fixing a typo in the last post...not having the best of mornings...

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I've had some requests, so here goes:

from "Fur Balls"
Ralph Cutter
February 2003 California Fly Fisher magazine


Ralph Cutter is desperate. An article on fur feeding trout is on deadline, and his film from an Alaskan trip is lost with his baggage. Cutter arranges a mouse photo session at Fanny Bridge on the outlet of Lake Tahoe... After causing a feeding frenzy with white petshop mice, the trout ignore two thrown in of the brown variety.

"These trout are fed a daily diet of marshmallows and bread by tourists on the bridge. In the trout's mind, our white mice were moving bread. They had no idea what to do with the brown, natural-appearing food. My article was about trout eating mice, not bread, and in those pre-Photoshop days, white mice just weren't going to make the magazine.

In a stroke of brilliance, Rusty jumped in his truck and returned from Seven-Eleven with a brown felt pen. We colored the backs of the mice so they looked like real mice to the camera, but left the bellies white so they kind of looked like bread to the fish. Perfect.

I put my eye to the camera and told Rusty to let fly with a bivisible mouse. I waited a moment, then told him once again to toss a mouse. When nothing happened, I looked up from the camera and followed Rusty's horror-stricken gaze.

It seems JR's restaurant is a popular place for parents to have breakfast with their kids before dropping them off at school. Pressed against the glass were seemingly millions of innocent little faces -- little faces fully absorbed in the spectacle of mice and men. Men who were going to jail."


Wes Wada
Bend, Oregon

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