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Is Fish Slime Part of the Next Leap in Antibiotics?

By
Dan Zazworsky
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We all know that the slime found on fish skin is their protective barrier against whatever they encounter in the water. The slime is known to protect them against fungi, chemical pollutants, other fish, illness and of course anglers wet hands. But recently teams of researchers have been studying the anti-biotic applications of the slime, as fish utilize it too keep their wounds clean and infection free during the healing process.

As researcher Sandra Loesgen explains:

“The slimy mucus that coats fishes acts as a protective coating. As the animal moves through the water, it can come in contact with all kinds of bacteria, fungi, viruses and more; the mucus acts as a physical barrier. Researchers speculate that there is also a chemical component produced by the fish’s microbiome that helps ward off infection.”

To discover more about the research, check out this article from TheConversation.com!

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Pebble Mine Update and Call to Action

By
Will Poston
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The comment period for Pebble Mine’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) has started, and the battle rages on. In a confrontation of sorts, Rob Theissen—President and CEO of North Dynasty Minerals Ltd., which owns the Pebble Mine project—wrote an opinion piece in the Anchorage Daily News, as a way to respond to an earlier anti-Pebble Mine opinion piece. This literary battle is happening in the midst of the completely inadequate—but immensely important—Pebble DEIS public comment period. And, just recently, an independent financial assessment of Pebble Mine has surfaced and paints a negative picture for Pebble’s economic feasibility. There is ample evidence of Pebble being the “wrong mine, wrong place,” but corporate interests are undeniably powerful. We must continue to support the diverse coalition opposing Pebble Mine and submit comments to the Army Corps of Engineers in opposition to Pebble.

Let’s start with the independent financial assessment, which Pebble never provided. Richard Borden, with his 23 years of experience in permitting mines and other projects, is no stranger to environmental and financial assessments. So, when pebble refused to release its financial assessment, he took it upon himself to supply the Army Corps of Engineers his independent financial assessment of Pebble mine. Borden’s “Pebble Mine Economics,” finds that the plan outlined in the DEIS is “almost certainly not economically feasible”.

Borden concluded that the Pebble project proposal would not make economic sense, unless Pebble broadens the scope of its operation from the plan outlined by the DEIS. Also noted in this report was the subject of Acid Mine Drainage (AMD); Borden found that, given the AMD producing nature of the mine’s ore and rock, “it is almost certain that any open pit mine will create perpetual water management and treatment liabilities,” which could cost “$8 million/year in perpetuity”. Many of us already knew the infeasibility of Pebble, but Borden’s independent assessment provides more evidence of Pebble’s negligence and alludes to the strong possibility that Pebble will have to widen the scope of its operation. For more on the Assessment, check out this Natural Resources Defense Council article: Pebble Mine Fails Financial Analysis. Also, be sure to submit a comment to the Army Corps of Engineers!

Now, after gaining additional perspective on this issue, let’s turn to these two combative Pebble Mine opinion pieces. A group of fishing lodge owners wrote their opinion piece on March 8th, “Pebble Mine Draft Environmental Impact Statement Fails Alaskans,” sparking the Pebble response. In the lodge owners’ piece, the group wrote:

“Pebble has put forth a massive proposal that covers only a fraction of the ore in the ground. The Corps has allowed this stunt and as such, the draft EIS ignores Pebble’s planned expansion.”

This statement, as we now know from the Borden assessment, is correct and must be taken seriously. If the current DEIS does not account for a planned mining expansion, the Army Corps should amend their DEIS and Pebble should make their actual intentions known.

Pebble’s CEO and President Rob Theissen responded with an opinion piece of his own, titled “Don’t Buy The Alarmism About The Pebble Mine“. Theissen claimed the fishing lodge owners’ opinion piece was dragging the Pebble name through the mud. Yet, there has been ample criticism of Pebble Mine and its entire permitting process. In his opinion, Theissen added: “Pebble will not affect the water resources of Bristol Bay. Water quality in nearby streams will be maintained. Downstream water flows will continue to support healthy aquatic habitat. And there will be no water quality impairment post-closure”. In no world can Thiessen guarantee these statements; accidents happen, and human error is common.

When you look at the magnitude of what one accident or failure could mean for Bristol Bay, it becomes clear that Pebble Mine is the wrong mine in the wrong location and must be stopped.

With the highly questioned DEIS, a less than ideal comment period length, and Borden’s independent financial assessment, the need to speak up against Pebble Mine has never been more important. Please, if you haven’t already, submit a comment to the Army Corps of Engineers, voicing your opinion and desire to protect Bristol Bay. You can submit a comment through this link from Trout Unlimited. Additionally, reaching out to Alaska’s elected officials– Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Sen. Dan Sullivan, Rep. Don Young, or Gov. Michael Dunleavy–or your state’s Politicians can make a huge difference. The outreach and support in opposition to Pebble has been amazing, but we are not done yet–keep up the pressure!

Comment–> here!

Media curtesy of Trout Unlimited and Fly Out Media!

This article was written by Fly Lords team member Will Poston.

Here are some previous Pebble Mine articles from Flylords:

Pebble Mine’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement Released….Grim Outlook For Bristol Bay

2017 politics going pro-Pebble Mine

 

UPDATE: Ross Reels Wins 2019 Colorado Outstanding Outdoor Industry Brand Award

By
Dan Zazworsky
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Ross Reels was just won the 2019 Colorado Manufacturing Award in the “Outstanding Outdoor Industry Brand” category. They also received a nomination for the same award last year, and took home the gold this year! With their dedication to detail and focus on quality it is of no surprise to us that they have been honored with this award.

In the category, Ross was up against 2 Denver-based outdoor companies, Topo Designs, and Guerrilla Gravity. Topo is an outdoor apparel company and Guerilla is a custom mountain bike manufacturer.

Check out the full Ross Reel line-up here, and discover why their reels are second to none.

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Product Review: REI Co-Op Spring Camp Gear

By
Jared Zissu
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This spring REI is offering it’s members an exclusive incentive of 20% off one full-priced item and an extra 20% off on an REI Outlet item if you are an REI Co-Op member. As big REI fans we were asked to pick out a few new products to test on a fishing/sailing trip down to the Florida Keys. Sleeping on a sailboat, the first product we asked for was the new Magma Trail Quilt 30.

If you are spending 4 nights on a sailboat in the Keys, it’s important to have a comfortable sleeping situation, and the Magma Trail Quilt did just that. What we enjoyed most about this product was its ability to breathe in warmer conditions on the boat – since it’s a quilt style bag I was able to adjust the bag to the different temperatures throughout each night.

The quilt features an 850-fill power goose down shell with a water repellent finish – perfect for adventures when you might get a little wet.

On this trip, we spent our mornings on a flats boat working with the Bonefish Tarpon Trust crew on fish sampling and tagging and in the afternoons we would hike around local flats in search of tailing bonefish and hungry barracuda. We looked for a backpack that could fit a bunch of our gear, would work well on longer hikes, and could also breathe well in warmer conditions. When talking with REI they told us about their new Flash – 45 backpack, they said this would be the perfect, lightweight backpack for the trip we were taking.

Our first impressions of the bag were it’s appealing look – we asked for the pumpkin orange color bag and it came out awesome in photos with the blue and green backgrounds of the Florida Keys. REI sent us the Medium bag which is a 45 Liter bag, and it fit all of our gear perfectly with extra space if we were spending additional days off the boat. The bag is simple with one large deep pocket that holds most of your gear, but it’s also very well equipped with ample side pockets for water bottles, extra rods, rain shells, and smaller items like wallets and keys… The 3D contoured hip belt and ventilated back panel were perfect for the sunny afternoon hikes – and the quick pull drawstring on the bag allowed for quick access to contents in the pack – This was especially helpful when we needed to change flies last minute.

Overall we were really impressed with the backpack. There were definitely times where having a fully waterproof bag on this trip would have been helpful, but other waterproof options are twice the weight and half the comfort. We are excited to bring this bag out west – where it will definitely come in handy on longer hikes into high mountain streams.

During our evenings in the keys, we would take the Canoe to a hidden beach and grill up some local seafood. In the bottom of our backpack, we were carrying around the new Flexlite Air Char, weighing in at a mere 1 pound, we didn’t even remember we had the chair in our backpack, but when it was time to have a few beers by the campfire the chair definitely came in handy. Easy set-up and very comfortable, especially considering its size and packability!

We had a blast testing out these new REI Co-Op products, and it’s clear they invested a lot of time and resources into designing these products, not only are they innovative, but they look great and were extremely functional for this recent trip down to the keys. Head to REI and take advantage of their Member Exclusive event valid through April 8th.

The LeHigh River: A Hidden East Coast Paradise

By
Dan Zazworsky
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When you think of big, wild east coast brown trout, typically you think of the Upper Delaware River or the tailwaters of New England. However, the Lehigh River which is the second biggest tributary of the Delaware River, holds large wild brown trout and boasts scenery that rivals many Western trout rivers.

Recently a group of anglers has begun working to grow the fishery and share it with more people as the Reading Eagle writes:

“It has the potential to be the best drift boat fishing east of the Mississippi,” he said of the river below Lehigh Gorge, “30 miles, and every bit of it trout water.”

Check out this video highlighting the Lehigh River and its fishery:

To read more about the growth of the Lehigh, read the rest of the Reading Eagle piece, here.

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Video of the Week: Las Pampas x Dirty Water Fly Co x Patagonia Fly Fish

By
Conner Grimes
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Who else likes streamer fishing? How about streamer fishing for brook trout in South America? We may not all have the experience to answer that second question, but thanks to this video from Dirty Water Fly Company, I can say that my answer would no doubt be yes.

Check out our latest video of the week to see what happens when three companies come together to set up the perfect chance for hefty brookies on streamers. I can’t imagine the thrill of hooking into one of these beautiful fish in such a scenic area.

This video was published by Dirty Water Fly Company. Be sure to check them out on Vimeo.

The video of the week is selected and written by FlyLords team member Conner Grimes.

Video of the Week: Black Fly Eyes 2018 Reel

Video of the Week: Notes From The Road

Video of the Week: Goodoo

Why Are These Trout Turning Blue?

By
Nick Boehme
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[This paragraph has been transcribed from a handwritten letter sent to the Flylords’ office from an unknown location]

“To whoever receives this letter.

We all grew up hearing fish tales. Stories that boasted unbelievable catches, missed strikes and lousy net jobs.  These tales gave rise to the term “Pics or it didn’t happen”. I’ve been one to exaggerate a few inches on my trout,  but nothing substantial enough to discredit by name. I was browsing Instagram one day when I noticed the “Blue Bow” A trout with these hyper blue, almost fake colors.

It was posted by the Instagram account Trout Row, and it seemed credible due to his large following. It was until I read the comments, and convinced me it was a fraud. A lousy photoshop job to trick the masses, but something Inside me wanted to believe it was true. I tried to contact Mr. Trout Row because I kept telling myself, maybe this wasn’t fake, maybe there was a real “Blue Bow” I sent him a message saying I would like to speak more on this matter, and he said we could chat. He gave me a cellphone number to contact, with an area code I could not locate on a search engine. I wondered why he couldn’t just message me what I needed to know, but it all became apparent in the near future. He answered the phone with a tone of paranoia, almost as if he had been waiting to get something off his chest like he had committed a crime. He went to explain how the Blue Bow was real, and not just a ruse to gain followers. Obviously, at this point, I was stunned, but there were too many facts and comments that seemed to prove it was fake. I passive-aggressively asked him about the Snopes article, because I recently found he admitted the hoax there. He told me he was paid off by the government to tell people it was fake because it was an accidental release of an experimental breed of fish. He quickly said he had to leave after this, and before I could ask why I was met by the depressing sound of a dial tone.

I was left with more questions than answers, at first I was excited to hear this news, but I wanted to know more about this fish. I started to do research online, Until I came across the Federal Fisheries Department, or the FFD. I found the contact information of the lead genetics scientist there, Dr. Ethan Hall, and I gave him a call. I started shooting questions off to him one after another, probably too many for his liking. He explained he could not give me specifics of any genetic work they did, because of security issues. He mentioned something about the “Fish Race”, A program with competing countries to see who could engineer the most temperature range tolerant and colorfully vivid fish, which I thought was a complete joke. I laughed and hung up, but soon after, my wonder overpowered my sense of humor. Could this be like the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States, where two superpowers battled for space travel superiority? There was no way. It wasn’t until I dug further that I realized it wasn’t so crazy at all. I turned to a Russian search engine on the dark web and used a translating app to search Blue Bow in the Russian language. My heart almost stopped when I was presented with multiple pictures of these blue fish.

Exhibit A
Exhibit B

I was euphoric, and I barely made it halfway down the web page when I felt a blunt object strike the back of my head. I woke up in a daze, barely able to recognize what was going on. There was a loud droning noise, and my ears were picking up a language I could not comprehend. I was blindfolded, and as soon as I sat up, the voices stopped. I yelled out frantically, only to hear the voices growing louder, and with a sense of anger. I was met once again with the familiar strike of a blunt object, And the next time I woke up, I was alone in the silence. This time I wasn’t blindfolded. I was in a large room, with posters littered in foreign languages scattered across the room. I recognized the characters though, they looked almost identical to the Russian typography I witness on the dark web. I came to my senses and realized maybe Dr. Hall wasn’t just trying to bust my chops, Maybe this fish race was real, and maybe I bit off more than I could chew. I have a lot more to say, but the pen I found hidden in this room is running out of ink. I am going to try to smuggle this out somehow. If anybody ever received this letter, please send help, and please bring the Blue Bow to light.

Yours Truly,

Joe Czarfunee”

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Lego Parachute Adams Fly

By
Jared Zissu
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Recently we saw this fly pop up on our Instagram and Facebook newsfeeds and we just had to find out more. We reached out to Sven Diesel to dig a little deeper into his LEGO fly…

A recent post was sent to me where a tyer was voicing his opinion about the creativity of fly tying these days and used a photo of some Duplo and a hook to make a point.  I agree fully with what this tyer was voicing and respect his opinion. Later that weekend as I was building some legos with my kids I had a thought come across my mind of a Lego fly. After chatting with a good friend Pete Rosenau about it, he said if someone could do it, it would be me. So as the Mountain Dew settled in and the hours of the early morning set in, I sat at my dining room table with our “random pieces” Lego bin with a few ideas of what I wanted to create.

I quickly discovered that I had a lot of charcoal grey pieces in the flat sizes and realized quickly that I could do an Adams Parachute.  After attempting several times to secure the legos to the hook I was about to resort to either gluing them to the shank or building the body and then heating the hook and simply burning the legos onto the hook.   Then I found the magical piece that slid almost perfectly over the eye.  This piece was the key element to building the body.  Once I had the body built using the grey flat pieces in the photo, to hold it all together without glue I had to heat the hook at the bend and melt the 1 x 2 flat grey so it was notched and would keep the whole body from spinning.  Glue Free was the goal. The body was done. Now the tail and the Feathers and post to worry about.

I tried to use some airplane propellers to replicate the hackle but it looked way to sparse. Similar to my first ever parachute where I wrapped twice and thought I was done.  This would not due.  I found that I had some wheel parts and noticed the groove in-between the outsides and thought to insert some sort of sword or weapon and how cool that would be.   Then I realized if I used all the pirate swords or shooters my kids would kill me.  Then a 1 x 2 grate piece fell on the floor as I was shuffling trying to find other pieces that would work.  It almost fit in the groove perfectly.  I grabbed a lighter, hit the end for a second so it caught on fire, blew it out then inserted it into the groove and it stayed. Perfect. I found all the great pieces I had in brown, grey and white to replicate the colors used on the Adams parachute of Brown and Grizzly Hackle.  I found that I had to cut the corner of the Grate piece to get more Grates in, but repeated the process as before. One layer didn’t look very dense as the fly looks, so I resorted to gluing the grates on top and on the bottom of the middle layer of hackle.  A little glue had to be used.  I had a few Grates left over and figured they would make a nice tail and cut a white grate diagonally and glued it to the grey grate, then lit a grey grate on fire and placed it on top of it all.  Then snapped it in place along with the replicated hackle. The last piece was easy. A white cylinder.

I put it together, took it apart, and put it back together again.  I have done this probably 4 or 5 times now and know that it is something that someone could easily replicate themselves.  I know that it is not considered fly tying, but it was a lot of fun.  Seeing my Lego Loving boys faces when I showed them was awesome.  It proves that you can create anything, whether using Legos, fly-tying materials, or stuff you find at the craft store.  The key is that without the foundation of tying and having tied a bunch of these patterns, I wouldn’t have been able to do this.

Be sure to follow Mr. Erik Svendsen Svend Diesel on Instagram @svendiesel, and see what he’s whipping up next!

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Fish Or Die is BACK!

By
Dan Zazworsky
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Sunday, April 21st at 10 PM one of our favorite groups of anglers return to TV on Animal Planet. Fish or Die is back and we couldn’t be more stoked. Join Jay, Thad, Chris, and Brian as they travel the planet in search of giant fish!

If this trailer doesn’t get you pumped, we don’t know what will.

Mostly sef-shot, the entire series is a document of these dudes getting out in the world with little thought to their own personal safety and make fish happen. With adventures to Greenland, Borneo, and South America, you’re not going to want to miss a minute.

Once upon a time, the Fish Or Die team invited Flylords Founder Jared Zissu to join them on their voyage to Christmas Island. They taught Jared a thing or two on the trip… Check it out below!

“When Costa invites you to go on an adventure with 5 crazy dudes…You don’t say no to that” – Jared

Fish Or Die premieres April 21, 2019, at 10 PM on Animal Planet, set your DVR and gather a crew to watch it with!

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Abaco Lodge and Costa Del Mar Team Up to Kick Plastic

By
Dan Zazworsky
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Check out this film from our friends at Costa Sunglasses highlighting Oliver White’s lodges in the Bahamas going plastic free. Costa’s Kick Plastic guide and outfitter program has been up and running for a few years now with more than 800 participants moving their operations to plastic-free. The program estimates that they have reduced over 1 million single-use water bottles since the program started in 2016.

If you haven’t started to kick plastic out of your lifestyle, you should get started. Plastic makes up one of the densest sources of debris in our oceans and by simply bringing your own multi-use water bottle you can have an impact.

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