1. Troutnut Forum
›
2. Fly Fishing
›
3. Am I missing something??, Page 2

G. I already have a couple support bars and six wood screws in my lower back keeping me upright...I almost reversed human evolution by crawling around on my hands and knees for awhile...I was contemplating becoming a brachiator and swinging from the trees but it hurt too damn much...;)

Now no wise cracks about my old brain not running too smoothly...Replacement parts there are hard to come by. :) "Snip, snip here, snip, snip there, and litlle rub-de-dub...That's the way we spend our day in the merry old land of OZ..."

Spence

Hi Jonathan-



Wish it were otherwise, but must admit, I don't have a clue what you are referencing. Am I referred to a larva somewhere?

Uh...YOUR PHOTO!!!

;oD

Jonathon

P.S. If you really don't want to ever grow up, Roger, I understand - neither do I...

I think I asked you guys above to not get me going here?! Yet you walk across my bunions on purpose just to rile me up, no doubt! :)

Jonathon I want you to do me a favor and re-read the above until you see the folly embedded in it.

I think that what Matt & Bruce were really getting at with their above gripe, that set this thread off was, "Is there anything left here in the good old US of A that's really, truly made here. We have shipped it all off to foreign ports-of-call.

When was there any time Jonathon that you personally ever had anything to do with a product manufactured in the USSR? Other than maybe vodka? You happen to own an old Soviet reel? A rod? Some leaky waders from Minsk? I don't get your reference.

Now the free-market system that you love so well has left Americans with what? Jobs? Quality manufactured goods? A Hardy reel no longer made in England?

You remember the old logging days here in Michigan where they basically marched across the state grinding up just about every tree standing only to move on when they were done. A boomtown mentality. Detroit is a post boomtown now as well.

When the factories were humming here the world beat a path to the manufacturing capital of the world. Now buddy, it's time to move.

We developed an EPA, an OHSA, a clean air act, work place safety rules, labor laws, unions, banned DDT, etc , etc, not because the scions of industry thought it was such a great idea, but they were forced to deal with it. They ruined eastern native brook trout streams, nearly whacked our national bird, and as a young man I remember men walking around in factories here in Detroit with hooks for hands.

Now they no longer want to deal with these shackles so capital has fled looking for cheaper labor and no environmental rules. China is primative capitalism/industrial revolution all over again...America itself is now the post boomtown.

They have folks living in dorms at the factory and if you get sick or can't work, no matter, we have another 250,000 waiting outside the door here that will gladly take your place...A fair wage? Forget it! Child-Labor Laws...We can forget those too and children can now sit at a desk forever cranking out your pretty little Adams for you...Pennies-on-the-gross...

The boys of capital are wetting themselves with the prospects of riches to be had once those billions in China can afford a Chevy and you and I can go back to planting corn for them. Ruin a river? Someone's health? So far not a problem...

I really don't want to drag politics in to our lovely bug-site, but answer me this one...The republicans don't want to tax the rich because according to their pet phrase, "they are the job-creators and this will hault job creation"...What jobs are these poor over taxed capitalist creating here? Where? Detroit? Pittsburgh? Cleveland? No they are creating them in South-East Asia and China...

The sad thing right now is if Sage started to sell their rods at Wal-Mart it would spell the end of fly shops. We drive by all the old local hardwares to save a dime at Home Depot to buy something made of plastic in China that leaks once you have installed it...Quality control! Oh I forgot. That's another thing private enterprise hates to be called on the carpet for...

Sorry for the rant gentleman...I just had "to blow it out my barracks-bag!"

Spence

I visited Lisbon Portugal in 2004...I took a tour that ended up at a place called Capa de Roca...The furthest western point on the mainland of Europe. The tourist bureau had dressed a poor soul up in heavy garb (he was supposed to be Henry the Navigator), in was 100+ out, to stand up there and welcome the tourists. Once he realized we were Americans he told a story about how Portugal was once the center of the known world with outposts all around the globe...The Greeks had once thought the same, then the Romans, and Great Britian and the Germans wanted to be it and the Allies told them no, it is America now...The world has been here for a very, very, long time, he continued, so hear my cautionary tale...Empire is a transitory thing in the big scheme of things...

About the guys with hooks for hands...I worked a summer job in high school at a punch-plant cranking out fenders, oil-pans, and valve covers, on the midnight shift...A friend once got his hand stuck in a press. They had to drive in a hi-lo to free his hand because the machine, if it had completed its cycle, would have taken his finger. They offered him a life-time job. The same offer the guys with hooks got. That was a place called Detroit Engineering and Machinist Company (Demco) in the shadow of the infamous Ford Rouge plant...Demco has been gone since the 80's sometime...

Wow Spence, those bunions must be really sore! I'm not sure this forum is the proper location for their therapy though.:)

Best regards,

Kurt

GEEEZ, Spence, that was such a long and voluminous rant that I'm nearly too tired after reading it to respond...OK, not really...first of all:

I TIE MY OWN FREAKING ADAMS, remember? And even outfish you with them on occasion...

Second, and just what is your point? You know you are preaching to the choir, to some degree, but would YOU want YOUR fly fishing tackle made in a state-run factory where, in the Soviet Union, the workers used to say, "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us..."??? You realize, of course, that the Soviets didn't exactly take great care of their workers EITHER - just ask anyone who worked at any of their nuclear plants or on any one of their nuclear submarines, just to start with. The Communist Party of the USSR WAS the "Ruling Class" over there - they got to shop in special stores with better consumer goods, got paid better, etc. - and the workers couldn't even complain about it without being thrown in the Gulag! We at least have the right to piss and moan to our hearts' content, even if most of the time it doesn't make a damned difference. It doesn't matter where you are, the "big shots" are ALWAYS trying to screw "the little guy". How do I live with this? In my own private acts of rebellion. The Right Wing no doubt hates me because I refuse to take some low-paying, demeaning job like flipping burgers at McDonald's or mowing someone's lawn or better still, cleaning toilets (I have seen all suggested in the past few years by those who seem to think the unemployed are just "lazy") and I collect unemployment (not to mention that I work in environmental consulting - I'm surely a Communist for that alone!). But you know what? My expenses are not that high and I have two part-time jobs (both in the biological sciences) so SCREW THEM, I'm just a fishing bum living in northern lower Michigan and I LOVE IT!!!

So, that's my story and I'm sticking to it! Spence, get your misanthropic ass up here and throw some goddamned flies with me before the colors are all gone and the snow starts flying, ya grumpy old fart!!!

Jonathon

Where in my post do you see anything that remotely resembles a defense of the old Soviet Union?! Say what?! Explain to me the difference between the old "state-run" system and the production plants in China or SE Asia...Is there any? What was I really getting at? I know its a long post and modern attention spans are minute...Do I have to speak to you with symbols?! :0 :) :( LOL OMG! ,!!!! :-D ZZZZ etc, etc.

I really don't know what you are rambling on about either...I do agree with Kurt that this is not a proper place for "non-TroutNut" related topics...

I'll pull it down today before I head home...

I think what the original boys who started this thread were trying to say, is, that "Made in USA" is a marketing ploy to play in to your fantasy that a manufacturing economy actually exists in the USA and you can rest easy that you are doing your part...They are playing to your sense of nationalism. When in reality its all over, over here, unless you can flip burgers or you want to cut my lawn for me. They don't want you thinking about where something is actually produced and the exploitation involved in that production...All to save you a dime or two...:) They just want you to buy it and shut the hell up...At least don't concern yourself with whether or not the label we attach to our garment means anything or not. Don't go peeking behind that curtain there because the wizard's a fake...

It feels better to our fly fishing image to be wearing something from Montana rather than Luang Prabang! :(

Spence

Spence, do you think I'm happy with everything being made overseas?? I think you already know the answer to that one...Of course I'd rather be buying things made in the USA, if that were even possible today. So what are YOU going to do about it??? Piss and moan all over TroutNut dot com??? Insult my attention span??? Am I SUPPOSED to listen to your looooooong crabby rants??? Are you going to call me a "trained mouse" again???

Yeah, I think our trade system SUCKS too. BTW, those production plants in Asia are selling their goods to US, not a Communist Bloc held under military supervision, and the people who own those plants are BILLIONAIRES, so there's two MAJOR differences for ya right there, pal.

I think you need more fishing time there, buddy, seems like you haven't been doing enough as of late. That's why I moved up here, it's all close at hand. The whole point of my "rambling", which you sure seemed to have missed, was that, short of starting an armed revolution against the Capitalist system, you have to make your own personal rebellion, as in I WON'T cut your damned lawn or flip your damned burgers or clean your damned toilet because I have a freaking MASTER'S DEGREE, which BTW I worked damned hard for!! So, I'll find whatever work I can that is appropriate for my level of education, which includes my environmental consulting job and my introductory biology teaching job (and possibly yet another job grooming cross-country ski trails this winter, which I am more than happy to do because I myself will be USING THEM) and collecting some unemployment to make up the shortfall - which I will happily give up when (or if) my consulting job ever becomes full-time, which it SHOULD given the number of environmental issues here in the Great Lakes! If I had the time and no responsibilities, I would go join the Occupy Wall Street folks, damned right I would, but big cities make we want to puke my guts out anyway, thus my home in Oscoda (and not even in town at that).

Do I LIKE Made in the USA? Of course I do - most of my GUNS are: Smith & Wesson; Sturm, Ruger & Co.; Para-Ordinance; Winchester...the only ones that aren't are old military collectables. And American-made ammo (Remington, Winchester, Federal) is what I prefer too. My waders are also made by Simms - are they made in the USA??? Who knows...And maybe if those supposedly "Made in the USA" autos from GM, Ford, and Chrysler had been made BETTER, they wouldn't have lost so much sales volume to Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, etc...

If you don't understand my "rambling" I don't care. I think we need to get back to talking about FISHING.

Jonathon

Yeeaaah, ok old red, maybe I will come back after awhile. You seem to have some issues to work out. It'll be all right, winter won't last that long and spring hatches will come!




now!run!

No...You are right...Just don't read them...You see my name attached you are free to blow by it...It's a free country...Right? Like they used to say, "You are free to change the channel" there fella...You are holding the remote.

Jonathon I write in pretty broad generalities and don't direct my posts at a particular person...Of course I guess I wasn't all that nice to "strmanglr" and when I said "your beloved Adams" well...That was about you. But you seem to think I'm aiming at you when I'm not. If someone happens to recognise themselves in a post of mine well...Oops! That wasn't my intent.

The "caged mouse" you referred to wasn't about you either. It was about how we as anglers in gerneral, myself included, give some of our flies a special status and talk ourselves in to believing something we don't know for sure...No matter what, we don't truely know why the damn fish takes our frauds.

It was about a behavioral science concept that some have called "superstitious behavior". A man rolls a bowling ball down the lane and once it is free of his hand he no longer has any real effect on the out come, yet still he waves his hands and shakes his rear in a vain hope of changing its course...All I was saying way back then was that we anglers convince ourselves more about the effectiveness of our flies than the fish does...As the saying goes, "more angler's have been hooked by a particular fly than fish have..." That's why they have all those sparkly colors and flash...:)

To some degree we are all in a Skinner box...We aren't completely sure the what and the why of what we do...Something reinforced this behavior in us and something else didn't...I try my best to understand what's going on out there on the stream and I can make conjectures etc, and I may even duplicate my experiment, but tomorrow it just might not work...:) But yesterday I was convinced.

Now let's just settle down here and I'll remove the offending post before Jason zaps me and if I can ever find it I'll send you a paper I wrote way back in the 70's for a Poli-Sci class at the university explaining why the Russian revolution wasn't a Marxist one...;)

Spence

Spence, some of us do try a lot of different flies, or have in the past, and find that, yes, certain ones do seem to work better than others, so big surprise, that's what we stick with. It's like buying a range of products, say ammunition, and finding out that some is more accurate and reliable than others, so that's what you stick with. Some of us don't feel like wasting a lot of money trying different brands of ammo, given that it is pretty expensive these days, just to find out that most of it doesn't work as well as we'd like it to. I used to wear a vest full of fly boxes and etc. and found that, in most circumstances, most of the flies I was carrying (and tying) didn't do a damned thing for me (and remember, I'm no newbie, been at this game for over two decades now, fishing AND tying). Carrying around a loaded vest got tiring, especially when wading deeply and having to pull all of those boxes out to make sure the flies were going to dry out and not rust after dipping them below the water level...And in going to a small sling-type pack, I found that I could still catch plenty of fish with only one or two boxes full of flies, and not worry about having to tie every damned pattern under the sun. It's not superstition, it's called TRIAL AND ERROR, and convenience and simplicity. To each their own - this works for ME, and "your results may differ". 'Nuff said??

Jonathon

HOLY SHIT!! Fellas! I'd like to get Janathon, Spence, and maybe Kurt together at a bar one night, beers on me. I would just sit there and sip my Pabst, speaking only when necessary to keep the show rolling. You guys are intense. It's actually kind of refreshing.

Thanks for the insights. I had this big response that I typed out only to post it and have the site tell me I was logged off. SO ANNOYING! Why does this site log you off????

Anyway, I'm not gonna do it all again, so this is what you get.

I would like to thank Jonathon for not taking my menial jobs, without which I wouldn't be able to afford my Ramen, PBR, and overpriced flies. Pabst, now that's still made in the good 'ol USA, at least, that's what it says on the can...

And my first responder, Kurt. I had kind of suspected that your explanation was the case. Guess I'll have to do some tag peeking at the local fly shop for ultimate validation. All good responses though, this site does not disappoint.

Keystoner, since you've moved to the West Coast, you're going to have to change your Troutnut moniker. I suggest "Oregon Mist" - is it beginning to fall out there yet? How's the fishing in your area these days? Say hi to the MacKenzie for me - I did a float trip out there once with my ex-wife and we caught some redband rainbows, at least one of which was actually born in the stream...Oh, and please go hug an old-growth Douglas-Fir for me, if there are any left!

Jonathon

P.S. I'm not a beer drinker, but a good glass or two of port or cream sherry will get me going.

Matt,

I promised myself to stay away from this post...Oh well. Everyone knows how long winded I am so I have run across the "logging off" problem quite often. Just log back in and hit the back button twice and what you wrote will still be there...Hit submit...I would of never survived if I hadn't accidently discovered this...:) I just heard a collective "oh shit" from all of you...:) Sorry..."collective"? I forgot that word is off limits...;)

Spence

Weren't we all just hoping this post would have fallen off the end of this page?!

Jonathon, I feel my moniker is fine. As you may have noticed, I was careful to ad "formerly Easten PA" beneath my location so as to prevent confusion. I may be in Oregon now, but I will always be the "Keystoner" at heart.

The fishing out here has been hit and miss so far. I haven't really been able to pinpoint any real go-to flys as of yet. What seems to work one day, will not the next. Kinda makes me miss the old PA limestones where a pheasant tail 16 would almost always be the ticket. I have managed to catch some very nice fish however, both redside and coastal cutthroat. All of which were wild as I have only been fishing the section of the McKenzie that is not stocked.

Also, I believe there may be one or two old growth firs left out here, although I have not yet located them. The mist that you mentioned is starting to pick up speed, as we've had a couple of rainy weeks following a very dry summer.

Spence, thanks for the tip. Many a lengthy post has been lost due to this logging off problem.

Matt,

Don't encourage us...As it is Jason has been contemplating a "time-out" and was going to make us sit on the couch until we can learn to play together in a civilized manner...:) Separate ends of the couch at that...Us Michigan boys tend to dig our lines in the sand rather deeply forgetting that the sands are ever shifting.

Now a few cold ones together may be just what the doctor ordered...It might serve to mellow us out a bit or we may end up killing each other...:)

Spence

Can you guys tell me more about this problem? I hate when sites do that, so I specifically programmed this one NOT to. It should keep you logged in for centuries at a time if you don't log out or clear your browser cookies. The only time it should log you out is when you log in somewhere else -- from a different computer or a different web browser on the same computer (and even that is not a design decision, but an artifact of how it keeps track of who's logged in). If you're getting logged out in any other situation, the site is malfunctioning, and if you give me enough details I might be able to fix it. In all my years on this site I've never had it do that to me, so there must be something very specific that's needed to reproduce the problem.

Some people are lucky I'm too busy to program a time-out corner into the site! Reading through this thread I was going to say something to everyone to chill out, but it looks like that already happened and everyone got back to fishing and bugs (real or digital), all of which are acceptable topics.

Oh ok dad...We'll behave...Promise.

The computer problem may be caused from our end maybe. Some way we have our own computers set up. It doesn't really log you out you get a message after you hit submit that states something like you are not allowed to send so-and-so a private message...But if you type in your ID and password and wait to see your ID there and then hit the back arrows a couple times eveything you wrote is still there and you can just go ahead and re-submit and everythings ok...

Now before you go fixing anything Jason, you should think long and hard about the novels some of us have been known to create here...:) Are you sure you want to do this? You know I could use an editor or maybe I sould just take a moment or two and let the steam abate and then decide whether or not to hit the send button.

Spence