Scott K.
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I’m pretty sure you could make a functional replica of the last one with a piece of plywood (you can probably fiberglass it if you want) or maybe even a thick doormat or bathmat, drilling sets of holes in it (each hole would be a quarter inch from its neighboring paired hole). The pairs themselves three or four inches from the neighboring pair. The nubs would be replaced by running weedwacker line up through the pairs to create a small hoop shape that sticks up. You may need to countersink the knots on the underside. Saw one of these one time, looked pretty slick.
When I wear this out I will be test driving the shorter Old Town Pack 12, if I can find one for a good price. The chines on the Guide series are really nice and stability-adding features, but the weight of the 14’er (78 lbs.) versus the 12’er (38 lbs) is pretty amazing.
I’ve spent some time in the Old Town Pack – I wouldn’t call it terribly stable.
Jay – Great to hear that you like the outriggers. Game changer indeed. I’ve been too busy travelling and with work to get out there to excercise mine – hopefully I will soon, though.
On Kayaks – I have the WS Tarpon and love it, especially the hatches that flip open – a really, really great feature. The 12′ is the sweetspot in manueverability, tracking and standability. I’ve done ocean stuff and somewher around class II+ whitewater in mine no problem.
On paddles – Don’t skimp on the paddle.
A fun morning no doubt. Always good to get on the river. Pretty good fish by Mr. Matthews – even in some pretty tough turbidity and raft hatch conditions. At some point, Zach said we’d be lucky to get one fish between us – and he pulled one in. Way to go man. Fishing for these suckers is tough in any case, pounding a lot of water and dealing with a lot of goosegg days is par for the course to come up with anything.
Below, a party barge sneaks up on an anchored Zach.
Dave – the outriggers are the Hobie Ama Outriggers. Bought them online at Austin Kayak. My yak is not a Hobie (it is a Wilderness Systems Tarpon 120) so I bought them hoping (but not sure) they would fit (they did). By “fit” i mean that outriggers need to be keyed to the amount of freeboard at the mounting point of your kayak. Too much freeboard on your boat – not much stability because the pontoons aren’t firmly in the water. Fortunately, these pontoons are just enough in the water to make me stable when standing. Frankly, the Tarpon is pretty stable without these, but anchoring in current while standing and casting without outriggers really exceeds my deftness and comfort level. If you need Dave, I am happy to measure the amount of freeboard I have so you can judge whether these would work for you.
It is absolutely appalling that raw sewage overflow still runs freely into the Hooch.
Hooch discharges.
On siltation – my thought is that the siltation behind MF is one of the most pressing, “under the radar but we’ll have to deal with it eventually” issues on the Hooch. This issue, I’m sure is not just isolated here, but will be a persistent problem nationwide as more and more dams are silted in. I think there has been a big to-do with a dam by Stanford’s campus for quite some time.
Thinking about it a little more, the folks that probably have the most incentive to dredge bull sluice are GA power and the city of ATL. GA Power because part of the reason that GA power can’t make much from MF is that the storage capacity has been so reduced by the siltation, they can only turn the turbines on for a limited period of time before it drains the place, and as Zach says above, exposes just maaaasive amounts of silted boggy bottom. Also, apparently GA power is entitled to a statutory rate of return based upon their asset base, which has a very broad meaning – if they could capitalize the cost of dredging into that base, they could raise rates and recoup it.
City of ATL because it would increase the amount of water stored above atlanta for drinking water purposes (though, I’m frankly not sure if “stored above atlanta” and “usable” are synonymous). I am sure Florida and Alabama would have something stern to say about dredging it out for water storage purposes.
Obviously, the dam coming down would be the best result. Now that dam removal has taken root in the west to some extent, I’m hopeful that this eventually turns into national legislation incenting dam owners to take them down….
Thanks Zach –
First, this brings to mind a couple of things.
1. New dams are being proposed in the Hooch watershed.
First – Glades – up around Lanier. Involves some crazy water piping from the Hooch to fill it and maintain it. http://www.gladesreservoir.com/
Second – Bear Creek Resevior – South Fulton – I don’t have a link to the proposal, but they too propose to pump water out of the Hooch for storage.
2. This is a really interesting video series about some guys that made a Quixotic voyage in a dory down the MS river. Much talk is about the pollution, dams, etc. Being from Memphis originally, before watching this, it was one of my big dreams to canoe the entire Mississippi – no more. http://vimeo.com/channels/omrp
3. For a real time chart of turbidity, see the last chart on: http://waterdata.usgs.gov/usa/nwis/uv?02336000 Note that the bacterial levels are calculated based on the turbidity level since they are well correlated and turbidity is more readily measurable.
4. An interesting document about the MF dam and its generation scheduling. http://www.georgiapower.com/lakes/hydro/pdfs/OperationsPrimer.pdf
5. Really interesting movie on Colorado river and the fact it doesn’t flow to the ocean. There is a longer version somewhere. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNlSRyanQg8&feature=player_embedded#!
6. We live in an industrialized nation and reap the benfits of that every day in uncountable ways. A natural effect of this is that water becomes a means to an end and gets dirtier. At some point, though, our technology should advance sufficently to be able to scub completely any water that we are discharging as a point souce and to mitigate the harms of non-point source poluution. For instance, most rivers are cleaner now than they were in the 1960s or even the 1980s. I don’t think we are at this point yet, however.
Second, on the hooch – For the lower hooch below MF, the primary WQ issue is the siltation back behind the dam. Basically, all of the silt from all of the city’s northern development is sitting somewhere in bull sluice. This silt is causing the water coming out of the dam to be relatively turbid from the get-go. If you actually go above MF, the channel of the hooch on the sluice has surprisingly clear water. It is much much more turbid below the dam. By the way, if you’ve never been on the sluice, its one of the most beautiful in-town places you will find… it feels very remote and, because of the geography, you really can’t see or hear the city around you.
The silt casues the turbidity and the silt has caused the decline of the MF tailwater’s trout fishing – apparently, there used to be some monster holdover fish in the river. Now with the lake shallow and the river temperatures in the 80’s in high summer, holdovers almost certainly don’t exist.
I guess the issue is, how do you deal with this…. It would be great if all of the silt were removed (but this would stir up heavy metals and other similar items for some time while being removed – which creates its own set of regulatory permitting issues) and it would be great if the dam came down. However, both of those are expensive processes and, in terms of economic benefit, without other action further downstream, my fear I doubt there is currently a value proposition to do either. The river is reasonably well commercialized down below the in-town reach of the hooch. There is the crap plant and the entirety of chatahoochie industrial boulevard. There are the other dams, there are the other lakes, there are the nuke plants, farmlands, etc. etc.
All that said, I think there are some points of light. Now, more than in the past, there is a good deal of interest in the hooch. Notably, Sweetwater Brewery raises some degree of awareness, several businesses operate some type of float trip / rental business on the hooch, there are volunteer groups that do clean-up trips in and around the hooch and now there is a new Chatahoochie Nature Center up near Roswell. The key will be how these groups leverage the public and whether enough of a groundswell can build up to do a watershed-wide clean-up effort. Note that one of the dams has just recently been removed at Columbus.
One thing you can do as an individual is, as Zach points out, to report discharges. Since most cities have dedicated water quality staff, and they want to use them, they are usually more than willing to jump all over this stuff. Call them.
I wanted to give you all an update on the attempt at the self-guided PR trip if anyone ever finds themselves in PR looking for something different (again, we were in PR for a wedding, we had pretty limited time to fish – basically, 3/4 of one day. And given that I’d come directly from 4 days of guided tarpon in FL, a guided trip wasn’t what we were looking for).
In any case, we ended up driving from San Juan about 2 hours to a town on the Caribbean coast called Parguera (basically, a small fishing / PR weekender town on the south west coast – and completely opposite San Juan). Main feature of the place is about 30 mangrove islands spread out and protected by a reef within about 1/2 to 3 miles from the town.
Went down there on a hunch – a mention on trip advisor of being able to rent boats and motors down there, and be able to hang / cruise around to the various small islands. Also, a place online had said this was once a great bonefish flats area but the gill nets had really killed it in the 80s and 90s (and continuing through to today). So, I brought along my 8 wt just in case we saw one. Oh – the main point of the excursion was ostensibly not fishing – it was just to do something different with the Ms. other than the rote tourist stuff in san juan.
So. We drive there (mountains – pretty drive), rent a boat (a 15 foot flat bottom carolina skiff with 15 hp engine), head out of the harbor, and it immediately started to rain…. hard. On one hand, this was pretty surprising because the Caribbean coast is supposed to be very dry (an apparently aptly named Dry Forest is located a stones-throw from where we were). On the other, my weather mojo has been bad lately (e.g., my 4 days of cloudy and blowing tarpon hunting just before), so this was not too shocking.
In any case, we anchor up in 4 ft of water in the rain near one of the more westerly islands. We immediately look down and see 4 or 5 juvenile (4 foot or so) poons swim high and happy right over the white sand flat by the boat. Holy shit. Not expecting that.
Rigged-up some 60 lb shock on the 8 wt and dropped a poon fly on there. Unfortunately, no hook-ups on those fish (long gone by the time i rigged up) or the other fish (only saw 3 others and they were basically in the boat when i could shoot to them – the rain, wind and glare narrowed the window of what i could see in the water to just a few feet in front of me).
Even still, we had a great trip. Lots of sand and grass flats between 6 inches and 6 feet (average – 4 feet). Worth exploring if someone has the desire to do it. Who knows, maybe i saw the only 7 tarpon in the area. Never saw a bonefish.
Overall, we had a great time and made some great memories being huddled under the rain fly of the skiff and knocking around the area when it sort of cleared-up. We wish that we had more time and that the weather could have been better, but it was still a fun off-the-reservation activity.
A few thoughts:
– More locales need to freely rent boats with motors. It is awesome.
– Go on weekdays. We were there on a weekend, and it is quite the spot for folks on the island to bring / rent a boat and boom box and cruise around. Even in the rain.
– There are a few boat companies. They are all about $25 per hour on the boats. We were able to negotiate something better for the four hours we were out. I’m sure if you wanted to do a whole day or week, you could cut one heck of a deal on the things.
– If you are thinking about doing this, the total cost of this can be pretty high (in the couple of hundred per day range if you factor rental car into the equation), plus the actual drive. Still, cheaper than hiring a guide – obviously, you are less assured any type of success in actually catching fish.
– An interesting trip would be 3 days midweek and stay at a local hotel. The town caters to local tourists, so its pretty clean and has the typical assortment of bars and a gas station you’d expect. Hotel is certainly not ornate, but looked fine.
– Place is a big scuba place, if you’re into that. There is apparently a huge wall everyone likes to go look at.
– We really wanted to stay close to San Juan and do the lagoons by the airport via kayak or SUP. Never did this. We couldn’t find any actual company that rented the boards or Kayaks in the lagoons. A few listed online, but no addressees and we never received calls back. That was disappointing.
– We also wanted to go to the islands (Vieques and Culebra), but the timing didn’t work for us in part because weekend ferries are difficult to get a ticket for (i.e. you gotta show up 4 hours early to hope to get a ticket to Culebra, or so I’m told). From the looks of it, those are pretty cool places and worth checking out.
– 50% of puerto rican drivers drive like little old ladies (e.g., going 30 in a 55 in the left lane on the expressway). The other 50% bob and weave between the first 50% like teenagers in a riced-up cars living a fast and furious fantasy. We saw 2 car overturned and way off the road accidents in our 4 hours of driving in mostly fine weather. We were not surprised. Look out!
– If anyone actually goes to Parguera and fishes this place, let me know how it turned out!
I agree. I have been consistently impressed by TFO, especially the BVK (which fits my casting style out of the box). I’ve had a 9 and just bought a 12 and it will be replacing my xi2 as prime for poons. Yard casting with the 12 has been great – we’ll see how good of an actual fishing rod it is next week.
I will say that, after casting a BVK (9) and xi3 (8) side-by-side for a week’s worth of fishing last fall, the xi3 is silkier and smoother with a little more loop / presentation control (with the BVK, i can only easily throw relatively tight loops – tough for me to open it up for a gentle close presentation). However, for my casting style, the Scott S4S beats the xi3 in the silky and smooth category hands-down. If I had to do it over again, I’d still have a BVK, but would probably have an S4S instead of an xi3…. but i digress. Note that the BVK and S4S are very different rods – for anyone looking at them, you need to try both.
Matt (or anyone else) – I really want to replace the cork on both of my BVK’s – is this do-able while keeping the existing reelseat?
I’ve had a similar problem of keeping my stuff dry (mostly due frequently hitting rapids in my sit on top with a bag lashed in my stern). Happened across what I think is a nearly ideal solution that will also work as a walk-in pack.
http://www.seattlesportsco.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=1858&idcategory=12
I haven’t put a lot of time on mine, but so far I love it. Took a lot of searching to find it. The main compartment is water-tight, with the second zippered compartment water resistant and there for easy access to granola bars, flyboxes, etc. It has a few points on it that you can attach carabiners to that would work well to use as lash points for rod tubes. Worth checking out. Its a rare backpack that has a good outside pocket and a waterproof main compartment. I have the black. Very low-key. $99.
In the less-than-fully-submersible, but still really cool category, you may want to check out the SealLine Urban Backpack – I’ve not actually seen one, but their specs look just like what you are looking for. Only issue I had with them was they are not fully-submersible. SealLine’s build quality is always pretty killer (usually better than seattle sports – judging from my dry bags i own made by each of them), so I have no doubt it will be a great pack.
Trent……like Bob….I’m no filmmaker but films that capture my attention are the ones that “go against the grain.”
One other thought.
How do you guys think a “southeast” (GA, TN, NC, VA, WV) brook trout video would do versus Georgia only? I have plenty of “characters” that are die-hard brookie fisherman in both GA and NC.
For me, I think just Georgia or GA / NC would make the story more interesting. A big problem that I’ve seen in most FF videos is that they don’t tell a story because they bite off too much and thus the narrative collapses (i.e., it turns into fish porn instead of a story). Having a deliberately narrower geography would force you to dig in, get close with the characters and actually tell a focused story.
Its like most things in life – dreaming big is neccesary, but you’ve got to narrow your focus when you are implementing.
