Fishing & Tree Climbing

Zebco Kid

Zebco Kid

Branched out member
Location
Ashland, Oregon
Hello.

I'm an avid fisherman. My expertise is trolling. I go for pretty fish: Trout, Steelhead, Salmon, Kokanee. Oh...did I mention delicious as well? Anyway, sometimes I go out and get skunked. Not a bite, not a nibble. And sometimes, those days include nothing but screwed up tackle that goes from bad to worse. When people ask about my day of fishing. I tell them that I didn't do much fishing. Rather, I trailered and boated.

Okay...so some tree climbing days are like that. Today I drove to Berkeley to climb with some folks. A small and kind community exists in the San Francisco Bay Area. I probably should have packed up and gone home after my 15th attempt to get the throw bag into the tree properly. Nope...I forged ahead. I spent the rest of my day untangling throw line via climbing. If memory serves, there was a treble hook involved in some of the mayhem. The day was capped with my multiSLING being stuck upon retrieval, so I had to throw another line to fetch it.

Make not mistake...I had a great day in the canopy. However, it wasn't so much tree climbing, as it was untangling and retrieving.

I see/experience these types of climbing days in a similar manner to those fishing days.

Know what I mean?
 
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Some days are tight lining and free flying.others are prodding through the tangles. If only my fishing friends set lines for me like my tree brethren
 
Man I have been having terrible throw ball luck the last week and a half or so, not even that I'm throwing bad usually getting my target in the first couple shots, and then it doesn't drop, gets stuck rope gets stuck, had it get stuck so I couldn't pull it either way twice.
 
Hey Vicente,

This weekend, my stuck throw balls looked more like a bird's nest based on a treble hook, or a striped candy cane around a limb. With both of those situations, the following technique wouldn't have helped. I do think it's a good one for many situations. The production is a bit silly, but the concept is good.

 
Thoreau is credited with one of my favorite quotes: "Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after."

I strongly believe there's a comparable one for tree climbing. Tangles are just part of the experience.
 
After having quite a few frustrating experiences with throw lines and weights, I almost never pull a line back towards the cube. It just seems to create problems that take more time to resolve than pulling another weight in the original direction, even if I have to do it 2 or 3 times to get exactly what I want.
 
Dan Cobb said:
After having quite a few frustrating experiences with throw lines and weights, I almost never pull a line back towards the cube. It just seems to create problems that take more time to resolve than pulling another weight in the original direction, even if I have to do it 2 or 3 times to get exactly what I want.
Click to expand...
So...to be clear, you toss over a desired limb. The bag goes straight to the ground. You then tie a bag to the "cube" end, and use the line with the bag on the ground to pull it up the "cube" bag, and settle it back down adjacent to the one on the ground?

If so...it sounds effective. However, my ego does soar when I toss, grab the line, and the throw bag returns to me perfectly. Very ninja. Unfortunately, nobody ever sees this. Just a ninja in my own "private Idaho"...or "private Novato" as the case is.
 
@Zebco Kid, I do much better with visuals, so here you go:
20220502_155542.jpg
I'm always dealing with trees with a zillion small branches. If I let a throw bag swing much (as usually happens when pulling back towards the cube), it tends to wrap onto small branches. And I always untie the throw bag if I miss and have to pull the line back for another attempt.

The people here on the Buzz were very helpful to me in figuring out how to greatly reduce throw line headaches. I take no credit for the methods I use.
 
Zebco Kid said:
Thank you. Your drawing makes perfect sense. I was imagining just one limb. I haven’t incorporated multiple limbs as of yet.
Click to expand...

In order to isolate the line over just one of the two branches in the drawing, all that now needs to be done is to draw the end of the line leading away from the crotch in which you wish to isolate your line. Once the bag makes it over the branch furthest away, it will drop down to isolate the line in a single crotch.
 
Dan, isn't it a challenge to pull a heavy throw bag up through the crotches? I often find that the crotches are tight enough I can barely coax the rope through them. Or do you use jump/flip etc techniques - but does't that bring back the original risk of the bag looping onto something? Maybe the secret is trees with wide unions.
 
@Bart_ , I'm a BigShot fan. I've gotten to where I rarely hand throw. Most of the time, I can hit very small windows 1st shot, so it's an overall time saver. However, that often results in getting the line through a bunch of unwanted branches in either the target tree or adjacent ones behind it. But, the line is usually going upwards on the far side of the target crotch, so the heavy bag (or two bags) goes through the crotch easily since it's being pulled upwards.

I like enough launch velocity to have a decently straight trajectory to the target, so I'm not having to factor together temperature, bag weight, trigger position, etc. to get the peak of the parabolic flight path of the bag to just clear the desired crotch and not catch limbs behind it.

For me, this method has proven faster and more reliable.

If I'm worried about the 2nd bag swinging when clearing a crotch, I put some tension on the end of the line that is being pulled upwards.

All bets are off with those super narrow crotches. If there's any other option, I just avoid them.
 
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