Monday’s Return From Cyber Hades – Fair Warning

MAID SERVICE! Cleaning Up Behind the Magic Curtain

Whoa. This past weekend I glimpsed the future, and saw that it was good (for all you survivalists). I don’t know about you, but two full days with no internet and no TV gave me time to collect all the technical mumbo jumbo about this website, talk to technicians (mostly waiting on hold), and realize just how thin the eggshell we call the internet really is. Thanks anonymous!

It is still amazing that in this very century we have gone from the zeet-zeet-bleep-buzz-scratch of a dialup modem to ultra high speed wireless internet service, but with speed comes the need – for more speed. If you think about it (like I do), it’s kind of like the need for faster and faster fly rods. These wondrous things, fast fly rods and faster website speeds, we all take for granted don’t we? The whiz-bang of this site is something I rarely think about anymore really. I just keep pushing the boundaries.

My first “aha moment” came a week ago when I was talking to an ad guru about advertising for this site, where all he could do is fill out adwords for Facebook – to try and raise the ratings on this site above (what I call) mummy sites, like www.texasflyfishing.com and www.flyfishingtexas.com. They have been a thorn in Google search’s side for years now, and the fine folks at Google will do absolutely nothing to review the inaccurate results and knock these two sites off of page one (to the bottom as far as I am concerned). So this guy is asking me questions, “so what is your site about?” Holy sh&* I thought. It’s about eight years, and a novel’s worth of words about everything. Of course I didn’t say that; “It’s about fly fishing,” was my canned and completely insufficient response. He ran with that, spouting off key phrases and key words, none of which came close to what this site is really about. “Fly fishing, fishing, Texas, techniques …”  on and on; we never finished talking about adwords because I already knew the value of paid ads on Facebook and Google for that matter. It’s zero.

So I settled on jacking up the site with a new pair of fat tires, and a fresh four-barrel carburetor. We’re going to be going faster, not a lot faster, but twice as fast as we did a week ago (hard to believe that’s all we can get out of this old beater). And with this new cloud distribution of the site’s pages, we have redundancy that should save us when the next, likely worse, internet armageddon happens. It is only a matter of time. Let me know if you notice the blazing new speed starting now.

Continuing on the theme of talking about the coming end of the world as we know it, if you want a real eye-opener have a read of Ted Koppel’s book, “Lights Out. A Cyber Attack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving The Aftermath.” I haven’t finished this one yet, but it will be interesting when half the USA loses electricity for a week or so. Do we wonder when would be the best time for the invisible enemy to attack our soft underside (the electric grid)? How about the day before election day?

Meanwhile, back on this little piece of planet earth, the days are painfully short now, and some concentration goes to a growing amount of photography work and pedaling for Cimarrona and welding when the weather is good. JB took his East Cape Fury out Saturday and saw carp on Ray Roberts but said they, “were deeper, skittish, and slower than usual.” Well usual is just about used up now, with the short days, low sun and cooling temperatures. I can’t resist the chance to head out this evening and hit that spot we caught two smallmouth bass on Ray Roberts – a couple of weeks ago. Nothing excites me more than seeing a viable new (to the lake) species like the smallmouth, spawning and growing on a lake the TPWD biologists said was not even a viable smallmouth habitat. I guess that’s the same logic they use for stocking triple the number of bass in Lake Fork over Ray Roberts?

What I remember of last winter, which really isn’t much at all, was that it was a winter that wasn’t. And now we are apparently headed for the same type of winter according to NOAA. They have predicted (which they can always change) a No Nina’ No Nino winter. Neutral is what they are saying, with drier than normal amounts of precipitation and warmer than average temperatures. I get the feeling this is setting us up for a repeat of this spring-summer – for 2017 season, which was absolutely one of the greatest I have ever fly fished through – even at less than full speed. Maybe I was just happy to be out and about, but I think the fish and the videos tell the truth – 2016 was a fantastic year. But, it a’int even over yet! We now prepare for the winter season, one that I completely missed last year. So it will be at least two years since we’ve done the Blue River, and perhaps more years since we traveled to Beaver’s Bend (BendBow). We’re way past due, and two years is a long time when you factor in flood events that have completely remodeled Beaver’s Bend, Oklahoma. I have heard enough about the changes that I will admit some excitement about returning and relearning the BendBow. The main goal is to provide readers with an ACCURATE report on BendBow, and see if anyone else is as interested as I am in that old reliable. It will be a start from scratch type of chase, now that the floods have left an historic mark on the area, and we’ll just see where the new roads take us …

Tags: Beaver's Bend fly fishing, BendBow, Broken Bow Fly Fishing, cyber attacks, cyber warfare

Category: Adventure, Culture on the Skids, Fishing Reports, Fly Fishing For Carp, Life Observed, Literature, OFF TOPIC, Oklahoma Report