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Snoods and tippets

George Washington’s pocket fishing box

Nothing is more confusing than leaders and tippet. If you set out one morning to make fly fishing arcane, you couldn’t invent something better than tippet.  There’s the whole stupid system of nomenclature, 5x, 6x, 0x. Who calls something 0x? And then you get saltwater with a completely different poundage nomenclature and its own wacky world.  Wouldn’t it make sense that if you were going to catch a 200-pound fish, you’d need a 200-pound leader? But of course you don’t. You use a 20-pound class tippet attached to something called a bite tippet that’s 60 pounds and can’t be longer than 12 inches or some such to qualify. Or something. Unless of course you’re using wire because the thing has teeth.

The leader attaches to the end of the fly line (which is the part of the line that looks like the line in a weed whacker). You add tippet, which is just more leader really, to the end of the leader to make the leader last longer. The fly ties to the tippet. It’s the least obvious thing in the world.  When I bought my first fly rod at Gibson’s Discount Center circa 1970 I pulled off some monofilament from my spinning rod and tied it to the end of my fly line, probably with a square knot.  Nothing wrong with that, except of course it’s not right.  I’m just lucky it didn’t explode.

Since October I’ve lost four good fish on broken leaders or tippet: two nice trout, two bass, and a permit.  A permit.  The second permit I’d hooked and lost in two days. The first flipped off the hook, but it was the second that hurt. My permit.  The only good thing was that for the permit at least the guide thought the leader was cut, not snapped.

Back when I abandoned the square knot and tried to figure out leaders–trout leaders–I started tying my own progressive leaders. There’s a joke there about Democrats. I learned a lot of knots, I learned a lot about how leaders are built. I also learned that most guides hate knotted leaders, and at his first chance the guide would pull off my carefully built leader and replace it with the store-bought kind. I think they all figured my kind of magnificent casting must be blamed on something, and the knotted leaders were the first thing to hand.

Like fly lines, leaders were originally built from lengths of braided horsehair (called snoods). There are still guys out there who make horsehair lines and leaders.  Progress was made when somebody started making leaders out of the silk gland of silk worms, called silk gut. We’ve made a lot more progress, but I’m sorry we don’t still call stuff snoods.

Trotline with Snoods, from Wikipedia Commons

For bass and sunfish I use nylon leaders and tippet. At least theoretically nylon’s cheaper, bass and sunfish aren’t leader shy, and in a perfect world I need some nylon for trout dry flies, because nylon floats on the surface and fluorocarbon breaks the surface film.  The problem with nylon is that it rots faster than fluoro, and that $7 spool of tippet gets expensive fast when I have to replace it every year. The only way I can tell it’s rotten before I lose a fish is because it breaks easy barehanded. I lost both bass on 3X nylon tied to poppers. The 3X was rotten. It wasn’t that old, really, but I’m convinced the stuff doesn’t stay strong for more than a year, so now when I buy new leaders and tippet I mark the envelope or the spool with the month and year I bought it.

At least theoretically I mark the spool with the month and year I bought it.  Usually I look at the spool at the store and think I need to mark the spool with the month and year I bought it.

For nymphs and streamers I use fluorocarbon. It’s stronger for the same diameter and theoretically there’s less breakage from abrasion. It’s problem is that it sinks, but that’s not a problem for nymphs or streamers. I use fluoro for saltwater for the same reasons.  It may rot too, but slower than nylon. I lost both trout on 4X and 5X fluorocarbon leaders and tippet. One broke at the tippet ring, and the other at a knot.  I think the tippet was rotten, and the fish was well played, and the knot was well tied. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I don’t tie my own freshwater leaders any more. I buy 7.5’ 0X leaders for bass and 3X for sunfish and trout. From that base I can build whatever I need. The guys at the fly shop advised me to never fish bass with anything less than 12 lb tippet or leaders.  That’s about 0X, but I still use mostly 2X. It’s all simple really, and I don’t know why anyone would accuse fly fishing of being arcane.

I just wish instead of tippet I was buying snoods.

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Four New Orleans’ Statues: Battle of Liberty Place Monument

Dorothea Lange, Farm Security Administration, LC-USF34- 009389-E [P&P] LOT 1680, July 1936, New Orleans

Getting ready for our quick trip to New Orleans, sometimes I read about Louisiana and wonder what the hell were those people thinking.  Sometimes I think they’re just like the rest of us only more so.  Unfortunately with the Battle of Liberty Place and its monument I’m pretty sure I know what they were thinking, and I’m pretty sure they’re like the rest of us at our worst.

Early in the Civil War New Orleans was a Union target, and Union forces captured the city in April 1862. It remained occupied by federal troops until April 1877, the end of Reconstruction. Before they were dismantled by the Supreme Court, Congress enacted a series of forward-looking civil rights laws to protect and enfranchise former slaves, but after Grant’s presidency, the country’s leadership was too tired or indifferent or hostile to be bothered, and violence to control race relations became a marker of the Post-Reconstruction South. Louisiana did its part.

The Battle of Liberty Place wasn’t the only Louisiana violence (and Louisiana wasn’t the only location where violence became commonplace). In 1866, at the Republican Party Convention in New Orleans, police fired into the crowd killing 34 blacks and 3 whites. In 1868 in Opelousas, St. Landry Parish, an unknown number of blacks were killed after a confrontation between black Republicans and members of the Knights of the White Camelia. In 1873, in Colfax in Grant Parish on an Easter Sunday approximately 150 black men were murdered by white Democrats in the worst instance of racial violence during Reconstruction. Racial violence didn’t end with Reconstruction. Louis Armstrong remembered hiding in his home as a child because white gangs roamed black neighborhoods after the black boxer Jack Johnson defeated the white boxer Jim Jeffries in 1910. In 1900, Robert Charles murdered a white policeman, and then shot an additional 27 whites, with seven deaths. The resulting white riots resulted in 28 deaths and more than 50 casualties, mostly among blacks.

The Liberty Square riot saw 8,400 members of the Democratic White League attacking approximately 4,000 mainly white Metropolitan Police and mainly black state militia (commanded by former Confederate General James Longstreet who was shot trying to stop the riot) over, more or less, a disputed gubernatorial election between Democrat John McEnery (supported by the White League) and Republican William Pitt Kellogg. Eleven police and militia and 21 members of the White League were killed. After three days federal troops arrived and quelled the riot, but it signaled the end of Reconstruction.

Wikimedia Commons, Battle of Liberty Place, Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1874

When it comes to Louisiana race violence, two numbers are particularly telling. Largely as a result of violations of racial . . . etiquette, whites lynched 335 blacks between the end of Reconstruction and 1968 (though most lynchings occurred before 1940). Texas had more by the way, 352, and neither state could hold a candle to Georgia, 492, or Mississippi, 539. Lynchings didn’t result in the prosecution of the instigators. At the same time, the number of African American voters declined from a bit more than half of the state’s registered voters in 1880, 88,024 voters out of 173,475, to 1,342 in 1904. The decline was caused largely through laws restricting the rights of African Americans to vote and out-and-out violence. How can anyone wonder why African Americans still see voter ID laws as racist, or that the apparently institutional police violence that spawned Black Lives Matters resonates still? The Civil War was our most violent moment, and we still carry around that violence.

Wikimedia Commons, Michael Begley, Battle of Liberty Place Monument

The Battle of Liberty Place Monument was erected in 1891 by the New Orleans city government. It was removed in 2017. In 1974, the New Orleans City government erected an adjacent marker that stated “Although the ‘battle of Liberty Place’ and this monument are important parts of the New Orleans history, the sentiments in favor of white supremacy expressed thereon are contrary to the philosophy and beliefs of present-day New Orleans.” I like that. I like that New Orleans realized that there was a problem with the Battle of Liberty Place Monument 40-odd years ago.

The world changes, and I think, other than the whole global warming thing and fake news, it’s mostly a better place. Last Saturday Kris and I drove down to Freeport and walked the jetty. We were the only folk carrying fly rods, but since it’s hard to cast off a jetty in high wind they were mostly useless. After 20 or 30 casts I didn’t lose a fly in the jetty granite, but I didn’t catch anything either.  On the other hand it’s a terrific walk through a diverse and lively America. And the Liberty Place monument is gone.

Meanwhile we found a great breakfast taco stand in Angleton, Taco Loco #2.

I don’t know where Taco Loco #1 is located.  We also found a good bakery in Angleton, the Paris Texas Bakery, on the way back to Houston, almost directly across the street from Taco Loco.  The staff was well prepared for Easter.

 

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Four New Orleans Statues: Jefferson Davis

There is no good reason for anything to be named after Jefferson Davis.  He was everything that was bad about the Confederacy: arrogant incompetence coupled with certainty in an indefensible cause. The only good excuse for a Davis statue in New Orleans is that he died there, but when he died P.G.T. Beauregard refused to lead his funerary parade. He was unpopular in the South after the Civil War, and only after his death was his reputation revived as a hero of the Lost Cause.

The Davis statue was removed May 11, 2017. Good riddance.

On the bright side, yesterday evening this lovely bass crashed my popper next to the grass. After the cast I let the popper sit until the ripples died.

 

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Four New Orleans’ Statues: P.G.T. Beauregard

With a name like Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (1818-1893), Beauregard could only have come from Louisiana.  He could only have been Creole. Dashing, aristocratic, glamorous, and reminiscent of Napoleon, P.G.T. Beauregard was the Confederacy’s first hero. Raised on a French-speaking St. Bernard Parish plantation and educated at West Point,  he commanded the Confederate forces at Charleston who fired the shots on Fort Sumter. He commanded the Confederate forces at the first Bull Run, the first major battle of the Civil War. He was not more important as a Confederate general only because he argued with Jefferson Davis.

Library of Congress

He was responsible for the adoption of the still-troubling Confederate battle flag. Because the Confederate national flag, now largely forgotten, was too similar to the flag of the Union, troops couldn’t tell them  apart in battle.

Beauregard’s statue was removed May 17, 2017, a bit more than 100 years after its erection in 1915. It’s hard for me to work up much feeling about the statue’s removal.  It was a lovely piece, created by a relatively important American sculptor (who also sculpted the Lee monument), Alexander Doyle. Maybe the erection of the statue had something to do with white power, but by 1915 the segregation of the South was old news and unquestioned, and Beauregard probably deserves some leeway for being a native son.

What interests me most about P.G.T. Beauregard is not his statue, and not his military accomplishments and failings, but that he was, along with fellow-Confederate General Jubal Early, the post-bellum front-man for the Louisiana Lottery.  In our America a state lottery is a  mildly questionable means of raising funds for a public purpose, questionable largely because it regressively raises funds to fund stuff like education that should otherwise be funded without resort to film-flam.  The 19th Century Louisiana lottery got that first part right: it regressively raised funds from the poor. But the second part, the funding of a public purpose, the lottery didn’t quite manage. It was a private enterprise chartered by the state that paid the state $40,000 annually.  $40,000. Mostly it paid off millions to its organizers, and paid Generals Early and Beauregard a decent livelihood to sit on a New Orleans’ stage to lend credence to the lottery drawing. When reformers threatened the lottery, the lottery corporation bribed the Louisiana legislature into writing its continued existence into the Louisiana state constitution.

The lottery was a power in Louisiana politics until 1890 when Congress banned sending lottery solicitations through the U.S. Mail. Most of the participation in the lottery came through mail solicitation, not only in Louisiana but nationally, so the enforcement of the Congressional ban effectively ended the lottery (though it survived for a few more years from Honduras). What it could have done with the internet.