Some random thoughts

“A hatchery rainbow is to a wild brown trout as one of Frank Perdue’s chickens is to a bald eagle.”

— Dick Blalock

If it is your habit to release all of the trout you catch, to fish with debarred hooks and you try not to injure a single scale on a trout’s head, you can easily become dismissive of fishing regulations. This is because they rarely have any effect upon your fishing. Beware, fisherman. Some years ago I had intended to fish at Fred White’s Eddy on the East Branch of the Delaware. At the last moment I remembered to check the fishing regulations. Oops, whoa podnuh! The regs clearly stated as of that date the East Branch above Shinhopple was closed to all fishing. It makes no difference if you are a no-kill guy or a hook ‘em and cook ‘em type, you had better follow the regs. Otherwise, in a quavering voice, you could be saying, “hello” to the local conservation officer.

Most fly fishers would agree that trout under 12 inches seem to be caught more frequently than those over 16 inches. In a paper titled “Fundamentals of Limnology,” Franz Ruttner has an explanation for this. He states, “Smaller fish eat more food and feed more frequently, thus are more at risk to be caught. Young and yearling fish generally eat their weight in food every 10 days, while three- or four-year-olds only eat their weight in food every 40 to 45 days.” Well, that explains it—or does it?

When teaching a beginner to cast a fly line, I urge them to think of their rod as a metronome, the device that regulates rhythm in musical terms. A short line is cast with a quick rhythm, but as the cast is lengthened, the rhythm gradually changes to a slower beat. I came across this quote from George Michel Lucien Labranche the other day. “Fly fishing, in my mind, is closely allied with music.” Gracious sakes, the great Labranche and the Tangler on the same wavelength? Well you surely are familiar with the quotation, “great minds”... Hmm, to prevent laughter perhaps I should not go there.

I have been rereading “Fly Fishing through the Mid-Life Crisis” by Howell Raines. Mr. Raines is a former editor of the New York Times. He quotes one of his liberal fishing buddies, Richard Blalock, as stating, “The good thing about Democrats is that they will run roughshod over property values in order to protect human values.” Mr. Raines concurs. Neither of these gentlemen care that the right to private property is one of the pillars of our Constitution (amendment 14, ratified in 1868.) If any liberal objects to the description of Democrats by Mr. Blalock, let them refer to the column by Marcia Nehemiah of January 10 in this paper. There they go again, folks.

The attempts by Mr. Raines to savage dead Presidents and the Christian religion are nasty and infantile, marring small portions of his book. At other times, he reports gossip as history without checking the facts. He writes that, “Vincent Marinaro died an embittered man,” and that he left orders for the bamboo rods he designed and built to be burned. In a new book titled, “Split & Glued by Vincent C. Marinaro,” Tom Whittle and Bill Harms describe Marinaro’s rods in detail, giving the exact tapers of his rods, plus a critique of their casting qualities, by three experts in the field of bamboo rods. Wayne Grauer, Tom Smithwick and Bob Selb, after casting five of these rods, all agreed that Marinaro was one hell of a rod builder. While this book costs $65, it is worth every penny with the dozens of gorgeous color photographs and the information it contains regarding the life and foibles of Marinaro. It contains a ton of history never available before. Skip a car payment and buy it.