Rain and slightly warmer temperatures this week raised water levels and the ice on the river, upstream of our village, is breaking up. Snow on the banks is collapsing, adding to the floes, and a jam yesterday forced water out of the channel and into the fields. The water has receded somewhat today but, if the ice jam lets go, there could be big trouble in town.
In last week’s Friday Fish Sticks feature at OwlJones.com, Owl posted a link to a video of a robotic fish and speculated about the potential of expensive, robotic lures. I’m sure there are self-propelled lures out there and I have no doubt that, with the advances in polymers and nano-technology, it won’t be long before we can get rid of all our complicated gear and use tiny cameras to guide a lure into the mouth of a fish, flip a switch and command a tiny motor to tow our quarry to shore for us.
The thought of robotic lures made me laugh (and shudder a bit) but those who pursue fish have always found ways to put new technologies to use. Inspired by Owl’s $57.00 robotic Rapala, I share a few ads I came across while putting together this week’s edition of Flashback Friday:
We live in an age where just about anyone can quickly, and generally unbidden, share just about anything with just about anyone else, anywhere else. The problem is that, if you make it possible for just about anyone to share just about anything, most of them will.
That’s a lot of sharing.
Digital technology has become cheap and easy, as has much of the entertainment it provides, coming at us faster and faster all the time, but there was a time when it was hard to share what we are doing right this instant and had to settle for sharing what we had done instead.
Why, before we had satellites and wireless signals a guy would have to wait until he got back to camp to call his buddy at the office to brag about his big Labrador brook trout — and only if he was lucky enough to be staying at a camp with a telephone!
That camp phone doesn’t have a dial but it has a hand crank, used to get the attention of an operator, who then dialed the number for you (such service!). Doing it this way must have taken forever! Maybe even as long as a minute and a half. Continue reading
With no wind and not a cloud in the sky, this afternoon turned out to be quite stunning.
Ice storms can be devastating and we dodged a bullet with this most recent one, up here on Nonesuch Mountain. The power stayed on and we did not get anywhere near the forecast amount of snow to complicate things so, for now, it looks like broken branches are the worst of the damage. The town road crew (bless their hearts) did a bang-up job getting our road clear, adapting to the icy, wood-strewn conditions by putting a plow blade and chains on the front end loader and shoving everything to the side, to be dealt with later.
April showers bring May flowers but rain in March brings ice.
Ice coats everything, a half-inch thick or more, and the barn door was not just frozen shut this morning, it was sealed that way. If only I had a hammer.
I used a hammer yesterday. I even remember where it is. It is on the work bench at the back of the barn. Fortunately, I keep another hammer in the truck, behind the seat, just in case.
One Hundred Posts! To mark this milestone, Quill Gordon is pleased to present this exceptionally rare photo of a SIX AND A HALF FOOT MAN EATING SALMON: Continue reading
The thing about opening a can of worms is that you can never fit back in the number of worms that came out. They wiggle and they wriggle, spreading slime and bedding all around and for some reason, even though it’s just a bunch of worms, most people do not have generally favorable reactions to such occurrences. Somehow, opening a can of worms has been perceived as something so traumatic that we dare not do it and the phrase has found its way into every day use.
Internet discussion of politics? Can of worms. Ask the members of the Neverwas Nonesuch Angling Society what color to paint our oldest cabin, the Parmacheene Belle? Can of worms. Suggest an outright ban on the use of worms at Fish in a Barrel Pond? There’s a real can of worms for you.
Now, I do not personally know anyone who would resort to such a thing but I suppose I can perhaps understand how an angler, especially one who is trolling when things are slow, might think about giving in to the temptation of tipping his fly with a teensy bit of garden hackle, just enough to give the fish ideas but only until things pick up, you know. Why suffer, trying to catch fish on a fly when everyone knows a ten year-old kid with a pocketful of worms will outfish a grown man using a fly most every time.
Worms are as easy to find these days as propane, donuts and cash, but what was a fellow to do back in the old days, before refrigeration and credit card reading technologies?
The answer to that is, he gathered them himself, like a man. Continue reading
Fame can be a dangerous thing. Just look at all the people out there who are only famous for being famous and the train-wrecks their lives can become. It can also be dangerous for us, the spectators, as our desire for famous people is filled by the likes of Justin Bieber and that Lady Gaga fellow. The internet was abuzz last week when Justin Bieber got a haircut. Big deal. He’s what, 12? When Quill Gordon gets a haircut, that will be news.
But I digress.
Owl Jones recently opened the internet portal to his empire at OwlJones.com. I worry about him, hoping he can handle the fame and adulation, and I hesitate to stroke his already massive ego by writing nice things about him. To keep my pistol-packing pal from Georgia on the straight and narrow, I will not discuss his singing, dancing or film-making abilities. I will leave his regal bearing, trend-setting style and natural good looks out of this discussion, but he does have deceptively dainty fingers.
Midge flies from Owl Jones
Owl ties flies. Some of his creations are displayed and available for sale at his appropriately named page “Owl Jones Flies”. Once you have entered the OwlJones.com portal, there is a tab at the top of the page labeled Blue Ridge Fly Patterns to take you there, too.
I ordered the zebra midges above, and a dozen of his “EZ SK8R Caddis” before the grand unveiling of the new Owl Jones headquarters. In fact, it turns out I ordered these flies during the time he was working out his nefarious plan to dominate the internet through his new web site and, even with everything else on his plate, he tied these flies and got them to me promptly and safely with no fuss at all. That is more than can be said for some bigger, better known sources.
EZ SK8R Caddis from Owl Jones
The caddis are tied so the hook point is on top and doesn’t drag when the fly is “skated” across the water. The hackle is plentiful and stiff so I expect these flies to ride high and skate well. Owl ties them for rough water and some people might think them inappropriate for still water, with all that hackle. Normally, I would agree that flies for lakes and ponds should be tied sparsely, especially those that are fished “dead drift”, allowing the trout a good long look, but to immitate caddis or midges streaking across the surface, that thick hackle will keep these flies up on their tippy-toes where they belong. (An aside: Owl Jones claims his caddis are “bullet proof” but I have yet to hit one. The real test, I suppose, will be the teeth of trout because I am out of patience for standing in the snow, trying to hit a #18 fly from fifty yards out.)
I have found Owl Jones to be an honest and generous person and his flies are as intricate and well-tied as any I have seen. They will have a spot in my fly box and you should save room in yours for some, too. It will be two months before I can give these southern-tied stream flies a workout on this little New England pond but I have no doubt they will catch fish.
Direct your browser over to OwlJones.com and order some flies! Tell him Quill sent you.
Now Accepting Sponsorships
(Owl also sent me a couple of nifty Blue Ridge Trout Bum stickers to dress up my Shappell Jet Sled. I would like to offer this same unsurpassed sponsorship opportunity to my other readers. If you, your business or your organization would like a spot on my sled, drop me a line using the “Contact Quill” tab at the top of this page and we can work out the arrangements. The cost to you? Not a darn thing [other than the cost of a sticker and postage]. Your message is guaranteed to be seen by various woodland creatures and at least a dozen readers of this blog.)
Meteorological winter, the coldest (on average) 1/4 of the year, is over. Winter’s back is broken but, as I’ve written before, you can’t shoot winter in the head and put it out of its misery. We must wait as winter kicks and fights with everything it can muster at this late stage of the game, while spring slowly asserts itself, a little bit at a time. Unfortunately, on days like yesterday, when a warm(-ish) breeze from the south brings mild temperatures and rain against driving snow and the cold(-ish) air still hanging on, both seasons end up looking foolish and the dooryard fills with slush.
We’ve had enough snow this winter that we were saying, “yeah, yeah, we get it” about four feet ago and we are ready to move on to the next season, which around here is mud. A lot of barns and other buildings collapsed last month, crushed by the weight of snow. Crews dug and raked as best they could, trying to lighten the loads on other roofs, but poor timing, gravity and uneven weight distribution continued to wreak destruction. Even with the sounds of catastrophe ringing through the valley, it was tempting to look at the roofs under my care, scoff, and say, “Hah! They’ve held more snow than that!”
I admit here and now, that is exactly what I did. Continue reading
The View from Fish in a Barrel Pond 