David Siskind | Sunday, 16 November 2025
I will be heading for Paul’s battleship at year’s end so met with him on zoom for a snake-head-shot status evaluation and left with some training recommendations for the home stretch. The zoom lessons are recorded and I download them for review. I hate that I talk compulsively and endlessly. I can’t believe Paul has to listen to me, but amidst my blather and nicely summarized in a text, were the drills I needed. I took them to the grass and river over the next few days. Among other goals the exercises work to ingrain some specific movements of my line hand to optimize the sliip-touch-slip backcast and to be in position to slip to a good haul going forward. It’s been a little cold (low 60s F) here in the morning and my SA Bonefish line is a little stiff. It rattles through the guides in a pleasing way and I’ve been getting some satisfying distance going back but somehow losing something going forward. I have 6 weeks to work on it.
My practice was interrupted by rain yesterday. We don’t get much in LA - typically 15 inches per year with maybe 30 events spread mostly over the winter months but it can come down pretty hard. While two to three inches doesn’t sound like much over three or four days, conditions often create some real hazards. The San Gabriel and Santa Monica Mountains are steep, not very durable, and in places have lost most of the vegetation holding them together to last year’s wildfires. Landslides and debris flows are expected and even in the northern reaches of Hollywood (at the end of my street) people on the margins of the Sunset Fire are being evacuated.
There’s an LA River carp guy (I’m sorry his name eludes me) who claims the fish feed recklessly in the early stages of rain events - the theory is they know they’ll have to hunker down for three days or be washed out to sea. I’ve had some good luck in the rain, and Ben reports the same. But the river rises quickly and this time went from fishable, I’ll say under 200 CFM, to over 1000 CFS too early to get any fishing in. Last evening it peaked at 4000 CFS but there’s more to come. I don’t think it’s safe to be standing on the sloped, wet concrete banks when the river’s running that hard. The rain persists, so no grass, no river until Tuesday.
The flow information is available on the USGS site. I’m surprised DOGE didn’t fire everyone doing this work but the Sepulveda Dam Station is still reliably reporting and recording real-time stream stage and flow. The LA River is low hanging fruit for the measurement guys. While we fish only the few miles with earthen bottom, much of it is concrete lined with sloped walls. There are sections with vertical walls with easily calculable cross sections for good measurement. I think (citation needed) that the station uses a bubbler to measure stage (water height). A bubbler pumps air or an inert gas through a tube whose outlet is at the river bottom. A pressure transducer in the gas line measures the backpressure created by the standing head of water and can be correlated to channel depth and then to flow. It’s good for corrosive liquids and debris filled flows as the pressure transducer need not be in contact with the liquid. They can also be programmed to purge for self cleaning. The USGS uses them in a lot of remote locations - a golden oldie.
Still smoking hopium. I wish the Dems hadn’t caved - I thought the strong election results would have stiffened their resolve but alas. However, news cycles are short. DJT and friends seem rattled by the discharge petition for the Epstein file release. I wonder if there’s anything in there.
David Siskind