The Northwest Files

Going Barbless

I'm on the countdown to my first fishing trip using fly-casting gear.

I've gotten, sort of, the rudiments of fly casting from a three-session, nine-hour casting clinic provided by the Pasadena Casting Club - and very well done it was, too. Believe me, this is not as easy as it looks, not if you're going to do it right - getting the right-sized (small loop) in the line, not hooking yourself in the ear, or worse, and setting the fly down lightly where you wish to set it down.

There are lots of ways to cast badly. Naturally, I am proficient in all of them. But it's coming. To help myself a little, I'm doing an additional casting class with a local fishing store, if only to get a different perspective on the process. And also because more practice can only help.

And then, the PCC's angling stalwarts will take a bunch of beginners (at my age, it's hard to imagine being a beginner at anything, but there it is) up to the Eastern Sierra, probably lower Owens River, for a go at the wily trout.

But I learned something interesting yesterday. Many of the areas in the Eastern Sierra offer only catch-and-release fishing. What the rangers are doing, I was told, is going through fly boxes to make certain that the barbs are removed from the hooks on the flies those boxes contain. This is simple to do, though the flies are tiny, especially with my fumblefingers - see the photo, which you can enlarge by clicking on it, and in which scale is provided by a 25-cent piece: You just pinch the barb against the hook's shaft with a pair of needle-nose pliers and the barb breaks off.

The rangers check by pushing the hook through the material on a shirt sleeve. If the hook slides right back out, you're good. If it doesn't, you're busted and an expensive citation is the result. (It occurs to me that being barbless will also be helpful when one hooks oneself through a nostril, or similar....)

Now, I don't own the hundreds of flies that experienced fisher people own. I've got just a very few. But I don't need no stinking citations, expensive or otherwise. So my chore this coming week will be to sit at the table out in the back garden making sure that all my small collection of flies pass muster. If I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it right.

-JFT

Gone Fishin'

Well, no, I've not gone fishin'. Not exactly. Not yet. But I am preparing to do so. In pursuit of that activity, I spent the morning at the first of three fly-casting clinics presented annually by the Pasadena Casting Club.

This has to be the best deal in outdoor sports. Forty-five bucks buys you three three-hour sessions of individualized instruction with experienced fly fishermen who have been taught by experts how to pass their prodigious skills on to others.

I took this clinic about five years ago and it was fine. But life intervened and I never went fishing. Now I'm retired and have the time to indulge myself in this fine art. And I find that this clinic has grown immeasurably. Casting, flies, knots and more. Just in the first session. And presented in a lucid, well-organized, easy-to-remember manner.

This instruction was aided by the rain. Casting instruction did indeed continue in the downpour that hit the casting pond on Saturday, but when it became the sort of waterfall that chased Noah aboard his boat, we repaired to the clubhouse to learn - well, all that other stuff.

Part of what's going on here is that as a Christmas gift, Laura presented me with a really nice rod and reel and the pronouncement that I was going fishing. (Hm, part of a plot, obviously.) And part of it is that I yearn to be streamside in the Eastern Sierra, an area I know and love from many years of camping, hiking and skiing there. So I'm looking forward to the next two sessions, and after they are complete, to hauling myself up there where the fish are to see if I can annoy them at least a little.

Meanwhile, I find myself cruising the Web studying flies and the claims of guide services. All, apparently, is lost. The plot progresses.

-JFT

So Far: An Update

OK, here’s what I’ve learned so far in this hiatus I’m taking:

1 – The days are long, here at home alone.

2 – When I’m at home alone, the house is bigger than it is when Laura’s here with me.

3 – At about 9 in the morning, that’s a good time to make a lap or two of the neighborhood on my bicycle.

4 – A lap on my bike is a pretty good break from the editing and writing work I’ve undertaken for Laura’s company – that starts over morning coffee and stops when it’s done.

5 – I’ve got the time to do things I’ve not done in ages – wax my car, for instance, which it desperately needed.

6 – There’s even less on TV during the day than there is at night. Scary.

7 – My fangers are way big and clumsy for this business of tying knots in fishing line (see preceding post). But I can do it, and will do it, more and better.

8- So far, since this started, I’ve not spent a dime (well, except for a stop at Sport Chalet Sunday, when I bought some sox and some fishing stuff - see preceding post). I think I probably keep this up for a good long time.

9 – There will be time to indulge my curiosity about the contents, exotic and otherwise, of the cookbooks back there in the pantry. I’m thinking that a killer chili would be a fun place to start. I’m also thinking maybe a quiche. I mean, how hard can it be?

10 – It’s gonna be pretty easy to find to time to shoot a round or two of trap on a weekly basis. This is a good thing!

11 – Judging from the lack of content on the journalism job sites, this may last a while. Time to find other things to do.

- JFT