Save Tarpon...Sign Petition

Via Striped Pajamas:

(photo by Gem Images)

Save Tarpon. Sign the petition. Stop the Professional Tarpon Tournament Series.

Boom...Morgan

Blue Toad

Via Striped PJs:

themarbletrout:

Blue fish on a popper (Taken with Instagram at City Island)

I know that cove. 

Nice gator

Boom...Morgan

"You Must Learn"

Via Striped Pajamas:

You must learn.

Boom...Morgan

Mr. Murray is Gittin Ready

He cannot wait for flats season...

"Na_Na_Na_Na-na-Na_Na

Na_Na_Na_Na_Na_NA

Gettin ready for flats season

Na_Na_Na_Na-na-Na_Na

Na_Na_Na_Na_Na_NA"

Boom...Morgan

Yum

Via Mr Murray:

Boom...Morgan

Fly Fishing for Carp...

From Striped Pajamas via NY Times:

Fly-fish for carp? For many anglers, the first response might be, “Why?” For coldwater anglers, carp have long been the fodder of mean-spirited jokes, a species more likely to be pursued with a bow and arrow than a bead-head nymph. But the fly-fishing frame of mind regarding Cyprinus carpio is changing.

Will Rice, an outdoors writer based in Denver, had his moment of “carptharsis” a number of years ago.

“During the spring runoff, trout fishing in the Colorado Rockies is just not happening,” Rice said. “One May, a friend and I were eager to wet a line, so we headed east from Denver to fish a reservoir for wiper,” a striped bass and white bass hybrid.

“We rented a boat and began zipping around,” he said. “At the edges, high water had pushed over the banks into some grass flats. We took a closer look and saw all these fish moving around — 10- to 12-pound fish — finning, mudding, even tailing. They were carp. We didn’t catch any that day, but it was eye-opening to see fish behaving like this — the way bonefish and permit behave. Carp are a species you can sight cast to with a fly rod without traveling to the Caribbean.” Comparisons to bonefish in terms of their skittishness and strength have earned carp the nickname golden ghost.

Common carp are of the cyprinidae family, the largest group of freshwater fish. Distinguished by large, sometimes golden scales, barbells, a stout profile and a small mouth, carp can grow to more than four feet and nearly 100 pounds, though 2- to 3-foot specimens of 10 to 20 pounds are more commonly encountered in the United States. Aesthetically speaking, carp, which lack the streamlined shape and the delicate watercolor patterns of trout, are an acquired taste for some.

“I think carp are maligned here because they’re not considered classic table fare — though they were brought to North America in the 1800s specifically for that purpose,” said Kirk Deeter, an editor-at-large for Field & Stream and part of a clan of fly-fishers who regularly stalk carp in the South Platte River in downtown Denver. “They are one of the most resilient fish in the world. They can live in almost any conditions — warm or cold, clean or dirty water — and are readily accessible just about wherever you live. Go to a local lake or a golf-course pond, carp are the fish you’re likely to see. If you want to sight cast to a tailing fish that might be 10 pounds or more, carp are it.”

Deeter added: “I like to equate carp fishing with soccer. Around the world, carp is the No. 1 sport fish. A staggering amount of money is spent on carp angling. But here in America, it’s just starting to catch on.”

This may be true among casual anglers, but many professionals know better. Ask guides on the finest trout streams in the American West what they do on their days off, and they will sheepishly admit that they chase carp.

“There’s a pretty common theme for anglers who get excited about carp,” Rice said. “They start out fly-fishing for trout, and then take a saltwater trip where they catch bonefish and tarpon. In the course of the saltwater fishing, something clicks about getting bigger fish on the fly. When they get back home and fish for trout again, that big-fish thrill is a little lacking. Then they discover carp.”

Carp are catholic feeders; they will feast on aquatic insects in all life stages, crayfish, baitfish — even plant matter, like blackberries. Anglers should not mistake the carp’s broad appetite as license for sloppy presentations. Carp possess highly developed senses of sight, hearing, smell and touch. This makes them spook easily. A spooked fish emits a pheromone that warns other nearby fish of potential danger. If you misfire and put one fish off, odds are good that any other fish in the immediate area will go off the bite as well.

“On the South Platte, I believe the fish are mostly eating crawfish, so I rely on crawfish or crab imitations,” Rice said. “I use the same crab patterns that I use for permit. In the end, it’s all about watching the take. Seeing a nice carp suck up a fly is always a thrill. When you set the hook, they don’t even know what’s going on — they just continue on their way. When they do realize that something’s wrong, the water explodes, and they’re gone. The big ones roll off slowly like an 18-wheeler in low gear. The smaller fish can melt line off the reel.”

Chris Wood, the president and chief executive of the conservation organization Trout Unlimited, said: “Before I had a family, fishing meant going to the end of the road and bushwhacking as far back into the woods as I could. The farther back you go, the fewer people and the better the fishing. Now, one of my favorite places to go is the C&O Canal in Washington, D.C. I take my sons out with me, and we fish from the towpath and we catch some big carp. When the Texas mulberry trees are ripe with berries and the berries are dropping in the water, the fish will take them on the surface. We use mulberry patterns and fish them like dry flies. If the hatch is on, it’s as exciting as catching bonefish.”

Bom...Morgan

Mr. Murray is a Boss

Featuring his site like a boss...

Boom...Morgan

Big Day for Bunker

Big day for Bunker.

ASFMC limits total catch by 37%.

Omega protein outraged.

Yeah? well I’m outraged that you think you should be allowed to decimate a natural resource for your own enrichment.

AMEN Mr. Murray!

Dawn Patrol..."Fly Fishing & Life with Terrible Spelling and Worse Grammer"

Found a gnarly blog thanks to Striped Pajamas...Dawn Patrol. Awesome blog, made the bookmarks bar for sure. Check out this dudes awesome fish art...

Check out the rest of his blog, dudes got his shit together.

Boom...Morgan

Menhaden aka Bunker

Courtesy of Striped Pajamas:

Boom...Morgan

Fly Swaps

Mr. Murray really sparked my interest in "Fly Swaps" today with his most recent post about an Albie Fly swap he was about to send out. I have heard of these for years and totally understand how they work, but I've never done one. I know I don't have too many followers (and the ones I do have never make themselves known, you guys are so sneaky, like Honeybadgers). So for those of you who are too naive to know what a fly swap is and you ask, Morgan will you please enlighten me, here you go...when two anglers love each other...oh wait, weird. So here's how it really goes; two or more anglers get in touch via a forum, website, discussion board, email chain, whatever...and they all pick out a certain amount of flies (usually for a certain species of fish) and then tie away. Once the amount decided on and shit has been figured out and tied, they swap addresses and send that "order" to one another. Boom. Done. That was easy right? So the purpose of this swapping of flies is so that everyone gets a taste of what is working for other anglers and it also allows you to see something new. I love the idea, I think I'm in, who's with me? If your down and want to swap, comment below or send me an email at mkupfer32@gmail.com. Id be more than happy to set up an email chain and/or discussion board and/or setup something on the TLTFF Facebook page and get the gears a grinding.

Here's Mr. Murrays flies for-a-swapping he just sent out...

Tight Lines...Morgan

From Good Ol' Mr. Murray...and The New York Times

In Yellowstone, Killing One Kind of Trout to Save Another

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — The first “Judas fish” have been released.

As the Biblically inspired name suggests, the fish — surgically altered lake trout, implanted last week with tiny radio transmitters on a gently rocking open boat by a team of scientists here — are intended to betray. The goal: annihilation.

“Finding where they spawn would be the golden egg,” said Bob Gresswell, a research biologist at the United States Geological Survey, and leader of the Judas team, a strike force in the biggest lake-trout killing program in the nation. The idea is that the electronic chirps will lead trout hunters into the cold, deep corners of Yellowstone Lake, where the fish might be killed in volume. “The eggs could be killed before they hatch, maybe with electricity, or suction,” Dr. Gresswell said.

That millions of dollars would be spent to eradicate a fish that many people love, and love to eat, is only the beginning of a paradoxical new chapter for trout, long a silvery symbol of America’s wide-open spaces.

States in the Great Lakes region, by contrast, where lake trout are a native species, dream of rebuilding the stocks that were overfished, and only about 100 miles south of here, Wyoming state wildlife officials are in fact still breeding lake trout in a hatchery and happily releasing them into local waters.

Motivation is where it starts, since the goal here in Yellowstone is not the killing itself, but rather the saving of another trout species entirely, the cutthroat, which grizzly bears, egrets, eagles and martens, among others, depend upon for food. Lake trout, which park officials believe were introduced by fishermen a few decades ago, gobble up the cutthroats (named for the slash of red under their jaws). And lake trout, unlike the cuts, as they are called, hide in the deep and do not venture into streams and tributaries to spawn, where bears and other animals can catch and eat them.

So death to the lake trout is the rallying cry. And come death does, to hundreds of thousands of fish in recent years, through an entanglement of gill nets, or a quick slice of the fillet knife and now, through the Judas fish program, at the scientific frontier.

Americans have tried in varying ways to manage fish and nature. Back in the late 1800s, for example, industrialization and settlement were wiping out many species, and a politically powerful new constituency of recreational fishermen, many of whom patterned themselves after leisure-class titans like the steel baron Andrew Carnegie (whose treasured rod and reel were handed down to his heirs), arose in force to demand that streams and lakes be teeming with fish, and especially trout.

But hands-on management in the name of wildness itself rather than human appetite or aesthetics — the core distinction of what is happening here — is a change in how people relate to nature in set-apart corners of the world like Yellowstone.

The theme is echoed elsewhere, in worries over the Asian carp or sea lamprey in the Great Lakes, or even the rainbow trout, a species native to the Pacific coast, which was spread all over the world by hatcheries, especially after World War II and often to the detriment of native fish.

The decline of recreational fishing in the United States since its peak in the late 1970s is adding its own twist, scientists, environmentalists and anglers say. Between 1991 and 2006, according to the most recent figures from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the percentage of Americans 16 and older who fish declined to 13 percent from 21 percent.

At the same time, the environmental movement, which in its earlier years was closely aligned with the hunting and fishing communities, became more urban and less connected to the idea that nature should be harvested or consumed.

Here at Yellowstone, that has led to a coalition of partners standing shoulder to shoulder for killing the lake trout, of which visitors are of course encouraged to catch and eat as much as they like, on behalf of a protected fish, the cutthroat, that is strictly catch and release. Eco-system watchdog groups like the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, and the national clean-waters angler group, Trout Unlimited, for example, are raising money to help Yellowstone kill its lake trout.

“The whole population is more urban, and urban folks tend to be more mutualist — looking at humans and animals coexisting, as opposed to animals being there for utilitarian use,” said Steve L. McMullin, an associate professor in the department of fish and wildlife conservation at Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Va., who studies fishing demographics.

Some people remain doubtful that what is happening here can succeed, or be controlled. Ecosystems are too complex, they say, and since even the most ardent trout hunters concede that lake trout reduction in perpetuity will probably be necessary, questions swirl about the long-term balance of nature, and whether a system can really be called natural at all if humans must remain at the helm to make it work.

"We may think we know what we’re doing, but the outcomes are going to be unpredictable no matter what,” said Anders Halverson, an aquatic ecologist and the author of a recent book, “An Entirely Synthetic Fish,” about how the rainbow trout took over waters all around the world through deliberate stocking.

The superintendent at Yellowstone National Park, Daniel N. Wenk, says he thinks the park has no choice but to fight for the cutthroats, which he described as the keystone species for a mostly still-wild ecosystem.

“What we’re trying to do is restore the opportunity for nature to literally do its thing,” Mr. Wenk said in an interview in his office at the park headquarters. “That’s different than trying to impose something on a system.”

On the dock, some people lament the waste, with tons of desirable protein being killed and sinking back to the lake bottom to decay. Park managers said, though, that distributing trout fillets for food, in a remote place like Yellowstone, would raise costs and legal liability concerns, and thus reduce resources for the cutthroats.

Some lake trout fishermen, meanwhile, even those who support the return of the cutthroats, are scratching their heads.

“Lake trout are better eating, and we fish for the eating,” said Que Mangus, a real-estate appraiser in Cody, Wyo., who came in off the lake on a recent afternoon in his small boat, having caught no fish at all.

The Judas fish, meanwhile, are still roaming wild and deep, at least for now. The first tracking buoys are scheduled for deployment this week, at which time the chirping flow of data from the lake bottom, and the hunt, will intensify.

Courtesy of Mr. Murray at Striped Pajamas and The New York Times.

Tight Lines...Morgan

Daily Reel...Flats Fishing '11

Courtesy of Mister Murray over at Striped Pajamas. I can't wait for Nantucket... T-20 Days

Tight Lines...Morgan

Word on the Street: Cinder Worms Are Coming

From Striped Pajamas:


"Mid summer+full moon+late night high tide=Cinder worms and me staying up all night."

Click "Read More" below the 'Like' button for more...(didn't want to take up the whole blog page with this one...)

Daily Reel...twenty five inches of "$%@! you, high water" brown trout

Pulled this one from the Striped Pajamas blog this wonderful rainy AM...

Tight Lines...Morgan