Waiting for a plane in ATL.

FFR show bound. Meeting up with Jay in the Mile High City then off to Fair Play for some fishing.

Updates will follow.

Follow the Herd: The Sky is Falling

Personally - I think I'll boycott companies who raise their prices in anticipation of a disaster. More probably I'll just fill up my truck.

FlyFishMagazine.com: Old Guys Love Us

flyfishmagazine.com The site appeals to a mostly male, 50+, HH income up to $60k audience.

Via Quantcast - Well we never really tried to be "This is Fly."

We do have some exciting things in the works for the near future,if all goes according to plan. Plans include a radical site redesign (no page flipping software though) that combines the blog with the e-zine domain, the addition of a "Editor of Coarse Fishing" (read carp), installing a fly fishing artist in virtual residence, and articles about fly fishing the world from one of the biggest fly fishing outfitters in the UK.

I am also looking to expand our regional coverage so if you are interested in writing articles or blog posts about your "neck of the woods" drop me a note and lets talk. We don't pay but If you are a fly fishing guide or have something to sell we will give you lots of free advertising and as you can see old guys with a reasonable amount of money love us.

Meanwhile, next week we will be prowling the floor of the Fly Fishing Retailer Show in Denver looking for paparazzi photos of fly fishing industry types in compromising situations to exploit for free gear new and exciting products of which we will surreptitiously snap photos and upload to this site via our super secret James Bond like spy camera / Crackberry. Thus giving our readers the scoop on goings on

Fly Fishing Retailer 2008

Tennessee Editor Jay Moore and myself are currently packing our bags to head out to the Fly Fishing Retailer Show in Denver, Colorado. Our plans include several meetings with industry types, confabs with fellow bloggers, the consumption of malt beverages, and this year we have even managed to plan a meet up for some fishing with FlyFishMagazine.com's Western Correspondent, The Sultan of Big Western Rainbow Trout, Ali Hassan.

This year we will be focusing on new gear and innovation in the fly fishing world with emphasis on some of the smaller companies who are doing some exciting things. We will attempt to refill our schwag can with all manner of free stickers and pins and etc (contrary to popular belief vendors do not throw fishing gear at the media at this sort of event.) Not that we wouldn't be open to that if anyone wanted to.

If you have questions you would like for us to pose to any of the gear company representatives leave us a note and we will try to get in front of them at the show and get an answer for you.

Of course, all of this is subject to them letting us in the door this year. We sent off our registration months ago and still haven't gotten the normal pre-show info packet nor have our emails been answered. This might be simply due to new show management. Oh well, if we don't get in it just means we will have more time at the bar to fish.

Mayfly Week: Jurassic MayFlies

Well actually Upper Eocene Mayflies in amber via The Virtual Fossil Museum. Bring on the prehistoric trout.

This fine example of a rare inclusion is found with a biting midge and a worker ant, making for a fine diverse example of the insects found in the Baltic some 40 million years ago.

Mayfly Week: The Mayflies USA

Walking in a Straight Line by Chapel Hill, North Carolina group, The Mayflies USA.

(There is no Mayflies UK, that's just a joke) are one of the more pop-oriented bands to emerge from the buzzing, trendy Chapel Hill, North Carolina scene in the 1990s. After a debut EP in 1997, they released their first full-length in early 1999, which was produced by North Carolina alt-pop legend Chris Stamey. That's a logical connection, since Stamey and the Mayflies USA share a love of British pop, power pop in the Big Star mold, and the kind of jangly alternative pop-rock that the South has been known for since, well, Chris Stamey and the dB's.

Excellent fishing tunes by local boys no less....

Mayfly Week: Mountain Tops Good For Mayflies

Strangely, It is fast becoming a sort of impromptu Mayfly Week here at FlyFishMagazine.com so we wont fight it and as usual will go with the flow. A recent article in the Charleston Gazette points out what some might say is rather obvious. The practice of large scale mining and more specifically mountain top removal is bad for aquatic insects.

Randy Pomponio, director of the EPA's environmental innovations and assessments division, said, "Maggie and Greg assessed 49 streams in West Virginia to determine the effects of upstream mining activities on downstream benthic macroinvertebrate communities. They learned through their study that whole orders of benthic organisms were being eliminated in streams below mines, which indicates that aquatic life is being impaired."

Who'd have thunk it?

Sierra Trading Post- Top Five Deals of the Week

Coffee Addicted Mayflies?

A recent study reported in the Chattanooga Times Free Press indicates that water in the Tennessee River contains enough caffeine for mayflies to ingest the equivalent of 26.6 cups of coffee each day.

Meanwhile, Dr. Richards said, that mayfly also is ingesting a cocktail of at least 12 other common drugs, including several antibiotics, antidepressants and substances designed to lower human cholesterol levels. While the amount of drugs in the water is tiny by human standards, they one day may have a serious impact on the environment — and on humans, as well, he said.

“Everyone’s worried about pesticides in the water, but the amount of pharmaceuticals that get dumped in the water via just taking them is going to equal or exceed that of pesticides,” Dr. Richards said. “You have to wonder what it’s doing to the ecosystem. If we’re upsetting the balance in any way, it can’t be perceived as a good thing.”

In addition to the obvious environmental concerns this report raises, it also gets me to thinking about the effects this might be having on on Tennessee trout. Initially trout might suffer due to the juiced up mayflies being faster and more difficult to catch. I can picture nymphs zooming to the surface, splitting their shucks and then flying space ward with hungry trout in hot pursuit.

Sooner or later the trout would catch on and figure out how to eat the leaping Leptohyphidae. The accompanying caffeine addiction would bring the trout stream its own set of problems. If the morning hatch was somehow delayed anglers might well take care wading a river full of grumpy trout who have not yet had their "morning cup of Metretopodidae."

During abundant hatches, these same jittery trout might be easy prey for anglers who camp out on the river's fabled "Starbuck's hole." Fish would be mindlessly stacked up at the river's equivalent of the barista counter, snapping at anything that comes between them and their next fix.

No doubt some trout would become "mayfly snobs" and would only consume mocha colored bugs with half the caffeine and topped off by a generous helping of skimmed cream midges. They would travel across the river to get their favorite flavors at the Starbucks hole when everyone really knows that the Service Station pool had mayflies that were just as good for a third the energy cost.

The fly tiers bench would also be impacted. Skilled tiers would develop patterns to "match the hatch. Flies with names like "the caffeinated caddis" and "Juan Valdez's deceiver" would be top sellers. Debates would erupt over weather a coffee bean glued to a hook constituted bait or a viable fly tied with "natural" materials. Unscrupulous anglers "spilling" their coffee into rivers in order to evoke a feeding frenzy could spawn an entirely new set of regulations which may even go so far as to include drug testing for hyped up anglers caught attempting to relieve themselves on area creek banks.

New NC Green Sunfish Record - 1 Pound 14 Ounces

When Wake county angler Sean Vanderburg hooke d this fishe he thought he had a largemouth bass on the line. Instead to his surprise he had a new North Carolina State Record Sunfish. That my friends makes for a big fish sandwhich.

Vanderburg, an avid hunter as well as fisherman, says he fishes this pond quite a bit, which is located on the same property where he hunts. He catches mostly smallish largemouth bass, and the occasional bluegill. On this particular day, he thought he had hooked a nice-size largemouth bass, maybe a 4-pounder, and was shocked to find what he thought might be a pumpkinseed — albeit a giant one — dangling on the end of the line.
“I’d never seen a sunfish that big before, so I had a little freak-out moment,” Vanderburg said. After he pulled himself together, he began calling friends to see what the state records were for all the sunfish species found in North Carolina. He then contacted Corey Oakley, a fisheries biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission, to find out exactly what he had reeled in.

Link the the NCWRC press release. Photo from the release.

Friday Fish Porn: Alaska's Copper River Rainbows

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I can't believe how many fish shots I took on our trip to Alaska. These wild fish were truly beautiful with each one looking different from the last. Why is it that the pictures you take on a trip like this never compare with actually seeing it first hand?

Do Fly Fishers Make Better Spouses?

It appears that during my recent Alaska vacation I have contracted some sort of no doubt rotting sockeye carcase bacteria that has had me confined to the bed most of today. My lovely wife has been busy taking care of her hacking and feverish husband who has been worthless for much of the week. I suppose my thankfulness for her attention caused me to notice this opinion piece in the Eufaula Tribune by Father David Shoemaker that suggests that the foundations of Marriage are found in the sport of fishing.

The first is to take your time. There have been many occasions when I have arrived at a stream and have been so overwhelmed with the excitement that I forgot half a dozen things I needed to do before I could actually start catching fish.

Everything - from scouting the stream for good spots, looking to see what insects are in the area, to proper casting - can fall by the wayside if you’re in too big of a hurry. And if you don’t do these things, your chances of catching fish are slim.

The same can be said for marriage. You need to take your time and do certain things to be properly prepared. In the Catholic Church we require a six-month period of preparation. This gives the couple time to look at important aspects of their relationship. It helps them to explore their expectations, beliefs and goals, which in turn helps them to truly be prepared to profess their vows on the wedding day.

It is worth a reading. I am just not sure I could wait six months for a fishing trip.

Pebble Mine Update: Battle Lost / War Rages

Last week while standing knee deep in a massive sockeye salmon run throwing egg and occasional mouse patterns to wild rainbow trout, very few things worried me. For the most part I was content to concern myself with drag free drifts, radical application of bug spray, the landing fish, and keeping abreast of the position of the area's resident grizzly bears.

I found myself not really thinking about the proposed Pebble Mine project and plans to plop a cyanide laced tailing pond and world's largest open pit mine right in the middle of what I now know first hand to be one of the world's best fisheries. In Anchorage it had been top of mind as our hotel television was filled with ads imploring Alaskans to vote for the clean water act and against the "mining shutdown" as the opp/for would have it spun. Even more signs began showing up just as soon as we got off the air taxi in the village of Iliamna, Alaska.



Not "Black Helicopters" but no less nefarious

Iliamna is a town with a booming population of 102 people and oddly enough a rather busy airport. What made it different from many of the other back country landing strips I had seen was the seemingly never ending stream of helicopters carrying under slung cargo from the tiny air terminal to an unknown location. Later I would learn from my fishing guide that most of these loads were destined for the "Pebble Project."

The signs were visible on our lodge's jet boats in the form of No Pebble Mine stickers on each bow. Talk around the dinner table was of the fellow who came to the lodge by boat a few days before, on his way into Iliamna to cast his vote on Proposition 4. No one had asked him how he planned to vote but it was clear from the distance that he covered that he was quite committed to his point of view.

When I asked the lodge staff about the "Pebble Project" I got a lot of pained expressions and head shakes indicating that things could go very badly. When one guest asked about why the staff was so worried, a quick course in gold extraction and tailing ponds was given with emphasis on cyanide and its effect on salmon runs.

On one of our fly outs I overheard our pilot talking on the radio to a beaver pilot and asking where he was heading. The reply of "coming back from hauling some big wigs up to the Pebble Project" took my attention from a view of the American River in my window. I was reminded that this project is fast becoming an integral part of the economy of this region and that in and of itself is going to be difficult to fight.

One guest from another part of the world looked at me at one point during our stay and said that with the economy the way it is and the price of copper and gold so high, it's pretty much inevitable, isn't it?

A young fishing guide and exceptionally talented artist who's livelihood comes from fishing, made a point to ask me if, I was "planning to write something about the Pebble Mine?"

Sitting in my hotel room in Anchorage later that week nursing a bad chest cold and upon learning that the Clean Water Initiative failed by what some might call a large margin, I found myself worrying that if I ever made it back to this part of the world, it might turn out to be a very different place.


Copper River Rainbow (you'll just have to trust me about the front end of the tape)

Now for some good news from the midst of this cough syrup induced gloom, even with this major setback, support for the fight against the Pebble Project continues to grow thanks to groups like the Renewable Resources Coalition and the Sportsman's Alliance for Alaska who have garnered support from thousands of retailers, manufacturers, and outdoor enthusiasts. This quote from Scott Hed, Director of the Sportsman's Alliance sums things up nicely:

I’ve said it before, and it rings true today more than ever. Nothing worth saving comes without a fight. And the fight for Bristol Bay will continue to be a monumental battle that the Sportsman’s Alliance for Alaska is proud to engage in.

Editor's Note: More excellent information on this subject was recently posted by Tom Chandler over at Trout Underground. Be sure to read his take.

Trophy Wife's First Trout on the Fly

What ever will we do with her? Now she is convinced that all wild rainbows are this big. She caught this one while fishing Alaska's Copper River. I managed to get a slab or two myself but jet lag or not she insisted that I get this posted tonight.

Orvis Customers to Round Up for Project Healing Waters

I am back in the lower 48 and can only say that our Alaska trip surpassed all expectations. I'll have more info and substantial fish porn shortly. While I recover from a redeye flight out of Anchorage I wanted to pass along a word from our friends at Orvis about a new initiative they have put in place to help support one of FlyFishMagazine.com's favorite organizations, Project Healing Waters.

Orvis is asking their customers to round up the amount of their purchases during the month of September with the proceeds going to Project Healing Waters. In addition the good folks at Orvis will be matching the customer donations dollar for dollar. Seems like a great time to buy some gear. Check out this video for details.