fishing for words

Since I’m still supporting the retired citizens of this great country through gainful employment and periodic contributions to Social Security, I had to wait for Saturday to roll around for my first fishing trip of the year. I headed to the Two Mile Bar section with some fly fishing club members.

Overcast skies foretold of a cold day to come. Like most of the other folks, I rigged up with a pale yellow salmon egg imitation — known to have pulled up fish the previous two days — and hit the water about ten o’clock. This section of the Stanislaus, being a wild trout fishery (with catch and release regulation), can be tough fishing just as easily as being wide open. But I’ve never been skunked there.

I started at the “Big Oak Pool,” a place where during my first trip here I caught my first Stanislaus River trout. After an untold number of fruitless casts, attributing the lack of a take to my rusty casting, I moved upstream to cross at the “Amphitheater,” then fished various pools as I moved downstream.

A few hours later, and after talking with a few of the guys as I went, I found myself at what I viewed as one of the more promising small pools — like the ones I enjoy on smaller creeks at higher elevations — and began to drag a Prince Nymph with a glass bead nymph underneath it through the water. After about 20 minutes of presenting my flies in the various seams, I was mentally preparing for a fly swap. But on the tail end of my drift, as the flies began to swing up to the surface, I got a slight bump. With a gentle set, I had a fish on.

While the speed of the current seems to amplify the size of a fish, I was nevertheless happy to soon land and release my first fish of 2009! It’s Monday now, but this first fish of the year is still crystal clear in my memory. At eight inches, it’s not the size of a fish that makes it into the classic yarns spun by fishermen, but it was a joy to bring to hand a wild eight-inch rainbow resplendent along its entire eight inches.

My First Trout of 2009!

Lucky English coppers.

autoblog.com picked up and expanded upon a Mitsubishi press release regarding the South Yorkshire (England) police department’s latest vehicular addition:

The South Yorkshire police just added a ten to their squad. No, that’s not a sexist statement about some new hire, it’s a reference to the new Mitsubishi Evolution X they just added to the fleet. Joining an already-intimidating Evo VIII and IX in the motorpool is a specially equipped X that should help keep the Road Crime Unit (RCU) ahead of the baddies. The Evo X should be more than adequate for tracking down drug dealers and car thieves by itself, but deployed as a pack, the trio of Evos will probably scare scofflaws into simply giving up the chase.

Not only it is a very cool ride, but it’ll be outfitted with an onboard Automatic Number Plate Recognition system that will the vehicle registration and alert officers if there is anything remotely suspicious about it. But I don’t think detective work is the main reason for this beast.

Read and drool see more here.

South Yorkshire Police's pack of Evos.

I’d posit that this Associated Press reporter was a bit more excited about the amazing discovery of a fisherman’s ring in the belly of a bass (though it’s a novelty that someone cleaned the bass planning to eat it). That could explain why the story that most folks read doesn’t reveal how the heck a bass was able to abscond with a fisherman’s tech school class ring 21 years ago.

No fish story — long-lost ring found inside bass
Associated Press
Dec. 3, 2008
BUNA (Texas) — The one that didn’t get away held an unlikely surprise for a Texas man.

The blue-stoned class ring of Joe Richardson, engraved with his name, turned up in

side an 8-pound bass 21 years after he lost it while fishing on Lake Sam Rayburn.

“My first reaction was — you gotta be kidding,” he said today.

The fisherman who discovered the tarnished ring inside his catch contacted Richardson on Nov. 28 in Buna, about 100 miles northeast of Houston, after tracking him down with help from the Internet.

His fisherman hero asked to remain anonymous.

Richardson, 41, said he lost the ring about two weeks after his 1987 graduation from Universal Technical Institute in Houston. His mom had bought it for about $200 and wasn’t pleased when it went missing.

As a mechanic, Richardson said he doesn’t wear jewelry so he tucked the undamaged ring away.

“I have not cleaned it,” he said. “I told my wife I don’t want to clean it.”

New Lure Design?

But to the rescue rides local reporter Lisa Richardson of The Bee (Silsbee, Texas):

Fishy story has familiar ring to it
Thursday, December 4, 2008
By LISA RICHARDSON
Special to The Bee

…That’s when we received a phone call that would take my husband, Joe, back in time. As he told me the story, we both stood in amazement at the miraculous events unfolding. We both knew that what was happening would leave us with even more gratitude on this Thanksgiving weekend.

Joe began to tell me about the story that began 21 years earlier.

He had just received his class ring after graduating from Universal Technical Institute in Houston. The ring was too big, slipping on and off of his finger easily.

During a fishing trip with his cousin and close friend Lloyd Curtis, Joe clearly remembers standing on the bow of the boat when his ring slipped off his finger, hit the side of the boat and fell into the water.

You can read Lisa’s article at silsbeebee.com.