Hey whoah, is this thing on? I’ve got 45 minutes of footage and half of it looks like this and the other half looks like it was filmed by rodeo clowns. No worries, I’ve got a bitchin’ soundtrack for it that I made with my new banjo on my Mac.
Tagged: go pro anti-hero, what's shakin' shakes?
In the winter on the full moon the shrimp run the inlets. On the incoming tide, the thing to do is go out in a boat with a handheld spotlight, flash the water until it reflects tiny red eyes floating by and scoop them with a long-handled dip net.
Brendan had all the necessary accouterments and a 16-foot Whaler and he’d ask you to bring beer. By all accounts this was one of the saner activities that could be undertaken by kids in South Florida.
The wind funneled in between the condominiums stacked aside the inlet and the humid air chilled to the 50s and felt ice cold. (Humans acclimated to 80 do not adjust well.) On the accelerating tide tiny flagellates riled and set the black water aglow with phosphorescence, interrupted by the red eyes that set off reflexive jabbing motions with the nets.
Weirdness funnels down the Interstates into South Florida and after midnight the purveyors end up in Denny’s.
Brendan sat at a table and he had bloodshot eyes and an elderly man in a plaid blazer walked up to him. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.
Brendan had a well-developed Irish temperament and he shouted, “Red Buttons!”
“No,” the man said. “I’m Alan Funt.*”
“No way,” said Brendan. “You’re Red Buttons.”
“No, I’m Alan Funt.”
“Red Buttons.”
“Listen…”
“RED. BUTTONS.”
The waitress came over to calm them down but it kept going back and forth until Brendan got the final word.
“F*&k you, Red Buttons.”
***********
Last week I went to Florida but I ordered in and fell asleep well before midnight. In the morning I took a boat to Boca Chita and Elliott Key in a head sea and got soaked and the wind turned everything to mud.
Florida, though, makes amends.
I caught peacock bass in a canal and saw some strange people in a diner but I was smeared with zinc oxide so they avoided eye contact. I ordered carnitas and iced tea and watched the front door in expectation that, somehow, Peter Funt would walk through. He did not.
*(Alan Funt)
Tagged: South Florida Derelict Brigade
Early on in my fly fishing pursuits I found myself releasing my 14th trout in two hours of fishing the Connetquot River. I felt good about this until a man walked by claiming to have caught 50. He’d grown bored, he said, and was going home early. Adding insult, he scooped a dip from his lower lip and flicked it into the water, where a trout rose to meet it.
The Connetquot River has been described as Long Island’s blue ribbon trout stream, a once private fishing club turned into a pristine State Park with an on-site hatchery that stocked it with kamloops rainbows, brooks and browns. Some of the fish held over and reproduced, creating a small wild population, and some below the dam attained sea run status, heading out beyond where the river dumps into the Great South Bay.
It worked via a beat system–a valid NY fishing license and $20 reserved the opportunity to fish an assigned stretch of river (choice of spots given by the order of sign in) for a four hour segment.
Fishing there always made you feel like a better fly angler than you really were; the deck was stacked in your favor like Kim Jong Il on the golf course. It fished that way until 2008, when an outbreak of Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis forced the State to shut down the hatchery.
The park opened early in the winter of 2009 and started a cull-fest, encouraging anglers to keep every fish they caught in order to rid the river of contaminated fish. I went one day; most stretches of water had been picked clean but I witnessed one young angler konk an old kyped brown trout and stuff it in a plastic bag.
In its heyday the park always had detractors for obvious reasons, and I’ve felt conflicted about it, but mostly enjoyed my times there. My friends and I learned a lot about fly fishing making pre-dawn pilgrimages from Hoboken and New York City. The fish were stocked, but some of them held over and the browns in particular could prove as challenging and rewarding as any fish anywhere.
Fishing at the park itself was steeped in ethics. It was one of the first places to ban felt sole, making rubber-soled hip waders mandatory in all wading spots. (One justification for the hip-waders–you couldn’t wade out too far and degrade the river bed with your footwork.) Barbless hooks were mandatory, egg patterns were banned, and general assholery not tolerated. Gil the riverkeeper walked the trails along the banks making sure your gear was copacetic, that you were respecting others’ space or to gently explain how your clumsy wading was ruining it for every angler downstream. Violations resulted in banishment.
Trout Unlimited and the Boy Scouts and other local conservation groups kept the waters and trails clean and practiced stream restoration.
These types of things carry over.
So I was thrilled this week to read in Newsday that the Friends of the Connetquot organization raised the necessary funding to get the hatchery back on track. The river is an amazing resource and, according to the article, the fly fishing brings in $300,000 of much-needed revenue annually to the park.
Thanks to Friends of the Connetquot for making this happen.
Last month a newspaper reporter and writer named Morgan Sherburne wrote an essay about some of my blog posts. (The connection: Morgan is dating Matt Dunn, who does Fishbeer, one of my favorite blogs.)
Prior, I had not heard the term “Flash Essay.” I just like to write short.
Tagged: is posting this self-promotion?
via Moldy Chum
I hope every striped bass angler out there sees it and feels the same awful kick in the gut at the prospect.
Tagged: fish population crash, Fly Fishing, striped bass
Five-string acquired, fellas.
Today “Little Brown Jug,” tomorrow world banjo domination.
Tagged: banjo in the hills, finger picking, original metal
Closing in on ’13 from fishingpoet on Vimeo.
Matt posted a 2012 video recap. If not for my bias towards the deft jon boat handler at the beginning, my favorite would be the feeding of tarpon via hand or fly.
Tagged: fishing poet
