VIDEO: Footage From The Fall Run
Posted on February 27th, 2010
More cool footage from Peter Laurelli on Vimeo. Forgot about these but thankfully found the latest one via Lowbrow Angler.
Tagged: Lowbrow Angler, new england fishing, striped bass
Archive for February, 2010
STRIPED BASS: Driving a Good Thing Into The Ground
Posted on February 26th, 2010
Earlier this month the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), which essentially decides the fate of the striped bass population along the coast in terms of cull numbers, voted to increase the commercial catch quota. This despite evidence on the front lines that the stripers aren’t doing as hot as the numbers suggest. People had some strong opinions about it: John McMurray, who always has the pulse of the striper situation: Years ago I wrote that Flyfishing guides like me may have a unique perspective on the striped bass fishery because of time-on-the-water and the inherent difficulty in the method. Thus, we are perhaps the first to see what could be the beginning of a very serious problem.” From the Coastal Conservation Association: This…
300-MPH Torrential 8-Weight Blues
Posted on February 24th, 2010
“We’re talking about practice, man.” –Allen Iverson In the period of winter dormancy there’s a fine line to walk between considering yourself a fisherman or just someone who likes the idea of it. There are things built around it all to engage in, like the daily scanning of other peoples’ thoughts and images, and the expos. But after a while all of it stands to serve as reminder of what you’re not doing. The thing to do is dig the rod tube out from underneath the crusty Grundens, walk to the park down the street, and start flinging line in the snow. Remember some of the things you heard the old man say at the Somerset casting demo about speed not power. Having the…
Tagged: casting, winter hiatus activities
McPhee On Pickerel
Posted on February 23rd, 2010
I stopped subscribing to the New Yorker a few years ago, mostly as a time saving measure. My Dad still gets it. He cuts out articles from newspapers and magazines that I might like and mails them to me, and this week he clipped a New Yorker essay by John McPhee about fly fishing for pickerel. I could read anything by McPhee, even his 700-page opus about geology, but particularly his essays on fishing. Here’s a bit of his description of pickerel: This family–Esocidae–is not popular with aesthetes, with people who torture trout. Put a pickerel in a pond full of trout, and before long all that’s in there is a larger pickerel. There are people who hunt pickerel with shotguns. In Vermont, that…
Tagged: john mcphee, New Yorker, wordsmiths
Close the Parks? Paterson, You're Gone
Posted on February 23rd, 2010
So this is what it’s come down to in the budget, closing State Parks–some of the only accessible green in the giant NY metro complex–to trim budget deficit. Even though it likely will save very little money. People are coming up with schemes to keep the parks open. Private operation, corporate naming rights, non-profit donations. New York has one of the most labyrinthine State governments in existence, with the most insane amounts of over-legislation and money drains imaginable. Biblical length books have been written on the subject so no point going into it on a fishing blog, but these proposed closings would cut access to a lot of green–and fishing water, to be honest–needed by many to keep their sanity. Me included.
Close the Parks? Paterson, You’re Gone
Posted on February 23rd, 2010
So this is what it’s come down to in the budget, closing State Parks–some of the only accessible green in the giant NY metro complex–to trim budget deficit. Even though it likely will save very little money. People are coming up with schemes to keep the parks open. Private operation, corporate naming rights, non-profit donations. New York has one of the most labyrinthine State governments in existence, with the most insane amounts of over-legislation and money drains imaginable. Biblical length books have been written on the subject so no point going into it on a fishing blog, but these proposed closings would cut access to a lot of green–and fishing water, to be honest–needed by many to keep their sanity. Me included.
Tagged: Paterson's Doomsday Budget
Judas Goats and Other Memories of the Galapagos
Posted on February 21st, 2010
The Galapagos had a feral goat problem so the powers that be hunted them down and killed them. They used a tactic called the “Judas Goat,” where they captured a goat, fitted it with a radio collar, and released it back into the wild. The Judas Goat would return to the herd and scientists and hunters would track it by helicopter and gun them all down. They were conducting this on the islands of Isabela and Santiago during our trip there to chase striped marlin. We stopped at a spot the goats might be. There was a path marked by a goat skull nailed to a post. The last Judas here must have done his job; live goats were nowhere to be found. The…
Tagged: Galapagos, invasive species, island adventures
Business Time
Posted on February 19th, 2010
There’s that time on the dock just before you step aboard where you’re not sure what next is going to happen. The time from the alarm going off to the steady effort to move towards the car and navigate to this point seemed to double back on itself, as the water couldn’t get there fast enough. Then you’re there, and the juice feels kind of like the opening kick-off and you’re watching the ball sail through the air waiting for that first collision. You’re visualizing in your mind how it’s all going to go down based on past experience, but you really have no idea. The bird on the piling, if he were capable of higher levels of thought, would probably mock your concept…
Tagged: anticipation, chasing fish, hold, wait for it
Less Than Zero
Posted on February 13th, 2010
Florida is a cruel place to be when there’s fishing to be done and you’re not doing it. But I was down on someone else’s dime and had a job to do that didn’t allow for deviation, even to accept Marshall DeMott’s invitation to chase juvie tarpon. Not that the fishing would have been favorable. The thermometer dipped into the 30s at night–they had snow flurries up north in Tallahassee on Friday–and today the temp seems to be holding at 55 degrees with a fierce north wind blowing everything out of whack. These fish down here, they must be out of their minds, being run through a washing machine jumble of winter weather patterns over an extended period. Had I gone I could imagine a…
Tagged: fishless
FLORIDA: Chilling Consequences of Recent Weather
Posted on February 11th, 2010
While down here for the Miami Boat Show, I met briefly with Aaron Adams of the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust. We had planned on sitting down for a full interview but outside forces pulled us in different directions. We did get to casually discuss the recent cold-induced carnage in Florida, and he dispensed some staggering information. Possibly 300,000 adult snook killed, out of an estimated 1.5 million adults total. That’s a huge percentage. Plus, he speculated that possibly two entire year classes of juvenile tarpon that come of age in the mangroves have been wiped out. Plus damage to turtle grass beds and mangroves that could take years to recover. The thought I took away from it is, extend the catch-and-release only fishing for…
Tagged: Bonefish and Tarpon Trust, cold snap, fish kills, snook
