Zach Matthews
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The fun thing about both fly fishing and photography for me is that almost all your investment is up front. I like to know what I am paying for, I guess. With golf, you have greens fees and carts and (in my case) lots of lost balls. With skiing there are lift fees. Hunting has expensive license costs and shell costs–especially bird hunting.
With fly fishing it’s basically X for your gear then $20 a year to be allowed to fish a wide range of public water. This is one of the really lucky things about living in America. In Europe being a fly fisherman is about like being an upland hunter in the East here: you have to pay to play.
So while the sport may be expensive, hey, at least we don’t have to pay $400 a month in membership dues or what have you.
Zach
Mike –
I have no qualms about using the iPhone as a regular camera. You don’t get the lens interchangeability but the panorama feature is very strong and can make for some excellent printable shots for double-truck stuff. I have printed a lot of magazine photos using the iPhone. I shot a couple whole articles with is – nothing too technical, I think mostly about boat-building, but for ordinary photography it is just fine.
Zach
BD said it wasn’t edible but that you could suck the juices out of it.
Hahahaha!
Great post Mike. Looks like you and Brian got on a really good stretch of water and wore them out. I love the high mountain streams like that; in some ways they are all the same but each one presents a slightly different challenge. Going from pool to pool is kind of like playing a new level in a game of Angry Birds or something–you know you can make it work, you just have to work out how.
Thanks for sharing.
Zach
Maybe the coolest post in the history of the site. I love the fly casting shot. But actually I love all the shots. So awesome. Thanks Jeremy!
So what’s the story? What kind of work do you do and how long have you done it? I feel like I just read a great National Geographic article.
Zach
John –
I haven’t managed to make it work yet. Technically there is a whole back end component we have to install and when I have enabled it it has crashed the site. At some point I will be able to make this a priority and get it set up but I am not there yet.
Zach
Awesome work Jay. I just did a patch on my Gheenoe – the bottom had worn down where I had been beaching it and cracked, letting in water. Since it was the dead bottom of the boat I didn’t stress about trying to make it look too good and it still came out great after primer and paint. I am sure your fixes will be undetectable unless you know they are there.
Zach
Cool photos! Looks like you might have had some ugly weather.
Jeremy have you ever tried to do a cast and blast with marsh hens? Season opens in September if I recall correctly and I thinking about a trip down around Jekyll to try it.
Zach
Great information Kent and I agree with Jason that it’s weird they don’t document and publish their stocking–especially of a native species, which really no one can reasonably object to.
As for eating snit trout: yes they do. And more power to them. Trout are the invasive here. Striped bass is easily the best fishery Atlanta has; it’s just that they are very very difficult for the average angler to catch, especially on fly. Scott is right–they take an enormous investment of time and they really demand that you improve your skillset up to the required level. But once you’re there, they are so awesome. I know very little about deep stillwater striper fishing like you and Henry do, Kent, and it really encourages me to keep trying because I know those big big fish are out there.
I love trout fishing. I’ll love it until the day I die. But in Georgia, I just thank God that we have stripers.
Zach
That’s helpful; thanks Henry. Do you know whether there have indeed been supplemental stockings since 2005, and if so, how many per year and which years?
Thanks man and good to see you here.
Zach
That’s good to know, Gary, and I value your opinions on this because I know you have a legitimate science background. I’m glad you posted. Interesting in the extreme that there is a component of 8 year olds which may already be above 20 lbs. I’ve spotted several large-looking fish over the years, but trying to eyeball weight on a fish in typically at least 4 feet of water is a fool’s errand. Every time I have told myself they had to be over 20 lbs., I’ve later walked myself back off the ledge. Maybe my eyes weren’t always wrong. I won’t know until I catch one, I guess.
Zach
Just scanning unsourced forum posts from back before the 2005 stocking, it looks like 1990 and 1992 may have been the only stockings prior to 2005:
“In 1990 26,000 were stocked and in 92 126,000 were stocked.”
That is not very many fish at all. For comparison, I once totaled up the amount of trout stocked in a year below Bull Shoals Dam in Arkansas. They were stocking something like 1.1M fish per calendar year there.
According to the NOAA, “Striped bass are a long-lived species; they can live roughly 30 years.”
So, working off those figures, it would seem probable that there are still several 1990 fish swimming around and quite a few more 1992 fish, since 5X as many were stocked. The 1990 fish would now be 23 years old and should be extremely large, with the 1992 fish not far behind.
It seems unlikely to me that the 18-pound range fish would have gotten that big in only the 8 years since 2005, but at the same time that doesn’t seem big enough for a striper that is at least 21 years old. That’s less than a pound a year of average growth.
Which gets me back to wondering what was happening between 1992 and 2005. I think there must have been some natural reproduction, if indeed those were the only three stockings.
Zach
So we know of 1990, 1992, and then 2005 and I think there’s been some sporadic stocking since then. I could definitely see 20 year old fish being over 30 pounds, but there can’t be many of them left… unless they have in fact reproduced when no one was looking.
That’s kind of what I am trying to figure out. Can we identify by size certain year classes and thereby gain some understanding of how long it takes the West Point/Chattahoochee system to grow, say, a 20 pound fish. Because if we know there were heavy stockings in 2005 and we know the fish gain say a pound a year on average, that suggests by the mid 2020s the Hooch will be averaging what the Cumberland system does in Tennessee.
Zach
Grant –
File size was too large – try resizing in Photoshop or the equivalent before posting.
Umm, do you know The Ted? Or was the Learjet some sort of private favor?
Cool pics; that house is awesome. Remind me what part of the Rockies this is in. New Mexico?
Zach
Hey Justin –
We were hoping to run that on one earlier occasion but the water flows had not been right – they were too high again on this day. I still want to do it. But now having been down the Etowah I would prefer to run that tunnel in a kayak versus my bulky canoe.
Zach