Teaching scenario / Loops

Yesterday we had our annual Fly Tying Expo in Salt Lake City. I lead a 2 hour course in Beginning Fly Fishing and Fly Casting. First hour held indoors, the second hour held outdoors.

Adults present with their young children for the most apart. My approach was to involve parents and children in the teaching process after laying casting foundations with pantomiming. Only talked about SLP, pause, and stop.

Parents teaching children and children teaching parents. I encouraged questions from everyone, especially the young, made for lively helpful discussions. Lots of pantomiming during the first hour. Had the kids use both hands on the grip with stop on the forehead. no problems with the wrist breaking.

Summary, the young ones delighted in teaching the adults and the adults took to the

challenge of teaching the young--swapped parents several times with others kids. Lot of laughing and play with the young and every one learning a basic cast.

Very satisfactory learning day for all involved with this approach.

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From Mark Surtees ....

Hi Gordy

I must be dim because I still don?t get it?how does this ?distance?, whatever it might be, determine the size of the loop ?

If the acceleration is constant how do you tell the first stage from the second ?

If there genuinely are two stages of acceleration, the second being greater and shorter than the first, why doesn?t this result in a tail ?

Mark Surtees

Outback Rigging Ltd

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Mark...

That is the whole point ! You get it very well.

The physics evidence is that there is NOT really a two stage of acceleration at all. This is a perception.

My take is that what really happens is that when the caster's constant acceleration curve is higher that the tendency is to have the rod tip to dip down is less so the rod unloads closer to the oncoming line at the rod straight position. it is greater.

When the acceleration curve is lower the tendency is to have the rod tip dip a greater distance so the rod unloads farther from the oncoming line yielding a larger loop.

The "speed-up-and-stop" which yields the tighter loop is really part of that constant acceleration but feels to the caster as a true second stage which it is not.

If we really did have two stages of acceleration this would oft lead to a tail, and other problems, indeed.

Gordy

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Perhaps as good an "authority" as any might well be a fly fisher who has lived here and fished regularly for bonefish for 50 years with his eyes wide open. Me.

Those percentages are close to what I would estimate on the conservative side !

Here is what I observed over the years, in a nutshell :

1.) Rays stopped following flats fish in the late 70's when mosquito spraying included the use of insecticides mixed with diesel fuel. Huge black clouds of these combined toxins were dumped on the islands regularly by DC-3 aircraft including the mangrove islands. This meant that they were spraying it into the water since those mangrove islands flood with every tide. THEY SYSTEMATICALLY KILLED THE PLANKTON INCLUDING SHRIMP LARVAE AND JUVENILES UPON WHICH THE FLATS FISH WERE FEEDING.

2.) At that point, the mullet population plunged. Partly due to over fishing for the roe which was sent to the Orient to be sold at fantastic prices.

3.) Snook populations declined so that by the 90's, they had almost disappeared from the lower Keys.

4.) Gross over fishing by shrimpers reduced the population of pink shrimp to the point that the large fleet of shrimpers at Key West declined from a peak of over 400 boats to only a fraction of than number ... because the shrimpers couldn't get enough shrimp to pay for their fuel. The few remaining are those with freezer capability and long range capacity so they can range all the way to Mexico. The "Mom & Pop" privately family owned shrimpers got together. They now go way out and shrimp at night, then in the morning pool their combined catch and one of them goes to port to the fish house while the others anchor at sea to conserve fuel.

5.) The population of forage shrimp on the flats declined precipitously as a result with occasional "shrimp hatches" in the fall and winter. We guard the information as to their likely appearance and the sites carefully, now, for obvious reasons. Shrimp form the principle diet of our bonefish.

7.) In the 70's and 80's, we witnessed gill nets being stretched across channels with thousands of dead bonefish in them as we saw them pulled. Sometimes I'd follow a net dragger as it went toward port and saw the men on board throwing bonefish after bonefish into the water so they wouldn't be seen at the fish docks.

Once, my dad and I saw a bonefish flat glistening like silver in the morning sun. The tide was out. I pulled my skiff up and noted hundreds of dead bonefish there. These fish, I thought, got stranded as the tide went out.... UNTIL I picked some of them up. Every fish had net marks !

8.) Although I have no proof, I suspect that the decline in Bahamian bonefish may be due to a diminution in the available food. Their shrimp population is comprised of the same species as those in the Keys.

During the 70's, I personally witnessed a scene in the Joulter Keys north of Andros in the Bahamas. The entire town of Lowe Sound had set a net on the flats there. That net must have been several hundred yards long. They pulled it by hand on the flat. As they closed it, there was a roar like thunder as the dying bonefish succumbed by the thousands. I talked with those natives. THEY WERE USING THOSE FISH FOR FERTILIZER !

I saw the same thing in Mexico.

9.) Tarpon fishing changed dramatically. Right in front of my home, which is on the Bogie Channel, we used to have thousands of big tarpon during the migration from late April to July ..... sometimes it appeared that one might even be able to walk across to No Name Key on their backs as they rolled about !

With the decline in the mullet which formed one of the principle food sources for the tarpon, there was a change in the migration pattern. Whereas formerly the fish would come and feed with ever increasing numbers collecting, they now come through in few numbers AND THEN LEAVE so we have to get to them when we can. Their population doesn't swell as it used to. They come and stay for a brief time and then go as others dribble in.

10.) We have had, along with the Bahamas, an explosion of the invasive cormorant species. These fish devastate populations of small and juvenile fish. (They were originally introduced as a curiosity at the Seattle Exposition near the turn of the century (1900 ) and released.)

NOW SOME GOOD THINGS ARE HAPPENING !

1.) Economics has helped the shrimp problem as sea caught shrimperies cannot any longer effectively compete with farmed product. Our flats shrimp are starting to increase bit by bit. The high price of fuel has helped, too.

2.) The Florida net ban has resulted in a slight increase in our silver mullet population. No longer to net boats discharge whole schools of hundreds of bonefish accidentally swept into the nets before coming to port.

3.) Though late in the mosquito control program, the scientists have taken note of the damage done in the past.

a. No longer are mangrove Islands sprayed.

b. No diesel fuel is used in the spray.

c. An aqueous low volume dibroma spray is used which (I'm informed) mainly keeps the mosquitoes from reproducing. In the concentrations used, it is not so toxic to other creatures studied.

d. Other much less damaging methods of mosquito control are also used. (I could do a paper on that alone.)

e. Our scientists have been heeded. Now spraying is done with pin-point accuracy on residential Keys areas with strict attention to wind currents, etc.

f. Fish are just beginning to follow the rays again ! Why ? Because the wings of the rays are dislodging forage critters again for the fish to eat.

g. The Bahamas has passed laws preventing the netting of bonefish.

Chuck....

As you may know, I fished with Ted Williams back then. He and I got along fine partly because I never discussed baseball with him.

Also, he and I won the bonefish tournaments at Great Exuma in the Bahamas several years in a row. He copped the prize for the largest fish each time and each time I got the one for the greatest number.

Old memories !

One important additional factor re. the decline of fish in general :

POLLUTION.

For years, commercial lobster and crab fishers used wooden traps dipped in various mixtures of creosote and old crankcase oil, etc. to keep them from deteriorating. With millions of such traps placed in our waters each year, one of our environmental scientists calculated that this almost added up to the chemical exposure produced in AK by the Exxon-Valdez oil spill !

The good news is that this soaking of traps in toxins of this kind is now outlawed in Florida.

Added to the pollution picture is something rarely discussed : We have more and more cars and trucks on our S. Fl. roads. The oil, grease, other noxious spills add to the product of countless millions of particles from wearing tires. All this eventually gets swept into our waters untreated as the rains wash the roads. For years, during the 60's and 70's, boats dumped raw sewage overboard and threw their garbage into the waters. Even the cruise ships and the Navy dumped ! Our Keys land-fills were full of toxins which leached out on every tide into our brittle waters. "Houseboat Row" at the shore of Key West was populated with numerous floating abodes. Their raw sewage (and garbage) was dumped daily into the water.

The city of Key West "pretended" to treat its sewage .... but during the 60's and 70's and into the 80's, we all saw the raw sewage boiling up from the effluent pipe less than half a mile off the island. It was non-stop... day and night. It stunk. Some guides would take their clients there to fish despite the odor because the stuff drew certain species which they then could have their clients catch. On the tide, the stuff would flow back onto the flats. Bonefish avoid tainted waters.

The good news is that at least some of this road drainage waste water from the roads goes into cachements and becomes filtered by crushed coral.

The "Houseboat row" is now gone. Modern houseboats at Key West exist ... most at the city docks. They comply with the modern garbage and trash laws and are connected to the new sewage system. So they don't pollute as they once did.

Environmental awareness has taken firm hold, here, so most anglers, tourists, and boaters avoid dumping trash and other pollutants overboard. The cruise ships and Navy don't dump, either. We have well enforced strict laws here, now, on any illegal dumping on land or water.

The Waste Management people no longer use the old Keys landfills. That stuff gets trucked up to the mainland where as much as possible gets recycled. What's left gets turned into methane and other products which reduce energy dependence a bit.

Key West now boasts a newly upgraded sewage system which no longer dumps the raw sewage into our waters. The biologists monitor coliform and other bacterial counts at key positions along the shores.

Angler pressure on the bonefish has increased exponentially. When I started to fish the Key West waters over 50 years ago, there were only two bonefish guides and one tarpon guide. (I taught that tarpon guide how to have his clients fly fish for tarpon.) Now there are over 200 hungary guides fishing out of that port. More than 300 out of Islamorada and lots of them in between. Years ago, anglers often kept caught fish for mounting or "bragging rights". Even the guides would bring back their catch to put them on display at the dock in order to attract new clients.

Guides would oft try to convince their clients to keep noteworthy large bonefish (and other species) for mounting. Why not ? They would often get part of the mounting fee to augment their incomes.

The good news is that our guides have become well educated. They fear the decline of the resource. Catch and release is the order of the day. They are also, now, very careful not to run the flats to avoid destroying the grass/ flats bottom ecosystem.

Guides no longer push their clients keep fish for mounting. Excellent and accurate mounts are now made from measurements and a simple photo.

I still hold the 12 lb. tippet World record for bonefish ... now tied. Since then, I've caught 5 fish which exceeded that weight. I'll not enter one since I'll neither kill a fish or stress it to lessen its chance of survival after release. Many of my angler friends have the same ethic.

In short, we are now proud of our modern Keys guides as they are fine stewards of our marine ecosystem ! They not only practice what they preach, but they go a long way to educate our fishing visitors on a daily basis.

Things are getting better, though with fluctuations and some down turns it is taking a long time. Wish I could say that for the rest of the World.

Perhaps more than you asked for, Chuck.