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

The Internet offers some very interesting video offerings these days.

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

ABC News reports:

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.

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Field & Stream has an interesting photo essay on the 6 catch-and-release of a large mako shark on a fly rod (8 foot 6 inch rod for a

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.

Frank W. Benson (1862-1951), Salmon Fishing
oil on canvas – 32 by 40 inches

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

Guns and Hooks

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.

George W. Bush’s “best presidential moment” was quoted in translation from an interview with the German language weekly Bild am Sonntag.

“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.

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Personally, I think we have here a very vivid demonstration of the eagerness of the left to grab any item or detail potentially servicable for the confirmation of their own preconceived ideas and prejudices, and then try to milk it for everything it’s worth, without the slightest regard for fairness or accuracy.

Don Hechesky Jr., Just Browsing, Muskie
acrylic on canvas, 11 x14″ (27.9 x 35.6 cm), collection of the artist

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.