On a cold, dark night on a Spanish stair. (Or a warm windy day as the bite turned on at sunset.)
Fished for an hour at dusk, mostly achieving nothing. I don’t know if it was the change in fly or the time of day but a flip switched and the hits finally started coming. Weird things start happening when you stick your point and shoot underwater and there’s not much light.
Tagged: Dylan, peacock bass
Pierced, spiked and branded, with the austere bars of Black Flag.
Tagged: Flurda, forced fly fishing analogies, peacock bass
Doing a little free-word association, what comes to mind with the jack crevalle.
Whether they’re half-pounders or 20-pounders, jacks are just mean. Nobody’s going to put together a four-digit travel budget plan to chase them but when they’re around and engaged in brutality against the lesser species (known as bait), tie on your most durable popper and be glad for it.
BONUS COVERAGE: More free word association.
Tarpon. Ascendancy.
False Albacore. Velocity.
Trout. Sagacity.
Peacock bass. Vibrancy.
Bluefish. Savagery.
Carp. Quixotical.
This could go on.
Happy Hour Bud's Lounge
During my Friday rundown of blogs I enjoy, I came across this perceptive post on the cultural phenomenon that is the Florida Keys Happy Hour. Well said, sir.
(Be sure to click on the mugshots.)
Tagged: Happy Hour, Headhunters Fly Shop
An unexpected package came in the mail last spring and I opened it. These electric little plastic baggies fell out and I thought, this was meant for somebody on the Furthur tour. But it was clearly labeled, Free Range Dubbing.
I didn’t know what to make of it, or with it. I am not a fly tier but someone who ties flies, a selection of saltwater patterns and some bastardized variants, none of which require dubbing. I resolved to learn some patterns that do, but I am lazy. And forgetful.
The other day I started rummaging for other materials and saw the package and remembered. I bought some dubbing wax. I know just enough to be dangerous but it doesn’t matter because there are no real consequences.
These bastards will swim and we’ll see if something comes of it. If nothing, I’m blaming the goddam weather.
If I lived there still I might get tired of it. Maybe.
(If I lived there I’d do everything possible to be in the express lane passing through Whitewater Bay.)
But if I’m down there and I have a free moment in the right place, it’s a safe bet to figure what’s lighting up my train of thought.
Tishan played free shows at the park across from Burger King and when you can’t drive yet you go where you can get to. The crowd always strange–kids, the elderly, homeless, surfers with bloodshot eyes.
The music is not really for you but it gets into you and it’s a short leap beyond Legend to King Yellowman and the yearly Sunsplash at the Sportatorium and for a while when you’re young music is as much a part of you as breathing.
Tagged: Brutal Out Deh
First
At this moment, there are exactly 113,347 fly fishing blogs in existence. Twice that many have come and gone. (Where are you, Blanco Honky?) But of all the blogs that are, were and will be, none can make the same claim as the the Urban Flyfisher: World’s First Fly Fishing Blog.
His name is Alistair, he fishes in Scotland, and this is his story.
You are recognized as the first fly fishing blogger. With no real contemporaries at the time, what compelled you to start a fly fishing blog?
Essentially I wanted to start a diary that I could update easily involving photos. I did not know any html so found this new fangled thing called “blogging” and it looked like it would suit my needs. At the time there was no other dedicated fly fishing personal blog. There were a few blogs I identified with and we would link to each other and pass visitors on – one was called “A View from the Bridge” about a chap whose job took him to the waves on large industrial ships – his photos were amazing.
And a blog about urban fishing, hip before its time. What gives?
To be honest it is just circumstance – my local river is a true urban recovering river full of Trout and Salmon that runs through the heart of Glasgow. At the time I did not drive so it is was the easiest river to walk to – additionally I was a student at the time (not one of those students that the whole experience was wasted on as I was a mature student who could embrace stupidly long summers involving fishing and cheap wine.) The blog actually started out as “Urban Fly Fishing on the Kelvin” and then after a while morphed into “The Urban Fly Fisher” as I realised pretty much all the rivers I fish are within a stones throw of the city. However my soul still resides underneath bridges with buses thundering over them.
Even though urban fishing may be seen as “hip” there are still not a lot of guys actually doing it – it appears to be the same old die hards rather than new folk. A lot of people go fishing to get away from the city not actually go into it. Saying that, now I have a couple of young children my fishing is now solely once more on the Kelvin as it takes me a few minutes to get there.
How long did it take before you had any readers?
Within a few weeks I had around a dozen unique visitors per day and it stayed that way for a few months. Over time it grew and grew.
Were you surprised from the response from across the pond in the States?
The majority of my readers are from outside the Scotland and the UK. I get a lot of emails from folk who have emigrated to the States and Australia who are homesick and want to check up on Glasgow – they are amazed that there are now fish in the river. I am still amazed that people enjoy what I write about the Kelvin – I assume they enjoy the Glasgow chat.
Nine years is a long time to be churning out content on a regular basis. What compels you to keep going?
It is a diary so I am never without content – during our close season sometimes content can be a bit difficult to think up so the whole blog slows down until the season starts and then it is back to being about trips. Of course now that I am Vice Chair of the River Kelvin Angling Association I do not get to moan at them anymore I now get people shouting at me at meetings – I then get to write about them instead.
Has blogging about fly fishing helped your actual fly fishing?
Without question yes.
I can honestly say that every fishing buddy I have now is because I started the blog. The majority of knowledge that I have gained through chat and observation of my fishing pals has made me a better fisher – not a particularly good fisher if the truth be told however certainly above half assed (just).
I reckon most of the guys I have fished with would not have fished with me if it were not for the blog – not saying I am a big celebrity or anything more of recognizing a kindred spirit type of thing. It opens the doors to new opportunities that’s for sure.
Any insane celebrity stalking stories arising from your blog?
I have good stories and bad. I am constantly surprised that people recognise me and when it happens I am still taken aback. Just last week I was at the swimming baths with my son and this huge gent with tattoos all over his body kept glaring at me. I thought it was because my son was splashing him and edged away, he edged closer and stared into my eyes and asked if I was Alistair – after confirming that this was the case he nodded and began to move away – “I read yer site” he said before swimming off without another word.
Another time I received an email from a guy who told me he was standing behind me in Ikea the night before – we now fish together regularly.
I have had guys over the years who send me loads of emails however sometimes I just find it difficult to email back regulary and I think this annoys them.
I do actually have some bad stories as well, up until quite recently there was a guy who was internet stalking me as I banned him from my wee local forum. It all got a bit serious to be honest.
Do you think the rest of the fly fishing blog community should present you with a certificate or something? A watch? (I’ve got an old Timex.)
I think there should be a minimum payment of ten flies sent to me by any new fly fishing blogger – also an open invitation to stay in their home and fish with them.
Oh and a watch – an old Timex.
And a fly rod.
And Reel.
tarpon under the dock
In the back corner I sat and ate two cheeseburgers at the saddest fast food joint in the universe. It occupies the ground floor of a building off Lincoln Road, through the gauntlet of shops and street performers and open air restaurants filled with people drawn in from every habited continent. A current of energy flows by, funneling from Collins and Washington and A1A, but it doesn’t swirl into the windowless interior where the broken silver haired man sits staring at an empty cup of coffee.
The Venetian is the back way off the island, safeguarded by a series of toll booths and draw bridges that bring transit to a halt. At the foot of one bridge women on skateboards wait for the gates to reopen.
On the incoming tide the bay fills up with bright blue water that flows in past the cruise ships in the Cut. But it was at night here where I saw my first tarpon, fooled by a jigged shrimp drifting in the dark water. I followed the crashes until my eyes caught it leaping, silver scales illuminated by the ambient light of the city.
Years later the water runs blue under the Venetian and through the piers of the marina on the mainland side, where 40 to 50 million dollars worth of boats float in the water waiting for the affluent to open their checkbooks. Underneath the shaded docks the moving stream is occasionally interrupted by splashes that sound like tail flicks and then the unmistakeable sound of tarpon gulping air. They float in formation facing into the tide and when I lay down on the dock and stick my head underneath they do not flinch.
These fish are not to be touched. But even if you could they’d retreat to the concrete and your line would go slack before you even had a say in it.
Tagged: Biscayne Bay, South beach, tarpon
FGs
I dig cheap sunglasses. I used to buy counterfeit Oakley jackets for five bucks in Midtown until I feared they were burning out my retinas. And I started fishing heavily.
On the water switching from regular (street-legal) polarized to Costa 580 lenses rocked my world. I have two pair and the frames don’t fit me right but I don’t care because they give me HD X-Ray vision.
I don’t wear my HD shades on the street anymore. They are susceptible to the indelicate hands of my two young children, who like to grab them bend them smudge them and, in the younger’s case, use them as a teething biscuit.
For that reason alone I hit the Walgreen’s circular-spinning sunglass rack and found a bitchin pair of polarized Foster Grants. My long-term evaluation sizes up the pros and cons of dime-store shades.
GOOD FOR:
Driving, sacrificial shades with kids, dropping, stuffing in pockets, hangover softening, sticking on top of hats
BAD FOR:
Fishing
*Alonzo Mosely, Midnight Run
Tagged: Foster Grants, Midnight Run, polarized sunglasses
