One of my go-to's is Facebook Marketplace. Over the last five years I've bought and sold vehicles, boats, a camper, trains, fly fishing stuff, and just stuff. At times selling can be a PIA but for the most part it's pretty good. Outside of 1,000 inquiries and promises from purchasers it all goes pretty well.
So when the above ad from Paru Pokharel down in Maryland popped up I took a shot. Sometimes that's just what you have to do. What got me were the saddle hackles. I like tying with them, especially for big saltwater flies. I haven't played around enough with the Bondorew/Abrams/Cordiero Flatwing patterns, like by the recipe, but have tied up a few and like what I have seen. At the FT Symposium I went into the Keogh bins to bargain hunt but this year I passed on $100+ for three saddles price tag.
That's Ray Liotta above, one of the best actors to portray a gangster role in movies, like Goodfellas. He died in 2022 at the age of 68. Just another great talent who entertained me that has passed away.
Before work the other day I did a quick Facebook Marketplace search on my way out the door. I saw the above ad with a title "Fishing Lot". I just glanced at the offering and dropped the seller a note that I'll take it. By the time I got home it was gone, as it should have been. A Dyna King vice, all kinds of tools, books, Pugliesi materials and more...for $200. I hope someone I know grabbed it and quick. Don't forget, I scored the pontoon boat a few weeks back by just surfing FBM, you just never know.
"Rain, rain,. rain....." I was at the below Grateful Dead show at the old Philly Spectrum in 1995, just five months before Gerry Garcia passed away. But, rain? Yes, we got hammered along the East Coast over the last 48-72 hours. Out near us we got 3 inches, but it seemed like a lot more, because before
work yesterday I was wading through the basement before heading to work. The Delaware River is just cresting now, that's what happens when you live on a big river. It pours, the river bumps, but then a day
or so later, when it all drains in up river, it hits it's highest point. So, on January 9th it was running about 18,000 cfs, we are now, this morning, at 90,000 cfs. This stuff isn't good. While it may be a great way to flush stuff out of the tributaries and out to sea, this all or none stuff isn't good. We get flooding, cresting, and then it all drops like a stone.
And just when we will be done drying out, this weekend looks like we're getting hit with more rain. On Saturday the winds will be cranking out of the south, which means warm air, so it will be another rain event. If, and I'm not a global warming guy, but, if things were "normal", the East Coast would be under a few feet of snow, the kiddies would be home from school, and my basement not full of water. And that does matter for the striped bass. If this was all snow it would eventually melt, go through the grounds aquifer systems, runoff feed the rivers, and create better spawning conditions for the bass.
That is why we may have a lot of rain totals over the winter but drought-like conditions during the spawning run in April and May. Add to that a couple of 90 degree early spring days, followed by a cold front and deluge, and it's over for that year. That is one of my concerns with the development of the
1,000,000 square foot warehouse across the river in Pa. While the site wasn't all that pretty, it was a natural filter for rain and water, the water came down, and eventually made it's way to the river, like underground eventually. Remember the line from that famous fly fishing movie, "Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it....". Just imagine how much a roof area a warehouse that large has, plus the asphalt parking lots, and how much water needs to go somewhere. Well, all that area you see above will be developed and the runoff will go into drains and blow out into the river, quickly. Not good. And by changing the landscape, by adding tons upon tons of fill, will just changes the angle of the landscape down towards the river where salt, cigarette butts, and garbage, etc. get dumped.
On the Trenton side it's not much better. Besides the waterfront development they are redoing all of the drainage system along Route 29, which they are planning on "moving" closer to downtown. Well those big drains all point to the river, like big drains. So when I fish in the river during a rain, and I'm there early in the event, I see the runoff first change color, then increase in volume, and then carry everything that was discarded onto Trenton's city streets into the river. Butts, mini- Fireball containers, plastic bottles, etc. If they are going to use the Delaware River in their long-term drainage plans they should have garbage collection clean-outs along the way. But that would take monitoring and money for
that to happen. Remember when they planned on having a gate system at The Flume on the 8th Avenue groin in Asbury Park to alleviate flooding in Deal Lake, all the while trying to protect the herring that go up and into the lake to spawn? Yeah, how'd that work out Frankie?
In the early 2000's I purchased two houses on the West Branch of the Ausable up in the Adirondacks. They were going to be one, a vacation home, and two, a fly fishing lodge. Put that idea up there with some of the brilliant moves I've made in my life. In 2011 Hurricane Irene came and sat right over the towns around Lake Placid, well the rains blew out the East and West Branches of the Ausable which, I think, directed most of the water making through the basements and first floor of both houses. That would eventually lead to me selling both, for pennies on the dollars I had into them. But, after the rivers
dropped, the powers that beed, decided to "fix" the rivers. What they decided to do was basically change the rivers from from their meandering and aquifying self to a straight channel. The thought was the waters would just find their way to the water highway and empty down into the Lake Champlain. In the end it really changed the river, as far as habitat and fly fishing for trout, and has taken years for that classic pocket water fishery to return, if it even has.
I guess it's all more along the lines of "You can't F with Mother Nature". But we have and continue to do so, and with that, are consequences. We can't control the weather, can't control the fish, and most definitely can't control ourselves. Water issues have continue to be a huge factor in the survival of our waterways, and we have done the most damage. We have been pouring raw sewage, chemicals, dyes, fertilizers, and sand, onto and into them, and they have affected the habitats that fishes and crustaceans call home for hundreds of years. We see that locally in New Jersey, down in the Chesapeake Bay, and in Florida's waters.
There are people who have really dug in and continue to fight the fight for things related to the things we love. For the bass it's the American Saltwater Guides Association, Stripers Forever, 1@ 32" Pledge, and I'm sure there are others. For water quality issues, and fishing, there's the Captain's for Clean
Water, HERE, who are based In Florida and look to protect those waters. Florida has become the dumping ground, sorry Mom, of just about everyone from the United States in the last 10 years. They joke that Florida is now just the waiting room for heaven. Things like politics and Covid just had the repatriation numbers growing exponentially. All of that development down there isn't sustainable. How is water consumption and waste management in all of those high rises, condos, and private homes sustainable? You can only treat water so much before it all drains out into the wild. And the industry down there to support all of those people, like big sugar, have destroyed the waters and fisheries that may never return.
And why the reflection, or rant, today? Well, today's my birthday. Born January 11, 1968. The above is a picture of me at my first birthday party, who woulda thought. 1968 was a big year in the history of the world. First, I was born, imagine if that didn't happen? But more seriously, the Vietnam War was just starting, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated kicking off riots across the country. Ironically, it would be in Newark, where some of the more infamous rioting took place, where I would go onto become a Newark fireman and now teach at Essex County College, which opened it's doors to 3,400 students in downtown Newark in 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, Arlo Guthrie sang Alicie's Restaurant for the first time in Newport, RI (we're going there next week), Apollo 7 was launched into space and Richard Milhous Nixon became the 46th President of the United States, narrowly winning over Hubert Humphrey by 500,000 votes.
I'm only 56 now, just a tot depending on what older person you talk to, but I feel old. I think I feel old because everything is so complicated these days. I am a simple minded man, and I can't keep up with the times. In these 56 years I have been alive for some huge things have occurred in history. I have even been involved in a few of them. Along the way my own life's decisions (both good and bad), and experiences, and encounters have made me who I am. Who am I and what do I want to be when I grow up?
Maslow determined that as we grow we need to fulfill psychological and physiological needs into order to be, well simply put, happy. The basic needs are at the bottom, food, water shelter, with the more psychological at the top, confidence, achievement, acceptance, morality and creativity. Some say we never get to Self-Actualization, but it's the motivate to reach that that keeps us in the game. As I get older, and looking at the pyramid, I see how much of a mess, I, and maybe a lot of us are. By your 50's, or maybe 60's, maybe I, we, should have the bottom tiers of the pyramid locked in place and solid. When we reflect, like a hard reflection, and look at the above, how solid, or successful are we? Most of us are still struggling juggling financially, our health is a mess, we have less true friends than more, the families a hot mess, and forget about self -esteem and self -actualization.
And then you think back to all of those bad decisions. Yes, we learn from our mistakes. We grow, yada yada. But if I only knew then what I think I know now. Regrets, I've had a few, but there are some really good things that came out of these 56 years. Maybe I just need to give myself a break. And go fishing. Fishing is always good.
As I get older family, friends, and influential people, I guess that's the word, singers, athletes, actors and actresses, die, well move on to hopefully a better place. I'll be joining them one day, as will you. And what does that all mean, nothing. The earth will continue to rotate, the sun will rise and set, your peeps will bury you with honors, they get on with their lives, and that's it. Hopefully, in the end we can all say we did some good somewhere along the way. And in the end we hope we don't leave our spouses and kids with a big mess of things to clean up, and there's a few shekels around for them to at least go out to dinner. I guess, in the end, we're just a big fart in the wind of life, not matter how important we really think we are.
So there you go. Too long. Tough. It's my birthday.