Sunday Blues.

Rental cars parked at the access points of my locals depress me.

Sunday saw me n' Captain K getting the show on the road at the crack o' 11, with a few hours to kill before familial responsibility overrode the Cap'ns fine-tuned predatory fishing skills. Upon arrival at the creek, there were a few rentals parked in the turnout...poorly, I might add.

After a short hoof to the creek, we were greeted by the sight of some Doink standing in the middle of the creek, whipping a spinner up- and down-stream, and generally clogging the hole and making an ass of himself.

As I stepped in to take a place a respectful distance away, he looked at me as if I were insulting him. When I stripped out some line and cast, he looked at me as if I were insulting him AND his mother.

Too much for me.

In a nice, bracingly sarcastic tone, I said "It helps if you don't stand in the middle of the hole."

He turned on me and barked, "Excuse me?"

I replied, "You will catch a lot more fish if you aren't standing in the middle of the hole."

At this point, Doink started to inch his way backwards out of the river, trying to give the impression that it was his idea.

After awhile, Doink cleared his throat and said he was sorry for standing in the hole, but he was undoing his fine lure from a snag just before we arrived, and hadn't made his way to the bank yet...to which we replied "Whatever."

To make matters worse, Doink's partner came downstream about this time, toting two dark fish that he had killed.

Now, The Chronicle is not against killing fish. I repeat, We are not against killing fish. There is a big honkin' hatchery in town that we terrorize for our eatin' fish. We love killing hatchery fish, and do it with abandon.

This particular river that we were on has about 500-700 Wild and Native adult coho return every year, of which we catch and release about 20-30 a year. After that, we don't bug em anymore. Let them eat when they are biting, don't mess with them in the skinny water when all they have is lust on the brain. Killing these fish would be like killing a dance partner, or a teammate.

So you can understand why rental cars depress me.

The out-of-town mentality of the occupants that they carry only fits in the place they are from, where kill is the rule and there is no love of the game and no respect for any of the players.