What young guys think and what old guys know about fly fishing.

What young guys think and what old guys know.

1. Young guys think the guy in the fly shop their age will give them the best advice. The old guys know the owner who has caught the most fish.
2. Young guys think you must use a specific fly in a specific place like their buddies. Old guys know the drift is more important.
3. Young guys think the published primetime tables will tell you when you must throw the first fly. Old guys know that the published primetimes are based on astrology not chronobiology and don't mean a thing.
4. Young guys think using a fast rod and casting quicker will get them more fish. Old guys know that stealth and finesse are more important.
5. Young guys think old guys will not walk pass the first spot. Old guys know that habitat rather than walking distance determines whether there will be fish holding in a spot.
6. Young guys think that getting skunked ruins the whole day. Old guys believe that being out on the stream is reward enough.
7. Young guys think they'll never be that old. Old guys know they will be and will still be fishing.
8. Young guys think the catch and photo are most important. Old guys know the release is the most fun.
9. Young guys think that size matters. Old guys think that fly selection, stalking and size matter.
10. Young guys believe that it only happened if there's a photo. Old guys even count an in-stream release.

Annual Update 2015 eat drink travel fish sort books.

Eat, Drink,Travel, Fish, Sort Books. 

Just like last year.

from John and Brenda Davenport 

There were a couple of notable events this year. Mom, Olive Davenport celebrated 100; Morgan Bransky launched her college career; we got all six grandchildren together for the first time!!; Brent got engaged to Jennifer Brown; John immersed himself in unplanned plumbing infrastructure events; and Brenda finally got some of the wall colors changed in Denver.
       Abby and Dante both climbed the F&B ladder this year. Abby jumped back to the Hilton ladder as the Executive Assistant Food and Beverage Manager at the Waldorf Astoria in NYC and opened the new La Chine, a "Ritzy Regional Cuisine Chinese Restaurant." Meanwhile Dante jumped off the Hilton ladder to Food and Beverage Director at Savor/McCormick Place, the Western Hemisphere's largest convention center. 

      The 100 Valentines Day celebration in Nashville brought together a fine collection of the family cousins from both sides; some of whom had never met and were surprised how civilized each other were. Olive will be sending out her own Christmas letter; so, we won’t duplicate other than to say the reconstruction of Park Manor in Nashville really cut down on her walking with a predictable effect on her mobility. She quite enjoys receiving Skype calls on the “magic window” John installed in her room (an iMac). Charlie and Liz are still on duty, but Charlie claims John’s turn must be coming up again.

     This year, our international research for places to emigrate if The Donald is elected included the Turks and Caicos and the Czech Republic. 

     After a very complex money transfer we booked a VRBO on Grand Turk Island in January. Definitely off the Caribbean tourist trail; however, it is definitely on the Off Shore Banking trail. It was harder to get a fishing license than setup a multinational conglomerate. John persisted and scored a bonefish, probably legally, right out the front door of Sea Biscuit, our cottage. 

    The Czech Republic tour was organized by Overseas Adventure Travel with a little side venture to fish with Jan Siman, a former Czech Fly Fishing Team member. We discovered that the  “Iron Curtain”, named by George Kennan, was indeed made of iron and steel barbed wire and concrete bunkers. The Czechs and Slovakians were really undone by Chamberlain, Hitler, and the Russians. It is a testament to these Central Europeans’ resiliency and negotiations that the cities of Budapest, Cesky Krumlov, and Slovanice are so well preserved and the vineyards near Modra have been returned to their former greatness. 

     US travel included 100 days in Chicago, and a week in Belmar and Santa Fe. We look forward to Brent & Jennifer’s March wedding in St. Thomas and getting Evan as a bonus grandson. Plans for next year include more of the same with Machu Picchu and the Galapagos in January and an unknown destination far from Koch brother doorbell ringers and political campaigns in the fall.

     John’s book count is now 10. “Bug the Bug 3-Fixing Fly Fishing Fails” with Eloise on the cover, now joins his other books unread by thousands. Francesca’s book “Greek Mytholagy A-Z” out sold him in all markets.

     Overall, the highlight of the year was getting all the kids and grandkids (with Brent, Jennifer, & Evan an exception to be corrected in 2016) together at the beach in Belmar. 

    

Here’s a link for the visually oriented

    Via - Photos -  https://picasaweb.google.com/103202631667358953084/AnnualUpdate2015

     Via - Map

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/albumMap?uname=103202631667358953084&aid=6222209445572861617#map

      Via Slide show:

                iPhone

                iPad

                Fred's New Humungous HDTV

   

Text us when you are flying to or through Denver and we’ll meet you at the airport for some dining or bring you home for western hospitality.

 Wishing you a good year with good times. Stay in touch.

John and Brenda Davenport

email or text: jandb.davenport@mac.com bnlbnw@aol.com

skype: loghousejd

facetime: jandb.davenport@mac.com  or john.davenport.mac@mac.com

4426 Wolff St

Denver, CO 80212

and sometimes:

519 N Main St  1EN

Glen Ellyn, CO 60327

Getting into Fly Fishing for under $100

Presented at the Fall Fly Fishing Rendezvous - Denver Colorado - 11/1/2015

Cost and Complexity:

     A primary roadblock in getting  yourself  or a son, daughter, or grandchild into fly fishing.

Presented here is a low cost minimalist way of getting a person started. For less than $100 you will have all you need to start learning the basic skills and catch your first fish.

Expanded info is available in eBook or printed form from Amazon.

http://goo.gl/ygr34P

 

Nymphing is not all they do in the Czech Republic.

Jan Šiman shares a little fly fishing wisdom on some sweet Czech rivers.

Jan, http://www.goflyfish.cz, set me up with a 6 minute metro ride

 and an easy 2.5 hour bus ride through the Czech countryside from Prague to Susice. This area is called Southern Bohemia and is very close to the German and Austrian border.

According to Jan, three time member of the Czech National Fly Fishing Team, the term Czech nymphing was invented by Orvis or some other American to explain the technique used by the Europeans that was cleaning the clock of the US Team in every championship. They are actually a little insulted that now the world thinks they invented it and don't know how to do anything else.

Let me set the record straight. If Jan Šiman is any example, they know how to do a lot of things right.
First the technique know as Czech Nymphing. This is Jan doing it right. The stream is flowing from right to left. He's using a bi-color sighter (indicator) just off the water and is leading his weighted "czech nymph" down stream. Looks like high-sticking but look where the fly line is. He's probably using 15 feet of leader/tippet.


        He rigged me up for tandem dries with a massive 18 feet of leader tippet ending in 7x.  He uses what he calls a Spanish cast that collapses before rolling out the last 5 feet of tippet, putting no weight or force on the dry fly which drifts slowly and naturally to the surface near the loose piles of tippet. The result is a drag free drift of at least 10 feet. The Spanish cast puts a loop of leader up stream from the tippet pile so when line is gently pulled in the fly travels UPSTREAM just like a natural. Truly amazing and nicely effective. It works on Clear Creek near Denver also. I tried it and I like it.
     The licenses, permits, access, and training needed to actually get on the river is daunting. You'd never be able to do it yourself. It is nothing like public waters in any state in the US. It's more like fishing on the Wigwam club property, e.g. State License, Local Permit, Personal Relationship with the River Keeper, Membership in a club with a 120 year waiting list, and then a gilley to tie on your flies, unhook your fish, an tell you precisely where to cast.

A very nice grayling

Browns and Grayling all on dries. A gray cdc emerger about size 16.

Sumava River

Here is Jan's ingenious fly dryer, more commonly known as an elastic band.

Sumava River

Sumava River

Otava River

     We fished Sumava Rivers in August 26-27. The Otava on the 27th.
John Davenport from USA-CO. Sumava rivers, August 2015. Photos Jan Siman.

Dinner stop at Chata Rovina so we could go back and fish the evening hatch.

     Nice $30 room in a new hotel obviously set up for the cross country and biking trade.

Fly Fishing on Pluto

     The July 14th flyby of  New Horizons spacecraft gives new hope to anglers having difficulty landing a Yellow Dog reservation for fly fishing in Cuba. It will take 16 months to download all New Horizon's data and photos by which time it is expected most of the seats on the first Pluto flight will be booked. For those that like to get their fly fishing fix from far away destination, like my fishing buddy Dr. Fred, it would be wise to do a little research now and maybe put down a deposit the minute reservations open up.

Nasa photo - Sputnik Planum.

A typical day fly fishing on Pluto.

    Pluto revolves a lot slower than earth so a day is actually 153.3 hours long. Fishing on Pluto will be very much like fishing in Alaska and Finland during their 24 hours of daylight. This is perfect for fishing an evening hatch which could go on for days. Luckily the flight time of 9 years will be long enough to reset your internal biological clock to account for "rocket lag." The challenge for the guides will be bringing enough flies to last you for 76 hours of continuous fishing. You will want to pack cold weather gear even if you are fishing the volcanic areas. Without considering wind chill, summer temperatures on Pluto are about -369F. A buff will be essential but should be comfortable under your oxygen helmet. Skies will be cloudy.

Don't do this outside on Pluto unless you are used to 30% methane, like being in a room with teenage boys.

A typical stream.

    The photo above shows mountain peaks roughly 68 miles from Hillary Montes in the Sputnik Planum. This area is geologically young at 100 million years like the 80 million year Rocky Mountains. Over the next 16 months we should expect more and better photos. At that point we'll be able to find areas similar to Yellowstone National Park where volcanic activity is melting the ice that covers much of Pluto. Stick close to the "fire holes." Schedule a training trip to the Firehole River in the dead of winter for an idea of the conditions you'll face. Fishing in winter on South Boulder creek during the slush period will  also hone your skills for the slush and frost in the streams of Pluto.

S. Boulder - photo by the author.

    Casting should be relatively easy. Atmospheric wind speeds during storms is about 23 miles per hour, similar to early spring fishing on the South Platte River in South Park, Colorado. Since Pluto gravity is a mere 1/12 of Earth's, your 3.5 ounce Sage One Elite will only weigh 3/10 of an ounce. Fishing until your arm falls off will probably not be possible.

A typical fly.

     Just like the arctic Alaska stonefly, which can withstand -15C and builds glycol, the insects have probably evolved on Pluto the same way. We are all familiar with the winter stonefly which has similar capabilities in our climate zone. Suggested patterns would be black size 50 stonefly nymphs, a parachute adams, of course, size 0 and everything in between. There will be tying benches and material supplied during the 9 year flight. 

From the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation

A typical fish.

     Lack of ground level details has never impeded a fly flinging angler from speculating on a fishery from an airplane window. Optimism reigns supreme. 

     With the same array of hydrocarbon building blocks as earth, and a similar geological history, we can guess that chance and the harsh environment probably played the most important roles in the evolution of fish on Pluto. Water, nitrogen, and methane ice cover the surface, although on close passes to the sun, melting creates a thin atmosphere. It is during this melting that the fish of Pluto will undoubtably spawn. Just as brown trout clean up after rainbows and vice versa, the fish not spawning will be most susceptible to a fly. (Fishing to spawning fish on Pluto in view of fellow anglers could leave one out in the cold.) Consider the Antarctic tooth fish, a close relative of the Patagonian Toothfish we know as the Chilean Sea Bass. They have evolved antifreeze proteins in their blood that keeps water molecules from nucleating into ice in the 28F polar ocean.

PATAGONIAN TOOTHFISH, ALSO CALLED CHILEAN SEA BASS. 

PHOTO BY MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM SEAFOOD WATCH.

     The Plutonian Toothfish must be strong to swim primarily in slush so 0X is a good recommended starting rig. Threading your size 50 arctic stonefly nymph on 0X tippet in the 23 mile and hour winds in -369F weather will make fly fishing on Pluto a trip to remember. So will the odor of methane.


Authors note: "Bug the Bug -3" is now available on Amazon. Targeted at new anglers and those who have lost their cell phones in the river, it is a recap of perplexing fly fishing question from the Fly Fishing Community facebook group answered by aquatic insects using an iPhone dropped in Clear Creek Colorado. If you are just getting into fly fishing and can't afford this eBook, send me a pm to my facebook page and I'll send you the link to a free review copy.  http://goo.gl/JBFfsY 

     

#CleanWaterRules .... What’s the diff? Polluting the banks or polluting the waters.

What’s the diff? Polluting the banks or polluting the waters.

  ..

Is there a difference between those that toss PBR and Coors cans along the banks of our streams and The American Farm Bureau Federation and friends trying to mandate the right to pollute the water in the same streams?

Anglers, boaters, hikers, swimmers and downstream water users can’t understand either group. We can pick up the litter and tsk,tsk the thoughtless who did it, but once the dirt, bacteria, fertilizers, manure, acid, and heavy metals have killed the bugs and fish, we CAN NOT clean it up on our own. We have to wait until the EPA declares it a superfund site, and then with tax payer money and fines we, the people, clean it up. Clear Creek, Overland Park, Rocky Mountain Arsenal are examples of EPA cleanups we enjoy in Colorado. 

As we all know, it is illegal to litter and when caught you’ll be fined. But thanks to a couple narrow court cases and some confusing administrative guidance in 2003, it’s really easy to get away with polluting upstream water and destroying wetlands.

The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency are close to promulgating a simple rule that defines what “The Waters of the United States” are for purposes of Clean Water Act of 1972. The purpose of that act was to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation’s waters … and maintaining the integrity of wetlands. Sounds just like the Trout Unlimited mission.

When the 2003 Bush administrative guidance gutted enforcement of the 1972 Clean Water Act, polluters could foul millions of wetlands, lakes and ponds that are within a state and streams that aren’t obviously connected by surface water to other navigable streams, rivers or coastal waters. The “guidance” barred Clean Water Act enforcement  for 117 million people in the US who get their drinking water in part from intermittent, ephemeral or headwater streams.  Between 2006 and 2010 EPA reported at least 1,500 major pollution investigations were shelved because of the uncertainty created by the guidance. Hazardous waste may not be dumped directly into your drinking-water supply. But a polluter may be within the law if he dumps it into a stream that feeds that supply if the stream is not obviously connected. The 2003 guidance has made it impossible for the Corps of Engineers and EPA to do their job in making and keeping our streams fishable and swimmable and our water drinkable.

The Farm Bureau has gotten itself into a position more in tune with the destruction of the EPA than in the interest of farmers. Unlike most farmers, it believes that keeping the EPA out of the water is more important that assuring the water the livestock drink won’t kill them. This is not surprising since it is in fact the voice of grain and meat processors and opposes the Clean Air Act, Voting Rights Act, Department of Education, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Their lobbying effort and social media campaign against the “Definition of Waters” rule focus on building fear that the EPA rule will force farmers to get permits to build fences, use pesticides, and dig ditches. Here is the EPA’s campaign.

Decide for yourself who is “overreaching.” Here are the two pages of the rule.

Support the Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency rule “Definition of ‘The Waters of the United States’ Under the Clean Water Act” so that once again it is clear which specific waters of the US are protected from pollution.

• It protects all tributary streams and waters adjacent to such streams or other covered waters (adjacent meaning along the bank of, or in the floodplain area of, covered waters), because the science confirms they have a significant effect on the biological, chemical, or physical condition of downstream water bodies that are navigable or that are interstate.
• It does not fully protect “other waters” – ones more distant from covered waters.  It would allow them to be protected if they are shown to collectively play a significant function with respect to downstream waters in the watershed.
• It lays out what activities and what water bodies are not covered by the law’s programs, by reaffirming a number of pre-existing exemptions and by codifying for the first time exemptions that had previously only been followed as a matter of administrative policy (for instance, stock ponds dug in uplands).  The rules will also specifically exclude certain things that nobody really thought were waters of the US, such as groundwater and tile drains.
• It explains that certain agricultural practices aimed at improving water quality are entitled to an exemption from the Corps’ permit program, an action the agencies made immediately effective.

To support this rule and tweet our Senators

@SenBennetCO @SenCoryGardner Support #CleanWaterRules  We must restore and maintain the biological integrity of the nation’s waters.

More opinions and facts about this rule:

From the National Resources Defense Council. http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jdevine/everything_you_wanted_to_know.html

From Environment and Energy Publishin  http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059963096

From Fly Rod and Reel. Ted Williams http://www.flyrodreel.com/magazine/2015/clean-water-showdown

From the New York Times http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/05/22/good-news-for-the-nations-waterways/?ref=topics&_r=1

New Belgium Brewery wants Clean Waterhttp://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/05/19/3660492/epa-water-rules-new-belgium-brewery/