Is This Thing On?

 

Holy cow!

CQCQ

CQCQ

I'm such a dunce. I let my hosting fees expire several years back. Not on purpose, just not paying attention to the 30 or 40 email notices I got from GoDaddy. My domain was immediately snapped up by some douchebags somewhere and I have no idea how I would get it back or how much they're holding it hostage for. They eventually quit mailing me small pieces of my domain along with their demand letters.

Then today I finally started poking around and found how to just revert back to a blogspot domain, so I'm going to see if this works. 

I've been publishing over on Substack for a couple years with very limited success, and it just seems like I did a lot better here. For one thing I had a pretty good email list of people who were interested in what I had to write.

So what I'm considering doing is publishing on both platforms. I think Substack comes across as a little pushy or intrusive, or maybe people think they have to pay for a subscription or something. But I also discovered that everyone on Substack thinks they're a goddamn philosopher or something. I feel like the guy making fart jokes (and noises) in a business meeting. Also, the amount of AI bs infiltrating Substack is a little annoying. I get halfway into an article and realize it's starting to sound a bit generic.

Truth be told, I miss my old site, miss Blogger- I just want to be home again. I never meant to leave you. I just needed a break at the time from weekly posting.

So if you're getting this or seeing it please, Please, PLEASE drop a little comment, let me know you're there, and if you prefer seeing something here over Substack. If you're still on Blogger and want nothing to do with Substack I'll round up my better writing from there and publish it here as well.

I promise to amend my ways.

Sincerely,

Jason Tucker

Fontinalis Rising

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Morning Coffee- Because what else do I have to do?

Whew! Yawn, stretch, scratch, repeat- let's have some coffee, shall we?

I'm home this morning on this fine spring day, so why NOT have some coffee? I am indeed having a cup of coffee, but truth be told ~gulp~ I have quit drinking coffee every day. It has been affecting me adversely in multiple ways more as time has gone on (no, I'm not getting old- don't even go there), so when I came down with a flu-like illness in early February (the flu) I took the opportunity to quit and only drink it occasionally. Coffee- I love you, I just hate how you make me feel.

For those of you sick of news about the pandemic- skip the next two paragraphs, though I promise they are not overly morbid. I don't want to impose any more talk of that on you than you can stand. I just didn't feel I could glibly not mention it.

The elephant in the room of course is COVID-19. Perhaps you clicked here to read something not coronavirus, but I don't think there's any escaping it for any of us. I'm a bit of a news nerd sometimes, and when I caught reports of this in December that some novel virus was creating a health crisis in Wuhan China, I perked up and paid attention, especially when they first reported it was spread by people with no symptoms, as opposed to almost every other serious infectious disease the world has faced until now. AIDS may be an exception. I've been following this data collection and world map from Johns Hopkins tracking the disease since January, when it was only a couple thousand cases in China and a sprinkling of cases in neighboring Asian states.

You all know where we are now, and I'm no epidemiologist. I can only encourage you to listen to health authorities whether the CDC, your state, your county, or your family doctor. Take care of your family, and especially check on the older people in your life. Give them a phone call, give an encouraging word, offer to get them groceries and leave them on their front step if you are healthy enough to do so. This is not a 2008 financial crisis moment, nor even a 9/11 moment- this is a Japan-attacked-Pearl-Harbor-going-into-World-War-II moment. It will affect us all, and like World War II we will all need to step up and make sacrifices for the good of the world and our country. Like that war we are also going to go through hardship not seen in a generation, not since that last terrible Great War. We are also going to lose a lot of people. We are going to need each other. To all the naysayers out there- I pray to God you are right. The realist in me knows better.

~Fishing Content Below!~

Captain of his ship- Dave Grossman dispensing wisdom

This is a fly fishing blog (or used to be), and I'm happy to report that I finally got out to fish last Wednesday with the illustrious Dave Grossman of Southern Culture on the Fly. We had this trip planned before things got really serious out there, and it felt like a last hurrah of sorts. We fished the South Holston, and Dave really knows his water and put us on a bunch of fish despite my amateurish efforts at Eastern  tailwater fishing. I may write an actual post about it. One thing I learned is I need to be less stubborn. I hate showing up and not knowing my shit or having the right stuff, but I checked those boxes hard. Dave finally lost it (in a good way,) insisted I re-tie his way with his flies, and I caught fish on a steady basis for the rest of the day. We had a great time, laughed all day, got some sun, took in amazing, almost Western views, and even tied on some dry flies and I caught my first topwater fish of the year. It's so satisfying to make a good cast and mend, get a good drift, and watch that fly disappear. I could cut my hook points off and just watch that all day.

my kingdom for a fish- a South Holston brown falls for the Squirmy

I'm going to get to work on some content for you here. I have a backlog of unfinished posts, and it seems like there's never a shortage of things to say about fly fishing. In the current crisis, talk of fly fishing can seem glib, whistling past the graveyard so to speak (sorry for that metaphor). But there is no shortage of information and bad news out there; we all will need a break, something to take our minds off of trouble, if even for a few minutes.

I have been working on a series for Gink and Gasoline on small stream fishing, so if you want more to read the link above takes you to posts I've written there. Be sure and click around on their other excellent content too. Cameron Mortenson at The Fiberglass Manifesto continues to crank out great daily content and he has put together a top-notch reading list so check that out.

I love you all and I want you be well. I can't tell you how much your support and readership have meant to me over the years. All of my best friends and fishing buddies I have now I've met as a result of this blog, and I can't be more thankful. I also know I can be crusty and unpolished at times, so thanks for putting up with me too. Somehow we'll all emerge from this, and we will need the peace and meditation that fly fishing provides more than ever. Get out there if you can; if you can't, then tie some flies and get caught up on your reading. I'll try to help you with that.

Well, my coffee is gone and I've got writing to do.

Let's get after it.

Monday Morning Coffee- Nothing Special Edition

Eeeerrrgggghhhhhpppphhhhtttt! Yawn, stretch, scratch, repeat- It's Monday morning, so let's have some coffee.

It's been so long since I've done one of these I've almost forgotten how, but it's a rainy day and I'm off work so why not.

one of many great fish in Michigan this summer

I have not been fishing since July, which helps explain my dearth of content. I had a wonderful week of fantastic dry fly fishing in Northern Michigan then, which has sustained me up until now. I also got out around the same general time period on the Chattahoochee River with Louis Cahill of Gink and Gasoline, and Dan Frasier, the famous carp master. I caught my first, if diminutive, striped bass on a fly that day, and we saw a couple monsters swimming around. We also watched a coyote catch a duck on shore.

I'm still writing a series on small stream fishing for Gink and Gasoline. You can find the links here, here , here, here, and here. I also have a short fiction piece in the latest Southern Culture on the Fly you can find here. It's about fly fishing gangsters, so I hope you enjoy it. But enough pimping my wares.

Since then my girlfriend and I got three horses- foals- in September, so that has been interesting and exciting. They are draft-cross horses, which means at six months old they're already the size of small quarter horses. I'm no horse person, so the learning curve is steep.

our three monsters a few weeks after arrival

Bow hunting has always been my first love. I shot my first deer with a bow at age 14. I got into fly fishing as an antidote to my obsession with bow hunting to be honest. After a break of eight years I finally made the effort this fall to get back into it- got my bow tuned up, got my shot tuned up, and got a new seat for my tree stand. I had the inestimable privilege to hunt with Alex Cerveniak of the Deer Trout blog in November, and I took two deer home with me. We saw nice bucks every day. It was one of the best hunting trips I've ever been on. The hospitality was fantastic too. Today I'm cooking up some osso bucco from venison shoulder I have. Technically it's supposed to be shanks, but it works for the various shoulder bits too. I can assure you it is delicious. I'm really thankful to have the meat and enjoying some great meals. I also got a sous-vide cooker for Christmas, which has been a game-changer for cooking game. Cooks it perfectly without drying it out.

like falling off a bicycle

To bring all this back to the present time and place- it's winter, and my work is a little slow, so this is my time to get back out and fish here in the South. Hopefully I'll get out this week and be able to report back here. It would be nice to restart this blog. Josh Mills of the Chucking Line and Chasing Tail blog is doing a #dozenfordownunder charity event to support relief efforts in Australia due to the wildfires, so please support that if you can. I'll be tying up a dozen myself, so you can look for that (and bid) on my Instagram account @fontrisn.

I don't know much else besides that. Right now I'm just watching the winter rain pour down and cleaning house. I'll get to tying some flies later in the day. I hope you all are doing well. Or should I say "y'all"?

My coffee is done and there's work to do- let's get after it.

All the Gold in the World

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Mark 8:36

It is much to my chagrin to see that the Pebble Mine is back from the dead. The Trump administration seems bent on fast-tracking the permitting process. After all the public input, the social media campaigns, and the efforts of the prior administration to put an end to it, the specter of a massive gold and copper mine in the headwaters of the greatest salmon fishery on earth again rears its ugly head.

Regardless of your political bent I think it's safe to say that the Pebble Mine won't benefit you. That gold and copper won't end up in your vault. It will provide a few jobs for a few decades, but nothing in comparison to the vast profits it will provide for its owners and investors. Meanwhile the $1.5 billion salmon fishery benefits commercial and recreational fishing industries, natives and residents on an annual, sustainable basis. Without the Pebble Mine it can continue to provide food and jobs and a way of life to people in perpetuity and long after Pebble has shuttered its doors and left a lake of waste waiting for the chance to escape and wreak havoc.

The mine will also provide decades, if not centuries, of risk to the Bristol Bay region. Acid mine waste is not pretty, and its devastation on the region would be terrible, and incredibly difficult or impossible to clean up and restore. They plan to contain the acid mine runoff in huge reservoirs in a seismically active region. Sure, they say they have it all engineered, but mining has a terrible track record of accidents and low compliance with regulation, and once you let that genie out of the bottle it's awfully hard to stuff it back in. Those dams only have to fail once. Pebble Mine is not progress. It is not even civilization. It is just ugly destruction in one of the most beautiful places on earth to enrich a greedy few.

But there's an even better reason to stop the Pebble Mine. The world is not vast anymore. Its abundance is not boundless. Its wonders are tarnished. Everywhere the natural world is hemmed in by agriculture, fences, cattle, dams, roads, development, pollution, garbage, defacement, climate change, and a myriad other cuts inflicted by man. The few natural spectacles left on earth only exist because they have been preserved by us, as if stuck in amber and displayed on a shelf. There are no unmanaged wild ecosystems that exist on their own apart from man. All of the ocean is over-fished, except for a few carefully managed systems like Bristol Bay. The time for trade-offs is over- there is no wildness left to barter over, an oil well for a coral reef here, this salmon run for that mine there, these orangutans for another palm oil plantation. We are down to the last examples of everything- the last rhino, the last intact salmon run, the last migrating antelope herds in Asia, the last intact rain forest. These are the last conservation hills left to die on, there are no others. When those are wiped out there is nothing, and nothing will bring them back.

Recent headlines announced that now over a million species are in peril of extinction in the next few decades from human activity. Ninety-seven percent of animal biomass on land consists of humans and their livestock. Are we shooting for 100%?

In the past we made those choices. We dammed the Columbia (and every other western US river worth damming) because there were salmon in British Columbia and Alaska. Salmon runs on the West Coast are just a memory, a dim shadow of their former selves. Now salmon and steelhead in British Columbia are under increasing pressure. Chinook salmon in the Yukon system are in trouble and no one knows why.

There are a scant handful of natural spectacles left on earth- parts of the Amazon rainforest, which must remain vast to be a spectacle, and the Brazilians and others are steadily chipping away at it. The animal spectacles of Africa- the charismatic megafauna are there but dwindling; the great migrations of wildebeest and plains game for now seem to be intact. The Great Barrier Reef is there but suffering greatly due to bleaching events caused by high temperatures. There are still some large caribou herds in the north, but the vast Labrador and Quebec herds have crashed due to natural cycles. Yellowstone is wonderful, but is a highly managed system hemmed in on all sides by agriculture, and a local populace uneasy with bears and wolves in their backyards.

So Bristol Bay and its salmon runs is one of the last natural spectacles left on earth. Its fisheries are heavily managed to maintain that abundance, but it's one of the last places you can go and witness an entire ecosystem, complete with mass migrations, and dependent megafauna like bears, seals, salmon sharks and orcas, due to the fact that it is not under threat from development like the Pebble Mine. We shot all the passenger pigeons; we killed the bison and turned their prairie into cornfields, or fenced it off for cattle. We dammed the Columbia and Snake rivers and throttled their salmon and steelhead runs for cheap energy and water for agriculture. Florida fisheries are being choked and whittled away for Big Sugar. We don't need to do the same to Bristol Bay. We are in danger of having all the gold in the world, and nothing to spend it on.

Micropterus Rising

I am a devotee of native species. In Michigan I'll take native brook trout over imported steelhead. The native smallmouth and largemouth bass are more captivating for that matter. I love steelhead, but their presence in the Great Lakes feels artificial and managed. I feel like I'm buying a fake Gucci bag on Canal Street. Steelhead Alley feels like you're surrounded by guys trying to sell you $20 Rolexes. Don't get me wrong, I love fishing for steelhead. Back in the day I also enjoyed haggling over fake Rolexes in Manhattan.

Here in the South it's all about Centrachids- the sunfishes including bass, brim, bluegills, sunfish, shellcrackers, crappie, warmouth, red-spots, orange-spots, redear, pumpkinseeds, and more.

The basses are most fascinating. There are local native basses here not heard of much outside of the region. Up north it's simple. Not simple, but of the larger basses there are largemouth and smallmouth bass. There are also rock bass, warmouth, and the sunfishes (also not as diverse as the south).

In the South you have sunfishes not found up north, but its the variety of bass that stand out. Largemouth and smallmouth are here in various places and numbers, but then there are all the local, more obscure species that are basically localized to specific river drainages and sub-regions of the south, and so you have shoal bass, redeye bass, Chattahoochee bass, Choctaw bass, spotted bass, Guadalupe bass (proud Texan), Suwannee bass, and Bartram's bass. Some are closely related to largemouth, some to smallmouth. They can hybridize, and I think some can hybridize with both as well as with each other. This is problematic, because the bucket brigades have been active here, moving these species around, and they have changed entire regimes in various watersheds. Where spotted bass have been introduced they tend to take over and either out-compete, or hybridize out the local fish. (There's a problem with locals moving flathead catfish around too, with bad results for fish species not adapted to these aggressive predators.)

To my knowledge, so far out of the local species I have caught redeye bass, shoal bass, Bartram's bass,  and spotted bass. Some of the identifications have come from locals commenting on my social media pics. The Bartram's bass is native only to the Broad River system, and maybe one or two other streams in South Carolina. I think Cameron Mortenson caught some on a guided trip there. From my reading, the Bartram's, which most resembles a smallmouth to my eye, is believed to be a unique species, but it has yet to be properly described scientifically.

Bartram's? Broad River bass

These species of bass and some sunfishes fill the ecological niches that trout fill in colder streams. If you go to the Chattooga River in midsummer you can fish crystal clear riffles with small poppers and terrestrials, and catch redeye and shoal bass all day long. It is very reminiscent of fishing brook trout on hoppers up north, from the clarity of the water to the behavior of the fish, and the flies you use. It is an absolute blast, but for me the satisfaction comes in catching wild, native fish not found outside the region. It's the difference between seeing a lion pacing in a zoo, and seeing a lion on the African savanna lying under an acacia tree, supine and panting, with blood drying on its snout, it's yellow eyes sizing you up through the shimmer of the heat.

Fishing the Chattooga for bass is perhaps my favorite. It's a big system so I'm not giving up a secret spot here. It's the kind of place you can go and catch bass all day on topwater flies, stalking them like brook trout, catching fish until you're tired of it, or until the sun and heat beat you down into surrender. Most of the fish will be brook trout sized, but they can run three or four pounds. It's great fun on four weight glass.

I certainly still enjoy chasing trout in the mountains, especially the native brook trout, but the bass epitomize fishing in the South. I thought bass fishing here to be fishing warm, green, weedy ponds and lakes, or zipping around massive reservoirs in a metallic flake bass boat. Instead it is far more varied, interesting, and accessible than I could have imagined.

Monday Morning Coffee- SCOF Edition. Gink Too

Uuuuurrrrppphhhhhtttt!!! Yawn, stretch, scratch, repeat- let's have some coffee!

It's been awhile so I thought I'd, you know, share some coffee with you. Ahem.

It's springtime everywhere now, so if you're not out fishing you're probably in traction.  Here in Georgia the daily temps are in the 80's. In another month I'll just wish that was the case. This week some of my buddies are doing a combined turkey/trout/mushroom camp in Michigan. I was there last spring but need to save my time for a hunting trip in fall, so pour one out for me guys and hopefully I'll join you next spring.

our Abbey Road

There's a lot of great fishing to do here in Georgia as well this time of year. The bass and panfish are looking up, and there are some hatches on the trout streams. I've spent most of my spring redoing the landscaping at home, and now it seems to want to storm on the weekends again. I did get out with my friend Jeremy a couple weeks ago for some farm pond bass and panfish and had a lot of fun. (you can find Jeremy on Instagram as @lostinwydaho). It was great fun and I'm hoping to fish with him again soon.

farm pond shellcracker. hope i got the name right

I've been doing quite a bit of writing lately, but my betrayal of this site continues. I wrote a brief piece for Gink and Gasoline about small stream fishing. It was such a disservice to the subject that we decided to turn it into a series. I've written about 10,000 words so far and have hardly scratched the surface, so those should be up on Gink every week or two.

As the title above indicates, a new issue of Southern Culture on the Fly comes out today (ish) and I have another piece in it. It's more tongue-in-cheek musings, in particular on the miserable weather we had this winter. It rained almost every weekend from November on, and I believe the winter rains set records in the Tennessee River valley which includes some of the waters I fish. Anyhow, it's a fun piece I wrote for SCOF so be sure and check it out. Watch for it in your social media.

some streamer research for the SCOF piece

I've gotten back into oil painting in the last year. I don't know that I'm the next DeYoung or Schlaff, but I really enjoy it. It's a non-verbal way for me to express creativity without the agony of writing. Right now I'm just painting brown trout in profile while I try to learn proportion and how to blend colors. Brown trout are pretty forgiving. Just when you think you've mangled it you'll see a picture of some grotty brown who looks just like your painting. You can do a really bad job on the proportions and anatomy, paint some spots on it and voila!, it looks great. So for now I'm enjoying that as another creative outlet. These two have already found homes with friends of mine.

how do you rotate these things?

That's all I have for now. Keep tuning in to Gink and Gasoline for the small stream series, and Dave Grossman says he wants a piece for every issue of SCOF, so keep an eye out for those. My apologies to Dave for the rough condition I sent the last one in. Editing- it's like plastic surgery for writing.

My coffee is gone and it's time to go to work- Let's get after it.

Monday Morning Coffee- SCOF Edition November 12, 2018

Errrrgggghhhhppphhhtttt!!! Yawn, stretch, scratch, repeat- it's Monday, so let's have some coffee.

Yeah, I know a lot of Mondays have come and gone without a peep from me and you're wondering "Why now?" I ask "Why not?". So pull up a chair, look over your shoulder to make sure the boss isn't headed your way, and let's take a coffee break and get caught up.

All personal blogs seem to follow a similar arc- early days and small beginnings, the building of fame and following, and a tapering off period, which this blog appears to be in. Only the hardiest blogs survive and thrive, like Gink and Gasoline, and The Fiberglass Manifesto. Part of my problem has to do with my moving from Michigan to Georgia. This blog was very  much centered in my love of Michigan fishing, and it is tough to make a transition from one to the other. I also felt like I needed to take a break for a couple years and figure out where I'm at in life. It can be wearying to be a "public" figure in the age of social media. Maybe I'm not cut out for this. I know, cry me a river.

But the truth is, I love blogging and writing, and I'm slowly getting to know the fishing in my new Southern home. Some of it is different. Some of it is spectacular. Some of it really obscure.

I've been doing the obscure kind of fishing lately, hitting small local streams in search of brook trout. It involves the same backwoods bushwhacking I did in Michigan with a certain verticality mixed in. These mountain streams are tough. Instead of tag alders there's mountain laurel and rhododendron. Instead of beaver dams, there are waterfalls. But there are also brook trout. Definitely brook trout.

I didn't trout fish all summer because of the heat- I almost can't bear the thought of it when it's over ninety degrees out. Sometimes it is markedly cooler in the mountains, sometimes it is not. A couple months back I got a call from Dave Grossman asking if I would write something for Southern Culture On the Fly (SCOF for short) on the pursuit of brook trout. So, at great personal sacrifice I have pursued these noble fish whilst storming my brains out to think of what to write. It has been a labor of love with a smattering of fish to show for it, but I think you'll enjoy the result. The winter issue is due to drop today and so I hope you'll check it out.

Here there be brook trout

I'm leaving on a cruise this Sunday. If you scroll down just a little you'll find my write-up on my first bonefish experience from this time last year. This year I'm going back to Xcalak, Mexico for a rematch, and fishing Roatan, Honduras as well. I'll try to do some posts on that when I get back. I've written here and here on Gink and Gasoline about my experience at their bonefish school at Bair's Lodge, Andros Island. I've gotten through several personal hurdles over the last couple of years and plan to do more fishing and hunting in the future and I'm hoping to share some of that with you.

So please check out my latest article on SCOF if you will, and check out the other fine writing therein, as SCOF continues to be one of my favorite online magazines for its laid-back self-deprecation.

I don't know about you, but I'm out of coffee, so have a great week and spend some time outside if you get the chance.

Let's get after it.