Fly Rod & Reel

The Wild Steelhead Coalition

I think it takes a bit to get Jim Schmitz pissed off. For instance, I was recently interviewing Schmitz, vice president of the Seattle-based Wild Steelhead Coalition, when he realized that his house had just been robbed. He casually said, without hint of anger, “Hey, I should probably deal with this. Would it be OK if I give you a call later?”

But let me tell you this: If you bring up hatchery steelhead, Washington State’s 1974 Boldt Decision and the mismanagement of that state’s fisheries, you’ll see Schmitz’s hackles rise.

Conservation NEW

  

Click image for slideshow.

Tobogganing on cafeteria trays can be dangerous, especially when icy conditions coincide with heavy drinking, as always seems to happen in my part of the Northeast. So I stick to the foothills. But recently a dozen more daring participants were hospitalized. Some suffered cranial pressure from ependymal hematomas; others had bone splinters in their meningeal tissue; still others leaked cerebrospinal fluid. Since the brain-trauma physicians were on a golf holiday in Aruba, the hospital administrator enlisted the custodians, providing them with condensed neurosurgical guidelines along with carte blanche authority to do whatever seemed necessary with their saws, chisels and staple guns. All the patients died.

How to Kill a Reborn River

September 17, 2011 was a day of wild celebration in northwest Washington state for what is billed as the most ambitious salmonid recovery project ever undertaken on a single river. After nearly half a century of lobbying, negotiations, legal wrangling, legislation, environmental review, and a federal outlay of $325 million, the continent’s biggest dam removal project was underway.

Wild, Scenic & Trashed

If not for their horse, ORV and jet-boat hatches, the first two scenic rivers designated by Congress would offer only inspiring scenery and quiet, enjoyable fishing.

Let Them Eat Tin

On a may pre-dawn in 2009 i held a quivering loon in my arms. It had crawled out of Big Island Pond and onto my beach, where it sought shelter against my canoe—a bad start to the day, because loons are a recent addition to this busy southern-New Hampshire lake. When I came in from fishing it had died of plumbism.

Plumbism (lead poisoning) in wildlife is caused almost entirely by ammunition and fishing tackle. The most common victims of tackle are birds that eat fish or dabble in bottom muck. Because they lack teeth they “chew” their food with gizzards, ingesting pebbles to aid the process. Frequently they mistake lost sinkers or jigheads for pebbles; in fact, they key in on them. Even more frequently, they eat lead-toting fish that have broken off anglers’ lines.

Ask the Experts On Henry's Fork: Rene Harrop

René Harrop has lived and breathed the Henry’s Fork fishery for decades. His company, House of Harrop, produces some of the leading flies for the area; he was a founding partner of Trouthunter, a top fly shop on the river; and his artwork, writing and overall philosophy of fishing have inspired and enlightened countless fly-fishers, on the Henry’s Fork and elsewhere. Harrop lives in Last Chance, Idaho. We caught up with him there.

Rivers of a Lost Coast

There’s much to ponder in Rivers of a Lost Coast, an award-winning documentary about a minor apocalypse—make that major for West Coast salmon, with many runs already extinct or on the verge; and catastrophic for California’s steelhead, now so diminished that conditions call for a new word or one I don’t know yet. If decimation means taking one of 10, how do we describe a process that leaves roughly that? And when so much of what’s left is spawned hatchery product returning from the Pacific for factory-pool reunions?

Ask FRR

What do you think about the new rubber alternatives to felt soles on wading boots? Do they grip and wear as well as felt? And do they achieve their intended purpose of reducing the spread of various invasive “nasties” from stream to stream?

Bull Fights

Bob Orsua was in full cry on September 15, 2010. “That’s a lie!” he told me between deep inhalations as he spoke unofficially for the 100-member Flathead Wildlife Inc. rod-and-gun club and virtually all outfitters, charter skippers and guides who work 122,885-acre Flathead Lake in northwestern Montana.