“We had to work hard for our fish today, Jeff.”

“We struggled this morning, Jeff but we managed to pull it round after lunch.”

“We got some good fish for our troubles, Jeff.”

We?

I was taking photographs. The only thing I pulled the trigger on all day was an F16 exposure at 1/250 second.

You cast. You caught. You brought home the bacon trout.

But I’m grateful for your generosity. These are more inclusive times, after all and I can think of one man who’d lap up the ‘we’ thing and probably push it a notch further.

So I’ll take it. I was standing pretty close to you, after all…

To those of us in the magazine biz, they are possibly our biggest source of angst every month.

‘Teasers’, we call them.  Three- to five-word lines that sum up the main articles to be found between the covers, every last one of them sweated over by editorial staff and management alike, down to the last syllable, because expert opinion has it that the success or failure of an entire issue can hinge on the calibre of those one-line come-ons.

I’m not an expert, so I wouldn’t know. I only know that I never read them when I’m buying a magazine, because my idea of being teased depends on what I see when I actually flick through the pages in the newsagents.

At a subliminal level, though, maybe they work on me more than I know, because when Moldy Chum recently posted this reminder of the days before teasers, I was blown away by the contrasting simplicity of what I saw.

These covers call rather than yell to me, yet I hear them just as clearly. I warm to the idea of a magazine that trusts its subject to sell itself and I can’t get away from the feeling that I’m being pitched to by this rather than by this.

But then I’m getting old and have no training in these things. Maybe such minimalism would be doomed in this info-saturated age.

And maybe there’s a reason Trout Fisherman editorial meetings see me banished to the far corner of the office with crayons and some paper.

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Pic of the Day – Colorado, USA

Younger Kid has to stop mid-sprint because his coat zipper has jammed half-way up.

Older Kid’s too cool for running, so dawdles by the tide line, effecting world-weariness and quietly hoping you’ll be so distracted that you won’t notice him dragging on a surreptitious cigarette.

And that gorgeous creature who simply insisted on carrying the lugworm bucket? She’s actually in the car because those wave-ridged beaches do nothing for her Achilles tendonitis. And she’s gorgeous in somewhat more subtle ways.

Within 20 minutes, Older Kid hates what the wind is doing to his hair, you’re looking at the bird’s-nest from hell and Younger Kid is wishing that, just once, you’d bring him fishing when the wind’s at his back.

And Subtly-Gorgeous is yelling that we need to be making a move because she’s realised Coronation Street starts in 47 minutes.

Having studied her Timex watch.

And no awards for the the gratuitous sex scene 59s in, either. Rushed and lacking both context and sensitivity.

Otherwise, delightful…

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Pic of the Day

“From southern California to South Carolina, fish and wildlife agencies have been collecting Christmas trees with plans to use them in lakes and waterways to create protective habitats for small fish.

In Wyoming, the trees will be dropped through designated holes in the ice at Ocean Lake in late January”

The real breakthrough, of course, will be when we discover that trout gorge on old wrapping paper and new sweaters that no man would be seen dead in…

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Pic of the Day

Explaining how he hadn’t been able to access the Korean fishing videos to which I linked yesterday, he told me that his company now has strict Internet filters in place.

This follows discovery by the bosses of a pornography archive among nightshift workers that by all accounts made Hugh Hefner’s mansion look like the Vatican.

In an act of compassion almost unheard of among senior executives, management instituted a two-day amnesty. Lose the filth in 48 hours and you keep your job. No exceptions.

According to my ‘mole’, this sword of Damocles concentrated workers’ minds wonderfully, turning the company car park into a hive of activity normally unknown beyond Hyde Park Corner.

“I knew it were bad,” he tells me, “when one bloke flew back from Tenerife just to clear his hard drive…”

“…the Dorchester, Mass., artist has made a life-size white suit of vinyl with a fishing-pole holder in front; a gigantic, pink fly-fishing creel; and a cabinet filled with fantastical flies made from human hair. What this says about masculinity is open to interpretation.” – from a review of the Manhood: Masculinity, Male Identity and Culture exhibition at Vermont’s Helen Day Art Center

Give me Theodore Lane’s The Gouty Angler any day, dating back to a time when the word ‘artist’ pre-supposed an ability to draw.

If anyone reading this has worked on Trout Fisherman features with me and wondered why I like him to wear one bright item of clothing to ‘lift’ the photos, these clips will hopefully demonstrate what I’m getting at. Imagine the anglers filmed dressed in head-to-toe khaki…

A sample:

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Pic of the Day

“You might not think it at first glance, but Jonathan Goldsmith is the most interesting man in the world. The actor has achieved notoriety for his role in Dos Equis beer commercials with the famous last line: “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do, I choose Dos Equis…

“…It’s an ad campaign that has taken on a life of its own, becoming part of popular culture, and with the lines often popping up in everyday conversations.  Dos Equis saw sales increase as soon as they started airing the ads five years ago and Goldsmith says the work has made him millions…

“…His mom was a model. He loves sailing, reading and fly fishing with his dad’s rod.”

Stay smug, my friends…

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Pic of the Day