I worked until the wee hours of the Monday morning, and I’ll be doing the same until early Tuesday morning. Naturally, I’m a little burned. Crispy even.

So instead of a thoughtful essay on foundations of the Italian Renaissance and its relationship to fly fishing, you’re getting The Underground’s First Show & Tell — a relaxing few minutes before the whole class rolls out our sleep mats and takes a nap.

Kids, play nice…

First, There’s the Big Nymph

First, from Moldy Chum comes an unexplained photograph of a two meter long stonefly nymph.

Sculpture? Shrine? Alien Artifact (the alien fly fisher’s equivalent of a crop circle)? The Underground simply doesn’t know.

Then There Are the Clear Fish From Spluch

Via the always-odd Spluch site comes pictures of the perfect spokes-fish for Saran Wrap — the crystal clear fish who live in the icy depths around Antarctica.

Their bodies have adapted to the extremely cold, oxygen-rich waters by doing away with hemoglobin (red blood cells which thicken the blood in cold conditions).

Imagine the conversations between fish (You bastard, you spawned with that other fish — I can see right through you!). Or not. It’s OK if you don’t, they’re just clear fish for chrissakes.

More at the Science Notes blog

Then There’s The Big Trout

Ian Rutter sent me this pic of his better half (Charity Rutter, and she’s really more of a “better three-fourths”) gripping a big rainbow caught on a tailwater (where I could be fishing in 1.5 week’s time).

This rather sizable fish fell to a streamer, and I’m going to take this opportunity to tell Charity that I’ll happily buy that streamer from her when I get out there.

She fishes. She guides. She’s attractive. She’s taken.

Then There’s the Dead Dog

Via Ralph Maughn’s most excellent Wildlife News site comes news of a Utah man suing the Federal Government after the “Wildlife Services” department deployed a series of cyanide poisoning devices (designed to “control” coyote populations, though they’re indiscriminate killers).

You can read the whole sordid story at the Wild Again blog, where you learn in 2005, the cyanide traps killed 92 dogs and one bald eagle. Now that’s an effective program.

Nap Time

Tomorrow, Dave Roberts might be passing through, and yes, it kills me that somebody’s fishing while I’m sitting here at the computer.

To make matters worse, he’s been tying some killer emerger patterns (below a South Platte Quigley Sulphur pattern).

That’s all for now. Nap time, and plenty of it. See you in homeroom, Tom Chandler.

[tags]fly fishing[/tags]

Posted in Underground Entertainment.