Humor

A Package from Sweden and Another Story Not About Fishing

The internet allows us to communicate with, and get to know, people who live far away, in distant lands. There are times it almost doesn’t seem real. I fire up my computer and there you all are, your words and pictures on my screen any time I want. Wires, electricity, zeroes and ones combine to produce a wondrous illusion, instantaneously, allowing us to share words, pictures, and more with people we may never know in person, wherever in the world they may be.

Back in December, Marc Fauvet, of Limp Cobra fame, announced The Friggin’ Awesome Limp Cobra Holiday Photo Contest!, with the only requirement being that said photo must have a fly in it. The results of the contest can be seen HERE. The real winner was Ulf Börjesson, who takes wonderful photos and keeps the blog [Mad] Trout, but he declined, allowing my photo to move from second place to first!

We know a digital image can travel thousands of miles in a matter of seconds but how long does it take for a DVD to travel from Sweden to Vermont? Thanks to Marc and Ulf, we know the answer to that question: Three friggin’ weeks!

I am looking forward to watching this one and trying out some of what it has to offer. Perhaps I’ll do a review in a few weeks. Thanks again, Marc and Ulf!

******

With winter’s banshees pummeling the windows and moaning at the door, the Shack Nasties lurk in dark corners. They follow me across the dooryard as I go about my chores and huddle with me beneath my blankets when I come back in, whispering sweet nothings in my ear, reminding me of far-away spring and a distant, misty, evening rise.

Screw the Shack Nasties, Cabin Fever, or what ever you want to call it. Here is a story, not about fishing:

When I was a kid, going to the mall was a special treat. A world unto itself, the mall was a new concept and my family went to walk and gawk as much as to shop, joining the throngs that circulated through the climate-controlled, concrete, chrome and glass corridors like schools of fish. Whenever I became separated from the rest of our little group, my parents knew where to find me because there was one thing in that giant Church of the Almighty Dollar that invariably drew me in, like a moth to a flame. Somehow, I always ended up in front of the County Seat Jeans Emporium, staring in wide-eyed wonder at the gargantuan pair of pants hanging from the ceiling inside. My nine-year-old mind was absolutely boggled by the size of those pants. It was humbling to realize that the mall was a place where anyone could get anything they needed, but I shuddered as I imagined the person who needed those pants. Those pants weren’t just Levi’s. They were leviathan. My parents assured me that those giant pants were a joke and that no one could possibly need pants so large, and for years I believed them. Until I met Robbie Brown. Continue reading

Categories: Humor, Winter | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

What Are You Looking For?

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who makes time to read The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond. Some of you have been muddling through my stuff for quite a while now. Some of you found your way here via The Outdoor Blogger Network; some of you were pointed this way by friends and some of you were invited in; some of you stumbled across this blog by sheer dumb luck and liked it enough to subscribe, and most of you probably wonder sometimes just what the heck is going on around here.

As away the old year passes, I’ve been pondering an appropriate year-end wrap up. A “Best of 2011” post crossed my mind but a lot of bloggers do those. I thought about posting a list of resolutions I plan to stick to in the upcoming year but I write fiction, not lies. In the end I decided to bring 2011 to a close by looking at my Search Term stats (provided by WordPress) to see just what sorts of things attract readers to the shores of Fish in a Barrel Pond.

I was just as surprised as you by what I found and, like you, I also sometimes wonder what the heck is going on around here. Thank you all for stopping by, whatever the reason, and the very best to you in 2012.

~Quill Gordon

*****

We might as well just get it out of the way. The number one search term that brought eyes to these pages in 2011 — with more than twice the views of number two — is just what fans of Fish in a Barrel Pond would expect: Continue reading

Categories: Humor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

A Pause in the Wobble

The winter solstice marks the return of lengthening days and we talk about more hours of light but, in reality, the difference between today and tomorrow will be measured in seconds. It’s a slow retreat from the darkness but those seconds add up and around here, at this time of year, we take what we can get, especially with the truly cold time still ahead.

The word “solstice” actually refers to the sun seeming to stand still, as today is essentially the same length as yesterday and yesterday was as short as the day before that. The days have been growing progressively shorter, and we know they will be growing longer, but first there is a pause. The earth wobbles on its axis, tilting us away from the sun and then back again, giving us our grand procession of seasons, and this pause is probably a good thing. If it didn’t take three full days to reverse the direction of the tilt, crash helmets and other protective gear would probably be the hot gifts of the season.

In June, the solstice days bring long, dreamy twilights and short nights that brighten into leisurely dawns. The days shorten noticeably from there — more quickly, it seems, than they lengthen from here — and thoughts of winter creep in, just like the no-see-ums of summer at the cuffs of my sleeves. It might seem strange, trying to remember where I put the snow shovel while waiting for mayflies to hatch, but it’s no stranger than thinking about then, now. Remembering June comes easily on an overcast December day that couldn’t get cranked up to much more than dim. Continue reading

Categories: Humor, nature, Vermont, Winter | Tags: , , , , , , | 14 Comments

It’s Hard, Man

I told myself the other day that, with not more than 5/8 of the lake surface frozen, there was still plenty of time left to fish. I told myself the next morning I should have fished the day before.

Continue reading

Categories: Fly Fishing, Humor, Winter | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Another Exciting Weekend in Vermont

More excitement, torn from the pages of the Woodstock Early Bird!

In an awareness-raisng example of Vermont’s long political tradition, strong “back and forth” broke out today as A Dozen Turn Out for “Occupy Woodstock”.

And late last week, thousands were left without power because some skwerl was monkeying around: Squirrel Shock Causes Power Outage”.

I like Woodstock and whenever I head there for a visit I make sure to go through Proctorsville and Cavendish so I can stop by Singleton’s General Store on the way, just in case.

Sign at Singleton's General Store

Categories: Humor, Rural Life, Vermont | Tags: , , , , , | 11 Comments

Wets

I have heard it said that the fin of a brook trout is the best bait to use to catch another brook trout. Pre-spawn, they stack up where the feeder streams come in, the males jostling for position and posturing for status, waiting for whatever signal it is that sends them streaking uphill to the spawning beds. In their finest fall colors, fins flick like flags and are nipped at in response, hence the logic of fluttering a disembodied fin through the pod.

Wet Flies, Tied by Don Bastian

The issue of obtaining said trout fin in the first place was addressed — in a Gordian Knot sort of way — by those who tie flies, a notorious bunch of fussbudgets fine community of problem solvers. A few casts with a feathery fin fly were usually all it took to collect as many real fins as an angler could wish for. Continue reading

Categories: +The Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society, Fly Fishing, Humor | Tags: , , , , , , , | 30 Comments

An Exciting Friday in Vermont

People who visit our little village are sometimes compelled to ask, “What do you people do for excitement around here?”

No matter how hard I think, my answer is invariably, “Well, I guess we just don’t go around getting excited much.”

If you want excitement, you should head up to Woodstock: Skunk Dispatched in Village

Rabies is serious business but I am amused that the skunk didn’t “release any scent” until it was “put down.”  How do you insult a skunk?

Categories: Humor, nature, Vermont | Tags: , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Fishing Hurts, Again (Still?)

Winter’s approach means less time on the water for most anglers in the northern hemisphere, and more time in front of the fire, contemplating this and all other seasons past. It also means more time in front of the computer, discussing our “sport”.  Erin Block has kicked off our more philosophical time of year with a very interesting conversation on her blog about ethics, specifically casting to spawning fish.

Every angler has his or her own justifications for fishing (or not) the way they do (or do not) and I am glad to see Erin’s post take off the way it has, even if I prefer to save such heaviness for the dark cold blue of deep winter. Her words, and the comments they have spawned (pun intended) are definitely worth a read.

The fact that anglers are willing to discuss their fishing ethics is encouraging to me. It is certainly better and more productive than some of the stuff non-anglers throw at us, as pointed out by Marc Fauvet of The Limp Cobra in his post, My rod’s bigger than yours. PETA has adopted a strategy to eliminate fishing by relating the torturing of fish to penis size, referring to the penises of the anglers, not the fish. Never mind the fact that many of the world’s finest anglers have no penis at all. Check it out and see if you have something to add to the conversation over there, before it turns completely to goats.

Personally, I still sometimes wonder why I feel the need to drive a hook into a fish’s mouth and reel him/her in, just to let him/her go. Or why I set traps for beaver, muskrat and mink. Or swat flies, kill wasps and poison mice. I do, however, know why I do not fish for dogs and I wrote about it once. You can read my story here: Fishing Hurts.

Meanwhile, I’ll be blowing out water lines in the camps and trying to get stuff picked up before it freezes to the ground. It’s going to be a long winter.

Categories: Fly Fishing, Humor, Winter | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

The Return of Quill Gordon

It was a dark and stormy night. Some say my friend, Eugene, was riding a door strapped to a couple of compressed gas cylinders; others say it was some kind of jet-propelled ironing board. What he was riding is not important now but all accounts agree that at about the time the river was cresting Eugene shot downstream in a long, horizontal spiral like a bottle rocket.

Over dams and under bridges — in some cases over bridges — Eugene rode the raging floodwaters of Irene through the night and into the next day. And the next and the next, eventually drifting into Long Island Sound, where he was sighted aboard what appeared to be a horse trough, using his trousers for a sail. Plucked from the water by a passing pleasure craft, Eugene was then taken ashore, where he was tended to by a group of lovely women who, it turns out, were the stars of a television show about themselves. It also turns out they were drinking quite a lot and things became, as Eugene put it, “a tad competitive.”

The general consensus, once everyone was sober and Eugene found his trousers, was that it would be best if no one ever spoke again about what had just taken place, so the next time you happen to find yourself searching the internet for the truth behind this September’s firings among the cast of Real Housewives of New York, read those articles twice. Notice how carefully all parties avoid any mention whatsoever of my friend Eugene. Continue reading

Categories: +The Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society, Humor, Stories About My Good Friend, Eugene | Tags: , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Summertime Blues

January 24, 2011

There was a day six months ago that made me wish for a day, six months hence, that would essentially be its opposite. Today is that day.

I will remind myself, six months from now, to not be so melodramatic. I will shut up and eat my pancakes and my pancakes will taste like summer.

Continue reading

Categories: Humor, nature, Rural Life, Vermont | Tags: , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.