Mid-Missouri Trout Unlimited
October 2006
This summer I learned a new word that is surprisingly applicable to a lot of situations I have come across the last several years: schadenfreude. Basically, this means enjoying the misfortune of others. I won’t go into the history of the word because, well, I don’t really know it, so that makes it easy, but it just seemed to jump out at me.
If you can remember a time when your friend was casting a double-rig of nymphs on a windy day and ended up with a hair-ball on the end of his fly line, having a good chuckle at his expense would be schadenfreude. Calculating the time it would take him to cut away the mess and re-tie the leader and tippet to see if it’s enough to fish out his hole and the next one is not schadenfreude but just good fishing technique.
Several years ago I fished the Eagle River with Jon Deal. Due to unknown circumstances, Jon was having a slow time rigging up, and I, maybe too enthusiastically, hoisted a nice 17 inch rainbow and yelled so he could see what he was missing. Schadenfreude. Later, when I buried the Prince Nymph in my thumb while the dropper was still attached to a lively brown trout somewhere between my feet, Jon did not experience schadenfreude when I yelled at him. That was more like grumpiness brought on, I figured, by a lack of caffeine. Nevertheless, he still didn’t drive me to the doctor’s office.
It was schadenfreude later on the same trip when Mike Kruse enjoyed a spicy Mexican meal one evening followed by a trip the next day to the Frisco Emergency Room for a nice saline drip and a good long draw of oxygen, only to have someone in the group snap his picture in the hospital bed hooked up to a good bit of equipment. It may have been uber schadenfreude to have the picture scanned then distributed in an email to his co-workers.
I think I had a trickle of the stuff when John Wenzlick told me about being on a business trip in southern Missouri, set his alarm clock to fish a little before work one morning only to find when he got to the stream it was still dark. Like 4:30 a.m. dark. Somewhere in there John changed the time on the alarm clock and got up several hours too early. What a chuckle. A few weeks later in Denver, the last day of the Trout Unlimited national meeting, John and I rooming together to save expense and got up showered and packed and then I noticed the darkness and stars outside the window. Same story, different place. No schadenfreude that time.
Sometimes I have a hard time distinguishing schadenfreude from other, similar type feelings. I don’t think it was schadenfreude on my pack trip in Montana with Bill this summer. Bill’s newly minted knee surgery slowed his pace on the climb up to treeline to a more middle-aged, office worker type speed. My feelings were more like gratitude mixed with a bunch of relief and a tiny bit of guilt since I benefited from Bill’s pain. I know I didn’t laugh because we needed his car to get back to Missouri and my wife would have enjoyed a good dose of schadenfreude if I called and had to explain why I needed a ride home.
Packing up on the Current River, taking my rod apart, my hand slipped. The snake guide slid from under the wrappings and went in and out of the third finger on my right hand. Hooked like a fish I asked Bill for help and he grabbed the rod to take it apart and all I could see in my mind was flesh ripping apart and a painful long drive home. When the situation was explained in a loud, forceful way that I didn’t need that kind of help, Bill stepped back and looked at the rod dangling from my hand. I think he had schadenfreude.
- CURT
October Meeting
The October 3rd meeting of MMTU will be held at the Missouri Department of Conservation, Resource Science Center at Stadium Blvd. and College Ave. in Columbia. Meeting time is
7:00 p.m. We have a return visit of Tom Hargrove, proprietor of T. Hargove Fly Shop in St. Louis. Tom will present the program on fishing for big trout in Argentina. Come join us to hear about Tom’s adventures, he is always entertaining and informative.
Tom Hargrove
September Meeting
Ken Weston, with assistance from Lynn Kleopfer, presented an excellent program on fly fishing for bonefish on Andros Island in the Bahamas. Ken presented an interesting Powerpoint show with numerous photos of the Bahamian flats, fishing shots, and Andros Island as well as plenty of saltwater fly fishing advice and observations.
Fly Flingers Weekend
Don’t forget that Brian Sloss at Eleven Point River Canoe Rental is hosting Fly Flingers Weekend on October 21-22.
Little Piney Project
Sampling locations for the project are shown above.
Vida Bridge is between Upper A and Upper B.
The Havins’ gravel operation is in the middle of the photo.
The bug picking project on the Little Piney on September 9 was great fun. Bob Sites, John Wenzlick, Sam Potter, Michael Riley, Don Warner and Bryan Chilcutt teamed up for the adventure. Taxonomic results won’t be available for some time, but we learned there is great variation in stream life between one riffle and another, and even between samples within a riffle. We found a great variety of mayfly nymphs along with some caddis and stonefly nymphs, helgramites, water pennies, riffle beetles, leeches, darters, sculpins and crayfish. My own evaluation is that darters (Mike’s mohair leech in olive), small crayfish (mottled rusty color 1” long), and Isonychia nymphs (try a #12 zug bug) might be good flies to try.
Michael Riley’s photo of bug pickers at work
How many bugs can you find?