Just some cool stuff. First, I went and switched up the fly on The Average Angler logo. For nearly 15 years it has been a Royal Coachman, and now it's somehting more saltwaterish. I kinda of like the way it came out, few things I would tweak if possible. So after I drew it up I went to a
local embroidery shop to place an order. Over the years my first and only batch of hats have been lost (blowing off my head in the ocean), given away, taken by my wife, or damaged, ususally when the metal clip in the back rusts out. So just getting few hats done is not an easy, or affordable, thing.
Pretty much like anything else these days. It's $45 for the inital setup and then each hat, I went for the expensive Flex-Fit hats, with the embroidery is $35 each. Ouch! But I wanted to get the hats done. Why should I wear someone's elses hat? Once I got them home I could see the person that made them wasn't a fly fisherman, the cast is too straight, and not drawn like I did. The fly, whatever it is, doesn't have the hook showing from it, even just a little bit, which helps visullly identify it as a fly. And the logo is too big. I really like the original hats that I had done over 10 years ago. That guy was in Neptune, but has since went out of business. I may look him up rather than try and explain to my new people what I need.
And since this blog is about fishing, I guess now family, with a little Grateful Dead mixed in, how about this. This is the last year for the Dead & Co. going out on tour. Allegedly, that's it. No more. For the last few years they have been doing shows in Mexico calling it "Playing in the Sand". It's six days at an
all exclusive resort and three nights of shows with the band. They stay here and the stage is set up on the beach right there. All the food and drink you could want. As we speak Erin and Lauren are down there with my-ex, livng the life. When I asked Lauren if these shows were different, she explained it was like Deadhead's with money and that she preferred "the Shakedown grilled cheese crowd". This is crowd is older, a little more put together, and has a bit more money. I just took a look at tickets for the Philly show in June and they are $91.50 a piece. It's crazy what tickets for concerts cost these days, I can't imagine paying hundreds, or thousands to see Taylor Swift or Billy Joel.
And then there was this. What to do? Theresa and I took the dreaded drive out to Long Island to hook up with some of her grammar school buds. We went to a restaurant in a town called St. James on the North Shore. I don't know Long Island, but I did ask, are we near Gardiner's Bay or Montauk? Just in case I wanted to make a drive and needed a place to stay. It's about an hour and half away from them.
They treated us to a wonderful dinner and the menu was amazing. It was a menu that took me about 20 minutes to decide what I wanted. It was one of those farm to table local kinda places. On the menu, which I am not used to seeing living in New Jersey, was striped bass.....wild caught. I went back and forth. I haven't killed a striped bass in over 11 years....the commercials are ruining the fishery.....catch and release......all going through my head. And then I said really? So I was going to get something else, but I really wanted to try it. It isn't farm raised, it's probably from a nice 34-38" bass, probably caught here on Long Island......alright I did it, and glad that I did. It was delicious, and I
would order it again. While I was eating I couldn't help but think of the commercial side of the striped bass fishery. On Long Island seine net fishing was very popular and productive way to legally and commercially catch striped bass, the problem with that is, it help decimate migratory striped bass strocks. I am not sure if it is still allowed. While New York and other states have a commercial fishery New Jersey does not. What we do have is the Bonus Tag program that trasnferred our allotted commercial quota amount to the recreational side. In anything about anything related to money
there are going to be cheats, and in fishing we call them poachers. It happens in every fishery, both recreational and commercial. But it was, and still is, a big thing with striped bass. Anglers would be creepin' while your sleepin' and catch fish and bring them to the back door of the finest, and not so finest, restaurants, eliminating the reporting, and cutting into the quota, bypassing the "fees"
associated with fish mongers and places like the Fulton Fish Market, and having to report it as income and paying taxes on it. If you catch a 30 pound bass and the going market rate is $4 a pound and you sell it at the back door for $2, they save and you just made $60 to go fishing, and that's if you sell one fish. Jeff Nichol's, a Montauk Captain, and comedian, wrote a book, Caught, about this very same topic. It's a good read and eye opening at the same time.
And on this Martin Luther King Day I offer the above video in which legendary Bimini bonefish guide Ansil Saunders talks about having Dr. King out on his skiff just days before his assassination on April 4, 1968. I met Saunders and spent some time with him at his shed over a
decade ago while there visiting the Bimini Big Game Club. Inside he built and maintained his gear and skiffs. I didn't know of his interaction with Dr. King then but Simm's put out Mighty Waters last year. It's a good quick watch. I guess there's a little fisherman in all of us.