Posts tagged: singlebarbed

So What Exactly Do We “Owe” Fly Shops Anyway?

June 8, 2011, by 11 comments

While I’m trying to puncture a few work balloons, discuss the following gem from Singlebarbed amongst yourselves, where he (ahem) disagrees with something from the recent issue of Angling Trade:

It’s probably their best issue yet, but after digesting it from cover to cover I’m unsettled by some of the commentary.

Maybe we should all wake up and smell the coffee. It isn’t about hair salons, or Costco, or even big box stores and direct sales over the Internet. It’s about who really cares about fly shops, and who backs words with action. Any action. Think on that, and you already know who has your back, and who doesn’t.

Naturally I’ve got my own ideas about how all this is supposed to work, and knowing that us taxpayers share an increasing frustration over posturing politicians, CEO’s, and those that nearly bankrupted the economy, yet I’m still a little surprised that someone would think we owe anything to anyone that wasn’t earned the old fashioned way.

Why does someone in this industry think I owe an underfunded childhood fantasy a decent living?

Badda bing.

If you’ve got something to say about that topic, best to discuss it over at Singlebarbed (there are a lot of good points being made).

One comment I will make centers around an often-repeated fallacy — that the “Internet” is dealing a death blow to the fly shops disappearing from the landscape.

First, the “Internet” is basically plumbing; if someone’s buying online — and putting the boots to a local fly shop — they’re still buying from a person or a company apparently offering a better value proposition, not some malevolent entity with a grudge against brick & mortar shops.

So why is buying online so attractive?

It’s not uncommon for a USA-based “manufacturer” to source goods overseas, so the chain can look like this: overseas manufacturer to US-based company to rep (or distributor) to fly shop to you — the fly angler harboring suspicions of being overcharged.

That’s a lot of steps, and each takes their pound of flesh.

Contrast that with the ability of today’s fly fisherman to sometimes reach directly overseas via the Internet — buying goods directly from the people making them.

At the very least, it’s not hard to prune a couple steps from that supply chain (along with a couple of markups), and it’s little surprise the number of “direct-to-consumer” fly rod companies has grown the last couple years — or that fly shops are now selling their own branded fly rods (three steps instead of five).

Where it gets a little strange is when someone puts forth the idea that fly fishermen — or even the fly fishing industry — are somehow obligated to protect that original, inefficient supply chain.

Other industries — including my own — have been upended by the advent of digital goodies and the Intertubes, and while plenty of tears have been shed, I can’t remember hearing anyone seriously suggest we all pull together to push back the essentially irresistible forces of change.

Fly fishing won’t be any different.

A guide friend of mine once said that the industry is fighting tooth and nail to avoid change instead of embracing it, and I’d say there are a lot of cracks appearing in the facade.

Some companies — especially the self-contained ones — seem to be doing fine.

Those that can’t budge had better deliver a hell of a value proposition, or get used to hearing that flushing sound.

Something Stinks In California, and It’s Not Singlebarbed’s Essay About Dewatered Rivers

September 7, 2009, by 4 comments

A week ago I wrote about fly fishing a little alpine creek that was glorious in the spring, but threadbare and fly-ridden at the end of summer – courtesy the cattle that had grazed it bare.

At least Stream Y had only been denuded of its greenery; Singlebarbed’s now-famous “Little Stinkin’” river has been stripped of its water(courtesy an irrigation district), and yesterday he visited it again in the hopes of finding a little wet stuff in the streambed.

What he found instead would make any fishermen throw back his head and howl at the moon:

Dead and desiccated beaver were scattered near their burrows. While agile underwater they’re clumsy prey on dry land, easy pickings for coyotes or someone’s Rottweiler.

The pelts were too far gone for my road kill honed reflexes, and I left them for the buzzards.

Even the deep stretches were dry, at best with a bit of dampened mud at the bottom. No fish carcasses were evident but they would’ve been picked clean and skeletal.

It’s a complete wipe. Bugs dead, fish dead, and the wildlife in the area foraging for water as best they can. I found a couple muddy traces that had an inch of water remaining, and the volume of animal tracks nearby were moot testimony to the deer, coyotes, and birds having to make do.

It’s a riveting post, thought not a manifestly happy one. It’s tempting to shrug it off as an isolated incident, but it’s not.

In fact, it’s potentially more a model of California’s water future than elegant-yet-ugly essay.

With Big Ag drumming up support on the back of a string of lies about unemployment, what’s causing that unemployment, and the negligible effects of a short-term halt in pumping from the Delta, it appears that California’s prevailing sentiment about water has swung toward the “dry ‘em up” side of the pendelum.

California – one of the most hyrdologically altered landscapes on the planet – is now in the grip of a drought, but it’s also witness to a war being waged for the stuff that runs in its veins.

While the media largely buys the spin offered up by those profiting from the taxpayer’s largess, the California Delta’s ecology remains in free fall, and politicos seemingly can’t hand out the corporate welfare checks fast enough.

Now – with new water “storage” and “conveyances” planned (at taxpayer expense), and a growing sense that any trickle of water that makes it to the ocean is wasted – we’re witness to what may be the last call for any sizable populations of salmon & steelhead in this state.

It’s grim and getting grimmer, and because he sums it up better than I can, I’ll let Singlebarbed wrap it up for us:

Something stinks, and it’s not the corpse of my creek. She smells of hot rock and a few posies … all that remains.

It Had to Happen: Singlebarbed Founds Brownliner Unlimited

April 15, 2009, by 5 comments

OK, we’re making a joke here, but then again, we’re sorta not.

As Singlebarbed (the Underground’s brownlining equivalent) points out in his latest post, maybe it’s time someone spoke out for those waters considered too far gone by most to warrant a word:

Take a water district operating with complete autonomy; no CalTrout, no Trout Unlimited, no passionate enviro-lobby, as there’s little glamour in little brown rivulets, couple that with a week long promise of heavy rain, and you get Scarface and more like him as progeny.

140 CFS is the normal flow, yet for 12 hours during the storm the dam release was 14000 CFS – enough to take the face off what few fish could hide, and blew the rest of the fish into the Delta accompanied by Dodge Escorts and rusty shopping carts.

Scarred by massive flows? Singlebarbed thinks so.

Scarred by massive flows? Singlebarbed thinks so.

I’m wandering an empty creek, barren of Bass – and what few fish remain show scrapes, scratches, and assorted wounds compliments of the “Zero Sum” water policy on the lake above.

You’re tired of hearing it, and I’m tired of saying it, “.. rather than spend those precious dollars on restoring the pristine, which we quickly despoil, perhaps we should be focused on restoring the balance of Nature.”

In each of the last two years the release from the lake coincided with the wettest storm, suggesting the water district management blew open the gates in response to what runoff was anticipated. Swelling any river 100 times its normal size in an instant makes a killing machine; it destroys the insect population, kills or removes all the fish, and probably wipes a goodly portion of indigenous reptiles, amphibians, and anything else that calls the streambed home.

Both years would have scrubbed the creek at the height of the salmon spawn.

Beavers are great swimmers, but not when the river is a torrent. Likely it kills most in their burrow – and those that make it into the water are battered into pieces. At right is one of three dead beaver encountered at the high water mark. A little far-gone to determine cause of death, but it’s possibly additional evidence of an abusive water policy.

If fly fishing really is experiencing a “fish where you are, not where you aren’t” movement, then maybe there really will exist the political will to make some of the simple water management changes. Then again, maybe not.

See you at Browline Unlimited’s Fundraiser, Tom Chandler.

Singlebarbed Exposed: Can Even A Top Brownliner Make Boa Yarn Look Manly?

November 3, 2008, by 5 comments

Singlebarbed continues his series of frightening innovative fly tying posts by extolling the virtues of Boa Yarn, something that looks awesome on a hook, though you wouldn’t necessarily want to trim your hat with it before heading out with the guys:

To catch a glimpse of the workings of Singlebarbed’s tortured inner psyche a creative fly tyer at work, read the rest of his most excellent post here.

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Singlebarbed Goes All Hollywood On Us, Published in California Fly Fisher

September 17, 2008, by 8 comments

Don’t adjust your set – that really is an article on Brownlining in the October, 2008 issue of California Fly Fisher written by none other than Singlebarbed – the Underground’s less bathed Brownlining Twin.

There’s no online link, so if you want to see how Singlebarbed looks in print (a little grayer, actually), you’ll have to buy the magazine.

Brownlining becoming mainstream? When it starts showing up in destination mags, you gotta think so.

See you trying to become all hip and brownliney trendy, Tom Chandler.

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How to Become Obscenely Rich in Fly Fishing (Without Starting That Way)

August 29, 2008, by 6 comments

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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Barbarian Fly Fishers at the Gates: Why It’s Time to Loosen Fly Fishing’s Straitjacket

August 19, 2008, by 15 comments

The barbarian hordes are gathering at fly fishing’s gates, though instead of looting and pillaging, they’ve got rubbery, pouty lips on their minds.

Who are they? I’m talking about the the fast-growing mob of fly fishing’s “brownliners” – people happy to hammer the “rough” fish gone largely ignored in the trout-happy USA.


How’d you like to catch that on a 7wt?

Unlike trout, warmwater fish are everywhere (especially in urban settings), and in the face of disintegrating leisure time and high travel costs, America’s fly fishers may soon learn what the Euros have long known:

Carp are Cool.

Carp and Friends

Amusingly, carp have become the glamorous poster children for even more “extreme” gamefish like pikeminnows and suckers – an astonishing fact. Until recently, smallmouth fan Ian Rutter said even the kickass smallmouth bass was a hard sell to his fly fishing clients.

Now we’re looking hard at Pikeminnows and Redhorse suckers?

No less a figure than John “Trout Bum” Gierach lionized the Golden Ghost in an essay years ago, and European anglers have long had a love affair with the pouty-lipped wonder. And why not?

Carp are wily, they’re spooky, they’re strong, they feed in shallow waters, and they grow to impressive sizes in waters lethal to less-hardy fish.

When I moved away from the Silicon Valley – where I fished for carp in an apartment building pond – I found myself missing their selective natures and powerful ways, though I appreciated not having to run whenever an apartment manager hove into view.

Carp and Current Events

Carp fliesFueling the carp frenzy are current events like skyrocketing fuel prices, which may do for brownlining what common sense couldn’t; turn close-to-home carp spots into jealously guarded secrets.

Carp-flavored Web sites, blogs and forums are popping up all over, and fly fishing’s well-trod essay book genre even saw the publication of an excellent book about fishing for odd fish in odd places (Offbeat Angling).

Naturally, fly tyers – bored with endless Atlantic Salmon patterns – are now applying their arcane fly tying talents to carp-specific patterns, with predictably interesting results.

Can the fly fishing industry – looking for its next big market – be far behind its fishermen? Carp Captains? Carp guides? Carp rods? (Will we see a resurgence of the reasonably tapered freshwater 7wt?)

It’s a Rough World – Or At Least It Will Be

After all, free enterprise – like nature – hates a vacuum, and while we may not see “Carp Glamping Trips” advertised for some time, we may see a bit more economic attention paid to fish that will thrive even as climate change sweeps over our coldwater fisheries.

The question is simple, Undergrounders – how long until Carp is King? Will the “rough fish” moniker – which is already losing its negative sting – ever simply refer to a class of warmwater fish?

And will other fly friendly “rough” fish – such as Singlebarbed’s beloved California Pikeminnows – ever see their names on a high-end fly rod (“The Pikeminnow Special”)?

Calfornia Pikeminnow
A Pikeminnow (courtesty Singlebarbed)

Discuss.

See you on the brownlines, Tom Chandler.

A few online Carp resources (in no particular order):
Singlebarbed: The consumate brownliner
Carp on a Fly: John Montana and his Big Carp adventures
A Roughfisherman’s Journal: Exactly what it says
Angling for Carp: Central Texas fly fisher looking for rough fish

Forums & Groups
Non-Traditional Angling: Carp spoken there
Carp Anglers Group: Yes, really.
CarpNet: You knew it had to be…
Michigan Carp
American Carp Society: You read it right
OregonCarp: Can “CalCarp” be far behind?

An Underground Sick Day: Life on the Couch

June 10, 2008, by 1 comment

I’m huddled inside, surrounded by all the usual springtime cold goodies (kleenex, cough syrup, tea, Wonderdog, etc).

Still, if I had to be sick, I didn’t pick a bad day for it; the wind is bending the L&T’s fruit trees almost to the ground, and the sky is bright blue – neither of which portends a great day on the river.

In fact, temperatures on our back porch have yet to reach 50 degrees, and it’s closing in on lunchtime in the second week in June.

I’m inside and working (though when my head gets full, the words come slowly), but still stealing a few minutes to read what’s on the Internet.

There’s a lot to comment on – and I’m saving some of it for coming days – but here’s a couple things to chew on while I’m brewing tea, and getting ready to renew my assault on the local fisheries.

Ode to Old Guys

Singlebarbed pens a wry observational piece about the value of old guys, and while he’s pretty much older than dirt himself, it’s still an engrossing read (and a rare glimpse into the Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club’s bygone years).

There’s something magical about Old Guys, which is why I enjoy their company so much. I liken it to the baseball pitcher that knows he’s only got 90 pitches in his arm, and treats each without wasted motion, executing the delivery without the frantic movement of youth or temper, merely going about his business as thoroughly as his arm allows.

Salmon as Invasive Species?

While Chinook Salmon populations plummet along the USA’s west coast, in South America, Chinook are finding a home for themselves in the region’s undammed, largely unpolluted rivers.

Hard to believe it’s the same species. But the chinook salmon, conservation heartbreak of the U.S. West Coast, is invading and thriving in South America.

Chinook, or king salmon, largest of the five North American salmon species, reached South America some 25 years ago as people tried to farm them there, says Cristián Correa of McGill University in Montreal. Now a broad survey of records and stream visits finds chinook reproducing on their own in at least 10 Andean watersheds that empty into the Pacific…

In a decade or two, will we be in the embarrassing position of flying to South America to catch salmon we’ve extirpated from our own rivers?

See you on the couch, Tom Chandler.

Singlebarbed Takes Hard Look at Fly Fishing Industry’s Shadow Distribution Channel (or, Fly Rod Bargains 101)

May 20, 2008, by 2 comments

Singlebarbed launched an excellent article that’s either an indictment of the fly fishing industry’s penchant for quietly selling overstock online (to the detriment of fly shops), or a guide to getting a great deal on a fly rod.

He invested a fair amount of time looking at online sources of closeout goods (including eBay), and some of what he found was pretty surprising.

singlebarbedrticle

When the Creel fly shop in Knoxville closed its doors, we saw a lot of "what’s happening to the world’s fly shops" comments here on the Underground.

While a lot of those excellent comments focused on competition from big box stores, we also touched on the Internet’s use as a vehicle for manufacturer’s close outs:

For example, some manufacturers demand large pre-season orders from their dealers — the kind of order that’s harder for a small fly shop to absorb.

At the end of that season, a change is made to the product (even a small one), and the manufacturer’s entire remaining stock of old stuff goes into the sale bin (the Internet is dotted with closeout specialists) and suddenly, the small dealer is left with a pile of gear that’s selling — with the blessing of the manufacturer — at half the price written on the tag.

Are manufacturers stiffing fly shops by closing out "last year’s" goods at fire sale prices through online sources? Or is it simply the way it is?

Get on over to Singlebarbed, and add your thoughts to the conversation.

Is It Monday Already? The Underground Faces <gasp> Work

May 5, 2008, by 4 comments

Damn, it is Monday.

That means the many not-so-neat piles of work on my desk require a little attention. As do the around-the-house spring jobs that sat while I fished.

McCloud Lake Brown Trout
That’s 19 inches of pissed-off Brown Trout, courtesy a streamer.

It also means the weekend’s fishing trips will get short shrift in terms of complete, in-depth, helpfully informative coverage.

That’s OK — Singlebarbed completely fabricated did a nice job of covering our Saturday visit to the Upper McCloud (there’s a teensy bit of actual fishing reality in this report).

uppermccloudtrees  
The Upper McCloud fished a little cold, but looked damned pretty.

I will say this: the McCloud’s eye-candy views almost compensated for the fact I pounded up only one take on a dry, and then promptly missed him (still 48 degrees water tempts, though the indicator types are catching fish).

Damn.

Still — in a rare fit of how-to helpfulness — I will fire up a post about my Sunday trip to Steve Bertrand’s Secret Guide Spot.

No, I can’t reveal the exact location of the Secret Guide Spot, but then, that’s not where I caught the above-pictured Brown Trout — nor the handful of others that ate a streamer I stripped about as fast I could.

The dry fly has failed me so far this year, but twice the streamer’s saved my butt (and in a big-fish way).

And yes, streamers are just plain fun. And we do fun here just fine.

Until then, see you at work, Tom Chandler.