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.

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)