A Fish Tale--Worms, Poles, and Drones

When I fished the creeks as a farm kid, we used bamboo poles, barbed hooks, and a can of worms. The only "drone" we knew was the litany our parents gave us before we took off for the pasture--"Those hooks could take your eye out." "Don't push your brother in the water." "Get home in time for supper."

Techno drones are literally the buzz of the year, and fishing has not escaped the hoopla.

**  A Kansas farmer turned a drone into a high-flying fishing pole. Derek Klingenberg, also know as the humorist Farmer Derek, filmed himself using a drone to catch a fish. 

And CNN “reporter-humorist” Jeanne Moos takes a different look at Farmer Derek’s drone “fly fishing.”

**  This site shows how an aerial drone fitted with a waterproof camera could be used by fisherman to position their bait and catch more fish. Some fishing purists lament that the technology ruins the skill and enjoyment of fishing. 

**  This fisherman claims to be the first to pull one in with a drone.




Genetically Modified Fish Ain't Nothin' New  (from an earlier blog)


 
When we fished the farm creek in the early '60s, we were after bullheads and chubs, and I doubt any of us pre-teens would have known how to spell "salmon," let alone catch one. We definitely would not have understood genetic modification, and I don't recall Flash Gordon genetically engineering much of anything in the early science fiction I read by the glow of the night-light back then. 

But looking back on it, I think we did have genetically engineered fish. The chubs all looked clone-like. They were shiny, small, and void of any personality, like minnows on steroids. We threw them back as soon as we could get the hooks removed. We older kids would then thread a freshly dug night crawler onto a barb for the little ones and toss our cork bobbers into a deeper area by a fallen tree or on a bend in the pasture. We wanted to catch our version of a science-fiction fish. To a ten-year-old, bullheads had to be the result of genetic engineering: oily skin, flat heads with beady eyes, and stingers ready to paralyze careless kids. 

 (continued...  click here for the entire blog entry)

by dan gogerty (top pic from grindtv.com; bottom from cayunacounty.com)