My first experience with a high-tech device in an outdoor setting was at Milton Reservoir. I was brewing coffee in the morning when a young guy ran over and pleaded, “Can I borrow a cell phone? I’ve got to call my broker.” I didn’t have a cell phone, and the thought of calling my broker while camped on the edge of a serene lake disgusted me. Later that year, two friends and a first-timer in our group were driving to a Northern California lake. The new guy spent most of the five-hour trip on his cell phone. It was unpleasant. Part of the fun of a trip is the banter that goes on while you’re on the road. Thank God for those early “black holes” in coverage.
One of the images that pulled me toward fly fishing was of Theodore Gordon, the father of American dry fly fishing, casting a fly on one of his favorite Catskill rivers, the Beaverkill. He might have gotten there by riding a horse and certainly didn’t have a smartphone with a hatch app to guide him in fly selection. Nor did he use more apps to check on stream flows, up-to-date weather information, GPS coordinates, and solunar tables. I suspect he walked out of his house onto the front porch, stuck a wetted finger into the air, and made a decision on whether to go or not to go.
I doubt if the fly-fishing armamentarium of the late nineteenth century would have allowed Gordon to cast his trout fly much more than 35 or 40 feet. High-end cane rods of the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, made by masters such as Hiram Leonard, cast quite well, but silk fly lines and gut leaders of that era left a lot to be desired.
Modern high-tech fly lines are the most important part of my stillwater equipment. There have been breakthroughs in line design and manufacturing that can help turn average anglers into good ones. Simply put, a high-end line will improve your casting by getting the most out of any rod, regardless of quality level. There are now improved tapers that load a rod better, improved cores with more flexibility, surface coatings that reduce drag and increase floatability, and specialty tapers such as bass lines that make it easier to cast large, aerodynamically challenged flies. Improved distance and accuracy mean increased angling success. Effortless casting lessens arm fatigue during a long angling day. I recently fished with a master angler who repurposes old rods. On our trip, he chose to fish with a dried piece of ornamental bamboo from a neighbor’s garden that he fixed up with ferrules, line guides, and a salvaged fly-reel seat. He used a sink-tip line and enjoyed being able to cast quite well with such a piece of equipment. He is a tournament caster and was using a modern line.
I also admit to having succumbed to the digital age and have incorporated high-tech into my angling. The cell phones that disgusted me are now an important part of my kit. The safety issue started me carrying one. It coincided with several incidents involving friends of a similar age. One broke an ankle on a steep riverside trail. Another lost an engine in his boat on the Delta as sunlight was fading. Both incidents had happy endings because of a cell phone. Another fishing partner returned to his truck on the Yuba to find a dead battery. He hiked to within cell phone range, avoiding an area known for nocturnal rattlesnakes and nervous pot growers during harvest time.
I moved to a smartphone when I dropped my older cell phone into a lake. An exploratory trip a few years ago opened my eyes to its possibilities. While I drove, my friend Jimmy Marchio used his tech skills from years as a California Department of Forestry fire boss to navigate with both a smart phone and a tablet. We were looking for a lake in the Bear River drainage and were getting phone calls from another friend with updates on water levels and temperatures, bragging rights, and real-time photos. Immediately, I signed up for remedial smartphone classes at my local computer learning center. More recently, I was at my local fly shop, where three of us were planning a trip to Davis Lake. We were able to pull reliable water-level reports, Doppler radar weather forecasts (from My Radar), and even a posted photo of the only viable launch ramp in an area that was marginal at best. Smart phones access stream-flow reports such as CDEC.water.ca.gov or Dream Flows, apps such as Fish Head include tide charts, there are insect-identification apps, wildfire reports are available on Yubanet.com, and colored tide graphs such as those on http://tbone.biol.sc.edu/tide/sites_uswest.html are available.
High tech has greatly improved fish finders, too. Today, fish finders that incorporate sonar possess memory and have maps and navigation features with route planning and waypoints. They guide you to input GPS points received from a friend, a bulletin board, or saved on your unit. Some allow you to interface with smartphones, tablets, or laptops. They’ve come a long way from early “dial flashers” that showed depth and fish with flashing red spokes and chart recorders that used a stylus on graph paper. With all the current electronics, a fully rigged boat console can look like an aircraft instrument panel.
A departed friend was a retired CEO of England’s Marconi Industries. During World War II, he was involved in the development of the radar-controlled anti-aircraft gun and radio telecommunications. Together, we purchased one of the early Heathkit fish finders and assembled it using his soldering skills and electronic savvy. Our first sortie was on Carquinez Strait. We anchored his boat and flipped the switch. Our round flasher dial powered up immediately. We broke out a chilled bottle of champagne when we saw red blips that indicated water depth and cheered when a blip noted fish. We moved to the edge of the channel shown by depth change and caught several starry flounders and a striped bass. It was like we had a new set of eyes, not to mention the safety of knowing how much water was under our keel.
Fish finders have come a long way since then and are available at many levels of sophistication. I purchased a new unit two years ago. There has been a learning curve. I have Dr. Sonar, a consultant in Michigan, on my smartphone’s contact list. The newer units are like computers and smartphones in that they have more capability than we can use and threaten to overload us. Depth and water temperature are perhaps the most important information, but bottom makeup, allowing you to discriminate hard bottom from soft, is huge. Some high-end units are dual-frequency models. High frequencies are better in shallow waters and low frequencies at greater depths. A soft, silty, or muddy bottom shows where a Hexagenia or midge hatch may come off. Open sandy flats hold few fish, and we like to position over or on the edge of submerged weed
