Wet fly heresy

Wet fly heresy

I am a big fan of Davy Wotton’s video, “Wet Fly Ways.” I learn something new every time I watch it. The rigging of droppers, the angle of the “cast” of flies (ie. three flies, usually all wets or maybe one dry at the top, or “hand” position, and two wets) — all rich stuff.

There is one point in the video when the straight man asks the Welsh Wizard of the Wet Fly if he ever adds a little weight to the rig.

Wotton bites the guy’s head off. It’s pretty amusing.

Good thing the Wiz wasn’t around this evening on the Housatonic.

Last night I was in the middle of about five different hatches and couldn’t catch a thing. Fish were begging to be caught, yet they spurned by every offering.

Tonight, in a different spot, I hardly saw any bugs coming up. Of the ones I saw, there was a cream-colored bug, and a dark, big bug.

Also mosquitoes. They like me. I believe the mosquitoes of the Housatonic eat very sparingly during the day, knowing I am likely to show up around dinner time.

So I rigged up with a big Light Cahill dry on top, a Leadwing Coachman wet in the middle, and a Light Cahill wet below.

It was windy, and I foolishly brought a 4 weight, 10 foot rod. Although it was windy enough that I don’t think anything short of an 8 weight would have made much difference.

So I spent the first two hours getting blown around and tangled up. There were a couple of bumps on the Cahill wet, but I couldn’t seal the deal.

I then went downstream, to a stretch of runs and riffles that operates to the side of the main current. I have had good results here in the past. The video clip shows the stretch, although you can’t tell that it is about four feet deep in the calm part. The point is there are different depths and different currents operating in a relatively short stretch — ideal for a short line, long leader and long rod approach.

I saw what had to be an isonychia coming off the water. So I cheesed the dry fly, put on an iso emerger, and kept the rest of the rig.

And I added a little piece of split shot to the leader, about six inches above the point (or bottom) fly, in this case, the Light Cahill wet.

Casting a little upstream, I quickly mended and kept the rod up high. Hardly any line on the water, all leader. Second try, a decent brown took the now slightly weighted Cahill.

Rinse and repeat, for the next hour and a half. I caught trout on all three flies, not the usual experience. One of them was pretty good but he wriggled off. That’s what you get with barbless hooks.

So while Wotton would disapprove, it was that miniscule amount of weight that got the cast of flies down enough for the fish to see them and react.

IMG_0193 IMG_0182

Unsolicited testimonial dept. — Dollar Shave Club

Unsolicited testimonial dept. — Dollar Shave Club

shave 2

I was tired of shelling out $20 or so for a pack of five Gillette Mach 3 blades, so I succumbed to the frequent blandishments of the Dollar Shave Club.

This was about 18 months ago.

The “dollar” part refers to the twin blade cartridges that are, indeed $1 for five. Plus $2 for shipping. But “Three Dollar Shave Club” doesn’t look right, somehow.

They also sell a shave butter ($8 for six ounces) and a moisturizer ($9 for 3.4 ounces).

The blades work very well. Too well. I shave daily, except for times of special revelry, and I have to remind myself to change the blades. Even so, I have a 20-blade stockpile.

The shave butter is good. If you are used to shaving cream or gel the lack of suds may throw you. Be sure to leave the stuff on for a minute or two, to allow it to soak in.

The real star of the show is the moisturizer, however. I have ruddy skin, and suffer from razor burn. This stuff nips such problems in the bud.

Everything comes monthly, and you can modify your order. Everything also comes with Ye Olde Authentic Hipster Ironic Iconic Heritage Artisanal packaging, which is semi-amusing if you’re in a good mood.

All Men’s Grooming Products

Mid-May, mixed results

Mid-May, mixed results

May 19 — An unusually warm spell sent water temperatures on the Housatonic into late-summer range. At the Elms, all I could scare up was a small smallmouth, who took a soft-hackle wet (olive).

housy smallmouthhousy spey

A fellow upstream was spey casting, for some reason. Maybe he just wanted the practice.

The water temperature on the Blackberry River in East Canaan was okay during the heat wave. This photo looking upstream looks pretty and inviting, but this stream is very difficult to wade successfully. Lately I have been using a 10-foot 4 weight rod in here, which is crazy, I admit it.

blackberry deceptive

I love fishing this hole, because the hits always come when the fly is on the other side of the boulder, out of sight. It’s pure feel and instinct.

blackberry holeblackberry hole 2

This long pool is in the stretch between Beckley Furnace and the bridge downstream. The left bank looking downstream in this photo is state forest; the right bank is private property and I have not asked permission from the owners, although I met them once a couple years ago. If they would allow me to fish on their side it would make life a lot easier.

As it is, the pool deepens and widens, and there is surface activity here when other popular spots are slow.

blackberry sucker pool

Complicating matters are a large herd of absolutely giant suckers. Know why they are called “suckers”? Because at first glance, in dim light, the herd looks like the mother lode of enormous brown trout. I waste an hour banging them in the snout with nymphs. Then the penny drops. “Sucker!” (referring to me).

So this is best fished with a slack line tossed downstream and toward the opposite bank. An indicator dry fly and a nymph on a long dropper is the ticket. A Hendrickson emerger and tung-head Prince brought these fish to the net.

blackberry sucker pool 1 blackberry sucker pool 2 blackberry sucker pool 3

Triple Header of Boredom

Triple Header of Boredom

Three discs arrived from Netflix last week. It was grim.

First up, “Dracula Rising,” a tedious piece of fermented curd starring Christopher Atkins, whom moviegoers of a certain age will remember from his pond work with Brooke Shields in “The Blue Lagoon,” a film that elicited howls of laughter at college.

No such luck here. This is strictly a fast-forward film. Way too much plot getting in the way of the story. Big 1980s hair on the girl; gratuitous 1980s feathered modified Italian wind tunnel on Chris. Brief moment of aquatic nudity, utterly unredeeming.

Half a coil.

Next, a two-fer from Jess Franco that cements his reputation as the World’s Worst Filmmaker. Not that these are films. They are videos — shot on video, edited on video, with a videographer’s eye (i.e. amateurish).

Although you’d think something called “Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula in 8 Legs to Love You” would have something going for it.

It doesn’t. The flick on the flip side is even worse, and apart from two women with shaved genitals is utterly unremarkable.

No coils. So bad even I couldn’t take it.

I was able to scratch out a weak single with the final disc — a Hammer film from the end of that studio’s run, “Lust For a Vampire,” a re-telling of the Carmilla story. This one has the Karsteins — that darn vampire family with the wild daughter — taking advantage of the fact that some nitwit has opened a girl’s finishing school nearby, making a useful addition to the supply of beautiful virgins (although the town has a bunch too).

About an even dozen breasts and the obligatory Hammer scenes inside the village pub. Also the obligatory leaden dialogue and the hero in pants so tight the audience knows which side he dresses on, if you get my drift.

Two coils, mostly for the hootage.

Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula in 8 Legs to Love You

And so it came to pass…

And so it came to pass…

And a Voice said “Go forth — well, sit down in your underwear and write a Devil Movie; be sure to include a choir singing gibberish Latin and take freely from the Revelation of my servant John, for there is plenty of material the heavy metal groups have not appropriated.”

And the scribe did as instructed, for the Voice was terrible and he was sore afraid, and also he was hung over and had not the energy to argue.

He wrote for forty and two nights and on the 43rd night the Voice asked him “Have you written my Devil Movie?”

The scribe held the script above his head, and it vanished.

The Voice did not speak, and the scribe got sore afraid again. Then the Voice said “Lose the zombies, they clutter it up, and nix on the sex scene between the padre and the nun, nobody’s shocked by this kinda stuff anymore and we won’t get the PG-13. Nice job otherwise, kiddo.”

With his advance the scribe, who was middle-aged, fat, bald and not too bright, and was thus scorned by the young women of the city, bought a fine new robe, an even finer pair of sandals, a sleek racing chariot and an even sleeker horse to pull it, and took to spending long hours in the cafes, calling strangers “baby” and buying lavish meals for the women.

It didn’t help.

The Top Ten (from Oct. 3, 2010)

The Top Ten (from Oct. 3, 2010)

Many people say to me, “Hey Sully, what are the best exploitation flicks of all time?”

And I reply, “It’s the same list as the worst exploitation flicks of all time.”

These films are, by definition, awful. They may be poorly made. They might deal with taboo subjects. They might have been made for $11.87 by a couple of Armenian Jews in Mexico.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get all that and more!

Remember, “exploitation” is an elastic term. It may refer to the exploitation of women (a common feature of schlock). It could mean the exploitation of a touchy subject — just run the lesbian vampire sub-subgenre by the gals at the next feminist symposium you happen by on your way to the track.

It always means the exploitation of you, the moviegoer — because you, like a chump, bought a ticket, or rented the DVD (a sad feature of our lax post-modernist, post-drive in society).

So here we go:

10. I Spit On Your Grave. Made in Kent, Conn. for the above-mentioned $11.87. A valiant, doomed attempt was made to recast this as a feminist film, because the grave-spitting is done by the female lead, with good reason. Nice try.

9. Make Them Die Slowly. The ultimate “Stupid White People in the Jungle” flick.

8. Deathstalker II. Sword and sorcery epic, with an evil warlock who looks like Gloria Swanson.

7. Freaks. Tod Browning’s 1931 circus geekfest anticipates reality TV and gave the Ramones their “Gabba Gabba Hey” chant.

6. Basket Case. A “Freaks” for the 1980s that also captures pre-Disney Times Square.

5. Zombie Lake. This gets the nod over “Shock Waves” in the underwater Nazi zombie category with its tender love story and nekkid volleyball.

4. Bloodsucking Freaks. The flick that gave us the deranged midget Ralphus and a renewed appreciation for the techniques of modern dentistry.

3. Evil Dead II. In which the hero, with a new group of dopes, goes to the exact same cabin and reads the exact same words out of the exact same Book of the Dead — and is then surprised when the forces of Hell are unleashed. Again.

2. Night of the Living Dead. For pure horror nobody has ever come close, certainly not director George Romero in his innumerable rehashings of the subject.

1. Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS. If you wish to alienate someone forever — someone normal, that is — make a big tub of Jiffy Pop, pop open a couple of Dr. Peppers and settle in for this monstrous epic.

One Plus One = Zero

One Plus One = Zero

Jean-Luc Godard’s One Plus One (aka Sympathy for the Devil) is a big pile of merde.

About half the film is of the Rolling Stones working their way through what eventually became “Sympathy for the Devil” on Beggar’s Banquet.

The other half is, to be nice about it, incomprehensible revolutionary gibberish.

It’s only an hour and a half but it seems like forever.

The revolutionary bits are so self-conscious and so… stupid, yeah, that’s the word — I half expected the Monty Python guys to pop out of the abandoned cars in berets, striped French sailor shirts and elaborate mustaches. “Un, deux, trois!”

About the Stones: “Sympathy” started out as a folky, bluesy thing, and it seems Keith Richards worked up that little loopy bass line for Bill Wyman. Brian Jones is shown playing away at an acoustic, but they don’t seem to have turned his microphone on.

Thank God for the fast-forward button. Two coils.

Nine Songs, Nine Sex Scenes, Big Whoop

Nine Songs, Nine Sex Scenes, Big Whoop

“Nine Songs” (2004) is a weird little pseudo-porn flick about two dull young people who hang around at rock and roll shows and screw a lot. In between the filmmakers throw in a lot of stuff about Antarctica. There is some boring dialogue that’s probably supposed to be existential, some okay-to-mediocre live footage of bands like The Von Bondies and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and some explicit sex scenes between the cute girl and the rather greasy guy.

If there’s a point to it beyond titillation, or promoting the bands (most of whom have faded into oblivion now, six years later) I can’t see it.

And if you want a fuck flick you can easily find one that doesn’t have long glacier sequences.

Two coils for the sex, but it’s really not much of a show.

Bite Me — Please

Bite Me — Please

 

Tell the truth — would you throw her out of bed for eating crackers, or small animals?

“My Mom’s a Werewolf” (1989) is a perfectly foul made-for-TV (and/or straight-to-VHS) flick that has very little to recommend it except for the presence of Susan Blakely as Mom.

No nekkidity, alas, but who wouldn’t take a shot at her? (Assuming you can get around that hair and fangs deal.)

Working out the angles is always the toughest part of home dentistry

Imagine inquiring about lycanthropy in addition to sexually-transmitted diseases, prior to jumping in the sack with someone?

I used to date a girl who looked like this — on purpose.

High 1980s hair. Bad pleated acid-washed 1980s jeans. Toe-sucking. Toe-biting. John Saxon taking a break from harassing Jim Rockford. Ruth Buzzi chewing the crystal ball as a gypsy fortune teller. John Schuck wearing an expression that says “I would rather be doing summer stock.”

One coil.

So Many Cliches, So Little Time

So Many Cliches, So Little Time

I found a two-fer DVD at the Stop & Shop a few weeks ago — “The Howling”, installments V and VI. Oddly enough, V’s release date is two years after VI.

VI has got most of what you want in this type of film, except breasts. (There is one, but it’s attached to a hermaphrodite nightclub singer.)

Now I don’t expect great writing, but can’t we do a little better than this roster of stereotypes? Sheriff who is automatically suspicious of foreigners; peckerwood pol in polyester three-piece suit, even when it’s obviously 98 degrees; preacher/weirdo; preacher’s daughter, anxious to get a little sinning in; evil villain who might or might not be Satan and dresses like a roadie for Rush.

OK then. We’re talking cat swinging. Supernaturally evil villain in charge of a circus. Tight pants and checked frock coats on same, which for some is the true horror. Stupid fat mayor. Stupid fat mayor’s stupid fat wife. Alligator boy. Malevolent midget. Lycanthropic transformation scenes shot on a very tight budget. Werewolf who looks like Michael Jackson after a long night in the Magic Kingdom. Cute girl who fails to get nekkid. Yokels. Guns. Some blood. One breast, sort of. Exceptionally stupid. A grudging two coils.