There is naturally a special fascination for sportsmen in the prospect of trying for an example of particularly rare and beautiful game species.

The Paiute Cutthroat Trout survived in only a portion of a single remote stream in the High Sierras, Silver King Creek, (and transplants have been made to only handful of other locations), so Paiute Cutthroats do not grow to a very large size, but with respect to beauty and rarity, they inevitably rank at the top of the heap of potential trophies for the trout fisherman. I say potential, because it has not been legal to fish for Paiute Cutthroats for many decades. Occasionally, one is caught, photographed, and released with special permission by some writer or fisheries biologist.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday on the ironic situation in which environmentalist extremism on the part of two busybodies, has, for more than a decade, successfully blocked efforts by the California fish and game department to restore the rare Paiute Cutthroat to its original home range on the lower portion of Silver King Creek.

In 1912, a young shepherd named Joe Jaunsaras wanted to fish the fishless upper [portion of Silver King] [C]reek, historical records show, so he carried some Paiute trout up in a can. The fish still exist in that upper stretch of the creek.

He unwittingly saved the Paiute trout from extinction. ... State officials later put other trout species into the Paiute trout’s old home. The more-aggressive new fish ate some Paiute trout and hybridized with others. By the 1940s, Paiute trout were gone from the nine-mile stretch of creek.

There are now fewer than 2,000 adult Paiute trout… The fish has been classified as “threatened” on the federal Endangered Species List since 1975.

California’s fish and game department started working on plans to restore the Paiute trout to their old range in the 1990s.

Then Ms. Erman, the bug researcher, found out. At a water conference in Las Vegas around 2000, someone—she doesn’t remember who—mentioned a plan to use the rotenone toxin in Silver King Creek. Ms. Erman says she knew there were few studies on whether that would kill rare insects. She talked to others who were skeptical of using poisons in the wilderness.

Ms. Erman came to believe that angling enthusiasts were driving the plan at the expense of other species.

Mr. Somer of the state fish and game department says a recreational Paiute fishery could be a “benefit” of a successful restoration, though he says the creek may never open to fishing. ...

Ms. Erman joined forces with environmental lawyers, who in 2003 sued in federal court to stop the trout plan because of their concerns over using rotenone. The suit delayed the plan, but state officials got it back on track until Ms. Erman and her allies in 2004 successfully lobbied a water board near Silver King Creek to halt the plan. The state water board overturned the decision.

The following year Ms. Erman’s allies at Californians for Alternatives to Toxics filed new state and federal suits. They won a federal judgment forcing the state to modify the Paiute trout plan by doing more studies.

The trout plan was again on track in 2010, when the state and federal agencies completed final reports in preparation of poisoning the creek.

But a wet winter caused delays and the insect allies kept litigating. In September, U.S. District Judge Frank Damrell issued an injunction on the plan, in part because it “left native invertebrate species out of the balance.”

The plan, wrote the judge, was “failing to consider the potential extinction of native invertebrate species.”

Nancy Erman, a retired invertebrate researcher from the University of California-Davis, and Ann McCampbell, a Santa Fe, New Mexico physician who appears publicly representing the Multiple Chemical Sensitivities Task Force of New Mexico (a group comprised essentially of herself) are waging a campaign against the use of rotenone and antimycin, the piscicides that would be used to eliminate hybrid and competing trout species in order to allow the reintroduction to their native stretch of stream of one of the rarest and most beautiful trout species in the Western Hemisphere.

Erman and McCampbell, with inadvertent comedy, have actually successfully combined left-wing egalitarianism on the level of Natural Orders, essentially winning in court by accusing California of discrimination in favor of vertebrates (!) with their environmentalist fanatical opposition to chemical piscicides and their Puritan hostility to the field sport of angling.

Looking at all this from the viewpoint of democracy, the state of California sells approximately two million fishing licenses a year. The American Sportfishing Association, as of 2006, estimated that 30,000,000 Americans bought fishing licenses each year, but that twice that number actually fished in the course of a five year period.

All two million licensed California anglers and roughly 60,000,000 American anglers contribute money via license fees and excise taxes of equipment for fisheries management and have a legitimate interest in the perservation of the Paiute Cutthroat and the eventual creation over time of a highly restricted, catch-and-release fishery allowing Americans to interact with this rare and charismatic trout.

But our system of laws has become so sclerotic, so open to manipulation by cranks, extremists, and special interests that two malevolent old crackpots can impose their will against the desires and interests of millions upon millions.

Normal Americans, in this particular case, as in so many others, find themselves simply run right over by crazy people utilizing the enabling provisions of feel-good legislation, like the Endangered Species Act, which the majority allowed to be passed into law.

We need to modify and repeal that kind of enabling legislation and we need to pass laws applying some kind of scrutiny to the deceptive fund raising and the lobbying and litigating activities of radical fringe groups attempting to exercise extravagant kinds of power at the expense of ordinary people.

Anatole France remarked sardonically that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges.” In Brooklyn, it forbids both evidently also to harvest fish or game in Brooklyn’s 585-acre Prospect Park.

A year ago, federal agents gassed 400 Canada geese resident in the park, which were considered to represent a hazard to planes using nearby La Guardia Airport. They had their reasons. In January of 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 ran into a flock of geese and would up crash landing in the Hudson River.

But can New York turn a blind eye as former Lehman and Bear Stearns executives now also resident in the park reduce the nuisance population of grey squirrels, pigeons, and geese or take panfish from the lake? Perish, forbid.

The New York Post reports that what my friend from Yale, Mr. Brewer, describes as “an awesome locavore experiment in living off the land” was rudely interrupted by “spoilsport cops.”

Cops have busted a group of oddball poachers in Prospect Park — a band of vagrants that was trapping and eating ducks, squirrels and pigeons.

Parks officers wrote four tickets — two for killing wildlife and two for illegal fishing — totaling $2,100 in fines during a two-day period last week. ...

“This is a dodgy group,” said park-goer Peter Colon, who spotted one of the men catching a pigeon while his friend started a fire. “They are the most threatening people in the park.”

The disheveled — and possibly homeless — tribe in question uses “makeshift” fishing poles and traps to catch the critters, then grills them over the fire, according to park watchdogs.

“One woman uses a net to bag the ducks,” said wildlife advocate Johanna Clearfield.

The kind of person you or I would call a busybody or general nuisance always gets promoted in the conventional journalistic parlance of our time to some form of “advocate” or “activist.”

Lots of luck collecting those fines, New York City. I bet the hobos used the tickets to light their evening cook fires.

Matthew Ridley, in the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Review, takes the occasion of the recent finding of an array of a very sophisticated chipped-stone fishing implements on Southern California’s Channel Islands to propose the idea that it was exploitation of maritime food-gathering opportunities that really constituted the evolutionary leap that made mankind human.

Last week archaeologists working on the Channel Islands of California announced that they had found delicate stone tools of remarkable antiquity—possibly as old as 13,000 years. These are among the oldest artifacts ever discovered in North America. To judge by the types of tool and bone, there was a people living there who relied heavily on abalone, seals, cormorants, ducks and fish for food.

This discovery fits a pattern. From the stone age to ancient Greece to the Maya to modern Japan, the most technologically advanced and economically successful human beings have often been seafarers and fish-eaters—and they still are, as the latest tsunami reminds us. Indeed, it may not be going too far to describe our species as a maritime ape.

Ridley might have put it slightly differently. He might have suggested that it was the discovery of fishing that made mankind human, and he could then have gone on to expand that theory by noting that the invention of the fishhook directly paralleled the invention of the arrowhead and proceeding to argue that it may have been the intellectual challenge resulting from our more northerly contact with the salmonids that deepened our intelligence, leading to the creation of artificial lures and fly fishing. The maritime ape ultimately evolved into the cultivated and civilized man and the dry fly purist.

Ogden Pleissner, Dry Fly Fishing for Salmon

Unnecessary bureaucracy has a venomous effect on the national security establishment, whether it’s infantry or intelligence. The director of national intelligence, which has ballooned to a 1500-man supporting office, was a top down solution to a bottom up problem.

Admiral Blair was a casualty of Intelligence Community turf wars. Closing the DNI office would reduce unnecessary conflicts and duplication of effort. It’s too logical a course of action to be given serious consideration most likely though.
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Bruce Fleming says that standards at US service academies have been lowered for affirmative action and to allow academy teams to compete in the NCAA top divisions. He thinks standards should be restored or all the service academies closed down.
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Robin Hanson observes a unidirectional dynamic at work in progressive statism.

[I]n any area where we let humans do things, every once in a while there will be a big screwup; that is the sort of creatures humans are. And if you won’t decrease regulation without a screwup but will increase it with a screwup, then you have a regulation ratchet: it only moves one way. So if you don’t think a long period without a big disaster calls for weaker regulations, but you do think a particular big disaster calls for stronger regulation, well then you might as well just strengthen regulations lots more right now, even without a disaster. Because that is where your regulation ratchet is heading.

What if you can’t imagine ever wanting to weaken a regulation, just because it was strong and you’d gone a long time without a big disaster? Well then you apparently want the maximum possible regulation, which is probably to just basically outlaw that activity. And if that doesn’t seem like the right level of regulation to you, well then maybe you should reconsider your ratchety regulation intuitions.

Hat tip to the News Junkie.
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Ann Althouse chides the Washington Post: If you’re going to criticize the new social studies curriculum adopted by the Texas Board of Education, you’d better quote it or link it, not paraphrase it inaccurately.

Presidential Memorandum, April 16, 2010:

Today… we are losing touch with too many of the places and proud traditions that have helped to make America special. Farms, ranches, forests, and other valuable natural resources are disappearing at an alarming rate. Families are spending less time together enjoying their natural surroundings. Despite our conservation efforts, too many of our fields are becoming fragmented, too many of our rivers and streams are becoming polluted, and we are losing our connection to the parks, wild places, and open spaces we grew up with and cherish. Children, especially, are spending less time outside running and playing, fishing and hunting, and connecting to the outdoors just down the street or outside of town. ...

it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Establishment.

(a) There is established the America’s Great Outdoors Initiative (Initiative), to be led by the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and implemented in coordination with the agencies listed in section 2(b) of this memorandum. The Initiative may include the heads of other executive branch departments, agencies, and offices (agencies) as the President may, from time to time, designate.

(b) The goals of the Initiative shall be to:

(i) Reconnect Americans, especially children, to America’s rivers and waterways, landscapes of national significance, ranches, farms and forests, great parks, and coasts and beaches by exploring a variety of efforts, including:

(A) promoting community-based recreation and conservation, including local parks, greenways, beaches, and waterways;

(B) advancing job and volunteer opportunities related to conservation and outdoor recreation; and

(C) supporting existing programs and projects that educate and engage Americans in our history, culture, and natural bounty.

(ii) Build upon State, local, private, and tribal priorities for the conservation of land, water, wildlife, historic, and cultural resources, creating corridors and connectivity across these outdoor spaces, and for enhancing neighborhood parks; and determine how the Federal Government can best advance those priorities through public private partnerships and locally supported conservation strategies.

(iii) Use science-based management practices to restore and protect our lands and waters for future generations.

Barack Obama thinks America’s children are not hunting and fishing enough? And there’s going to be a federal initiative to do various things about this?

Visions of federally-grant-funded programs hiring aging boffers to take a boy fishing swim before my eyes. I should get one of those How-To-Write-Federal-Grant-Proposals books and start a corporation, rather like ACORN, which would recruit the kinds of individuals my mother used to refer to uncomplimentarily as “woods rats,” the kind of guys who’d rather fish and hunt and drink than work, and sign them on board to take under-Field-Sports-privileged youths out bluegill fishing and bunny shooting. I know some of just the bars to look for my first staffers in.

The idea of a democrat administration ponying up to pay for the gasoline, live bait, cartridges, (and beer) required to expose America’s youth to the out-of-doors is wonderfully amusing.

Hat tip to Peter Wilson via the News Junkie

Probably not, but…

Last October, Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for the well-known tackle company Shimano, warned that President Obama was rapidly developing a fisheries policy report intended to serve as the basis for an executive order that would apply to both saltwater and freshwater fisheries and which would potentially have grave and very far reaching implications. People at Shimano were alarmed at observing the power of influence over the report of radical environmental groups and found themselves and the recreational angling community shut out.

Dave Pfeiffer, President of Shimano American Corporation explained, “In spite of extensive submissions from the recreational fishing community to the Task Force in person and in writing, they failed to include any mention of the over one million jobs or the 6o million anglers which may be affected by the new policies coast to coast. Input from the environmental groups who want to put us off the water was adopted into the report verbatim – the key points we submitted as an industry were ignored.”

The Obama administration has ended public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.

This announcement comes at the time when the situation supposedly still is “fluid” and the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force still hasn’t issued its final report on zoning uses of these waters.

Fishing industry insiders, who have negotiated for months with officials at the Council on Environmental Quality and bureaucrats on the task force, had grown concerned that the public input would not be taken into account.

“When the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) completed their successful campaign to convince the Ontario government to end one of the best scientifically managed big-game hunts in North America (spring bear), the results of their agenda had severe economic impacts on small family businesses and the tourism economy of communities across northern and central Ontario,” said Phil Morlock, director of environmental affairs for Shimano.

“Now we see NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) and the administration planning the future of recreational fishing access in America based on a similar agenda of these same groups and other Big Green anti-use organizations, through an Executive Order by the President. ...

Led by NOAA’s Jane Lubchenco, the task force has shown no overt dislike of recreational angling. As ESPN previously reported, WWF, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife, Pew Environment Group and others produced a document entitled “Transition Green” (sic) shortly after Obama was elected in 2008.

What has happened since suggests that the task force has been in lockstep with that position paper, according to Morlock.

In late summer, just after the administration created the task force, these groups produced “Recommendations for the Adoption and Implementation of an Oceans, Coasts, and Great Lakes National Policy.” This document makes repeated references to “overfishing,” but doesn’t reference recreational angling, its importance, and its benefits, both to participants and the resource.

Additionally, some of these same organizations have revealed their anti-fishing bias with their attempts to ban tackle containing lead in the United States and Canada.

Also, recreational angling and commercial fishing have been lumped together as harmful to the resource, despite protests by the angling industry.

Morlock’s evidence of collusion—the green groups began clamoring for an Executive Order to implement the task force’s recommendations even before the public comment period ended in February. ...

Morlock fears that “what we’re seeing coming at us is an attempted dismantling of the science-based fish and wildlife model that has served us so well. There’s no basis in science for the agendas of these groups who are trying to push the public out of being able to fish and recreate.

“Conflicts (user) are overstated and problems are manufactured. It’s all just an excuse to put us off the water.”

I looked at the National Resources Defense Council Transition to Green document. It certainly contained plenty of environmental empire building and a very lengthy list of funding requests, but I did not see any specific plan to ban sport fishing.

I think anything that radical is still a long way off in the United States, even for the Obama Administration. But a ban on angling, following the Hunt Ban, is definitely on the table in Britain.

PETA has a front group specifically targeting both commercial and recreational fishing.

The folks at Shimano were quite right though in recognizing that the development of federal land and water management policies hand in glove with radical environmentalist and strongly anti-field sports organizations is extremely dangerous to the interests of sport. Changing the basis of wildlife management from a focus on recreational use and harvest to a junk science-laden ultra-preservationist agenda would have terrible practical effects and there are a thousand ways that minor regulations can be crafted on the basis of one pretext or another to cripple little by little anything the left is not able immediately to openly ban.

Signing Keep America Fishing’s petition is not a bad idea.

Cameron Mortenson, who (there’s no accounting for tastes) actually likes fiberglass fly rods, has a posting (with a slideshow of photos) on the late Robert Traver (John D. Voelker)’s camp at Frenchman’s Pond in winter.

He quotes Voelker, describing a childhood visit in winter to the camp:

I went along on a few of those outings as a kid, and usually wound up skiing around outside while the laughter echoed out of the cabin. I would busy myself by looking at the pond and surrounding woods. Even in the dead of winter the pond would never freeze completely over. Open spots would reveal where a spring bubbled up from below. I would mark those spots in my mind and revisit them on the hot days of late summer. There I would throw hopper patterns with my 8’glass Fenwick six weight that my Grandfather bought me at the local sporting goods store. On occasion, I would be rewarded for my craftiness and provoke a swirl from a large Brookie that had claimed the spot to fin in the cool water.”

Hat tip to Brad Reiter.

Via a bamboo fly rod list:

T’WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CADDIS
BY
RICHARD FRANK

He then mounted his sled and he flew out of sight
Shouting, “Merry Caddis to trout and to all a good night!”

Hat tip to Wilmer Price.

A potential world record 41 lb, 7 1/4 oz. (19.1 k.), 43.75” (1.11 meter) Brown Trout (currently Salmo trutta, formerly Salmo fario) was caught on Wednesday in Michigan’s Manistee River.

Thomas Healy of Rockford, Michigan was fishing a crankbait (a plug with a lip causing it to dive when retrieved, “cranked,” i.e reeled in) using a spincasting rod and reel.

The previous record Brown Trout weighed 40 lb. 4 oz (18.26 k.) and was caught in 1992 on the Little Red River in Arkansas by Howard Collins.

Healy was being guided by Tim Roller of Ultimate Outfiteers.

The fish was weighed and measured by two Michigan state biologists.

Ludington Daily News

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Mr. Healy holding the gigantic trout
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Thanks to commenter Amy of Riverside Charters for correcting the top photo ID.

11 Year old Jessica Wanstall of Sittingbourne, Kent, on vacation with her father in Spain, set a new world record for a freshwater fish caught by an angler aged 16 and under, by landing a nearly 9’ (2.74 m), 13 stone 8lb (193lb – 87.7 k) Wels catfish (Silurus glanis) from the Ebro River. The catfish was considerably larger than the young angler, but was defeated in 20 minutes.

Daily Mail

Telegraph

Lt. Gen. H.G. Martin, in his memoir of soldiering and sport in pre-War British India, Sunset From the Main (1951), recalls an unpleasant encounter on angling expedition to the Simla Hills in search of mahseer.

The steep path dropped down to the bed of the gorge past brakes of thorn and matted evergreen and across unexpected lawns where the encircling cactus reared its knotted candleabras, rigid and grotesque as submarine coral-beds. In these occasional clearings troops of brown monkeys basked, scratching in the sunshine: plebeian monkeys, vulgar, thieving, shameless, who lowered and gibbered as we passed. I do not love the brown monkey. Who has ever seen him look pleasant? A typical, politically minded proletarian, he has the Communist’s capacity for hating all creation.

Tip from Steve Bodio.

Forbes describes how Tom Morgan has managed to overcome MS to continue to produce state-of-the-art custom fly rods.

In his case, the “thought rod” metaphor takes on another meaning. Considered by many to be the world’s finest living fly-rod-maker—a craft that relies almost solely on feel—the 67-year-old Morgan has not been able to cast, or even hold, one of his creations for more than a decade.

Morgan has multiple sclerosis, a still mystifying degenerative disease that occurs when a mix-up in nerve signal transmissions causes the immune system to attack the insulating sheaths around the nerves. Morgan has a particularly debilitating form of MS and has extremely limited movement below his neck. He is confined to his bed and to a high-tech wheelchair with a headrest, a reclining contraption that resembles a dental examination chair. Morgan’s thought rods are a pure extension of his mind.

Read the whole thing.

Tom Morgan Rodsmiths

0:57 video

There’ve been so many complaints about the weather recently that you can tell they’ve been doing a lousy job of administering the oceans and the atmosphere, and that Marine Fisheries Service has never once delivered fish and chips to my house. But it is clear those federal bureaucrats in charge of the waters and the air and lords of the fish that swim in the sea have other ways of occupying their time.

They’re now proposing to license sport fishing in the ocean. They don’t even really want the money. The states get to keep it in return for selling the licenses. But that way, they can keep better track of us, you see.

The Boston Globe has the story.

The only thing anyone’s ever needed to sportfish off New England’s coast is a rod, reel, and good luck.

Now, the more than 2.5 million people who fish for fun here will probably need a license.

The federal agency that manages fishing announced yesterday that it intends to require most saltwater anglers to register before fishing begins in 2009 and plans to start charging for the privilege by 2011.

Fishery officials have grown increasingly concerned about how many fish the nation’s recreational fishermen reel in from the ocean each year.

“This will lead to better stock assessments and more effective regulations to rebuild and manage these valuable fish,” said Jim Balsiger, acting assistant administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service.

The rule will mean most fishermen – whether fishing from a dock, beach, or a boat – will have to have a permit. State waters within 3 miles of shore aren’t normally covered by federal rules. But the new regulation would apply to fishermen who might catch any species that travels between fresh and saltwater, such as striped bass, one of the most popular New England sportfish.

Progressive states, like California, have already thought of this.

The MSM and the blogosphere has moved on from unimportant subjects like Islamic terrorism and the upcoming presidential election to what really matters: Is that really a babe reflected in Dick Cheney’s fishing shades?

McClatchy:

Since Wednesday, the blogosphere has been atwitter over a photograph on the White House Web site of Cheney with a caption that said he was fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho.

The photo is a tight shot of Cheney’s face sporting dark sunglasses and his trademark grin.

What’s stirring all the buzz is the reflection in the vice president’s dark glasses. Some thought that the reflection looked like a naked woman and, this being Cheney and this being the Internet Age, they immediately shared that thought with the world.

In a Google search for the words “Dick Cheney” and “sunglasses,” 79,300 hits came back at mid-afternoon on Thursday. By 7 p.m., the count was 130,000.

On DemocraticUnderground.com, the discussion starts with this question: “Notice anything … interesting … reflected in his sunglasses? Something that has little to do with conventional ‘fly-fishing’?”

Photographers discuss.

If America’s increasingly aging sportsmen don’t make more of an effort to recruit members of the younger generation, in the years to come, hunters and anglers will become a smaller minority increasingly outnumbered and out-voted by anti-field sports advocates and gun control supporters. Britain’s ban on hunting with hounds is a sample of what we can look forward to here.

AP:

Sales of Vermont hunting and fishing licenses have dropped more than 20 percent over the last 20 years, leaving the Fish and Wildlife Department pleading with lawmakers for extra funding.

Other states report similar drop-offs:

—Arkansas hunting license sales dropped from about 345,000 in 1999 to about 319,000 in 2003.

—Pennsylvania sold about 946,000 hunting licenses in 2006, down from just over a million in 1999, and a peak of 1.3 million in 1981.

—Oregon had 100,000 fewer licensed anglers last year than in 1987, and 70,000 fewer licensed hunters.

—West Virginia sold 154,763 resident hunting permits in 2006, a 17 percent decrease from 1997.

The nature of the problem can be seen in the ignorance, bigoted animosity toward field sports, and implicitly Disneyfied perspective of Drew Curtis’s 3/29 link to the story on Fark.com:

Interest in hunting and fishing dropping among Americans, who are finding other things to do than inflict pain and death on nature’s beautiful, innocent creatures.

The news had begun to circulate yesterday that George Maurer, proprietor of Sweetwater Bamboo Flyrods, had died suddenly of a heart attack.

Maurer had been the most renowned rod maker to work in Pennsylvania since the 19th century era of John Krieder and Samuel Phillippe. He built parabolic rods inspired by the tapers of Paul Young, and standard tapers based on the works of Jim Payne and Goodwin Granger.

Maurer was a friend of the angling writers Harry Middleton and John Gierach and built rods named after some of their books. I’ve never owned one myself, but I’ve often heard the model he called the “Old Philosopher,” a 7’ 5” for 5 wt., singled out for exceptional praise.

Maurer’s shop in recent years was located at a wide place in the road along the rural highway paralleling the Big Pine Creek in North Central Pennsylvania, where cities are far away, and newspapers are few. It will be a while before a full obituary appears.

Len Codella

Trout Underground

Reintroduced via batches of chicks imported from Russia, the largest Eurasian game bird the Great Bustard, Otis tarda, is being reported to have nested in Britain for the first time, as the London Times puts it, “since Queen Victoria was a child (1832).”

A female bustard has laid two eggs somewhere on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire. The precise location is not being publicly released in order to foil the hordes of mad-keen British ornithologists (bird watchers) and the now nearly as endangered as the bustards themselves oologists (collectors of birds’ eggs).

Press release with photo

London Times

Telegraph

UK Great Bustard Reintroduction Project

The primary wing feathers of the great Bustard play an important role in the dressing of traditional featherwing Salmon Flies, being featured as ingredients in the wing of many of the most famous patterns.

Jock Scott

The large patterned black-and-orange mottled strip of feather, third from the top in the wing, beneath the Golden Pheasant crest feather and brown mallard, is from the great Bustard.

Here is a vintage movie short, titled Salar the Leaper, made in 1957 on New Brunswick’s Miramichi River by the illustrious fly-fishing authority Lee Wulff (1905-1991).

Part 1 – 3:43 video (Unfortunately interrupted right in the middle.)

Part 2 – 4:21 video

Pipe bombs found in an aqueduct that supplies water to millions in Southern California were probably not intended for sabotage, but for fishing, state officials said Thursday.

The five small bombs found in a branch of the California Aqueduct were typical of those used to stun and collect fish, the state Department of Water Resources said in a statement.

“Similar devices have been found previously when water levels in State Water Project facilities are drawn down for maintenance and other purposes,” the statement read.

The bombs were found this week in a section of an aqueduct branch in the Mojave Desert about 100 miles east of Los Angeles. Two had already been exploded, and the others were detonated by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

The bombs turned up along with cars and other debris when water levels were lowered for a routine cleanup.

Looking for California real estate?

Check out homes for sale by owner in California for the best deals. When you cut out the middle man and buy your home FSBO straight from the owner you can save a lot of money on real estate.

16 weight line

They’ve got so many record salmon in the Restigouche (where they all have to be released), that I place no reliance in any estimated weights or lengths myself.

This impressionist oil painting by renowned sporting artist Frank Benson is the highlight of today’s Sporting Sale, today and tomorrow at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel by Copley Fine Art Auctions. The Benson is expected to sell between $600,000 and $900,000.

RESULTS

Sales price was $650,000 + 15% buyer premium = $747,500.00

The Museum of Idaho (in Idaho Falls) will feature an exhibition titled Guns of the West & Rocky Mountain Fly Fishing running from July 14, 2006 to January 27th, 2007.

Over a dozen major collections are represented, illustrating 500 years of firearms history, and the considerably shorter, but still fascinating, history of Western fly fishing.

I’m told there are more than 20 linear feet of antique fly rods on display. Not to be missed.

“I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound perch in my lake,” he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

Although the White House’s English language transcript correctly describes the president’s catch as a largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides), a number of moonbat blogs are leaping (like hungry bass) after a rather unsurprising English-to-German-then-back-to-English translation error.
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Americablog started it:

Bush told the following to a German newspaper yesterday:

Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001. “I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound perch in my lake.”

The only problem is that the world’s record for the largest freshwater perch caught is 4 pounds 3 ounces.

So Bush either doubled the world record, and didn’t report it, or he’s a liar.

(Major kudos to the Stacy Taylor Show on KLSD-AM in San Diego for catching this.)

So, naturally, Kos joined in:

Jesus. H. Christ. Is Bush even capable of telling the truth?...

Apparently, since Bush didn’t have any “best moments”, he had to invent one.

Upper Left:

Someplace along the translation line (the original story was published in German) the fish in question has mutated from a record setting freshwater perch to a stocked bass charitably described as, well, fair sized. The size and species of George’s finned prey isn’t what really struck me, though.

It was the way he tossed off “…my lake,” as though owning your own lake is the most natural thing in the world.

Of course, there’s nothing natural about Bush’s private man-made lake, or the fish, for that matter, which are planted for his private angling pleasure.

And there it is. After six years as “the most powerful man in the world,” the final Decider of all matters of national and international importance, George W. Bush’s best moment was the solitary pursuit of a private pleasure on his private lake playing what was, in essence, a game of shoot the fish in the barrel.

Doesn’t that seem a bit, I dunno, sociopathic to you?

Fact-Esque:

The story, as with all BushCo stories, was a lie…. In the meantime, the White House has scheduled a press conference with the 7.5-pound perch/bass/man-dressed-as-fish at which time he is expected to describe being caught by Dear Leader as the high point of his last five years. If the perch is unavailable, Harry Whittington is expected to stand in on his behalf.

The Okeechobee News reports that a wading fisherman was bitten last Monday by a ten foot alligator.

Sixty-six-year-old Sam Crutchfield of Fort Pierce was attacked by an alligator while fly fishing on Lake Istokpoga Monday afternoon. The alligator, which is believed to be at least 10 feet long, grabbed Mr. Crutchfield by the hip as he stood in 41-inch deep water.

“I had been wade fishing off the south end of Big Island for over three-and-one-half hours without a bite. Around noon I moved into the deeper water. Suddenly, I was knocked sideways,” said Mr. Crutchfield. “Something locked onto me by the right hip and wouldn’t let go. I started punching him as hard as I could. He finally released me and I took off toward our flats boat. I called to my partner that I had been bitten and he wouldn’t believe me.

“He still wouldn’t believe me until I dropped my shorts and you could see the imprint of its teeth around my hip. My leg is so bruised that it looks like I’ve been hit by a car going 80 miles an hour,” added Mr. Crutchfield, a fifth-generation Floridian.

The muskellunge, Esox masquinongy, a torpedo-shaped predator and the largest member of the pike family, is one of the most desired trophy fish in the Great Lakes region. The musky was named the official Wisconsin state fish in 1955.

Muskies reach a maximum length of over 5 feet. Trophy size is more than 50 inches. A musky can reach a maximum weight of almost 70 pounds. A trophy sized example would weigh 40 pounds or more. The state of Wisconsin has produced more record-size muskies than any other region and holds the world record at 69 pounds and 11 ounces. It takes the average angler 20-80 hours to catch a legal musky, but that doesn’t stop hundreds from trying each year.

The musky hunts by stealth, waiting motionless for its prey to swim by. Muskies are ferocious predators and will eat even other muskies. When a potential victim appears, they will strike, pierce the prey with their large canines, rotate their victim, and swallow it head first. GULP! Muskies frequently devour mice and frogs, and will also sometimes eat ducks and muskrats.

Madison, Wisconsin’s WIBA reports:

PETA is asking Governor Doyle to ban fishing of the state fish. Karin Robertson with the animal rights group admits they’ve tried to get other governors to do the same, with no luck. “Well our expectations is at the very least…that the request will generate interest in the fact that fish are intelligent animals…that they feel pain just like all animals do and that they deserve to be treated with compassion and respect.” Robertson tells WIBA news that fish are just as smart as cats and dogs with complex social structures. She claims fish can eavesdrop on each other.

I’d bet that minnows, perch, sunfish, mice, frogs, ducks, and muskrats would all oppose the musky fishing ban. Look closely at the above picture (by Don Hechesky Jr.). Just how much “compassion and respect” do you suppose old br’er musky is handing out?

Internationally renowned angling author Ernest George Schwiebert Jr. passed away Saturday morning, Dick Talleur reported on the Michigan Sportsman web-site. He was 74 years of age. Newspaper obituaries have not yet appeared.

Schwiebert graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture from Ohio State University in 1956, cum laude. He also earned a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts in 1960, and a Ph. D. in Architecture in 1966, from Princeton University . He wrote his doctoral dissertation on The Primitive Roots of Architecture. He resided in Princeton, New Jersey, and practiced for many years successfully as an architect in New York City and in Princeton.

While still an undergraduate, Schwiebert wrote his first book, Matching the Hatch (1955), which astonished the American angling community by realizing American angling’s most avidly desired, yet most unattainable, theoretical goal: reconciling traditional artificial fly patterns and their use in actual practice with Science. The book’s title became a by-word for the preferred methodology of serious dry fly fishermen everywhere.

Efforts at codifying a list of the most effective traditional fly patterns, and identifying scientifically the specific natural insects they imitated, thus reconciling angling with entomology, had been underway since the turn of the century, when Theodore Gordon’s articles in the English Fishing Gazette, reprinted domestically in Forest & Stream, began popularizing the ethos of Frederick Halford’s dry fly purism in North America. Previous authors, most notably including Louis Rhead, author of American Trout Stream Insects (1916), and Preston Jennings, whose A Book of Trout Flies appeared in a luxury edition published by the illustrious Derrydale Press (1935), had tried and failed. The goal of establishing the scientific identity of the most traditionally important mayfly hatches, determining what fly patterns constituted their most effective imitations, and which versions of these patterns were most correct, had represented the perennially sought for, never achieved, goal, the Unified Field Theory, of American angling for half a century. The sporting establishment was shocked to find that the for so long seemingly-impossible had been accomplished deftly and with unanswerable precision by an angler so young.

In a single step, the youthful Schwiebert vaulted to the supreme heights of angling authority; and, over the years, other publications appropriate to his sporting stature followed. Architectural training had taught him draftsmanship, and he subsequently became a skilled illustrator and water-colorist. This latter talent was placed on display in Salmon of the World (1970), an opulent portfolio of portraits of all the species of the King of Gamefish, produced in a small edition, and much coveted by collectors. With Nymphs (1973), Schwiebert proceeded so far into entomology that he passed beyond nearly all of his readers’ ability to follow. The boxed two-volume Trout (1978) at some 1800 pages length was intentionally monumental, and simply overwhelming, covering angling history, species biology, techniques, and featuring a rhapsodic and passionately detailed survey of high end tackle. Schwiebert wrote regularly for angling, and other sporting, serials, and published three collections of stories and memoirs: Remembrances of Rivers Past (1973), Death of a Riverkeeper (1980), and A River for Christmas (1988).

In the course of a long and illustrious career, he fished, and wrote about, the finest rivers all over the world. He was a regular habituée of the choicest waters and the most exclusive clubs, and was renowned for his enthusiasm for the best of everything. As the years went on, Schwiebert’s elitist perspective and idiosyncratic writing style came in for a certain amount of criticism. He was reported to be a colorful personality, and intensely competitive, by those who travelled in the same circles. Criticisms of Schwiebert’s latest book and anecdotes of conflicts in the field and at events became staples of gossip in the sporting community. One envious scribbler went so far as to caricature the great man in an anonymously published, pretentious and ridiculously overpriced, lampoon.

Real achievement of the scale of Ernest Schwiebert’s will always find detractors and provoke envy. It probably also true that, that like many of angling’s other greats, Schwiebert possessed a full consciousness of his own worth, and could at times be difficult. The roll of major angling writers is thickly populated with egotists and curmudgeons. His passing, however, is bound to silence criticism. Even those who did not like Ernest G. Schwiebert will be forced to acknowledge that we have lost probably the single most important angling theorist of the last century, the most important figure in North America this side of Theodore Gordon.

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12/13 Press reports are beginning to appear:

Field & Stream

NY Times

Web sources are reported the death of angling writer Ernest G. Schwiebert. More to follow.