

Wilson’s retreat features the great Bob Clouser and Kevin Howell and a few days fishing the Davidson River in  N.C.

The event runs $615 per person, including a program from Clouser and Howell, meals, and use of recreational facilities.

The path to spiritual salvation, I assume, is also included in that cost.

Gierach on the Horizon

A great treat for the new fishing season is on the horizon. John Gierach has written a new book. From the effusive Amazon.com review:

Fishermen everywhere will understand Gierach’s quest to discover and explore new waters (and then not to divulge the best locations to anyone), the unlikely appeal of winter fly-fishing (”the ice fishing shanty served the dual purpose of group therapy and the neighborhood tavern”), how impossible it is to predict the best fishing (”Everything that happens is entirely familiar, but I don’t always see it coming”), or even the absurdity of the entire exercise (”day after day, you’re casting a fly that doesn’t look like anything to fish that aren’t hungry and may not even be there”).

One of his earlier books, “Trout Bum,” changed things for a lot of anglers. [That said, I hope Mr. Gierach is getting royalties for the rod makers and others who have taken the Trout Bum moniker and, well, commodified it.]

I know as a teenager, his writing was a lot more accessibly and made much more sense than much of the admirable, but notably stuffy writing of fly fishing’s past.

Fly Anglers to the left; Bait Tossers to the Right

As someone who prefers to fly fish over any other fishing method, I end up fishing alongside bait-casters and spin-casters a lot. I personally thing fly fishermen are a little aloof and I’ll welcome the conversation of the more affable non-fly anglers. I also enjoy the challenge of trying to out fish these guys, many of whom are tossing some form of live or laboratory-created bait that fish go bananas over.

“Wild” Bill Schneider, a columnist for the weekly Flathead Beacon in Montana who recently got the steelhead bug pretty good, wants to set aside more stretches of rivers as fly-fishing only. I’ve heard this argument before and while I don’t support it, Bill took it a step forward and benevolently said he has no problem designating other areas of rivers for jig and bait fisherman to fish exclusively, without having to give the wide berth that fly anglers require.

Segregation for the sake of parity is his argument, the way I see it.

But I like that fly fishing is harder. I like that we get weird looks from worm fishermen and occasional vitriol from local kids tossing bread balls for suckers. I think it would be pretty damn lonely (and existentially incestuous) if we only rubbed elbows with fly casters all the time.

Most of the great trout and salmon water I’ve managed to fish so far has been almost exclusively fly fishing water, and not always by legal mandate. From a conservation standpoint that makes sense – fly-fishers release more fish than other anglers, as Schneider points out. If we can’t manage a fishery for all fishermen, then we need to do a little more homework about fisheries management.

But any tendency toward exclusion is not the way to go, IMO. If anything, more water needs to be open to whomever wants to fish it. We’ll all sort it out on the stream.

(Photo credit)

41 Tips the Scales

Looks like the presidential poppy landed himself a nice tarpon on Saturday. Old 41 pardoned the scaly lunker, even though he had a harvest tag. Now that’s a compassionate conservative.

(Photo via Yahoo/Reuters)

Sign for a Good Weekend

(Via Flickr)

Found Under a Table in a Conn. Fly Shop

Maybe something to file in my “this could be you if your life went suddenly wrong” department:

Michael O. Pickens, son of billionaire tycoon T. Boone Pickens, pleaded guilty on Thursday to third-degree burglary for burglarizing a Cornwall Bridge fly fishing shop last June. He received a one-year suspended sentence. State police said Pickens, 53, appeared groggy after he was found under a table inside the Housatonic Meadows Fly Shop. Police had been called after the owner of the Housatonic Meadows Fly Shop noticed something wrong and, later, investigators found a nearby stash of items taken from the shop.

Pickens, who lives in Texas, had rented a room nearby for a weekend of fishing, police said. Pickens also faced federal charges for allegedly defrauding investors in a stock scheme.

A federal judge ordered him to undergo drug treatment.

‘The Thing About Fisheries Management is, uh, We Were Wrong’

Throw back the lunkers and keep the schoolies. That’s the gist of an in-depth paper from the esteemed journal Nature on fishing’s impact on fish stocks.

Basically, the idea of tossing back the real pigs is the exact opposite of what is happening with the bulk of commercial and recreational angling. Oops.

I think most fly-fishermen practice catch-and-release, but there are a few headhunters out there among us and I respect their rights to take a few for the table.

But what about the non-fly anglers? As the Nature blog points out, limits on harvesting larger fish wouldn’t work because many of the fish tossed back (especially by commercial fishermen) die.

Salty anglers would find this ‘graph interesting from a Reuters dispatch about the report:

Writing in the journal Nature, Sugihara said that current policies that manage according to biomass targets instead of individual fish size can also destabilize the population.

Fluke fishermen in the northeast have been seriously pinched over the last few years because of biomass targets. Maybe it’s time to rethink, um, everything?