4th of July patriotic fish roundup

The Hideous Jabbering head of Issak Walton gets a flag doo-rag:



"On this fouthye of Julye more patriotic Phishye"

Block Prints | John Koch | Fish Art

Going to the Great Waters Fly show in Chicago this weekend ?

John Koch, Trout Lily studios will be showing these:


Corner Pool, Paradise



A Small, Quiet Place


The Mirror Pool


October

As well as a whole lot more great work. You chance to purchase and meet the artist all at the some time. Buy a print, buy him a beer.

Fish Art

Not trout, but goldfish that look like a drawing but made with wire.

Calder.

Reflections on the Water: The Metaphysics, Sport and Literature of Fly Fishing

D'ARCY EGAN

THE PLAIN DEALER

Steve Schoenwald of Hinckley receives some fly fishing tips at Wade Lagoon from Case Western Reserve University Professor John Orlock. Orlock is teaching a class on the sport - and art - of fly fishing.

To understand the great lit erature spawned by the sport of fly fishing - books written as long as 500 years ago - pick up a fly rod and learn to cast and catch fish.

So says Case Western Reserve University Professor John Orlock.

Orlock is teaching freshmen the art of fly fishing and quite a bit more this fall with his course "Reflections on the Water: The Metaphysics, Sport and Literature of Fly Fishing."

On Thursday morning, Orlock had a dozen young men and women waving fly rods and casting a small fluff of orange yarn into the still waters of Wade Lagoon, dappling the reflection of the nearby Cleveland Museum of Art.

"The course is an examination of fly fishing with an integration of academic skills, providing an introduction to outdoor life," said Orlock, who, not surprisingly, is an avid fly fisherman. "Fly fishing, like no other sport, has been responsible for a proliferation of great literature."

A part of the college's SAGES (Seminar Approach to General Education and Scholarship) undergraduate program, the course has been a collaborative effort, said Orlock. Molly Berger and Peter Whiting, deans of the College of Arts and Sciences, encouraged Orlock. So did steelhead trout fisherman Bill Siebenschuh, chairman of CWRU's English Department, as well as college librarian Bill Klaspy.

Klaspy, also a fly fisherman, is guiding the students through a wealth of literature on the sport.

Ray McCready, president of Orvis - a leading maker of fly tackle - donated rods and reels. The equipment prompted Orlock to offer the course twice each year.

Orlock pointed to Stephanie Jackson, a student from Moon Township, Pa.

"On Monday, she couldn't make a cast," he said. "Now, she's showing a lot of skill."

A great help, said Orlock, was a session this week with George Vosmik, a local master of fly casting and fly tying who has taught hundreds of people the art of fly fishing over the years.

A smiling Xi Chen of Solon, who had never fished before, was adeptly making roll casts.

"It's my favorite class," said Tyler Smith of North Ridgeville. "Maybe because it gets us out of the classroom. But it has been fun, learning to fly fish and reading a lot of great books."

The course reading assignments include:

Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It," which became a popular movie credited with rejuvenating the sport.

"Uncommon Waters: Women Write About Fishing," edited by Holly Morris.

And, of course, the ever-popular "A Treatyse of Fysshynge Wyth an Angle." The book, penned by Dame Julianna Berner in 1496, was the first on sport fishing.

"There is such emotion in fly-fishing literature," said Penny Tucker of Stanton, Tenn., co-instructor of the course, as she collected rods and reels at the end of the class. "It was hard not to tear up at the end of 'A River Runs Through It.' "

A burning question is whether a sport can be considered art.

Orlock has the credentials to make such a determination. The former head of the theater department at CWRU, he was awarded the Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Chair in the Humanities in 2000. He's also a playwright, whose works have been featured at such major theaters as the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Cleveland Play House and the Focus Theatre of Dublin, Ireland, among others.

"Fly fishing is like dance," said Orlock. He points out that the great fly fisher Joan Wulff was a dancer before she took up and excelled at the sport.

"I thoroughly enjoy fly fishing, and fly fishing literature," said Orlock. "Introducing both to students has been a terrific experience. I believe it is an introduction for them into a new and wonderful world."

from:

http://www.cleveland.com/sports/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1221295087284330.xml&coll=2

Banner update

6 weeks left of the season up here... time for an update

Fish art from the British Museum

In the immense and crazy pile of stuff that is housed in the BM.
One fish carved in stone from 2000+ years ago



One fish painted on pottery from 10 years ago

CATCH UP TIME

Yes - I've been lazy about updating the blog for a month.

NO LONGER.

will be updating with a series of fishing reports from the last four weeks, but will start with this.



I thought this blog was a fishing and travel blog. Apparently I have no idea what this blog is about as this word cloud image from Wordle points out.

IF you need a trophy ...

Try one of Yoshikazu Fujioka works of Paper Trout art. Super cool. really.
The Oshorokoma pictured here.

The Fishing Pause Ends: Part 3

So this morning the fishing pause ends.

What is the fishing pause ? In Wisconsin the early season catch and release inland trout season ends a week before the regular season starts. Last week all fishing for trout was closed on the inland streams. This morning the regular season starts, and one might be sure that most of the catch and kill that occurs throughout the season will happen in the next couple of weeks across the states trout streams. If science mattered we would know that the continued selection of the largest classes of fish for harvest have destabilizing effects on the stream populations and ultimately are negatively selecting for large fish, as those are the ones that are generation after generation failing to reproduce. We can also know that across the board hatchery fish are no replacement for wild fish. Hatchery fish have smaller brains, and reproduce at a vastly lower rate in the wild. A recent study indicates that the Chinook salmon runs in California had as few as 10% wild fish, with the concomitant problems that comes both in putting a far weaker fish into the environment and masking the collapse of the wild fish population. Yesterday all fishing for salmon on the west coast was closed:

All salmon fishing banned on West Coast

Salmon fishing was banned along the West Coast for the first time in 160 years Thursday, a decision that is expected to have a devastating economic impact on fishermen, dozens of businesses, tourism and boating.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez immediately declared a commercial fishery disaster, opening the door for Congress to appropriate money for anyone who will be economically harmed.

The closure of commercial and recreational fishing for chinook salmon in the ocean off California and most of Oregon was announced by the National Marine Fishery Service.

It followed the recommendation last month of the Pacific Fishery Management Council after the catastrophic disappearance of California's fabled fall run of the pink fish popularly known as king salmon.

It is the first total closure since commercial fishing started in the Bay Area in 1848.

It isn't as if this should be a surprise. We consistently pay no attention to the facts as they sit in front of us regarding management of these resources. These are not isolated scientific data sets. The recent article in National Geographic about the the collapse of the international fish stocks had this quote:

For reasons not fully understood, when areas are closed to fishing, snapper aggregate within them, forming large resident populations. Spiny rock lobsters ("crayfish" to New Zealanders) do the same. Their density inside the reserve is about 15 times higher than outside. Commercial crayfishermen have cashed in on the reserve's success because the outward migration of crayfish—a process marine biologists call spillover—brings the crustaceans to their pots, strategically placed just outside the boundary. These former skeptics are now some of the reserve's staunchest defenders. They refer to it as "our reserve" and act as marine minutemen, reporting poachers and boundary cheats.

S0 do these macro systems say anything about the rivers of the Midwest ? Our own history of the elimination of species, the Michigan Grayling, the Lake Superior Coaster and the Lake Michigan Lake trout all speak to the fact that all of these natural systems have been damaged and continue to be the wanton acts and policy of who and what we are as the alpha predator.

A curious thing happens when fish stocks decline: People who aren't aware of the old levels accept the new ones as normal. Over generations, societies adjust their expectations downward to match prevailing conditions. The concept of a healthy ocean drifts from greater to lesser abundance, richer to poorer biodiversity.

So today the fishing pause ends.

The Fishing pause: Part 2, more Damn Science

From the Science Daily


Fishing Throws Targeted Species Off Balance, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2008) — Fishing activities can provoke volatile fluctuations in the populations they target, but it's not often clear why. A new study published in the journal Nature by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and colleagues has identified the general underlying mechanism.

Research led at Scripps with a distinguished team of government and international experts (including two chief scientific advisors to the United Kingdom) demonstrates that fishing can throw targeted fish populations off kilter. Fishing can alter the "age pyramid" by lopping off the few large, older fish that make up the top of the pyramid, leaving a broad base of faster-growing small younglings. The team found that this rapidly growing and transitory base is dynamically unstable-a finding having profound implications for the ecosystem and the fishing industries built upon it.

"The data show that fished species appear to be significantly more nonlinear and less stable than unfished species," said Professor George Sugihara of Scripps. "We think the mechanism involves systematic alteration of the demographic parameters-and especially increases in growth rates that magnify destabilization in many ways-which can happen as fishing truncates the age structure."



How exploited and unexploited fish populations differ. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of California - San Diego)

Read the whole article here

The fishing pause: Part 1- Damn Science

From the Science Daily

Fewer Fish Eggs, Smaller Fish Result From Over-fishing

ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2006) — The practice of harvesting the largest individuals from a fish population introduces genetic changes that harm the overall fish population, a UC Riverside graduate student and colleagues have determined. Removing the large fish over several generations of fish causes the remaining fish in the populations to become progressively smaller, have fewer and smaller eggs with lower survival and growth, and have lower foraging and feeding rates, the researchers report.

The figure shows the decrease in body size in Atlantic silverside as found by a research team led by UCR graduate student Matthew Walsh. The silverside, having been reared for five generations in laboratory experiments, are all the same age. The fish shown here are from the fifth generation. The fish on the left are from populations from which large individuals were harvested over five generations; the fish in the middle are from populations from which fish were harvested at random over five generations; and the fish on the right are from populations from which only small fish were harvested over five generations. (Photo credit: M. Walsh)

Great Art - Great Cause

John Koch at Trout Lily Studios, Pierce County Wisco, has put up a special trout print to benefit the annual Rush River clean up.

Titled "Recyclable Trout" 100% original art wood block prints.
prints and images copyright © John Koch 2008

You get one from him direct @ Trout Lily Studios

Fish Prints : Prints

Leah #1
Leah #2
Jonah #1
Jonah #2

Fish & Fish Art

The fish hunters headed out onto Big Shag lake yesterday.


We had some success acquiring subjects for artwork and consumption.
We used the hand ground ink, Japanese brushes and rice paper. Ink was applied.

Paper applied.

Prints were pulled.

Jonah printed his fish, too.


Jonah printed three colors of fish on top of each other. Leah made a print with different colors of fish making a school.

After that the fish were filetted.

And eaten for a late afternoon snack.