Leave it to Roughfish-Hugger Singlebarbed to put us on the trail of a unique opportunity to fly fish - and get paid for it.
Sure, you could become a guide and get paid, but everyone knows you’re not fly fishing when you’re guiding - you’re simply holding the hands of people who can’t fish, but have more money than you.
Besides, guiding’s a one-way ticket to an advanced degree in body piercing, courtesy clients who can’t cast.
No, my little Undergrounders - your path to professional status comes via the Pikeminnow Sport Reward Fishery, a power-company funded attempt to preserve Salmon and Steelhead in the Columbia and Snake rivers.
Sure, a few nattering nabobs will say that controlling predators across an entire ecosystem in an attempt to bolster a fading species is a one-way ticket to the environmental equivalent of the fiery abyss, but I’m pretty sure they’re just jealous eggheads who couldn’t catch a Pikeminnow if it jumped into their hands.
From the Pikeminnow Sport Reward Site:
In the 2008 season, we will pay anglers for fish 9 inches and larger. The reward will remain the same at $4-$8 for each northern pikeminnow caught in the lower Columbia (mouth to Priest Rapids Dam) and Snake (mouth to Hells Canyon Dam) rivers. This year’s qualifying tagged fish will be worth $500.
Lemme see: if all the Internet stories we read are true, then most Internet Experts Who Couldn’t Catch a Non-Virtual Fish fly fishermen could clear a couple hundred a day.
For some, that only covers the daily cost of cigars hookers and booze, but for rugged individuals knowledgable in the ways of the wily Pikeminnow (like the grubstake-seeking Singlebarbed), it’s a plan for retirement in five years or less.
I say we quit our jobs en masse and establish a Pikeminnow Bum camp on the Columbia.
It’s Friday, most of you have started drinking already, so who’s with me? (Pumping fist in the air, fight-the-power style.)
I say we can’t miss.
See you at the Pikeminnow check-in station (and I’ll be rich), Tom Chandler.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
kbarton10 08.29.08 at 11:46 am
If you hadn’t mentioned my Mother while you was laughing - them “guaranteed Pikeminnow Killer” flies would still be $1.59 …
Now that Mom’s involved - call it $9.33 each (includes your bamboo blueline discount).
Tom Chandler 08.29.08 at 12:41 pm
You brownliners have no sense of
humorcommerce.You should have written the “How to Fly Fish Every Day Of Your Life and Still Retire to a Yacht Jammed With Bikini Babes” e-book “information product” and sold it for $79.99 each.
Don 08.29.08 at 5:38 pm
I think I’ll start filling the freezer with California pikeminnow. Once (if) gas prices drop, I’ll pawn them off as Columbia River natives and finance a new bamboo rod.
Jean-Paul Lipton 08.29.08 at 8:02 pm
KB, don’t forget to tack on the $1/fly roughfisher excise tax. That jerky isn’t going to buy itself.
Ian 08.30.08 at 4:01 am
Hmmm…. Best as I’ve found, the way to end up with a million dollars in fly fishing is to start with two million.