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15
Sep 09

Respect the Fish… a plea for glory shots

Anglers all over the world do this… doesn’t matter if you are fishing for trout or bonefish… folks do it when the camera gets pulled  out… they hold the fish out as  close to the camera as possible.  This little trick of perspective makes the fish look bigger, of course.  Who doesn’t wish the fish they caught was bigger?

Don’t be this guy.

Here’s my issue… I feel like this is disrespecting the fish.  Don’t do this.  The fish you caught is the fish you caught… you likely worked hard for it, were excited about it and wanted to capture it in all its pixelated glory.  So, don’t go and try to get the picture to lie for you.  Respect the fish.  You don’t have to kiss it, or take it out for coffee or lie to it about those jeans really making its butt look big… just hold up the fish you caught and get the photo and let the thing go.

Or this guy…

Don’t you feel a little more honest when you snap a picture that doesn’t try to stretch the fish through illusion? If you hold that fish up, straining to get it closer to the lens, it calls your word into question.  Well, if you were trying to make a 20″ fish look like a 24″ fish, was  your 7 fish day really a 5 fish day?

Respect the fish.

Be this guy. Respect the fish.

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14
Sep 09

Beer Blog and Belize

It is just a simple truth that many of life’s best things start with “B.”  Bonefish, of course… bacon, butter, blues, BBQ’s and Beer.

It is also true that some beers can bring a sense of place with them.  For me, Moose Drool Brown Ale will transport me back to Montana and Kalik will make me think of the Bahamas.

Belinkin of Belize

I found Captain Keith’s Beer Blog where he draws the connection between a bonefishing trip he took and Belikin Beer, the beer of place of Belize (which also starts with B, reaffirming my initial comment that good things start with B).

I was surprised, upon really looking into it, that there is no Bonefish brand of beer.  There are a host of great trout themed beers out there.  So, I call on bonefishing brewers to get busy and bring us a Bonefish brand beer.

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08
Sep 09

A little ditty

I just found fliesandfins.com… I think I like it.

One way or another, I like this little video I found on YouTube that features some of the Fins and Flies folks.  It isn’t ALL about bonefish, but does feature the gray ghost and some of the Florida saltwater anglers that go after them.

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05
Sep 09

Objectum: The Art of Bonefish

Popping up yesterday  on a google alert was a bit of bonefish art.  My current fixation on bonefish is pretty broad and includes art, just like it includes t-shirts.  This print is by a guy named Mike Salven.  He lives and works out of Costa Rica and does some interesting work, including immortalizing that big catch of yours (which looks totally ruling, by the way).

Oh, there are so many faces and facets to angling.  That’s one of the great things about it.

Upon seeing this Salven painting I immediately thought of Tim Borski (I’d say they do pretty similar looking work, but I’m no art critic, I just know what I like), who does some pretty good work himself, including doing the art for that pretty frigging cool Able bonefish reel that is benefiting the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust.  Tim has set a standard (if not THE standard) for painting fish for our modern age.  Some good stuff.  Check out his site to see more.

Bonefish Art.

One sweet looking reel!

Needless to say, each of these bits of bonefishy art is more than or equal to an actual trip for me, so they won’t be gracing the walls here in Bonefish Day Dreaming Capital of the Sierra Foothills… but if you have the scratch… art by either of these guys would be nice to stare at when it is gray and 36 outside.

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26
Aug 09

Tag Ends

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22
Aug 09

Bonefish and San Francisco

With global warming a fact of our modern world, it could very well be that bonefish will some day be cast to on the mud flats off Sausalito.  Don’t rush out and haul that flats skiff from the Keys just yet.  I’m sure there is a lot of food fit for a bonefish in the Bay, but the water is, in a word… cold.   Bonefish don’t love cold water (78 is their ideal) and that Bay water is frigid (gets as warm as 73 in spots, but as cold as  46… which is fatal), as is the water along the coast extending down most of the length of California.

I have been bemused to see several sources list the northern range of bones on the West Coast as extending up to SF Bay.  One of these sources is the website of the Florida Museum of Natural History Ichthyology Department.  Some months ago I set out to discover the source of this statement of fact.

Turns out there is a bonefish in the CA Academy of Sciences collection that was caught off Sausalito back in about 1914 or so.  How that fish got there, I have no idea.  If you look at catch reports from piers, party boats and other anglers it is very clear that no bonefish are, or have been, taken in the Bay in the 90 or so years since then (or at least no one has talked about it).

There have been whales up the Sacramento River, but I wouldn’t include the Sac in the stated range of those whales.

Basically… I’m calling BS.  Bones do inhabit some of the back bays in San Diego, but not really any further than that.  Californians are just going to have to wait a few hundred or thousand years to find bones in SF Bay… sorry.

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