beatdown paradox for today: the unethical skater:

at one time or another, you've prolly been bored enough to read some fool fishing website (you're here, fella...) and, in specific, the bulletin boards. we've all attempted to sit through the pain of these fishing forums/pits of dispair where people post a question or something, and then four hundred geriatric armchair internet jockey experts chime in with the latest rumors based on no fact and all heresay. i'll admit to being guilty of reading that shit a few times, clinging to my beer and hoping sweet, sweet death would relieve me from the idiocy and flat-out half truths and really not believing some of the virgin shit these dudes and their misiformation like to spew. it was like watching a compound fracture happen. you didn't want to, you knew the outcome wasn't gonna be good, but it was so gross you couldn't look away.

the entire insanity of it all became way clear to me the one time i actually put a person together with their moniker. this guy, i knew him in th real world and dude was velcro-shoe all the way. guy who could type shit about anything that had to do with reels, lines, rods, worldly anadramous destinations, name drop "famous" fishing celebrities, the whole nine. guy had every line the day it came out, all the in vogue new rods, everything, but i never once saw him on any of the rivers he claimed to be fishing. kinda creepy. i once heard he honestly claimed making 120 foot casts on the gaspe from the front of a canoe and that really shocked the turd outta me, cause when i knew that dude not so long ago he couldn't cast 40 feet with a tailwind and i gotta have my doubts some shit clicked and he became an elderly overnight superman jammer.

anyway, more than anything he and his minions loved to debate about what was ethical with steelheading. now bear in mind these dudes seldom fish much and if they did, it was for summer runs. they loved to think the stupid things mattered, trying to define everything instead of letting shit be and being down with the vague beauty of it all, trying out new stuff and making the game their own. guess they really rodded off on making steelhead fishing more difficult than it really is, most likely because they just sucked at it and needed something to blame or something.

we make that observation freely admitting we suck at steelhead fishing as much as the next guy, as well, but whereas some dudes need to find an excuse for when the skunk saddles up and drop kicks your balls, we're more into finding an excuse to go fishing again so we can understand a little more about why we keep getting kicked in the sack.

thus, i direct you to two sage, key, completely true pieces of guide advice i tend to groove on when the dungeon and dragon masters start dorking off about the ethics of 5 or 3 wraps of tinsel on a size 3 wet, exactly and i mean EXACTLY how much distance is acceptable between wading anglers (if you have to ask, you too fucking close, buttslammer) and whether foam can be used on a steelhead fly (true story, there's a famous steelheading dude with a famous bigass beard who might live out east of here and he used to talk tons of shit about us tying foam back skaters with stinger hooks about 5 years back, and now, guess who's got their name on a—you guessed it—a foam bug with a, yep, gasp!, stinger hook. the solace being that fact that this fly tips over sideways and pretty much doesn't skate the way a skater's supposed to skate. so much for product testing, i guess.) without having the gjods of dirty capilene crucify your ass:

Dirty T: "people act like a steelhead eating your fly is an act of god. uh, well, it's not. because they're sorta stupid if you consider that no bug actually looks like a size 3 rick's revenge."

and the Cap'n eloquent prose: "Dude, they're so stupid a lot of times, they'll eat a dog turd on a rope."

Cap'n's comment sparked something the other night, so i aim to find out. how stupid of a fly will they eat, how unethical can i make it and can an skater even be unethical?

we think yes, according to most people's definitions. hence, i believe i've tied the most unethical skater ever, and the four people out there who know me also know that's the kind of punk rock shit that makes me proud of my balls. now, we've caught summer runs on a floating line and bare hook wrapped with silver tinsel just to see if it'd work, but and after tying this thing, i started wondering, "Jesus, that's so stupid, it's not even right."

so, insofar as the grand heirarchy of skater ethics, here's where we're at (apologies for my shit camera work):

old school and still cool, the venerable size 4 moose turd, eau natural (save for four sprigs of blue mylar) we still roll this one lots if we must fish summer runs cause it's a great old fly that gets it done. good as a comeback in small sizes, as well, but it gets waterlogged to easily and you gotta hitch it halfway down the run:



the semi ethical foam back October Caddis Buck Rogers. Still got moose for the wings and tail, but a lip of foam that won't stop skating, rides real shallow in the film, bobs and weaves, and needs no hitch. this fly was our first foray into velcro-shoe killer territory quite a few years back and like most every fly tied in the last 20 years, we're sure we weren't the first to tie it so save yourself the trouble of sending me a scathing email, nerd:



the most unethically perfect skater we might ever tie, and by no means do we think we're the first to stoop to such lowly measures. it took 4 minutes total, uses all synthetics, both foam AND a bunch of Zap-a-Gap, has more hook gap clearance than any of the other two, will never sink, needs no hitch and will skate, sputter and pop better than a retarded kid who just shotgunned a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and is now watching his first porno.

the only thing this fly is missing might be smelly jelly, an egg snell and some borax.

you cannot imagine how proud we are, how much we look forward to fishing camp water on the North Umpqua with it and all told, how much we honestly believe this things gonna throw down:



pretty sure Dirty T would approve just for its out and out blue-collar inventiveness, but he prolly wouldn't be caught dead fishing it unless i could guarantee no one would see him. then, he'd freely admit a fly of this design will destroy and then promptly go destroy with it.

the Cap'n, on the other hand, is somewhat mired in tradition and we're pretty sure he was downright pissed off and disgusted when i showed him this.

both made me feel extra special about my new pet skaterpopper. we will be testing it this weekend and shall report back.