Paraflynalia

I don't know what to call this. A woolly muddler? A muddle bugger? A mud buggler? A muddler buggler? A muddly bugger? Yes, definitely the Muddly Buggler. I am absolutely positive that I am not the first guy to combine a woolly bugger and a muddler minnow. Together, these two flies have caught... well, a lot of fish. A ridiculous number of fish. But, in all honesty and the best of faith, I have never seen the two combined this way- so I get to claim it as a new pattern. The Muddly Bugger. Ta-da. It will catch fish. And no, I will not be checking The Big Search Engine That Starts With a Gee to see who else has already popularized the same idea. Though, fly fishing and the ether being what it is, I have no doubt that I will see two magazine articles, one book excerpt and three blog posts about it from this and each of the preceding two decades over the next week. Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that.

In Sex, Death and Fly-fishing, John Gierach discusses how fly fishermen may fancy themselves philosopher/poets, thereby pulling off the very neat trick of feeling more and more superior by way of catching fewer and fewer fish. I myself enjoy the warm, smug glow I get from getting skunked while sticking with zombie-like steadfastness to my chosen technique/fly/rod/spot. However, whenever one feels less like a philosopher and more like interfering with fish, there are few things one can do that are more productive than tying on a woolly bugger. Woolly buggers can be tied in a size or colour to catch pretty much any kind of fish that has ever grabbed a hook. It's not always possible to even know why a particular fish takes them at a particular time, except that woolly buggers look a lot like lunch. Or dinner. Or something they want to kill. Or something to pick up and move out of the way, or something to taste, or- someth...

I'm not retired. I am enjoying (I hope) the start of a mini-break from the world of attending a regular day job. We, unlike fish, mostly have choices. Like retiring. Who wouldn't enjoy a permanent respite from drudgery, danger and labour? Apparently fish can strive for retirement too, according to this U of Washington article . Interesting read, but it might be worth following the links to the research. The writer of the article seems to have some difficulty distinguishing between char and trout. At least the author capitalized the D and the V in Dolly Varden; one of the few animal (or fish) names that should actually be spelled with capitals. That is because the fish was named after a (fictional) person, a character in a lesser-known Dickens novel. Interestingly enough, another character in the same novel- Grip, the titular character's pet bird- provided E. A. Poe with the inspiration for the The Raven . I have heard that raven feathers can be...

I'm going to rant. I'm going to wail and gnash my teeth. Expound, pontificate, clarify, muddle, question and hypothesize. Share what I feel like sharing, bury anything I don`t want to hear. Show off, own up, divulge secrets and ask for help.   I`m going to say anything I bloody well feel like saying, as long as it`s about fish, fishing, water, stuff in water, stuff around water. But it`s mostly about the fish, what they eat, and how to bridge the gap between their world and ours. My preferred tool is a fly rod. Let`s go fishing.