Recently in Conservation Category

This May, Drs. Jerry Ault and Jiangang Luo of the University of Miami got into SCUBA gear, grabbed some high-def cameras and went deep under Bahia Honda bridge, an important staging point in the migration of tarpon through the Florida Keys. The resulting video gives a great perspective on how these big fish travel.

"An estimated 2 million alewives returned to the river on their annual spring run this year, according to state officials. Other sea-run fish returning to the previously impounded 17 miles of river between Augusta and Waterville include American shad, striped bass, sturgeon, and a few Atlantic salmon." Keith Edwards reports on the remarkable comeback of fish populations on Maine's Kennebec River, ten years after a major dam was removed by order of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In the Kennebec Journal.

The River Taff, once so polluted that its salmon populations dropped to near zero, will be location of an international fly fishing championship that begins Friday, the BBC reports. "In the 1980s, salmon had become almost extinct on the river. But following two decades of investment, including the installation of fish passes along the river, salmon have began returning to the upper reaches of the Taff."

Seven years after the previous U.S. administration succeeded in expanding waste disposal options for mining companies, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Coeur d'Alene Mine Company can dump 4.5 million tons of mine tailings into a 23-acre lake -- and kill all the fish. "'If a mining company can turn Lower Slate Lake in Alaska into a lifeless waste dump, other polluters with solids in their water can potentially do the same to any water body in America,' said Trip Van Noppen, president of Earthjustice, which had participated in the litigation." H. Josef Hebert of the Associated Press.

"Monday is the 40th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969, when oil-soaked debris floating on the river's surface was ignited, most likely by sparks from a passing train." Outrage caused by the small fire on the Cuyahoga led to indirectly to the passage of the Clean Water Act and to 40 years of productive cleanup, but locally the river remains challenged by its role as a municipal and industrial resource. Christopher Maag in The New York Times.

Drawing a distinction between "snagging" and hooking a fish in some part of the mouth, the Colorado Division of Wildlife Management on Tuesday declared the Moffitt Angling System to be legal in that state, perhaps offering a rationale for other states to follow. According to a press release, the state said "the Moffitt System did not constitute snagging under Colorado law because 'the system appears to comply with the intent of our regulations by requiring the fish to voluntarily strike the fly in order to be hooked.'"

Saying that "Afghanistan will become again the tourist destination for Central Asia, for Americans, Europeans, for people of all the world. You can hold me to that. In five years. You can grab me by the tie and hold me to it," Prince Mostapha Zaher, head of Afghanistan's environment agency, holds out much hope for future eco-tourism, according to Peter Graff of Reuters.

Is it possible that Afghanistan could one day become a serious option for fly fishers? As Nick Mills noted last year, the potential is certainly there. "As for the origin of the brown trout, Jean-José wrote a book, La pêche à la truite en Afghanistan, in which he theorizes that the trout migrated from Europe in meltwater streams at the end of the last Ice Age."

By the way, if you care to familiarize yourself with the possibilities, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, by Eric Newby, is regarded as a classic of adventure travel literature, and it's a great read even if you never plan to leave home.

Ed Weber and Gary Giudice are fishing their way "up the spine of the Rocky Mountains following mayfly hatches." They start in Arizona's White Mountains, where they find that the hardest thing about catching Apache trout is getting to where they live. "We were fishing just a few miles from Fort Apache in the White Mountain Apache Reservation on Log Creek where Ed made his first cast. He read the water well. Very few bugs on the water, the odd small caddis was about it. He chose a small caddis emerger and starting rising fish almost immediately." On ESPN.com.

In The New York Times this morning, Anthony DePalma notes the sense of resignation that surrounds the appearance of Didymo in streams like the Catskills' Esopus Creek. But he also summarizes the current thought and research on the topic of how to keep Didymo from spreading. "Didymo is considered native to parts of North America, where it was found in higher elevations with cold, nutrient-poor waters. But in the last 20 years, the single-celled diatom seems to have morphed into a more aggressive invasive species, spreading from British Columbia across the continent to New York."

Riding horses and using electroshockers, biologists gathered 250 pure strain Gila trout from South Diamond Creek in New Mexico and plan to put them in a hatchery until the danger has passed. "As a lightning-sparked fire charred thousands of acres in southwestern New Mexico, biologists and firefighters used helicopters and trucks for an unusual evacuation. They captured 250 Gila trout -- a threatened species -- from a creek in southwestern New Mexico and are moving them to a hatchery in the opposite corner of the state." Article by the Associated Press.

In a related story, the Gila National Forest's Wilderness Ranger District will close 20 miles of the the Gila River's upper west fork while removing non-native brown and rainbow trout.

"Fisherman and author Linda Greenlaw, who survived the nor'easter that was the basis for the book and movie 'The Perfect Storm,' was fined Tuesday for fishing illegally in Canadian waters." Interestingly, Greenlaw plans to write about the incident in her seventh book, which comes out next year. Story by the Associated Press.

The picture accompanying a Billings Gazette story on Sunday's rupture of a gas line in the Yellowstone River -- coming as it does on the tenth anniversary of the death of a young fly fisher from a pipe break in Bellingham, Washington -- is disturbing, but not a cause for serious concern, at least according to Montana officials. "When emergency responders arrived, they found that a 4- to 6-inch, large diameter high pressure gas line had ruptured and was free flowing into the river, shooting out of the water like a geyser and creating cloud fumes, [Laurel Fire Chief Derek] Yeager said."

OK, I can understand teenage girls taking one-hour showers, but doing laundry?

Residential water use that in some areas exceeds 100 per person per day is drying up Massachusetts rivers, according to an extensive article by Beth Daley in yesterday's Boston Globe. Apparently some folks in Massachusetts think that this much water use is warranted given the cultural imperative to stay absolutely clean. "'I can understand limiting water in a stressed basin, but we aren't in one,' said Don Rugg of Sarian Company Inc., which manages the water supply for Plymouth Water Company. 'Sixty-five gallons a day doesn't cut the mustard, not if you have a family of four, laundry, car washing, and teenage girls that can take a shower for an hour.'"

A gas pipeline break that caused the death of three youths enjoying Whatcom Creek in June, 1999 reminds residents that awareness of the potential for tragedy isn't always enough. "The utterly random nature of the deaths of the three young people in a beloved city park added to the horror: two 10-year-old boys playing in the creek, burned to death but lingering for a day in a Seattle hospital; a teenaged fly-fishing enthusiast, pursuing his quarry in the creek's shady pools and eddies, overcome by gasoline vapors and drowning in the place he loved." John Stark in the Bellingham Herald.

Cameron Mortenson's Fiberglass Manifesto covers the story of Recycled Waders, a company that turns breathable fabric from well-used waders into wallets, bags and hip packs. As Recycled Waders founder Patrick Jenkins tells the story: "I couldn't bear the thought of throwing away my very first pair of breathable waders - especially since they were pretty pricey to begin with! After a long drive back to Fairbanks, I sat down and sketched out a pack I could wear that would simplify my king salmon fishing. Then I enlisted my mom's sewing skills."

A news release from Maine's Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (IF&W) is asking anglers to stop using soft plastic lures, because trout and salmon are swallowing the lures and failing to regurgitate them, leading to weight loss and other health problems. "'We strongly encourage anglers to voluntarily purchase biodegradable and food-based lures rather than soft plastic ones,' [IF&W Pathologist Dr. Russ] Danner said. 'Also, we are asking anglers not to discard plastic lures into any waters, and also to attempt to retrieve any soft plastic lures that have become unhooked."

What is a viable alternative?, you may wonder. Companies like FoodSource Lures are already making lures made of protein (Field & Stream has called their FoodSource Minnow among its "50 Best Lures of All Time").

Meanwhile, L.L. Bean, who this year already began testing new angling boundaries with their Helix Waders, says that their retail stores will begin offering only biodegradable alternatives to plastic lures beginning in August, with the Web and catalog soon to follow. According to Bean's Mac McKeever, "We began making plans to do this back in Fall 2008, but the study really reiterated the importance of doing it as quickly as possible."

The non-profit Tres Pescado ("Three Fish") Slam Tournament will take place August 20-22 on Ambergris Caye in northern Belize. "The Tres Pescado Slam Tournament is filled with 'firsts:' 1st Belize fly fishing tournament; 1st Belize 3 fish grand slam event; 1st Belize tournament approved as an IGFA Inshore World Championship qualifier event for the 2010 World Championships; 1st Belize fish census data collection effort." What also caught our eye is that the tournament will include a "poling contest (the world's first?).

The event's proceeds will all go to further the protection and research of tarpon, bonefish and permit -- fish that just last fall were given "catch-and-release-only" status in a progressive move by the Belizean government.

Read the full press release in the extended entry.

"'The New Period' ... will be marked, I think, by greater simplicity of gear, technique, style and purpose. It will be done closer to home, more impromptu and with less media attention. It will be gentler, more elegant, and less aggressive." That's Gordon Wickstrom calling an end to the "TU Era" of over-technical perfection and announcing a return to greater simplicity in fly fishing culture, where fly shops return to being "refuges for what is most delightful in angling."

Interesting stuff, especially in light of what I sense as a growing movement away from "extreme fishing," "fish porn," and hip "bumism" in the sport. (Are you truly a trout bum if anyone knows you're a trout bum?) In the Boulder, Colorado Daily Camera.

The next time someone tells you "It's only fly fishing," remember Don Elder of Gresham, Oregon. He pulled three people from the ice-chilled water of the Sandy River as they were being swept toward rapids Sunday afternoon, using the extra strength of his spey line to "strip" them to safety. "The only safe way was to bite off the fly, so I (bit off the leader), and before I realized what I was doing, I started casting to them. Elder's first cast was to the woman between him and the man. She grabbed the line and he lowered his rod, 'stripping' her in a bit -- making short tugs on the line -- as she held on and the current drew her toward the shoreline." Read the full, fascinating story by Bill Monroe in the Oregonian.

By the way, Don Elder works for the Western Rivers Conservancy. Make a donation today -- now that you're sure your money is being put in the hands of the right people. (Thanks to reader Jenny Andrews for this story.)

Well, yes they do. They probably also feel fear. Or for them fear is the same thing as pain. Or pain is fear. Or whatever. The conversation has dominated the animal ethics community for the past couple of years, even exciting PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to ask that fish be renamed "sea kittens."

Fly fisher Michael Agger just published a very good piece in Slate magazine on the controversy, citing the science and the writing that has explored it in recent years. "The 2003 Edinburgh study confirmed that trout have polymodal nociceptors around their face and head--i.e., they have the ability to detect painful stimuli with their nervous system. But, according to some definitions of pain, the detection of painful stimuli is not enough. The animal must have the ability to understand it is in pain to really feel pain." (Thanks to readers Zach Matthews and Jim Phillips for this link.)

"As one example, when the shadbush (shown) is in blossom along northeastern trout streams, Hendrickson mayflies start emerging. So when I see that tree in flower, I know not only that it's time to get on down to the river but also what fly patterns to take along. " We'll add to John's phenological examples the fact that when the royal poinciana is in full bloom in south Florida, the first really big numbers of tarpon will be moving through. From FieldandStream.com.

This week's "Fine Lines" column on MidCurrent taps the expertise of animal ecology research professor Gary Grossman and answers the question of how hooking fish in various parts of their anatomy affects mortality. Read "How Well Do Fish Recover From Being Foul-Hooked?"

On Moldy Chum, environmental ethics professor Sam Snyder -- who is a long-standing member of the American Museum of Fly Fishing and is soon to be John H. Daniels Fellow at the National Sporting Library -- challenges the Museum's well-publicized decision to invite Dick Cheney to their annual fundraising event this fall. "At the AMFF, in its galleries, on its book shelves, and in its storage rooms, we find the sacred artifacts of our sport (rods, reels, flies) and the stories (both published and written in personal journals) - all of which track the growth of technologies, shifts in rod building, and advances in fly tying. Throughout all of that, however, we also find details of the evolution of our varied ethics and relations to nature, streams, and the fish we pursue with religious passion."

Fish around the western U.S. enough and you soon begin to realize that despite the energy that gets poured into stream access law, the realities are all local. Whether or not you can fish unmolested on water that passes through private land may well depend on what kind of day the owner is having, or whether there is someone already making a living off the fishing there.

The recent failure of the Utah legislature to come up with clarity on the rights of private property owners versus those of anglers may have heightened the tensions, but ironically the number of trespass cases has actually gone down, according to Tom Wharton in the Salt Lake Tribune. ""It's hard on both sides,' [Brent Tanner, executive director of the Utah Cattlemen's Association] said. 'We need to be able to tell a landowner that this is what you can and can't do. It's hard for fishermen to know what they can and can't do because the court left definitions a bit broad and undefined.'"

Citing the tremendous rebound in rainbow trout populations in the Madison River and the discovery of a wild trout populations that are resistant to the disease, researchers say big losses in trout numbers are now unlikely. "Dick Vincent, one of [ecologist Billie Kerans's] longtime collaborators and recently retired as whirling disease coordinator for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said, 'The worst case scenario was drawn and didn't happen in Montana.'" This article also contains an excellent synopsis of the current knowledge about how whirling disease develops and is spread. Evelyn Boswell on Montana.edu.

"'I'm no radical greenie. I support responsible resource development. That's how I make my living. But in some cases, you have to draw the line. The Pebble mine is one of those projects and Sarah Palin, whose family fishes in Bristol Bay, ought to know that,' Hansen said." That's "Deadliest Catch" Captain Sig Hansen in last night's press release from Trout Unlimited and the Renewable Resources Coalition announcing the latest opposition to the Pebble Mine project. Members of the "Dealiest Catch" crew join Tiffany's and other brands in asking for the Alaskan government to take halt the project, which has gained worldwide attention for danger it presents to Alaskan fish stocks.

One of the better explorations of the controversy appeared in Men's Journal in March.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

Once again an unclear genetic picture has led to the exclusion of a trout species -- in this case upper Great Lakes "coasters" -- from the Endangered Species list, and environmental groups are considering a lawsuit to get the decision reversed. "The Fish and Wildlife Service said its review did not yield convincing evidence the coaster was a distinct population segment, much less a separate species or subspecies. Instead, the agency labeled the coaster a 'life history form' that could be reconstituted from other brook trout under the right environmental conditions." John Flesher of The Associated Press. (Thanks to reader Jim Phillips for this link.)

Today is the last day for comments on the management alternatives for the marine waters of Everglades National Park, so if you haven't offered your two cents, you can do so here. If you aren't familiar with the proposed changes the Park Service is considering, you can read all of the options they are considering here.

Ever since U.S. Fish & Wildlife denied endangered species status for the westslope cutthroat because officials decided to count any fish with up to 20 percent rainbow trout genes as "non-hybridized," some western anglers have adopted a non-release rule when it comes to rainbows. According to U.S. Geological Survey biologist Clint Muhlfeld, the only answer may be eliminating rainbows from cutthroat habitat. Brian Schott touches on the ethical dilemma as he fishes in Montana.

Burlington Free Press columnist Matt Crawford asks whether the hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent each year trying to restore Atlantic salmon to the Connecticut River shouldn't be spent on more promising projects. "In the wake of the recent news that the federal stimulus package contained an $890,000 earmark for an electrical system upgrade for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's salmon hatchery on the White River in Bethel, it seems as good a time as any to re-examine the Connecticut River salmon restoration program." (Thanks to reader Jim Phillips for this link.)

On ESPN.com, Mike Marsh attempts to frame the difficult choices facing coastal North Carolina fisheries managers, who are highly protective of the commercial fishing culture but are also being forced to recognize the wastefulness of gill-netting. "On one side of the argument are recreational hook-and-line fishermen like Dubiel. On the other side are commercial gill-net fishermen. Somewhere between are commercial fishermen who compete with gill-netters using other gear, recreational fishermen with commercial gear licenses that can also fish gill nets, and those who seek to protect other sea life from harm by gill nets."

Author and South Korean fishing guide James Card takes a detour from fly fishing for Japanese sea bass and discovers the arboretum of Carl Ferris Miller, an American expatriate who created one of the world's most important collections of trees. "When Mr. Miller settled at his new seaside retreat, he decided it needed some trees, and he deepened his roots in Korea to the point of no return. He later said he'd had no idea he would create an arboretum recognized by international horticultural societies, no idea that he would give up his nationality and no idea he would be awarded the highest honor the Korean government can bestow on a civilian." In the Wall Street Journal.

You can also read James Card's account of fly fishing along the Korean demilitarized zone on MidCurrent.

At the recent Jim Range National Casting Call, the National Fish Habitat action plan recognized Patagonia's Yvon Chouinard, EPA ecologist Janet Nestlerode, Project SHARE and others with 2009 National Fish Habitat Awards. Chouinard was given the Jim Range Conservation Vision Award. As the NFH said in last week's press release: "In 1986, Patagonia began a program that makes it unique among corporate entities that care about fisheries habitat. Patagonia committed to donate 10% of profits each year to grass-roots environmental groups. They later upped the ante to 1% of sales, or 10% of profits, whichever was greater."

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

For the first time, greenback cutthroat trout have been discovered in Utah, leading wildlife managers to hope for growing the population there. "Utah wildlife officials have confirmed that there is a tiny population of rare greenback cutthroat trout in a small creek in the LaSal Mountains east of Moab." Article by the Associated Press.

Apparently South Africa's Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) is quite serious about their proposed new rules for alien species eradication, moving to a second draft of their Alien and Invasive Species Regulations. Those rules, according to reporter Andrew Stone, would mean the end of trout fishing in that country. "Although trout have been established in South Africa for over a century, they are not indigenous to the country and would therefore need to be eradicated, according to DEAT."

Last fall we reported on the success of an initiative to declare bonefish, permit and tarpon "catch-and-release only" in Belize. The prime movers behind that effort -- Craig Hayes of Turneffe Flats, Alissa Flota of El Pescador, and Mike Heusner of Belize River Lodge -- were just recognized by the Belizean government for "their joint efforts and work to promote the passage of one of the most comprehensive catch and release fishing legislations in the world." These forward-thinking lodge owners have been setting a great example for other destination-fishery operations for quite a while. It's nice to see the official recognition.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

Elk in North Carolina? Turns out elk used to roam large portions of the southern Appalachian Mountains, so it should be no surprise that they, along with restored populations of native brook trout, would flourish in this "hotspot for biodiversity." While the Smokies' first superintendent, J. Ross Eakin, concluded the total population of the deer in the park was around three, diligent efforts on the part of Park employees, scientists and volunteers have proven that it is possible to overcome decades of misuse.

"Like other native species that now populate Great Smoky Mountains National Park, native brook trout was nearly gone from the park when it was established in 1934. Logging, the introduction of nonnative trout species and pollution led to the disappearance of the trout from 75 percent of its original range in the Smokies." Nancy Bompey in the Asheville, North Carolina Citizen-Times.

In the Huffington Post, Todd Wilkinson talks about the fifteen-year effort by four-time Grammy winner Carole King to overcome congressional resistance to the Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, which aims to restore -- with the help of a "citizen army" -- wilderness lands damaged by private misuse. According to Wilkinson, King has proved a hardy proponent, updating her message to match a new appreciation for restoring abandoned logging roads and promoting eco-tourism, and outlasting naysayers who have painted efforts to protect natural resources as un-American. "A few years ago, now retired Republican Congresswoman Barbara Cubin of Wyoming asserted that NREPA was 'an assault on our Western way of life.' Her late colleague, Republican Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth of Idaho, who famously declared that her favorite kind of salmon resided in cans not wild streams and oceans, portrayed NREPA as 'unthinkable.'"

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks first of trees whenever Earth Day rolls around. I can trace my own early celebration of environmental awareness to the ritual planting of a leafless sapling on school grounds each spring. But I didn't really begin to appreciate trees until I began to learn a bit about natural science, and then about the essential role trees play in complex ecosystems. Beyond the obvious benefits -- carbon uptake and oxygen production -- trees make possible the existence of innumerable other plant and animal species. Among those species are virtually every type of trout, which depend on trees to either keep water temperatures low, interrupt river flows, hide them from predators, prevent erosion of river and stream banks, store and release minerals, and support the myriad forms of animal and insect life that fish eat to survive. Not to mention all the other interrelationships we don't yet understand.

So the next time your ill-measured backcast wraps your fly around a high branch, pause before cursing, and take a moment to marvel that the tree is there at all. Maybe, in addition to being a reason you could even hope to find a fish in that water, on that day, it is there to remind you to work on your roll cast.

Although Atlantic salmon are already protected as an endangered species on eight smaller rivers in Maine and despite objections from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission has decided to go ahead with a catch-and-release season on the Penobscot in two weeks. "So on May 1, a 3-mile stretch of the Penobscot just north of Bangor will be open to spring salmon fishing for only the second time in a decade -- that is, unless federal officials decide to play hardball by immediately implementing protections for the fish." Kevin Miller in the Bangor Daily News. (Thanks to reader Matt Boutet for this link.)

After reading Caitlin Moran's column in the London Times, I'm wondering whether in fact the world might indeed be divided into fish lovers (people who value fish for fishes' sake, even if they occasionally eat a few) and fish fearers (people who think we should eat them all as soon as possible).

Moran points to a pattern in the renaming of fish to either suite culinary trends or feed nightmares, and behind it all is a lesson in how ignorance breeds fear. "What goes on down there? What are they all doing? Even though lions and mosquitoes and, as we now know thanks to QI, donkeys kill millions of people a year, there's something ultimately less terrifying about them compared with fish."

State assemblywoman Jean Fuller from the agriculture-based district of Bakersfield, California -- which receives a large portion of piped-in water from other parts of the state -- has introduced a bill that would remove protections given to striped bass in recent years. Bill AB 1253 is designed, in part: " to establish an effective program to prevent additional striped bass from entering the state, to discourage the promotion of the San Francisco Bay-Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta as a striped bass sport fishery, to immediately end any existing program for the enhancement, expansion, or improvement of striped bass populations and their habitat, and to eliminate any and all legal restrictions regarding the size or number of striped bass that may be taken."

The move has raised a collective howl from conservationists and virtually every west coast sportsman organization, who are enraged by Fuller's attempts to eradicate striped bass, a fish most consider to be a primary indicator of the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The great irony here is that supporters of AB 1253 claim that striped bass predation is a direct cause of the dramatic declined in salmon numbers, while most scientists agree that decades of poor water management and the dewatering of spawning streams and rivers has been a more real and measurable factor.

You can help the efforts of organizations like the California Sportsfishing Protection Alliance and the newly formed Save Our Stripers by going to www.saveourstripers.org and signing their letter to the Committee on Water, Parks and Wildlife before April 24.

As we reported last week, Governor Brian Schweitzer was scheduled to sign Montana's new stream access bill yesterday. Sign it he did, and in the process reporters got both a video and sound bite or two. "'They can build a fence that keeps an Angus bull in, but can't build a fence that keeps a sportsman out,' Schweitzer said. With the most public access to waterways in the region, experts say the bill will also encourage tourists to come to Montana for fishing trips." Sarah Gravlee of KULR8.com.

The American Fly Fishing Trade Association and its partners host two events as part of the newly renamed Jim Range National Casting Call in Washington, D.C. this month. These events, hosted at Fletcher's Cove on the Potomac River and timed with the annual shad run, aim to connect kids to fly fishing and government decision-makers to conservation.

The Family & Youth Casting Call, on Sunday, April 26, from 11 AM To 4 PM, is a public event intended to introduce D.C.-area children and their families to the joys of fishing and the outdoors. AFFTA partners provide all the tools and training necessary for families to catch fish in the C&O Canal, which is netted and stocked with native fish for the event. When not fishing on the canal, children complete a series of hands-on activities including fish art, scavenger hunts, water quality testing, touch tanks, critter identification and many other learning stations.

On Monday, April 27, the Jim Range National Casting Call -- an invitation-only event -- provides government decision-makers with the opportunity to fish for shad on the Potomac while also learning about fisheries conservation issues. This year, the Casting Call honors the legacy of Jim Range, a noted conservationist who envisioned the Casting Call almost a decade ago and who passed away from cancer in January (see "Prominent Conservation Lobbyist Jim Range Dies"). After morning fishing there will be a number of presentations including the christening of a boat built by wounded soldiers through Project Healing Waters.

AFFTA is looking for volunteers to help with either or both days of the events. To sign up, go online at www.familyandyouthcastingcall.com and click on the Volunteer link in the menu.

More about AFFTA.

Yesterday in The New York Times, Bill Becher reported on a recent trip to California's famed Hot Creek, where he managed to fool some very smart fish into taking small dry flies. His article raised the question of whether trout need -- as some veteran anglers say -- a "vacation" from being constantly fished. Better, suggest some experts, to have a closed season during the warmest months of the year. "Colder winter water holds more oxygen, so it would be better for the fish to have a closed season in the dog days of August, according to Roger Bloom, a senior fisheries biologist who oversees California's wild and heritage trout program. More stress on trout comes from anglers fishing in slow-moving water in the heat of summer."

As a follow-up to our March 9 story about how scientists believe "trophy hunting" may lead to smaller fish, a recent study suggests that the shrinking of species due to over-harvesting may be temporary, and that fish can recover their larger sizes faster than thought. Wired magazine reports that while there has been an average 20% drop in animal sizes among human-hunted species, "After being left alone for just twelve generations, a population of experimentally stunted fish regained most of their original size -- suggesting that the real-world dwarfism produced by continually killing the largest specimens may not be permanent." Article by Brandon Keim. (Thanks to reader Nicholas Kingston for this link.)

The first Montana stream access bill in 24 years will be signed by Governor Schweitzer at noon on Monday, April 13, in Riverfront Park in Billings, according to our sources. This is a significant piece of legislation, if not for resolving every detail of angler rights, then at least for preventing private landowners from arbitrarily blocking access to streams and rivers based on reinterpretation of county and state right-of-ways.

As we noted last month, Montana House Bill 190 faced fierce opposition from private landowners and their attorneys, but was passed virtually unanimously by Montana legislators.

Alaska Native leaders and other concerned U.S. citizens will take their protest against Anglo American's proposed Pebble Mine project to London next week. The group plans to appear at the company's April 15th shareholders meeting after holding a press briefing and attending the U.K. premiere of "Red Gold" at Hub/Kings Cross UK Angler. More details available on the new AK2UK Web site.

It's always good to see environmentally aware businesses take their commitment one step further and give back to the resources that make their operation possible. For Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., that means supporting organizations like the Western Rivers Conservancy, which acquires land along hundreds of miles of western U.S. rivers in order to preserve habitat and preserve low-impact access.

Ken Grossman, the founder and owner of Sierra Nevada Brewing, also commits time to serving on the board of the Conservancy. And in May, Sierra Nevada just announced, you can pop open a Pale Ale or Summerfest Lager and do something good for rivers: the company will donate a portion of the sales of 12-packs of those beers to the Western Rivers Conservancy for the entire month.

No doubt there are hundreds of unnamed anglers who scour secret drainages for wild trout, but Ed Hayne of Charleston, West Virginia, has found at least 200 more trout streams than existed in the state's Division of Natural Resources's lists. "'I got a structural geologic map of the state and learned how to read it,' he said. 'I learned to look for surface formations that contain limestone, because the presence of limestone helps buffer the effects of acid rain. My batting average for finding new trout streams went up significantly.'"

John McCoy also offers a review of resources for blueliners in a separate article. In the Charleston Gazette.

Looking for more info on stream geology? Read Tom Rosenbauer's excellent "Rich and Poor Trout Streams" on MidCurrent.

This past week the Arkansas legislature struggled with the idea of naming the blue catfish as the official fish of the state. After all, the blue catfish was first recorded in the Arkansas River in the 16th century. But a four-year-old who prays every night for bass and a state representative who grieves for trout helped squashed the proposal.

"'I grew up with fish. But the big fish are gone now, and they're never coming back. And if we don't act soon, and treat this with the same focus and intensity of fighting a war, we're going to be looking at a much different world than the one we live in now.'" In the Vancouver Sun, environmentalist and television host David Suzuki talks about Rupert Murray's new film adaptation of the Charles Clover book The End of the Line. Catherine Monk of the Canwest News Service.

This morning President Obama signed a landmark bill that gives wilderness status to 2.1 million acres of federal land. As we reported last Wednesday, much of land included in the legislation is inside of key watersheds like Wyoming's Snake River Basin or is adjacent to more than 1,000 miles of rivers in nearly a dozen states. At the signing, President Obama noted: "'This legislation guarantees that we will not take our forests, rivers, oceans, national parks, monuments, and wilderness areas for granted. But rather we will set them aside and guard their sanctity for everyone to share.'" On the Huffington Post, Matthew Daly wrote, "The law -- a collection of nearly 170 separate measures -- represents one of the largest expansions of wilderness protection in a quarter-century. The measure confers the government's highest level of protection on land in nine states -- almost as much wilderness as designated during the past eight years combined."

The Greater Yellowstone Geotourism Web site has teamed up with National Geographic and others to create an interesting annotated map of the Park and its surroundings. Available for download or order on the Greater Yellowstone site, the two-sided map is, naturally, filled with references for anglers, mentioning even rodmakers Sweetgrass and Winston, the Henry's Fork, and the Madison and offering great perspective for those who want to get their bearings for the area. There's also an interactive (though not highly detailed, yet) map that shows everything from accommodations to "Action Opportunies."

Dermatologist, cyclist, and fly fisher Alison O'Neill Andrew was inspired to provide a little extra happiness to seniors by the words of her father, who was dying of cancer in 2004: "'I spent the last nine months of his life with him and my mother,' Andrew said. 'One day, we were working in the garden and he said to me, "Alison, beauty becomes you." I'd never heard anyone say those words to me before. He meant it as a thank you and a message that what you do with your life makes you beautiful.'" Her Atlanta-based organization Beauty Becomes You is made up of volunteers who provide free haircuts, manicures, pedicures, massages, facials and makeup lessons to seniors in their residences. H.M. Cauley in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Alison's husband Jon Andrew -- also an avid fly fisher -- was a pivotal figure in the establishment of habitat protections for the Florida Keys in the late 1980s an early 90s. Now chief of the National Wildlife Refuge System for the southeast and former head of the Office of Migratory Bird Management at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, earlier in his career Jon managed the Key West and Great White Heron refuges, which at the time was in danger of being overrun by commercial interests. (I was fortunate enough to give Jon his first tour of the Marquesas.) Jon led the development of a newer, stronger management plan that prevented the backcountry from being flooded with jet-skis and tour operators.

Quite a couple, indeed.

Sydney, Australia fly-fishing guide Justin Duggan comments on the increasing number of near-fatal shark attacks along the country's shorelines, including one in February near downtown Sydney. "'The harbour is so full of baitfish -- that's why there are so many predators around,' says Duggan, a fishing guide for seven years. 'It's a protein soup.' Duggan attributes the baitfish boom and the increase in predators -- which themselves attract sharks -- to a ban on commercial fishing in the harbour in 2005 and anti-pollution measures producing cleaner waters." Article by AFP.

In Science Daily, U.S. Forest Service and University of California, Davis scientists say that only complete removal of non-native trout -- not just putting a halt to stocking -- is required for mountain lake insect populations to return to normal.

Despite disgruntlement among some landowners over "prescriptive easements," HB190 will head to the Montana senate floor for debate this week, after being passed virtually unanimously by the house and being reviewed in committee. "HB190 seeks to end a dispute that erupted in 2000 when landowners in Madison County, including billionaire absentee landowner James Cox Kennedy, put fences on county bridges. Sportsmen contended these fences denied them their right to access to public streams and rivers under Montana law." Charles S. Johnson on Helenair.com.

Did you know that both Colorado and Utah have a blanket ban on "harvesting rainwater?" That's right, putting barrel in your front yard and collecting moisture from the heavens could land you in court. In the Wall Street Journal Stephanie Simon explores why some western U.S. states have such stringent laws about rainwater collection and looks at the potential impacts of not having restrictions. "True, most people who store rain water will eventually dump it on lawns and gardens -- exactly where it would have fallen in the first place. But they are likely to do that during dry seasons when thirsty plants suck up most of the water, and very little is left to work its way through the water basin and into rivers."

Just a few hours ago a revised version of the landmark wilderness protection bill that was narrowly defeated in Congress two weeks ago was approved by a vote of 285 to 140. The bill has been sent to President Obama for signature and when finalized will set aside more than 2 million acres for protection. Much of land included in the legislation is inside of key watersheds like Wyoming's Snake River Basin or is adjacent to more than 1,000 miles of rivers in nearly a dozen states. "The legislation is a package of nearly 170 separate bills. In Wyoming, it would limit further oil and gas leasing in the Wyoming Range, designate the Snake River headwaters as 'wild and scenic' and provide federal compensation to ranchers for wolf-killed livestock." Matthew Daly of the Associated Press.

Trout Unlimited released a statement this afternoon calling the bill the "most significant collection of conservation measures to come before Congress in a quarter of a century." You can read the complete TU press release in the extended entry.

Somehow reading through the accounts of the suicide of Nicholas Hughes, who will likely always be remembered as the son of poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, reminded me that human beings have very little control over how they are perceived, especially if they are the offspring of gigantic personalities. So it seems right to refer to Nicholas Hughes as a fisheries biologist -- and a gifted one -- who spent countless days studying grayling and salmon in Alaska, where he lived. His contributions to the science of ecohydraulics and how "the combination of water flow and the streambed guide the way natural selection influences the behavior of individual salmon, grayling, trout and other species" were considered extraordinary by scientists. "In 2004, he published a paper in which he offered an explanation of why larger fish tend to swim upstream farther from the river bank than smaller fish. This seems counterintuitive, he said, because the current is faster in the middle which would require more energy to overcome. Natural selection would work against that, it seems." Dermot Cole in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

Field & Stream's John Merwin weighs in on a new hookless-fly rig that has recently caused disagreement among even the purists. Does it provide another way to reduce fish mortality, or does it rub against the collective zeitgeist of the sport? Merwin says, "The advantage lies not in hooking more fish but in doing less damage to those you want to release. The mechanics of Moffitt's system are such that it's virtually impossible to hook a fish in the tongue or gullet, inside the gills, or in the eye, as sometimes happens with conventional flies."

Ever since Peter Matthieson's 1959 Wildlife In America, we've known that birds -- and songbirds in particular -- are key indicators of the overall health of our environment. Matthieson's target 60 years ago was feral domesticated cats, which wreaked havoc on bird populations.

Now a new U.S. government report says our dependence on an endless supply of energy has become a leading contributor to bird mortality. On Tuesday Interior Secretary Ken Salazar released the U.S. State of the Birds Report, which describes "troubling declines of bird populations during the past 40 years -- a warning signal of the failing health of our ecosystems." As Dina Cappiello of the Associated Press points out, the report "shows that birds in Hawaii are more in danger of becoming extinct than anywhere else in the United States. In the last 40 years, populations of birds living on prairies, deserts and at sea have declined between 30 percent and 40 percent." Turns out that energy production of all types -- coal, ethanol, even wind -- have led bird numbers to fall precipitously.

Yesterday, John Flicker, president of the National Audubon Society, commented: "The birds are sending us a wake-up call that the habitat destruction, climate change and shortsighted environmental policies of the past are combining to take a serious toll."

What's the message for anglers? Habitat destruction and pollution are still major culprits in the loss of all wildlife, including fish, but declines in bird life point to increasing problems with fisheries management. Among other things, falling seabird numbers are one of the surest signs of the loss of forage fish to overfishing and bycatch. Longliners contribute directly to the death of surface-feeding seabirds. Diving birds -- loons, grebes, gannets, ducks, and shearwaters -- die from entanglement in gill nets. According to the actual report, "Mortality from incidental capture in commercial fisheries (bycatch) is the most significant source of mortality for Black-footed and Laysan albatrosses, both species of high conservation concern." Not surprisingly, the report concludes that new attention to sustainable fisheries is needed to stop the destruction.

"'The detergents may be the best way to treat spills in the long term because the dispersed oil is diluted and degraded,' says Biology professor Peter Hodson. 'But in the short term, they increase the bioavailability and toxicity of the fuel to rainbow trout by 100-fold.'" The study, published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, says that while detergents may help the survivability of surface-dwelling animals, they also disperse hydrocarbons from surface spills into the water column. From Science Daily.

The recent killing of a large steelhead on Washington state's Hoh River did -- besides dividing the angling community once again into "can kill" and "can't kill" camps -- drew more attention to the state of steelhead conservation. Among the more lucid observers is writer Dylan Tomine, who with the help of Tim Pask of Scanout.com, just published "State of the Steelhead: The Canary Ain't Singing Anymore, But the Fat Lady's Just Warming Up." Pask and Jeff Bright (both featured in MidCurrent's new Photography section) contributed images to piece, which goes into great detail about how West coasters have ended up fishing for "the crumbs" left over from human mismanagement. Worth a read by anyone interested in the survival of one of fly fishing's great species. (First seen on Moldy Chum.)

Despite the fact that biologists expect the fall run of chinook salmon in California and Oregon to be twice that of last year, that would still be below the 122,000 number needed to reopen commercial fishing. "The fall run -- in September and October -- has for decades been the backbone of the West Coast fishing industry. At its peak, it exceeded 800,000 fish. Over the past decade, the numbers had consistently topped 250,000." Peter Fimrite in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Washington state DNR officers tracked down a father-son team from Aberdeen-based S&S Aqua Logging after begin tipped off that they were seen removing logs from the Hoquiam River on the popular television show "Ax Men." The logs, according to the logging company, were worth $10,000.

"Logs provide a key function for rivers in trapping sediment, harboring insects and other food for fish, and creating pools and riffles where fish can rest, said Greg Hueckel, fish and wildlife habitat programs director. 'They are part of the functioning ecosystem, so removing the log would be like removing part of the bed,' he said." From the Associated Press.

Apparently, S&S Aqua Logging has built a sizeable business around removing timber from Washington waterways.

Gauges that anglers use to determine whether many classic New York fly fishing streams are fishable -- and that are key to helping conservationists monitor water flows -- may fall victim to budget cuts by the state. "Several stream gauges in the Delaware and Hudson river basins will be closed by New York City's Department of Environmental Protection, officials from the DEP, U.S. Geological Service, Delaware River Basin Commission and Upper Delaware Council tell the Times Herald-Record." Steve Israel in the Times Herald-Record. (Thanks to Michael Natoli for this link.)

Even though the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 sailed through the Senate on a 73-21 vote, it failed by two votes to get through Congress this week. Bill S. 22 would have protected over 350,000 acres along 1,100 miles of rivers in Oregon, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Vermont, and Massachusetts. The Snake River Fund blog covers the topic in detail: "'While we are very disappointed that the House chose not to protect these national treasures today, we hope Speaker Pelosi and Chairman Rahall will bring the bill up for another vote in the near future,' said David Moryc, Senior Director of River Protection at American Rivers."

According to Associated Press writer Matt Joyce, the action to block the bill's passage was led by those concerned the legislation would block oil and gas development on federal land, including Wyoming Rep. Cynthia Lummis. "[Spokesman Tom] Reed said Sportsmen for the Wyoming Range supports the Wyoming Range bill as it's written. 'Our contention all along as sportsmen is: Is it really worth having a national treasure in terms of trophy mule deer herd and three subspecies of cutthroat trout and the world's largest population of Shiras moose damaged in order to get 24 days worth of natural gas?' he said. 'I know sportsmen feel absolutely not.'"

If you're anywhere in the vicinity of Cameron, Montana in late June this year, you may want to consider attending the Madison River Foundation's annual banquet, where Howell Raines will be the keynote speaker and a live auction will feature an original oil painting by Ennis artist Ed Totten and a custom bamboo rod made by the "Boo Boys" at Sweetgrass Rods. The event will take place June 26 on the banks of the Madison at Sun Ranch.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

"Now step into the shoes of a sportsman, and ask yourself if you'd accept this proposal... Commercial harvest would be prohibited, and fines for accidental kills increased beyond reason (plus mandatory jail time). Development would be permanently halted. Private property transfers would include easements on prized areas. And you'd be restricted in your sport during government mandated times of the year only." Yesterday blogger Michael Gracie weighed in on the controversy surrounding the recent taking of a giant steelhead, noting that not all of us could easily accept the alternatives to freedom of choice.

"A pair of earthen dams (one, the world's largest at four miles long) will hold back 10 square miles of chemical waste. If this toxic lagoon ever leaks -- ever -- it will poison not only nearby streams and rivers but also the key spawning grounds for the largest sustainable salmon fishery on Earth, 200 miles downstream in Bristol Bay." In Men's Journal, writer Daniel Duane takes a closer look at the ongoing fight over whether Northern Dynasty should be allowed to build a massive gold, copper, and molybdenum mining operation in the Alaskan wilderness.

Last April we reported on the case of San Francisco millionaire Luke Brugnara, who said he was being unfairly attacked by state and local officials for damming Little Arthur Creek, which runs through his property (see "'Trophy' Real Estate Developer Snagged Poaching Steelhead"). An article by Chris Bone in this morning's Gilroy Dispatch tells the tale behind the tale: that Brugnara tried to sell 3 billion gallons of water from the creek to the Santa Clara Valley Water District. Never mind that the creek is important spawning water for endangered steelhead. Seems that Brugnara has since "filed five Chapter 11 bankruptcy claims in the past four months with a total debt of nearly $75 million."

"The measure resurfaced on the House floor after failing earlier in the session. But after three substitute bills, more than 20 amendments and hours of debate, the bill once again foundered in a 43-31 vote." Sheena McFarland in The Salt Lake Tribune. (Thanks to reader John Weis for this link.)

See our related stories:

"Utah Legislature Rejects Limits on Stream Access"

"Utah Anglers Wade In On State Capitol Steps"

"Utah Lawmaker Seeks to Reverse River Access"

"Trout in the Classroom, a nationwide program that brings the art of raising trout to city classrooms, resonates with students by translating trout terms into kid-speak: A fly is the trout's steak sandwich. Pectoral fins are their car brakes. Ants are their chocolate cake." In the L.A. Times, Catherine Ho describes a program that teaches kids how to be fluent in trout.

If the Jordan River National Fish Hatchery in the northern portion of the lower peninsula of Michigan is any example, stimulus funds may help breath life into trout hatcheries. According to the Traverse City Record-Eagle, "The Jordan River National Fish Hatchery may receive $2.58 million from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, part of economic recovery legislation in Washington, D.C."

Speaking to the audience at the Salmonid Restoration Conference in Santa Cruz, California this week, researcher and UC Davis professor Peter Moyles said that, without action, 65 percent of the state's salmon species would be extinct within 100 years. "Moyle attributes the dwindling number of salmon, from chinook to coho, to excessive water diversions, construction of dams and other changes to the rivers where the fish spawn. Global warming, and its effect on stream temperatures and food supplies, may be another factor." Kurtis Alexander of Mercury News.

Want to have fun and do good things for a very important fishery? Head down to the Florida Keys and spend Tuesday, April 7, 2009 participating in the second annual "bonefish census" conducted by the Bonefish & Tarpon Trust (formerly BTU) and the University of Miami. These surveys -- which are an entirely volunteer effort -- have become critically important in providing data to scientists and in helping lawmakers and regulators decide policy.

Read the letter of invitation from Dr. Jerry Ault in the extended entry.

In a big victory for Utah fly fishers and the grass roots movement that protested against limits on stream access, yesterday the Utah House voted 41-34 against a bill that would have cut public access to a list of only 19 sections of rivers crossing private land. Apparently the sponsor of Bill 187 thought that expanding that list to 30 might save the legislation, but opponents of the bill successfully argued against the state's role of deciding where anglers could and could not fish.

As Tom Wharton reports in the Salt Lake Tribune, many consider it likely that legislators will eventually put in place some restrictions on access rights, but for now Utahns can walk on the beds of all streams and rivers, regardless of who owns the land beneath them. "'The anglers and boaters of Utah have spoken loud and clear on what they think their public rights are,' said Ted Wilson, who heads the Utah Rivers Council, one of a number of conservation groups opposing the bill. 'They made it clear, along with the Supreme Court of the state, that we do have the right to go fish. It says that a $709 million industry is protected.'"

In Newsweek magazine, writer Lily Huang explores the impact of the selective hunting of animals by hunters and fishermen: namely, that the species involved tend to "miniaturize." "The phenomenon has been most apparent in harvested fish: since fishing nets began capturing only fish of sufficient size in the 1980s, the Atlantic cod and salmon, several flounders and the northern pike have all propagated in miniature." One possible upside mentioned in the Newsweek piece is that smaller animals may enjoy greater survivability. (Thought of in this sense, the taking of big fish for records might provide a sort of competitive advantage to the record-holders, as the population is literally shrunk by the loss of larger animals.)

As Nick Mills points out in the Maine Outdoor Journal, "a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the changes in size and reproductive behavior are caused far faster by human predation than by changes brought about by pollution or the introduction of alien species."

One thing's for sure: deflation hasn't hit the cost of hatchery-raised trout. A rise in price from $1.27 to $3.38 per fish from Pennsylvania's main stocked trout source has led the state to cancel the purchase of 130,000 trout, according to Deborah Weisberg in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

According to The New York Daily News, one American Museum of Fly Fishing board member resigned in protest over last week's decision to invite former vice president Dick Cheney to participate in their fall fund raiser in Washington, D.C. On the other hand, trustees Gary Sherman and Foster Bam seem fully behind the decision. "A Cheney aide confirmed receipt of the museum's invitation, but declined last week to comment on the uproar," said writer Michael Saul.

On Friday, February 20, Peter Harrison caught a steelhead estimated at 29-30 pounds on an 8kg tippet on Washington State's Hoh River. The existing IGFA world record for rainbow trout (the IGFA groups steelhead with rainbows) on 8kg tippet is a 28-pound fish caught by Chuck Stephens on the Skeena River over 24 years ago. The story, first reported on the blog The Big Pull, has elicited congratulations and groans -- the latter from those who believe steelhead, especially large fish, should always be released. But because it was bleeding from the gills and was "the fish of a lifetime," said Harrison, he decided to take the fish.

Moments ago we spoke with Cathi Comar, the executive director of the American Museum of Fly Fishing, and learned that the Museum has gone ahead with their invitation to former Vice President Dick Cheney to attend their annual fundraiser dinner in the fall. The decision was reached late last week but not made public until now. Cheney has accepted and will attend. Comar explained that the Museum board discussed the decision at length over the past several weeks and ultimately decided that since the Museum's role was historical, their primary duty is to record and preserve artifacts of fly fishing history. When asked about Cheney's obviously negative impact on fisheries conservation, Ms. Comar replied that the Museum chooses not to take sides on political or environmental issues. "Although we work with conservation organizations," she said, "conservation itself is outside of our role."

In a board-approved letter to the many fly fishers who have complained about the Museum's decision, Comar notes that the Museum has never allowed political reputations to influence its decisions about whether to include and display the fishing equipment of the various presidents or vice presidents. "Our premier traveling exhibition, Anglers All: Humanity in Midstream, highlights the fly fishing paraphernalia of former presidents Carter, Coolidge, Hoover, Eisenhower, F. D. Roosevelt, and George H.W. Bush. Controversy attended the administrations of each of these men. We did not vet any of these contributions using a standard of political popularity nor could we serve the Museum's overarching purpose had we done so. The Museum's commitment to the total history of fly fishing is inclusive."

Hundreds of anglers showed up yesterday to protest Utah's proposed HB187 legislation that would rewrite a judicial decision in favor of free access. "'All waters in this state are owned by the people and we have a right to use those waters,' Glade Gunther, of Utah Water Guardians, told the crowd, many of whom carried fly rods and fishing nets. 'The Supreme Court ruling last summer made it clear that the easement on state water was not effective unless it extended with it the ability to use that easement. The court determined that it was lawful to touch the stream bed in order to recreate.'" Tom Wharton in The Salt Lake Tribune.

If you've been in a Facebook fly fishing group, trolled a few steelhead forums, or seen her double-handed casting videos on YouTube, you probably know that April Vokey is something of a phenomenon: an attractive young woman who's grown up addicted to fly fishing. You might not know that she is also an ardent conservationist and completely unafraid to speak her mind on water quality and fish protection issues. Vokey, who runs FlyGal.ca when she's not covering water with a fly, was just interviewed by Zach Matthews on Itinerant Angler. It's worth the half an hour or so to hear what motivates this B.C. angler to stay on the river.

The country's long-neglected national parks will benefit from hundreds of millions of dollars for "shovel-ready" projects, as Bill Schneider details in New West. "'Congress has approved a reinvestment of more than $900 million in America's crumbling national park infrastructure--creating jobs in rural and urban communities nationwide, and helping to restore our national heritage, praised Tom Kiernan, NPCA president."

The new package will also pump funds into NOAA, the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish & Wildlife, as well as restart neglected mine cleanup projects. (As the "environmentally friendly" Beal Mountain mine near Butte, Montana proved, the long-term costs of hardrock mining are almost never borne by the companies that profit from the business.) "The Government Accountability Office estimates there are at least 161,000 abandoned hardrock mines in Alaska and 11 other western states, plus South Dakota. The Environmental Protection Agency says it could cost as much as $50 billion to clean up all the nation's abandoned hardrock mines." Joan Lowy of the Associated Press.

I don't suppose that the 300,000 pedestrians that are supposedly at risk at the Foremark Reservoir in Derbyshire will miss the numerous fly fishers who traditionally dot the shorelines there. Or that no one has ever been hit by a backcast in forty years of sharing the space matters to the local water board. "David Coates, chairman of Foremark Fly Fisher's Association, said fishermen who could once fish four miles of bank have been reduced to under a mile. He said 10,000 fishermen come every year to fish at the beauty spot, including the England fly fishing youth team." Louis Gray in the U.K. Telegraph.

The prospect of a catastrophic drought in California had us looking harder this week at the impact of agriculture -- and yes, even wineries -- on the survival of trout and steelhead fisheries in that state. The sad fact is that in the recent past more than one California winery has been implicated in the wasteful diversion of water from trout or salmon streams. As much as we'd like to think of vintners as an altogether swell crew, the reality is that they are only as green as they want to be. Last year Trout Unlimited announced a program to encourage west coast vintners to focus on restoring instream flows, but the reality is that severe drought tests the willpower of any business person whose livelihood depends on water. Wine growers are increasingly looking to sophisticated ways to conserve water, like installing solar-powered sensors to help manage watering.

This week we contacted the folks at Stonefly Vineyards in Yountville, California for an update on what vineyards are doing to help protect fish. Stonefly happens to be the "Official Winery" of the Federation of Fly Fishers, and recently they teamed up with the Sportsman's Alliance for Alaska to support their important efforts to preserve Alaska's Bristol Bay Watershed, so we figured that they'd be as good an example as we could find for best practices among wine producers. The company was founded over a decade ago to unite the artisan traditions of fly fishing and fine winemaking, and they craft a nicely-labeled selection of Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Sauvignon Blanc.

According to Stonefly's "Chief Fly Fishing Officer" (CFFO) Nick Papadopoulos, "currently we are facing one of the most severe dry spells in fifty years. We recently learned that our local water agency will mandate water rationing by 30-50%, impacting homeowners, municipalities and farmers. This past January was one of the driest on record. In the last few weeks flows into the Russian River have been reduced and I've heard that the steelhead are holding in the lower river and just sitting there in pods. No water to migrate upstream. Backing up to the big picture is the issue of climate change which many believe will fundamentally alter the winemaking and fisheries landscape, figuratively and literally." According to Papadopoulos, a responsible vintner has to ask the question "What can a particular vineyard site provide and what's asking too much of the land?" This is essential because the more you try to force the site to produce something it's not capable of the more inputs such as water, trellising, fertilizers are required. The same issues that impact fish also impact wine quality.

So what does Stonefly do to help minimize their impact? Beyond using no more water than necessary, they bring in beneficial insects to help control mites, develop habitat for owls and other raptors to control rodent populations (instead of using poisons), and they use multiple cover crop plant species to reduce the need for artificial fertilizer inputs. But as Papadopoulos points out, the challenge is to keep moving forward: "Sustainability is an ongoing process of improvement. You can always do better."

Stonefly was also kind enough to provide us with some links to important sources of information about sustainable wine production:

Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance
http://www.sustainablewinegrowing.org/

Fish Friendly Farming
http://www.fishfriendlyfarming.org/

Trout Unlimited's Water and Wine Program

Bay Area Green Business Programs
http://www.greenbiz.ca.gov/

Resource Solutions Group Wine Industry Energy Efficiency Program

Special Note: Stonefly just launched a discount program for those in the angling community. If your business is fishing-related, you may qualify for a 33% discount on wines sent to your customers and partners. Get more details by calling the company at (707) 836-5492, or go ahead and download the simple application form from their Web site.

Friends Tom Brokaw and Yvon Chouinard promoted 1% For the Planet to an audience of New York philanthropists Tuesday night. "Chouinard views the donations as an 'earth tax' and told Wednesday's party crowd that the charity deliberately chose the top line as the source for donations. 'The earth is still there even if you don't make a profit,' he said." Mike Spector in The Wall Street Journal.

A new bill that would reverse a unanimous state supreme court decision to allow public access to all streambeds is taking final form in the Utah legislature. The bill contains a dramatic change: no access would be allowed on Utah waters unless explicitly stated in the legislation, effectively closing off the majority of use of streambeds except on rivers and streams that are already popular. Currently only 14 rivers are listed. "HB187, sponsored by Rep. Ben Ferry, R-Corinne, and made public Wednesday, would designate the beds of sections of 14 Utah rivers as open to recreational use by anglers and boaters. All others would be closed, leaving recreationists open to trespassing citations." Tom Wharton in the Salt Lake Tribune.

As we noted in January, last July The Utah Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling that says Utahns have the right to walk on the beds of all streams and rivers, regardless of who owns the land beneath them.

If you want to get involved in preserving access to Utah rivers, visit the Utah Water Guardians Web site, where you can find specific advice for communicating your concerns to state representatives.

"I don't fish; still, Salmon's humanity, his honesty and his obvious enchantment with his river--and all that lives in it and along it--is always present, so I was happy to follow him up and down the flow, from one deep trout-crowded pool to the next, just listening." Tim Hull reviews M. H. Salmon's new book celebrating the wildness of New Mexico's Gila River in the Tuscon Weekly.

Gila Libre!: New Mexico's Last Wild River on Amazon.

Scientists are attempting to restore a specific species of aquatic grass in the Caloosahatchee River on Flordia's southwest coast. The hope? That they can recreate the huge beds of grasses that once provided food, shelter, and water filtering for this important east-west drainage that reaches all the way to Lake Okeechobee. The story behind the story is Florida's $1.7 billion dollar purchase of 187,000 acres of agricultural land used for growing sugar (see "Eating U.S. Sugar"), which may, in several years, put an end to a large source of excess nutrients that flow through the state's waterways.

"'Studies show that each square kilometer of seagrass supplies $10,000 in ecological services, from feeding ducks to working as fish habitat to improving water quality. If we had grass all the way to the lake, the river would be a lot cleaner, and we'd improve the fishery.'" Kevin Lollar in the Fort Myers News-Press.

The perfect manager, say economists, will manage a resource to maximize its total value over time. But when a resource is available to everyone, a few competitors benefit, while the public in general shares the cost of destruction of the resource. (This concept is explained with much more clarity on Wikipedia.) In The New York Times, Aaron E. Hirsh uses the example of the indigenous Seri fishermen of Mexico's Infiernillo Channel to illustrate how "artisanal" fisheries management provides a model for sustainable use of the ocean's resources.

"Around the globe, the same dynamic has unfolded in one fishery after another. Since 1950, the harvests from about a third of the world's fisheries have collapsed to less than 10 percent of their historical highs. A 2008 United Nations report estimates that global fisheries, currently worth about 80 billion dollars per year, could be worth more like 140 billion -- if only they were managed properly."

(Thanks to reader Jim Phillips for this link.)

University of Minnesota researchers are studying the life cycle and habitat requirements of midges that thrive in sub-freezing water and provide a significant nourishment for many trout -- but only in winter. "'We have discovered in the trout streams there are some very cold-adapted insects that actually only grow in the winter time,' [entomology professor Leonard] Ferrington said. 'Most insects don't do that.' The midges have a unique antifreeze-like chemical in their tissue, and Ferrington is investigating how they evolved this mechanism, in addition to his research involving trout streams." Conor Shine in the student-produced Minnesota Daily.

Scientists are still trying to determine whether trans-fats are as bad for birds as they are for humans, but one thing seems certain: the stocking of 745 Pacific salmon in the Great Lakes has not improved the dietary habits of herring gulls. "Releasing so many salmon - voracious consumers of small fish - has had the unforeseen consequence of causing herring gulls to go hungry, driving the birds to garbage bins and ultimately to accumulating the junk-food ingredient in their eggs." Martin Mittelstaedt in Canada's Globe and Mail.

In a case that may prove the extensive corruption of the commercial striped bass fishery, federal and state investigators have uncovered a highly successful black market in Maryland and Virginia, and say that poachers have organized to illegally sell several millions of dollars worth of the fish to markets and restaurants for at least five years. "The timing couldn't be worse for Maryland. On Monday, the region's fishing regulatory agency is to meet in Alexandria, Va., and state officials fear that the news could trigger harsh penalties that would cripple the multimillion-dollar commercial fishing industry in the Chesapeake Bay and drive up retail fish prices." Candus Thomson in the Baltimore Sun. (Thanks to reader Zach Matthews for this link.)

When I lived in Montana, in order to use a cell phone I had to hop in my rig and drive five miles (barely a driveway-length in that state) and get to the top of a ridge that offered a straight shot to Livingston. Somehow it wasn't any annoyance at all. On the other hand, a cell tower staring down the valley at us would been pure visual pollution. Eric Sandstrom, a trail runner, feels the same way, even if age has prodded him to consider a cell phone for safety. He notes a recent story about a Colorado fly fisher whose objections to visual blight helped result in a smart solution: attaching cellular panels to an existing water tank. In the Denver Post.

"Various government agencies and conservation groups have spent millions of dollars rehabilitating Central Coast creeks in an attempt to improve steelhead habitat. 'Each fish really counts,' [DFG Lt. Dean] Hileman said. 'We are talking about a species that is so critical that some subspecies are in danger of going extinct.'" David Sneed in the San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Member of the International Society of Plecopterists. That's one title that author, journalist and conservationist Robert H. Boyle seems to take most seriously. It's a perfect fit, given that stoneflies require highly oxygenated water (midges are much more tolerant), the kind that power companies and developers often take for granted and the kind that Boyle has spent decades helping to protect. This morning Morgan Lyle describes Boyle's latest effort to stop the misuse of free-flowing water, this time in the communities surrounding West Canada Creek in central New York state.

Stoneflies on Wikipedia

Luckily for Wyoming fishing and hunting outfitter Sammy L. Coutts, the Bald Eagle was taken off of the Endangered Species list four months before he decided to plink one on his trout pond. So it only cost Coutts a $5000 "donation" to the Wildlife Heritage Foundation of Wyoming. "Bald eagles are still protected in Wyoming under state law and, federally, under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. At first, Coutts reportedly denied shooting the eagle but later confessed under questioning by Game and Fish officers." Cary Hatch in the Jackson Hole Daily.

In Idaho's own version of Marie Antoinette's faux pas, the state failed to warn its Food Bank director that feeding 4,700 pounds of fish to the region's low-income people was not a very good idea. The problem? The fish came from Lake Pend Oreille, which has been on the Department of Health and Welfare's watch list for mercury contamination since 2007.

A bridge-access bill that was threatened with derailment by the lawyers of at least one large private landowner has passed the Montana house by a large majority. This is terrific news for Montana anglers and for traveling fly fishers, because it promises to prevent private landowners from arbitrarily fencing off access to rivers at bridges. Further, it removes control of bridge access from the county and places it in the hands of the state, where treatment is sure to be more even-handed. (Oddly enough, wealthy landowners have had great success in influencing local enforcement.) "As it reads, HB190 makes the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks responsible for resolving conflicts. The Montana Association of Counties supports the bill as is." Daniel Person in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. (Thanks to reader Wayne Hadley for the early news.)

African poverty and more than a little greed have led to an epidemic in illegal trades, including those for the feathers of endangered birds like the African Gray Parrot. Many buyers acquire contraband feathers unwittingly or under the presumption that the seller is licensed, so it is worth noting that the bad actors behind the Gray Parrot trade apparently don't bother to pluck the birds in question. 353 parrot heads and 2000 tail feathers were recently confiscated from a Cameroon smuggler. "Interestingly a search of ebay, shows that there is a substantial trade in the red feathers of the African Grey. The feathers appear to be used for craft and fly fishing. On 24/01/2009 there were 16 auctions for feathers with one seller parrotinthegarden having 125 feathers on auction, supposedly molted by his African Grey Pandora!" Dave Harcourt writes on the topic in Eco Worldly.

Last summer's "too-good-to-be-true" Utah Supreme Court ruling which gave anglers almost limitless access to the state's streams is destined to be compromised, according to Brett Prettyman in The Salt Lake Tribune. "What I've heard through the grapevine is that the bill includes a list of popular Utah waters that would become more accessible to anglers, waters like the Provo, Weber, Duchesne, Strawberry and more. Rivers running through private lands not on the list would be off limits to anglers and other recreationists, unless the landowner decides to allow access."

R. L. Winston just announced a new 9' 5-weight Boron IIx rod that it will sell along with a James Prosek signed and numbered 11"x14" Rainbow Trout Limited Edition print. Each numbered rod will featured a hand-painted trout on the blank. In partnership with World Trout, the company will donate $360 (or 20%) of each sale to conservation projects of the purchaser's choice. Winston will also donate two rods to Trout Unlimited in honor of their 50th Anniversary.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

Jim Range, who represented the voice of AFFTA in the U.S. legislature for more than ten years and helped shape numerous regulations and laws that support fishing and conservation, passed away Monday night after a short battle with cancer. Range was also Senior Legislative Policy Advisor and environmental lawyer for Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell, a Washington, DC, law firm. Range received numerous conservation awards and honors, including Outdoor Life magazine's 2002 Conservation Award for his work to establish the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP), the U.S. Department of the Interior's Great Blue Heron Award, and the American Sportfishing Association's Norville Prosser Lifetime Achievement Award. But he was perhaps most visible to fly fishers as the energy behind AFFTA's National Casting Call, an annual event that supports fish habitat conservation, science, and education.

You can read more about Range's work for the TRCP here, and AFFTA's note on his passing here.

In the Los Angeles Times, Jordan Rua says that the predicted shut-down of conservation projects is well underway. "The money freeze has immobilized construction of new biking trails along the Santa Ana River in San Bernardino and Orange counties. It has stopped plans to tear down the Matilija Dam in Ventura County and restore the sediment-filled Matilija reservoir. It has impeded efforts to boost the populations of salmon and steelhead trout off the coast of Los Angeles and Ventura counties."

If the builders of the Erie Canal, which linked the Great Lakes to New York, could have imagined the devastation to native fish species that the sea lamprey would cause, they might still be hauling goods with draft animals. A long battle has a potential new solution in the form of synthetic hormones that might be used to misdirect lampreys. "'We see it as away of tricking these spawning lampreys, and then you can do things to manipulate their behaviour in ways that would work against them -- for example you could lure them into streams without suitable spawning habitat, or just into traps.'" Richard Black for the BBC News.

By stuffing legislators with fried walleye before their Thursday vote, members of Walleyes Unlimited of Montana hope to re-write the science books and declare the fish a native species. Trout Unlimited is having none of it. "'Designating walleye a Montana native would be like legislating that the sun rises in the west,' says Trout Unlimited, a national conservation group. 'We're baffled that they are trying to suspend natural history,' said Bruce Farling, Trout Unlimited's Montana executive." Susan Gallagher of the Associated Press.

Worth reading if only because of the portrait it paints of Yellowstone at the turn of the 20th century, this 1906 Atlantic article also reveals much about the personality of Theodore Roosevelt, the sporting President. He believed bears and mountain lions to be mere "varmits" and preferred to fish only when it was necessary to eat, but he did more to preserve wilderness in the U.S. than any president before or since. "It is this transparency, this direct, out-and-out, unequivocal character of him that is one source of his popularity. The people do love transparency,--all of them but the politicians. A friend of his one day took him to task for some mistake he had made in one of his appointments. 'My dear sir,' replied the President, 'where you know of one mistake I have made, I know of ten.' How such candor must make the politicians shiver!'"

"Nearly a dozen San Juan River fishing guides attended the conference, and listened as the governor described the San Juan as 'one of the crown jewels of the Four Corners, and the state,' and promised a $400,000 allocation for river restoration and river habitat improvements." Steve Gill in the Farmington, New Mexico Daily Times.

Unless the lawyers, wealthy landowners, and Montana Stockgrowers Association can exploit a highly specific loophole in its wording, House Bill 190, which settles years of years of wrangling over stream access, could be passed by Montana legislature and satisfy almost all of the interested parties. "Six years of legal and legislative efforts to define how the public can walk from public bridges to public waters to float or fish snagged here Tuesday on something most Montanans have never heard of: prescriptive road easements." Seems James Cox Kennedy, "a billionaire absentee landowner" on the Ruby, has latched onto one final hope: that an easement is not really an easement when it comes to his river. Jennifer McKee on Helenair.com.

Yesterday afternoon the U.S. Senate voted 66 to 12 to send a bill number 22 to the House of Representatives. As we noted yesterday, the bill would create 2 million new acres of Wilderness area as well as give a large portion of the Snake River's headwaters protection under the Wild and Scenic Rivers act. Now the bill will come before a vote in the House of Representatives, then go to the President for signature if it passes there.

Today Democratic senators will force a rare Sunday vote on a 2-million-acre expansion of wilderness area in the U.S. Included in Senate bill 22 are provisions for restoration of the San Joaquin River and the reintroduction of the California Central Valley Spring Run Chinook salmon. "The largest expansion of wilderness protection in 25 years has bipartisan support and would include California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, Oregon's Mount Hood, Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and parts of the Jefferson National Forest in Virginia." From the Associated Press.

After the bill was defeated Sen. Tom Coburn and other Republican congressmen last year, deriding earmarks that include "$460 million for a water project designed to save 500 salmon in California," environmentalists and supporters of salmon protections are seeing this as a potential big victory.

Read the entire text of the bill here.

Taking what I think is a very common sense approach to the notion of taking "trophy" fish, and extending the protections already given tarpon to permit and bonefish, Bonefish & Tarpon Trust has just sent a letter to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission requesting that they modify regulations on these species. As the letter says:

"Our recommendation is that the species listed above be listed as 'Catch and Release only'. This would prohibit commercial harvest, and would limit recreational harvest to those possessing a 'kill' (aka 'trophy') tag. Our proposed definition of a 'trophy/kill' tag is: A tag purchased by anglers wishing to or in hopes of breaking existing world or state weight records. The current tarpon tag program could be redesigned and all three species could be included under a single tag. A trophy/kill tag would be needed for an angler to be in possession of a dead bonefish, tarpon, or permit."

Read the full text of the letter in the extended entry.

According to Cory Hatch in the Jackson Hole Daily, the U.S. Senate could vote as early as Sunday to designate 387 miles of rivers and streams in the Snake River drainage as deserving of special protections under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. "The omnibus bill, which includes about 150 public-lands bills, is a bipartisan effort and stands a good chance of making it through the Senate, according to Tom Reed, a spokesman for Trout Unlimited and Sportsmen for the Wyoming Range. If it passes in the Senate, the bill would then go to the House of Representatives, where it also has bipartisan support. "

When the Wall Street Journal took aim at the governor of Georgia yesterday, casting him as a sort of L'il Abner of state budget management, it recorded that Sonny Perdue believes that fishing in small, hot, man-made lakes will provide the economic shot-in-the-arm that will save the state. In fact the state has gone ahead with the construction of a $14 million "Go Fish Georgia" center near Purdue's hometown.

Consider, then, that a state that has overbuilt its water supply and that recently considered damming several wild rivers to help manage its water crisis hasn't even bothered to enact programs that would generate significant revenue at much lower cost. Case in point: declaring "gamefish" status for redfish. Georgia is the only state other than Mississippi to have failed to recognize the economic benefits of limiting the commercial harvest of redfish. Even Spud Woodward, Georgia's assistant director for marine fisheries, recently noted that "over time recreational fishing has grown in importance, and commercial fishing has somewhat diminished. The designation of species targeted by recreational fishermen just makes sense." Robert Pavey in the Augusta Chronicle.

Now if we can just get Spud and Sonny together on the idea that maybe a few million of those puddlefish dollars should go to regulating the harvest of redfish, we could all be winners -- especially the guides and anglers who treasure the resources of the Georgia coast. Take the time today to go to the GeorgiaRedfish.org Web site and sign the online form that registers your wish to see redfish protected. It will take only seconds, and you will have done a good thing for fishing -- and for the state of Georgia.

In today's Christian Science Monitor, Ben Arnoldy describes the tumbling cycle of raw-materials mining and its impact on small towns like Livingston, which despite successfully attracting artists, restaurateurs and upscale fly fishers, still suffers withdrawal when blue collar jobs go bust. The piece avoids reference to another long-standing problem in mineral-rich areas: communities willing to relax environmental rules in order to get new jobs, only to be stuck with the longer-term impact of mining waste on their local rivers. "The global economic crisis is part of the problem. The auto industry uses half the production of platinum and palladium, so Detroit's woes are rippling out to Montana communities such as Livingston and Big Timber. But the real culprit is the US dollar, mining experts say, and therein lies reason for hope that mining here might yet revive."

It's been almost 40 years since the Cuyahoga River, which ran north from Akron into Cleveland through a slalom course of rust-belt toxicity, suddenly burst into flames. The river had actually caught on fire many times before, but this was the burn that captured the national imagination and turned the river and region into the butt of so many jokes. In fact the 1969 fire may have contributed directly to the establishment of the Clean Water Act three years later.

This morning the Cleveland Plain Dealer offers an excellent overview of the fire and its aftermath, showing how dramatic efforts -- including letting many businesses fail --produced dramatic results. The Cuyahoga has gone from a river virtually devoid of life to one that supports 40 different species of fish, including steelhead.

"On a fall day in the mid-1930s, the warrior god of modern fly-fishing, Lee Wulff, met a photographer and a couple of sports writers on a bridge on the Batten Kill in the Catskills. Wearing unbelted chest waders and clutching a fly rod, Wulff proceeded to dive headfirst into the chilly water 15 feet below; when he surfaced, he rolled on his back, slowly backstroked to shore and crawled out, fly rod in hand."

OK, here's an end-of-2008 challenge: Is it more politically/environmentally incorrect to screw outdoor carpet onto your favorite shoes, or to throw away a pair of Tevas? It's the great Carbon Footprint versus the Aquatic Nuisance Species debate. (Most of know the best answer is probably to stick some Aquastealth treds on instead of carpet, but would that even work with Tevas?)

Jeff Aston covers a lot of ground this morning in the Mountain Express -- including the importance of learning how to swim in waders. But the beginning of the piece includes the kernel of what I think is a great idea. Want to get kids involved in fly fishing? Do what Ashton's dad did: forget about the fly rod and buy a kid a pair of waders. Get them in the water (midcurrent as it were) and the fish will come.

Oregon State University scientists say they've discovered the highest number of juvenile chinook salmon in coastal northwest waters since they began sampling more than a decade ago. They suggest that the coldest water the region has seen since 1955 drew more biomass into local waters. "Ocean conditions during 2008 for many fish species in the Pacific Northwest, including chinook salmon, were greatly improved because of a huge cold water influx that settled in across much of the northern Pacific Ocean - a phenomenon not seen on this scale in years." (First seen on Moldy Chum.)

In The New York Times, Bill Becher gives a brief history of the California striped bass, touching on the fish's controversial place in the coastal environment. "Striped bass look as if they are sculpted out of aluminum and carbon fiber. Their eponymous horizontal black markings cover an efficient eating machine that can grow from an egg to a 25-inch fish in five years. The California sport record striped bass is a 67 ½-pound fish caught in 1992."

Apparently no one at MSU has tried the Pina Colada-flavored Jell-O, because it is without question the most toxic.

"[Montana State University research Al Zale] and his collaborators will analyze several potential solutions and recommend the best. If Jell-O is chosen, Zale says it would probably be unflavoured. He says workers could spread it over the fish eggs to smother them." From the Canadian Press.

While well downstream of the main tailwater fishery on the Clinch River in Tennessee, the massive flood of sludge containing concentrated heavy metals and carcinogens that spilled from a TVA coal plant last Wednesday shows just how fragile the nation's infrastructure is when it comes to handling energy waste. Almost as amazing is the fact that coal ash deposits, which exist in hundreds of locations in the U.S., are not given hazardous-material status by the federal government. Which probably explains why an earthen dike was the only thing standing between 300 million gallons of toxic waste and the Emory, Clinch and Tennessee rivers.

"The breach occurred when an earthen dike, the only thing separating millions of cubic yards of ash from the river, gave way, releasing a glossy sea of muck, four to six feet thick, dotted with icebergs of ash across the landscape. Where the Clinch River joined the Tennessee, a clear demarcation was visible between the soiled waters of the former and the clear brown broth of the latter." Shaila Dewan in The New York Times.

Becoming a fly fisher almost always means becoming a nature worshiper, no matter what spiritual bent we 've assumed. Even if we choose not to engage with anything beyond a fly rod and fish, we become bound to the cycles of nature. So fly fishers -- especially in the northern hemisphere -- have something more to celebrate this time of year: an about-face of the sun. The light's shift to the south is over and now migrations reverse. Along the ridges of Central and North America, birds begin their 12-mile-a-day progress north. Tarpon note the subtle lengthening of days and start sniffing out inshore basins. In streambeds and river bottoms around the world, insects start listening for different sets of clues. Errant steelhead think twice about home. If we lived every day out-of-doors, we'd be clued in to it all. Our holidays, instead, are as close to a reminder as many of us get.

Once again we have a very short list of wishes in mind for MidCurrent readers as this year rolls to an end and a new one begins.

The first is that you enjoy the celebration of new beginnings that binds us all together.

The second is that you'll begin making room for more fly fishing in your schedule this year. Despite -- or maybe even because of -- the difficult economy, there's no better time to be fly fishing than right now.

At MidCurrent, we believe that the preservation of things that make fly fishing possible depends on folks going out and fishing. Respect begins with awareness, and awareness comes with practice. We appreciate your reading MidCurrent while you wait for your waders to dry or for the sun to rise, but most of all we want you to go out and fly fish.

There's nothing quite like being out there.

Happy holidays and Merry Christmas from MidCurrent.

John Merwin reports that the controversial new requirement that all U.S. saltwater anglers "register" in a federal licensing system has stalled in the Office of Management and Budget. "A federal rule that would have required most unlicensed saltwater anglers to join an 'Angler Registry' by Jan. 1, 2009 has been postponed. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has developed the proposed rule as required under law by the Magnuson- Stevens Act." From Field & Stream's "The Honest Angler."

In the Wall Street Journal this morning, Stephanie Simon reports that Colorado is putting tough new rules in place to protect watersheds and wild places from indiscriminate drilling. "The rules, which take effect in the spring, aim to strike a balance between two resources critical to Colorado's future: the bounty of natural gas buried underground and the natural beauty of a state rich in outdoor tourist draws, from sparkling trout streams to rugged big-game habitats. Among other things, drilling will be restricted -- and, in some areas, prohibited -- around streams that provide drinking water."

Never mind that five major jewelers, including Tiffany's, have promised to never use gold from Alaska's proposed Pebble Mine because of its promised impact on Alaska fisheries. The hot debate among Alaskans has spurred an even more aggressive move by miners to push the U.S. government to allow hard-rock drilling on 700 more square miles nearby.

"What is clear is that the mine -- wedged between Lake Clark and Katmai national parks -- would entail a staggering scale of industrialization. If the full resource were developed, as much as 12 billion tons of earth would be excavated and milled to extract the tiny flecks of metal: about 82 million ounces of gold, 67 billion pounds of copper and 4 billion pounds of molybdenum." Margot Roosevelt in The Los Angeles Times.

Gordon Wickstrom suggests that maybe, for one month of the year, the fish deserve a break. "But what of our rainbows and cutthroat? Well, poor devils, they're using up good belly meat to fill themselves up with roe and milt for their spawn in late winter or spring. So, our trout are also 'out of condition' and probably best left alone in December. Let the browns and brooks recover from their ecstasy and the rainbows and cutthroat build up and fantasize their own rites of reproduction.'" In the Boulder Daily Camera.

Keith Barton of Singlebarbed turned up an interesting story in Wired magazine about how scientists are suggesting giant magnetic coils to program hatchery salmon so that they will swim to and repopulate abandoned headwaters. Barton's commentary: "By then Walmart will have installed the gizmo in their parking lot to irradiate us continuously, sending us to whichever store has the most unsold inventory, or we're wandering around aimlessly wondering why we want a Tofu-Watermelon milk shake in Modesto, when we live 300 miles away."

Caspian sturgeon and beluga caviar long ago landed on the sour-taste list of many conscientious eaters, along with veal and foie gras. But a Massachusetts entrepreneur has found a way to satisfy the hunger of caviar lovers by sourcing his product from "sustainable fisheries," including those for Alaskan rainbow trout. (The gourmand's-eye view of trout eggs also reminds me of the British ghillie who ate mayflies to see why fish liked them so much.)

Little Pearl CEO Rich Bauman observes how "sustainable" caviar varies in taste: "It depends on how it's farmed. A lot depends on the water, how fresh the caviar is, and how well it's processed. From sites with cleaner water, it tastes cleaner. At some farms, fish eat both commercial feed and live natural feed, and that caviar tastes more wild. Some farms don't have that and the flavor is much simpler." Devra First in The Boston Globe.

Today President-elect Obama will name Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) as the new U.S. Secretary of the Interior. "Dwayne Meadows, a field representative for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, which focuses on the inner Mountain West, said Salazar's moderate approach should produce concrete policy results in an Obama administration. 'He's been supportive of public lands energy development, but he thinks it needs to be done responsibly and protect the other uses out there,' Meadows said. 'He didn't say, "Don't drill the Roan Plateau," but, "Make sure you protect hunting and fishing recreational uses as well."' " Juliet Eilperin in The Washington Post.

Salazar's biggest task -- other than purging the anti-science advocates -- will certainly be cleaning up departmental corruption. "'Short of a crime,' [Interior Department Inspector General Earl] Devaney said, 'anything goes at the Department of the Interior.'"

While some will shake their heads at the IGFA certifying Adam Konrad's 43-pound, 10-ounce rainbow trout as a world record because it originally escaped from a commercial fish farm, others will ask, "Where do I get some triploids for my private trout stream?" "About seven years ago, according to www.trophytroutguide.com, some 500,000 triploids escaped into Lake Diefenbaker from a commercial fish farm. The fish escaped through a hole in a net pen created by an ice flow, according to the Web site. Thriving on perfect forage conditions, many of the trout currently weigh more than 20 pounds. And several fish in the 30-pound range are caught each year." Mark Morical in The Olympian.

"After a big storm cleared out, I took Affre to Montauk, N.Y., where we finally found big schools of striped bass, which he marveled at as he filmed them. It was unusual to hear a Frenchman praising Americans for something they had done better than Europeans: properly regulating a fishery so that everyone could continue to enjoy it." In The New York Times, James Prosek hosts a visiting French filmmaker, who describes the U.S. east coast recovery of striped bass as something remarkable -- despite the growing number of anglers who are threatening the species by taking more than their share.

"A small and self-serving group with guidance from the BC Ministry of the Environment is trying to drive a wedge in the long, happy and mutually advantageous alliance between the good people of the Skeena Valley and the traveling anglers from around the world who have treasured this resource and taken its side when it has been threatened."

That's what Thomas McGuane told Seth Norman recently during Norman's investigation into a new movement to limit or ban non-resident steelheaders on the Skeena River and its tributaries.

It seems that the British Columbia Ministry of Environment (MoE) is bent on killing the B.C. steelhead guiding business -- or at least putting interests of locals who depend on the fishing economy ($35 and $50 million per year) second to those who might benefit from less fishing in the area. The most curious thing Norman turned up is that there were so few stakeholders involved in the process of re-examining river regulation in the first place.

Rather than repeat what Norman says in his excellent article on the subject, we encourage you to go read it in its entirety on the Fly Rod & Reel Web site. As Norman points out, there are all sorts of intriguing clues as to what might be motivating the MoE -- possibly involving competition for headwaters lands among developers and even giant companies like Royal Dutch Shell and Enbridge, Inc.

For those of us who love fly fishing for permit, it may seem hard to believe that Florida has resisted giving the fish permanent protection for so long. The anti-gamefish argument -- first suggested by commercial netters, then supported by commercial hook-and-line operators -- was that juvenile permit were indistinguishable from pompano, and that therefore it was an undue burden on them to release permit. Of course the ultimate impact of that logic was that permit were targeted as often as pompano. And as late as this past summer Captain Mike Wilbur of Key West noticed a popular restaurant advertising "grilled permit" on its daily chalkboard. Apparently some Key West charter captains had begun supplementing their income by selling permit as tourist food.

Now Bonefish & Tarpon Trust (formerly "Bonefish & Tarpon Unlimited" or BTU) has stepped into the fray and decided to put their weight behind getting permit listed as a Florida gamefish, which would prevent commercial taking and selling. A BTT board member proposed this action during the Public Comment period at the recent Florida Fish & Wildlife meeting in Key West and was supported by comments from numerous guides and anglers. The FWC welcomed the comments, and now it appears they will move forward toward giving permit the appropriate protections.

What is needed now is for more anglers (both Florida residents and non-residents) to add their names to the list of anglers and guides supporting this effort. BTT has provided a simple-to-use form for doing this on their Web site. Or you can write directly to:

Commissioner Rodney Barreto, Chairman
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
620 S. Meridian Street
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1600

Bob Popovics and others contribute to this excellent short video on the proper techniques for releasing striped bass. Produced for StripersForever.org by Jason Puris at TheFin.com, the video presents both tips for increasing striper survival and some pretty phenomenal cut scenes of blitzing fish. (Thanks to reader Bill Klyn for this link.)

Noting that continuous efforts to cleanup sources of acid rain have led rivers to recover much of their health, UK scientists say that the long-term effects of the problem, which peaked in the seventies and eighties, are not easily reversed. Interestingly, it appears that "adding lime (calcium carbonate) to soils to reduce acidity had few long-term benefits compared with natural recovery." "With average acidity in rivers falling, ecologists thought 29 insect species should have recolonised Welsh streams. Among them should be sensitive mayflies and other groups often eaten by trout and salmon. The findings, funded by Defra, the Natural Environment Research Council and others, however, showed a large short-fall in biological recovery." From Planet Earth Online.

While the first set of tracking data has also brought controversy -- dam opponents doubt the accuracy of reports that mortality is just as high in free-flowing rivers -- the privately funded transmitter networks are providing invaluable new information about the life cycle of northwest U.S. salmon populations. As an example, for the past several years the current administration made a full-court press to have hatchery fish counted with wild fish as a measure of the health of salmon populations, thereby avoiding endangered species protection rules. But the tracking data show that hatchery fish are proving to be slower and less able to adapt to salt water than their wild brethren.

Almond-sized transmitters that allow scientists to pick up signals from hundreds of miles away -- and even track individual fish -- promise to provide irrefutable data about how various factors influence salmon survival. "'This is a revolution in being able to study marine animals that travel vast distances,' said Fred Goetz, a fish biologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who's been studying Puget Sound chinook, steelhead and bull trout. 'This is a big breakthrough.'" Les Blumenthal for the McClatchy Washington Bureau.

"Researchers seeking to slow the spread of invasive zebra and quagga mussels in American lakes and rivers have found a bacterium that appears to be fatal to the problematic species without affecting native mussels or freshwater fish." The bacteria appear to be effective only in localized use and probably won't provide a solution for ridding large bodies of water of invasive species, but scientists plan to test the bacteria on western U.S. streams in the near future. James Janega in the Chicago Tribune.

San Francisco Chronicle outdoors columnist Tom Stienstra decries the logic of "enviros" who succeeded in putting a stop to most stocking in California lakes, streams and rivers. "The Center for Biological Diversity sued the DFG mainly to protect frogs and pollywogs, charging that fish can't be stocked without the DFG completing an Environmental Impact Report. Even though the DFG has stocked many of the lakes for generations, it's over now at many of the best. The ban takes effect immediately."

With the approach of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and on a day celebrated in the U.S. by giving thanks, it's also a good time to be grateful for all that fly fishing gives us. Consider, as well, that not all giving needs to be done with a credit card. As fly fishers, we have a chance to give back to our sport and to the environment through simple acts of involvement: teaching kids about the natural world, taking "ownership" of a local creek, or, if you like larger-scale projects, raising money for groups who restore streams, support research or advocate for environmental responsibility.

This week we're happy to have taken the first step -- with the support of Patagonia -- in building MidCurrent's guide to Fly Fishing Conservation. It's just a start, but you'll find the most current conservation stories culled from our daily news there, along with a growing library of videos, articles and tips for becoming a more responsible fly fisher. Be sure to check back for action updates and to discover new ways to ensure that the next generation of fly fishers enjoy the same bounty we've been blessed with.

"Angler of the first order" is how a 1917 French newspaper described the then-current king of England, King George V. With the passage of time, the behavior described makes us cringe, but then in the early 20th century serving as Emperor of India was considered magnanimous by some and shooting over 1000 pheasants in six hours only marginally excessive.

"In due time the salmon comes to approach himself to the bank. Aha. The king has cast aside his rod. He hurls himself flat on the ground on his victim. They splash and struggle in the icy water. Name of a dog. But it is a braw laddie! The gillie, a kind of outdoor domestic, administers the coup de grace with a pistol. 'The king! Hip-hurrah.'"

While outgoing president George W. Bush gets busy in the midnight of his term dismantling pollution rules on the borders of U.S. national parks, pardoning endangered species act violators and removing requirements for endangered species protections, Craig Mathews and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TRCP) have teamed up to create a limited edition fly to raise money for the organization. (If you didn't know, Theodore Roosevelt set aside more area for national parks than all of his predecessors combined -- see Roosevelt's Wikipedia entry.)

One of Mathews's 150 "Bully Buggers" can be purchased for a $150 donation from the TRCP, and an online auction of fly number one begins December 1. The TRCP is a non-profit corporation that works to preserve the traditions of hunting and fishing and is very active in helping to shape conservation policy in the U.S.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the actions of companies like Wal-Mart are what it takes to draw attention to the critical importance of wild fish stocks? While Trout Unlimited says that the move to sell Bristol Bay salmon "shows that high-end shoppers aren't the only ones conscious of where fish is caught," I'd also like to think that consumer tastes are moving away from penned, pumped and artificially pinked salmon shipped in to the U.S. from Chile and other sources. Buying farmed salmon only supports the perception that coastal and riverine development like the enormous Pebble Mine project -- which directly threatens Bristol Bay fish -- are harmless.

"This is big news for Bristol Bay and Alaska's salmon industry. It's a perfect match between the world's largest seafood retailer and the world's largest wild sockeye salmon fishery," said commercial fisherman Fritz Johnson." Elizabeth Bluemink in the Anchorage Daily News.

Go to Wal-Mart. Buy Bristol Bay sockeye salmon. Help save an ecosystem or two.

A new study commissioned by San Francisco-based fish and watershed advocacy group California Trout says that two-thirds of the state's native salmon, steelhead and trout may be gone in one hundred years. "'They are all in serious danger of extinction,' said Peter Moyle, a University of California at Davis ecology professor who wrote the 350-page report. In danger of extinction in the north state are redband trout on the McCloud River; coho and spring chinook salmon on the Klamath River; and winter, spring and late-fall run chinook, as well as the Central Valley steelhead, on the Sacramento River." Dylan Darling on Redding.com.

In a related story, a deal was struck yesterday between the state of California and two environmental groups to severely limit the stocking of hatchery-raised fish. "The deal prohibits stocking where 16 native fish species and nine frog species are found. It allows stocking programs in all large reservoirs and smaller ones not connected to rivers." Samantha Young for the Associated Press.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management seems hell-bent on removing protections for sensitive drainages in Alaska prior to the change in administrations. On Friday, they announced they are opening about one million acres near some of Alaska's richest salmon streams to mineral exploration and oil and gas leasing. "Large blocks of land in Southwest Alaska would be opened to development -- for the first time in more than 35 years -- in the same two river drainages as Pebble, the giant copper and gold prospect. One of the drainages is the Kvichak River, which has the largest sockeye salmon run in the world. The other is the Nushagak River, the state's second-largest king salmon producer." Elizabeth Bluemink in the Anchorage Daily News.

The New York Times this morning reports on a long-awaited administrative about-face regarding Klamath River dams. After years of pressure and negotiation, the Department of the Interior seems resigned to see more than 300 miles of the Klamath finally reopened to migrating salmon -- albeit not for several more years. "In a move likely to resonate around the Northwest, the Bush administration joined on Thursday with Oregon and California and PacifiCorp, a major power-generating company, to endorse a plan to remove four aging hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River by 2020." Article by Felicity Barringer.

Among the ironies that belong alongside the knowledge of how much water it takes to raise a pound of beef (2500 according to some estimates) is the fact that it takes at least one pound of ground fish to raise one pound of farmed salmon. But the cost in resources is felt far beyond the production of feed, as noted in this article about the possible ties between salmon farming and the disappearance of orcas in British Columbia. "It takes more than one pound of fish, processed into pellets, to produce one pound of salmon. Even though farms are working to bring the ration down -- some say they have achieved a one-to-one ratio -- Dr. Pikitch said the growing need to feed farmed salmon had greatly increased the demand for anchovies, herring and other fish, and 'aquaculture is indirectly pulling the rug out from under the ocean ecosystem.'" Cornelia Dean in The New York Times.

Like anyone who knows a place that is still wild and mostly unchanged, I hesitate to recommend that anyone go spend time there. But I also recognized long ago that many mostly-wild places stay that way only because of public awareness. This has never been truer than in the U.S. wildlife refuges that surround Florida's Lower Keys, where only a continuous, determined effort has prevented economic exploitation from turning them into on-the-water theme parks. In this morning's Miami Herald, Cammy Clark notes the centennial of the Key West National Wildlife Refuge, which stretches north and west from Key West and provides some of the best permit, bonefish and tarpon fishing in the world to those who learn its secrets. "The refuge, located off the coast of Key West, is full of life -- and surprises. Green sea turtles nest on its sandy beaches. Rare Miami blue butterflies flutter along its dunes. Hawks use the mangroves for resting areas to and from the Caribbean."

Count it as one positive that came from the closure of commercial salmon fisheries, or simply marvel at it as one of nature's demonstrations of renewal, but state scientists found the spawned out carcass of a giant chinook salmon in California's Battle Creek last week. "Measuring in at 51 inches - 4 1/4 feet - long, the male salmon was likely five to six years old, Killam said. Scientists used the salmon's girth and length to come up with their estimate of 85 pounds - and that's dead. The salmon probably weighed about 90 pounds alive when it started its swim from the Pacific Ocean back to Battle Creek." Dylan Darling on Redding.com. (Thanks to reader Sherelyn Campbell for this link.)

"It's been a dismal eight years for the U.S. Forest Service. When the Bush administration took office, it immediately suspended a popular measure to protect 58 million acres of backcountry public forests from new roads. Instead, the agency became consumed by firefighting. Since 2001, stopping fire has grown from about 15 percent of the agency's budget to nearly 50 percent today." In the Denver Post, Chris Wood makes a compelling argument that the U.S. Forest Service has gone way off track but still holds great promise as a vehicle for "reconnecting people, children and communities to the landscapes that provide their food, energy resources."

If you're feeling the least bit inspired by last night's presidential election to begin contributing to government again, start by lending your insights as a fly fisher to your community and especially to youth. A good start can be found in one of the great books available for teaching kids about nature.

George Grant, first known for his contribution of a distinct method of weaving hackles in the 1930s, passed away on November 2. Grant was much more than a fly tier. He was an ardent conservationist who contributed greatly to the protection of important rivers and helped ensure that stream access and protection laws were written into the books. His took up the causes of the Big Hole and Clark Fork rivers long before environmentalism was popular in Montana, and the facts that the Big Hole is the longest free-flowing river in Montana and that the Clark Fork was returned to life after years of mining pollution are largely due to his long commitment.

From Wikipedia: "Grant was one of the first anglers to realize that large trout fed primarily beneath the surface on nymphs, and that one needed to imitate and learn to fish this insect-stage if one wanted to consistently catch large trout. Grant's nymphs imitated primarily large stoneflies such as the giant salmonfly (Pteronarcys californicus), which grows up to two inches in length. In recognition for this work he received the Fly Fishing Federation's coveted Buszek Award in 1973."

At least three Washington state construction companies have helped make it possible for the Adopt-A-Stream Foundation to near completion of brand new Trout Exhibit, which is expected to be a key attraction at the organization's environmental learning center near Everett, WA. It's a story worth reading because it shows construction businesses -- often blamed for opposing conservation efforts -- can play an important role in public quality-of-life education. (If you live in or around Washington, hire Everett-based Wilder Construction, Gray & Osborne Inc., or ITT Flygt for your next project.)

"The county leased 20 acres to AASF in 1993 to create the Northwest Stream Center, the first facility in the Pacific Northwest themed to stream and wetland ecology as well as fish and wildlife habitat restoration. Funded by donations, the center has been developed in phases. Recently, a major part of the work has been donated by construction industry suppliers and members of the Seattle District Chapter of the Associated General Contractors." Article by the staff of Pacific Builder and Engineer.

On October 31, Jim Lehrer's NewHour covered the threat to Montana trout posed by global warming. There's a fascinating interactive display showing the progressive warming of the Montana map on the Web site of Climate Central, the non-partisan scientific group which prepared the Lehrer report. You can also download the show MP3 file from the Online NewsHour site.

Buff Headwear will be providing dozens of custom Save Wild Steelhead UV Buff head and neckwear to the Save Wild Steelhead Festival on November 5, 2008 at the Emerson Cultural Center in Bozeman, Montana. The Festival will benefit Trout Unlimited and the Wild Steelhead Coalition and is a fundraising event "focused on uniting anglers, filmmakers, photographers and conservation groups to bolster awareness and education around influential issues regarding wild steelhead."

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

"A federal judge on Monday upheld protections for wild steelhead trout in California rivers, rejecting an argument by forestry groups that said the success of hatchery-raised steelhead has made the population sufficiently robust." From the Associated Press.

Researchers say that a new study of juvenile salmon survival suggests that dams may not be the primary culprit in the decline of some major west coast salmon populations. While the study reaches no firm conclusions, it does raise doubts about the role of improved modern dams in salmon declines. And it may make scientists take a closer look at habitat destruction in the tributaries and overproduction in hatcheries as other, more significant problems. "Chinook smolts didn't survive any better in the free-flowing Fraser system than a comparison hatchery group did on its journey through the dams in the Columbia system, of which the Snake River is a major tributary, the researchers found." Susan Milius in Science News.

It takes a fine filter to pick anything meaningful out of the daily flood of political rhetoric. But Sunday's comment by Barack Obama on the importance of not allowing science to be co-opted for political purposes is worth noting, especially as regards the plight of Pacific salmon and steelhead : "'I want to make sure that the science hasn't been doctored, or it hasn't been shaded, or it hasn't been tweaked in ways that predetermine the answer,' he said. 'One of the things I hope would be a hallmark of an Obama administration is a restoration of the importance of science and how we make decisions, something that hasn't always been the case in this administration.'" Phillip Yates in the Colorado Springs Post Independent.

We've listened to a lot of mp3 files this year, but this is the first that was produced on-stream among biologists examining the health of brook trout populations. Excerpt: "Maine is to brook trout what Alaska is to Pacific salmon, it's the place you have large numbers of intact populations in the streams they evolved in, in something like their natural state. That's pretty remarkable if you think about the changes we've put on these watersheds over the last three or four hundred years." From Living on Earth.

As a study in how political ambition can change a person's perspective, Sarah Palin's reversal of course on the Pebble Mine project is as about as clear as they come. As a fledgling governor visiting Bristol Bay in 2006, she said "'I could not support a project that risks one resource that we know is a given, and that is the world's richest spawning grounds, over another resource.'" But in August she skirted Alaskan law by personally indicting the "Clean Water" ballot initiative aimed at preventing large mines like Pebble from releasing pollutants into salmon streams. "Other moves by the Palin administration could also help Pebble. It plans to use a $7 million federal earmark -- a practice she criticizes on the campaign trail -- for a major upgrade of a road through the snow-capped Chigmit range, records show. There are no villages along this route, but it would form the first leg of a proposed 200-mile thoroughfare between Pebble Mine and the Pacific Ocean." Michael Bower and Jo Becker write about the switch in detail in The New York Times.

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration, which counts only species that are valuable for commerce or recreation, uses various formulas and says the number of eggs and larvae killed each year at the nation's large power plants would have grown into 1.5 billion year-old fish." The question, as always, is whether the country can afford the solution, which is to have older power plants recycle the water used in power generation. Newer nuclear power plants are required to have cooling towers. Article by Jim Fitzgerald of the Associated Press.

In a 1989 column about fly fishing for smallmouth bass, New York Times writer Nelson Bryant uncovers old-style justice as practiced by Mainers protecting brook trout waters. "'There are,'' [Bob] Newman wrote, ''a few closet bass fishermen in the area. I won't say who they are or where they live, but they have been catching these "trash" fish in Lufkin Pond in Phillips. One of these fellas said he was thinking about transplanting a few into Haley Pond (a brook trout pond). I shot him.''

In what many would say is a predictable strategy of throwing anti-environmental hail marys during the final months of the administration, the Bush Interior Department will seek to quickly overturn the rules against mining companies dumping their waste into wilderness streams. "The Interior Department has advanced a proposal that would ease restrictions on dumping mountaintop mining waste near rivers and streams, modifying protections that have been in place, though often circumvented, for a quarter-century." In The New York Times. (Thanks to reader Jon Ain for this link.)

Decades of efforts by European countries to clean up the Rhine River may finally be having an obvious effect, as the first wild salmon in fifty years was caught and released in a tributary near Basel, Switzerland. "Salmon that come up the Rhine from the Atlantic have a long journey before reaching Switzerland and one with many barriers, including hydroelectric plants along the river. But Erich Staub of the Federal Environmental Office said the countries along the Rhine have made great progress in cleaning up the Rhine in the past 20 years." Article by UPI.

The water is rising in Hebgen Lake. After emergency repairs finally allowed the dam operators to lower the flow into Montana's Madison River a few weeks ago, everyone had their fingers crossed that the temporary patch would work. Now it appears that there will be plenty of holding capacity for the Madison through the winter and that brown trout spawning won't be interrupted. "'We're actually gaining water on the lake now a little bit,' said David Hoffman, spokesman for PPL Montana, operator of the dam. 'The more major rehabilitation will have to wait, possibly until the spring or the spring of 2010.'" Brett French in the Billings Gazette.

Michael Milstein's piece in The Oregonian is notable if only because of the terrific illustration that shows the many projects underway to help wild salmon migrate into Willamette River headwaters. "It will take hundreds of millions of dollars worth of engineering, technology and habitat repair, nearly half funded by ratepayers who get hydroelectric power from the dams. Federal biologists are calling for systems that haven't been devised yet to shunt fish past dams twice as high as those on the Columbia."

It doesn't take much searching to find examples of where impending cuts in federal and state funding are likely to reverse progress made in habitat improvement over the past couple of decades. But there are other examples of where simple economic facts -- lower interest rates and higher materials costs, for example -- will deplete the funds of states like Maryland, which battles a permanent problem with mining waste. The Northern Branch of the Potomac River, like many others, could return to a polluted state within a few short years, according to Elizabeth M. Piazza in the Baltimore Sun. "'We're not going to run out of money to build new systems,' said Constance Lyons Loucks, chief of the acid mine drainage section in the Maryland Bureau of Mines. 'We're definitely running out of money to operate the systems, and costs are going up exponentially because of what's going on in the world.'"

A study obtained by the Vancouver Sun indicates that the proposed Garibaldi At Squamish project at Brohm Ridge would wipe out steelhead in one of the top rivers in British Columbia. "The Brohm, one of two main steelhead nurseries for the Squamish River system, enjoys a naturally high level of phosphorus because of the volcanic geology of the area. That chemical supports an ideal food chain for raising fish. Only two other B.C. streams, the Upper Dean River and the Blackwater River, have similar chemistry and both of those rank among the top angling streams on the planet." Article by Scott Simpson.

Abel has two new special edition reels available online. The slate-colored Super 7 and Super 10 are engraved with a Western Rivers Conservancy (www.westernrivers.org) logo, and Abel will donate a portion of the sales to the non-profit group, which buys land alongside important western U.S. rivers in order to protect critical habitat.

All that's missing from this news out of the Iranian Agriculture News Agency is a plea for more and better translators. "'This number of child fish has been released in the foresaid rivers. 10 thousand in the first river and 10 thousand in the second,' said Rezvaani, the head of the center of repairing fish reservoirs of Kolaar Dasht."

In October's Smithsonian magazine, Abigail Tucker writes about the decline of California king salmon, which depends almost entirely on the Sacramento River and adjoining delta for its survival, mentioning that some wine lovers can trace elements of their favored beverage to these remarkable fish. "The kings' spawned-out carcasses nourish not only the baby salmon that will take their place but also living things up and down the food chain, stimulating whole ecosystems. Salmon-rich streams support faster-growing trees and attract apex predators like bears and eagles. In certain California vineyards, compounds traceable to salmon can be found in zinfandel grapes."

But the best part of this article is the its discussion of our growing dependence on hatcheries to sustain "wild" fish populations -- a temporary, and some say damaging, band-aid -- and the bleak picture drawn of the future of salmon consumption. To summarize: We need to forget about wine and develop a taste for cold canned fish.

If you had any doubt before now about whether PETA was off their collective rocker, check out their request to Ben & Jerry's that the ice cream company replace cow milk with human breast milk. Apparently they got the idea while vacationing in Switzerland (which makes me want to run check the labels on my chocolate morsels). You can read the full, amazing text of their letter here: "Storchen restaurant is set to unveil a menu that includes soups, stews, and sauces made with at least 75 percent breast milk procured from human donors who are paid in exchange for their milk. If Ben and Jerry's replaced the cow's milk in its ice cream with breast milk, your customers-and cows-would reap the benefits."

Even if my human milk sources were raised organically (no antibiotics, ate no animal by-products and ate farm-raised salmon less than twice a week), I'd still wonder if this was all that smart. Indeed, my reluctance to consider consuming human secretions in order to improve the lifestyle of cows got me to thinking about other "green" and animal-friendly ideas:

• Collect and bottle human sweat as an alternative energy drink (recycles essential minerals)
• Natural human hair undergarments, available in this season's most dramatic colors: blond, brunette, and ravishing root red (fewer shivering sheep, and a closer bond with all humanity)
• Feed Swiss cows human milk (apparently it is quite plentiful)

In all seriousness, though, shouldn't these women who sell their breast milk consider donating it to women who can't produce their own and must resort to formula? There are plenty of them. Probably even in Switzerland.

(Thanks to reader Luca Adelphia for the original news link.)

It was Sunday afternoon, and the bait buckets swung in the outgoing current from long nylon ropes. All fifty feet of the fishing pier was filled with anglers offering everything from cut mullet to bacon to live shrimp, hoping for anything that might bite. Jacks occasionally drove in to massacre the baitfish attracted to shadows, and my son jumped up and shouted whenever the water started to churn.

After about two hours of catching everything from pompano to pinfish and even a ray or two, we saw a man with an oversized rod bent almost double. This kind of thing always attracts a lot of attention on a pier. He soon brought a large black drum into his partner's long-handled net. "Wow!" said the kids on the dock. "That fish is well over 30 pounds," proclaimed the daily dock expert. (It was about 18.) "But they get kind of wormy, so check his gills and see." A couple of minutes passed as the catcher and the crowd scrutinized the fish and determined that sure enough, it had worms. "You're not going to let it go, are you?" someone yelled. The catcher smiled uncomfortably but said nothing. "Hold him up, I'll get the camera." Minutes passed while the friend took photos, first with man holding the fish, then with the man holding the fish with his kids, then with the man, the kids, and his other friends.

Then, with a sheepish grin, the man took one last long look at the fish and dropped him off the end of the pier. No doubt he felt he was doing something magnanimous. "We'll catch him another day," someone observed. It was, to all appearances, a "waste-not, want-not" moment, as close to sublime as pier fishing gets.

Of course the fish was dead by the time he was released, and I had to explain to my son on the way home why fish require a lot more care if you want them to survive. "I know, dad." I put myself in his place and tried to see what happened through his seven-year-old eyes and realized that he knows a lot more about catch-and-release fishing than I ever did at his age. He doesn't mind using live bluegill to catch bass, and he kills redfish for dinner, but the fish he doesn't kill he releases in the water, if he can. He understands something that I didn't discover until I was in my teens: that there's a kind of bargain we agree to in exchange for having the chance to fish.

Renowned mythologist Joseph Campbell got it closest to right, as far as I can tell, as anyone. He said that everything we do has a negative impact on someone or something. What's important, he noted, was "tending toward the light." The ethics of catch-and-release strike me as a matter of degrees. Even degrees of separation, if you will. The closer you are to your catch -- the more you know about how they live, what they do -- the more inclined you are to be a careful custodian. If you're a dad fishing on a pier with your kids on a Sunday afternoon and catch a whopper and let it go, you're tending toward the light too. The kids will learn. It's a matter of degrees.

As for the rest of our Sunday, my groans about pier fishing were repaid as we walked through our garage and by the skiff. "Let's go out on the boat tomorrow, dad. We see so much more."

With scientists from all over the world rushing to examine new Amazon plant and animal species before they are gone, it's nice to think that even in our over-managed United States diligence and dedication can still preserve what may one day prove a vital link. Thank the White Mountain Apache Tribe, the Arizona Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for a recent example. Over the past couple of decades, they've brought the Apache trout back from the verge of extinction by building fish barriers and removing non-native trout in 27 Arizona streams. "The small, wary native trout is closely related to the rainbow, but exquisitely adapted to the small, flood- and drought-prone streams of the region. They boast the largest dorsal fin of any trout -- which helps them hold their position in a small creek in heavy flows." Pete Aleshire in the Payson, Arizona Roundup.

You can't separate Denver from politics anymore, so I was not surprised that while at the FFR show more than one person who fishes Alaska regularly came up to me and asked, "Have you ever seen Wasilla?" Apparently it is the community by which all other Alaskans measure their environmental health -- and it is the lowest common denominator. On Salon this morning, David Talbot looks at what Wasilla has become, and wonders if it doesn't hold up the mirror to Sarah Palin's notion of what is worth preserving. "Wasilla City Council member Dianne Woodruff hears the same lament about her town all the time. 'Everywhere in Alaska, you hear people say, "We don't want to be another Wasilla." We're not just the state's meth capital, we're the ugly box-store capital.'"

Truax will pay $137,000 to state and federal governments on top of the reported $2 million they've already spent on clean-up. "On March 11, 2006, a tanker truck owned and operated by Truax Oil Inc. struck a guardrail, overturned and caught fire in Roseburg, Ore. The crash released approximately 9,000 gallons of gasoline and 2,000 gallons of diesel, some of which entered the ground and a tributary of the South Fork of the Umpqua River, which provides habitat for cutthroat trout." On KVAL.com.

Timing is everything, it seems, even when it comes to fly fishing conservation. Yesterday, just two days before the opening of the Fly Fishing Retailer Show in Denver, Trout Unlimited issued a press release asking manufacturers to cease production of felt-sole waders and boots by 2011. While several manufacturers have already begun the shift, it'll be very interesting to see whether felt soles disappear almost completely next year, given the weight of TU's support.

Read the full press release.

There's a new energy that seems to be coming out of Bonefish & Tarpon Unlimited in the past year or two. Their new operations director, Dr. Aaron Adams, is doing more in membership and contributor development (not to mention research). And the whole organization seems very much more committed to bringing together all the forces needed to extend research on bonefish, tarpon and permit into new areas. Just this past year, for example, they discovered that the most likely area for tarpon spawning to occur is exactly where proponents of off-shore oil drilling want to expand oil company operations in the Florida gulf.

BTU has recently added some key new board members, among them Matt Connolly, former leader of Delta Waterfowl, Ducks Unlimited and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, and Bill Klyn, the head of Patagonia's fly fishing division. They'll also be holding press conferences and releasing new data at the Fly Fishing Retailer show, which starts tomorrow in Denver.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

"About four in 10 fresh water fish species in North America are in danger of extinction, according to a major study by US, Canadian and Mexican scientists." (Tom Leonard in the U.K. Telegraph.) What do the scientists blame? Primarily overfishing, although climate change will be a big contributor to species declines. "'Across the 21 different ecosystems we have looked at, direct human actions have long been exceeding - and will long continue to exceed - the effects of climate change in almost every case.'" (Article by Louise Gray.)

Almost two weeks ago intake tower gates at the Hebgen Lake dam -- which feeds water into Quake Lake and the Madison River -- failed, causing the outflow from the dam to increase from 850 cfs to just under 4000 cfs in a matter of minutes. There were immediate concerns about the dam's failure, raised by both Ennis residents fearing total dam failure and by local guides and fly fishing businesses, since Hebgen Lake water levels are closely tied to management of water levels in the Madison, where brown trout are set to begin spawning in early October. Some expressed concern that the water levels in Hebgen would get so low that there would not be enough water to maintain adequate flows in the river through the winter season. Anxieties have risen as PPL Montana, who owns the dam, has so far been unable to repair the headgate damage. But using sonar, engineers have discovered a 150-square-foot hole in one of the four intake towers and yesterday began to replace the damaged stop logs there.

We spoke with Kelly Galloup, owner of Galloup's Slide Inn just below Quake Lake, yesterday and learned that PP&L, who owns and operates the dam, was making a new effort to replace the 17 boards damaged in the gates. "They feel confident that this time it will work," said Galloup. We also asked Galloup about rumors that there would not be enough water remaining in Hebgen to maintain the Madison's winter flows. "There should be plenty of water in there, as long as they fix the problem in the next couple of weeks. We are still eight feet above the historical lows for Hebgen, and whether you think the water is dropping at six inches a day or one foot, there should still be plenty of water in the lake. Just as important is that the the lake get drawn down to reasonable levels prior to the brown trout spawn. The state is required to bring lake levels down to prepare for spring runoff by October, and this has been a very wet year, so it would be just as bad if there was too much water in Hebgen, since high flows will also interfere with brown trout spawning."

Field & Stream fishing columnist and MidCurrent editorial board member John Merwin turned up this very interesting story about research into the age of a monster brown trout caught on Argentina's Rio Grande River last year. The fish, estimated at 41.5 pounds, was caught and released by Brian Yamamoto, a dentist from Fairbanks, Alaska. The University of Montana's Sarah O'Neal, who studies Rio Grande fish, got one of the scales and "read" the fish's history in the rings and scars: "We can't know with 100% accuracy the exact size of this guy at each year of his life. But regardless, they suggest that he was a fast-grower from the get go. Even in freshwater you can see he was larger than the average sea trout. And then he just went nuts out there at sea."

By the way, Merwin's new blogging efforts make a regular visit to his "The Honest Angler" a requirement for smart fishermen. I particularly wish I had had his solution to "bumper bashing" when I was trailering a boat 300 days a year.

A landmark decision by the Belizean government yesterday will provide much-needed protection for bonefish, permit and tarpon. As we noted back in June, Craig Hayes, owner of Turneffe Flats Lodge, and Ali Flota, owner of El Pescador Lodge, were leading an effort to provide the necessary economic data and angler support for the measure, which will stop commercial fishing for these important species. As research now shows, many of the juvenile fish for the Florida Keys and other areas originate in Belize, so these new protections hold great promise.

Thanks to all of those who responded to the original request for support.

Visit the Turneffe Flats Lodge Web site.

Visit the El Pescador Web site.

Read MidCurrent's guide to fly fishing in Belize.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

A response to a board poster from Florida's Fish and Wildlife Commission seems to make it clear that it is in fact OK to lift a tarpon out of the water for pictures or measurement without first placing a tag in the fish's jaw. The poster quotes the FWC as saying "Rules pertaining to Tarpon do not in fact explicitly prohibit anglers from bringing these species into the boat. Unless the angler has obtained a tarpon tag and intends to the keep the fish, there is no reason to bring the fish into the boat. However, if it is safer for the fish and the angler to bring the fish into the boat in order to remove the hook, the rules do not prohibit that activity." You can read the FWC response to the poster on Dan Blanton's bulletin board, and the relevant statement can be found here.

If you remember, last winter there was quite a hubbub over FWC's interpretation of tarpon tagging rules, which some said led to unnecessary damage to the fish and forced tournaments to adopt some strange rules for scoring, like requiring anglers to purchase $50 tarpon tags for each fish they expected to catch and release. There were even questions raised when former president George Bush appeared to have boated a tarpon without a tag in place (witnesses later confirmed that the fish had been tagged).

It looks like NOAA and U.S. Fish and Wildlife have agreed to include Atlantic salmon in the Kennebec, Androscoggin and Penobscot rivers in their plans to continue listing Gulf of Maine salmon as endangered. That means the chance of a fishing season on these major rivers this fall or next spring is almost nil. According to John Holyoke, the decision also has anglers wondering if further restrictions -- for example the halting of stocking efforts for brown and rainbow trout on these rivers -- isn't also in the cards. He also points out an irony in the numbers: apparently twice as many salmon returned this year as last year.

Howard N. Ellman just published an essay with great insight on the ethics of fly fishing on -- of all places -- the MadDuck.org Web site. (MadDuck's goal is to restore "biological, ethical and managerial integrity to the collective enterprise known as 'waterfowl management.'") The piece itself uses the sport of fly fishing as a foil to highlight hypocrisy among hunters, but it manages at the same time to be an eloquent reminder of what is at the core of fly fishing ethics: that success comes only when we finally begin to absorb the complex relationship between prey, water, and fish. It reminded me of Edward O. Wilson's wonderful 1986 book Biophilia.

Excerpt: "I watched as Ron tied on a tiny black-bodied spinner, size 20 with a 6x tippet, 14 feet of leader. 'Look closely, man. You can see those little clouds of spinners hovering over the tops of the weed patches. I think that's what that fish is taking.' I hadn't noticed. I wasn't even convinced that a fish was there, let alone one worthy of the effort the cast would demand. Those dimples did not announce the presence of anything large. Indeed, a minnow could have made them. "

While there have been rumors that New Zealand's Conservation Minister Steve Chadwick would not approve the proposed ban on felt soles in that country, today Chadwick announced that she will indeed follow the advice of the New Zealand Fish and Game Council. According to the Fish and Game New Zealand government Web site, "The new condition is part of the Anglers Notice and comes into affect from the beginning of the fishing season on 1 October. 'The New Zealand Fish and Game Council has recommended that people who hold a licence to fish for trout, and other sports fish, should contribute to the national campaign to halt the spread of didymo by not using felt-soled waders when fishing.'"

If you even dabbed a toe in political news this week, you know that the votes are lining up on each side of the U.S. presidential contest. While soon-to-be-VP-candidate Sarah Palin was ignoring the rule against governors taking a public stance on ballot issues and invoking "personal privilege" to encourage Alaskans to vote against salmon protections, fly fishers like Tim Romano and Will Rice were braving the close scrutiny of SWAT teams to go after some very big carp swimming just a stone's throw from Denver's Pepsi Center and the Democratic National Convention.

But you probably missed this "biting" commentary by the host of the popular show "DoughBall:"

"It's looking more and more like this could turn out to be a Carp vs. Salmonid debate that is decided in the end by crucial swing votes. Increasingly targeted by fly fishers and long known to pass global warming off as a ruse, carp are likely to vote red this fall. The sometimes aloof salmon and trout -- who have suffered eight years of doubt and a prolonged housing slump -- will likely vote blue. Meanwhile the Dixicrats of the fish world, largemouth bass, who normally favor shades of red, have been known to bite a blue lure on especially cloudy days. The only true independents, smallmouth bass, are predicted to cast a sympathy vote with trout on water quality and housing issues."

If you haven't followed the defeat of Alaska's Clean Water Initiative, which would have required mining operations to toe the line on water quality, be sure to read the in-depth discussion by Taro Satake on his Tspey blog.

Local officials are considering a new solution to the problem of seals feeding on steelhead in their spawning grounds in central California: electric barriers. While similar projects are already under way for the Columbia River and two rivers in British Columbia, Washington-based Smith-Root Inc. is looking at ways to improve their system for operation in saltwater so that they can be used at the San Lorenzo River mouth. "The pulse discourages seals and sea lions from passing by, but goes largely undetected by fish, according to the company. 'The larger the animal, the more field lines the body will intercept, and these lines are additive,' explained Carl Burger, a senior scientist with Smith-Root." Curtis Alexander in the Sentinel.

A 14,000-acre wildfire has entered the south part of the Nature Conservancy preserve near Idaho's Silver Creek, but officials believe they will be able to contain the blaze by tonight.

This kind of stuff fascinates me, because it suggests that "old world" resource recovery has a lot to teach planners in the U.S., where an embarrassment of natural resources has done anything but help us to learn how to protect and recover our rivers. Planners from Munich, Germany will travel to L.A. to show city officials that effective resource management doesn't have to come at the cost of natural beauty. "The Goethe Institute, Germany's international culture and language outreach organization, is planning to present the recent renaturation of Munich's Isar River as an example to LA, where the city council adopted a 32-mile revitalization plan in 2007."

Latest reports on yesterday's ballot initiative to enact new protections for salmon rivers show Alaskans voting largely against the new measures.

When Peter Matthiessen wrote Wildlife in America (1959), he was the first to take note of the devastating impact of feral house cats on wildlife and particularly on bird species. Fifty years later, as we digest the fact that our oceans' fish stocks are not unlimited, Australian researchers have put together data showing that non-feral house cats may be having a greater impact on fish stocks than human beings. More than two million tons of seafood are being consumed by our feline friends each year, they say. "The global cat food industry was using an estimated 2.48 million tonnes of sardines, herrings and anchovies annually, led by well-fed U.S. felines who downed more than 1.1 million tonnes, Deakin University researchers said. Close behind were European felines, which consumed 870,000 tonnes each year, and Japanese house cats, which ate their way through 132,000 tonnes of fish."

Of course, house cats are not known to build dams, divert water to subsidized farming operations, dump massive amounts of trash in the ocean, or use rivers as sewers.

The short answer to that question is that the 80s rocker and fly fisher spends a lot of time casting flies on one of those Montana waters where the surrounding property owners don't welcome the general fly fishing public with open arms. The Mitchell Slough (which Lewis called "just a ditch"), like the Ruby River, has been a focus in the ongoing debate over access rights. Ok then, Huey Lewis, workin' for a living, fly fishing in a ditch (albeit a very wide one) -- which will apparently be featured in a Canadian reality TV show: somehow that makes sense.

You could easily define the argument over whether or not a massive mine should be built in the Bristol Bay watershed by looking only at the source of money being used in the battle over public opinion. The pro-mine forces are being funded with millions of dollars from the mining companies themselves. Those opposing the mine are fly fishers and businessmen, including Bob Gillam, hedge fund manager Louis Moore Bacon, financier John Childs, and Ernest Mars Jr. of Big Horn, Wyo., who was CEO of Mars, Inc. (Of course Alaskan lodge owners, fly fishing manufacturers and Trout Unlimited are significant donors as well.) Tiffany's opposition to the mine has also made big news in recent months. Dermot Cole compares the fight to a well-funded political campaign.

Read more about the important Tuesday ballot initiative that Gillam and others are supporting on the Alaska DNR Web site.

A Tuesday vote, in which Alaskans will vote on Measure 4, an initiative to increase protections for salmon streams, may become the deciding factor in a battle between fishermen and proponents of the Pebble Mine project. "Television, radio and Internet advertisements on both sides have evoked things like exploding mine sites, vibrant red sockeye, sturdy-looking miners worried about their jobs and sturdy-looking fishermen worried about their jobs. Jewelers, including Tiffany & Company, have pledged not to use gold from Pebble Mine, while some powerful corporations run by Alaska Native groups say the mine is crucial to the rural economy." William Yardley in The New York Times.

Officials are still guessing at the motivation, but some time over the weekend father and son employees of Snyder Brothers Inc. opened the valves on seven crude oil storage tanks and spilled a massive amount of oil into Chappel Fork in Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania. "The Forest Service said the spill polluted four miles of Chappel Fork and nearly two miles of Indian Run. The staff began finding dead fish -- trout and shiners -- as well as reptiles and amphibians yesterday." Allison M. Heinrichs in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Despite thousands of individual and group protests, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management went ahead and sold nearly $114 million in gas leases in Colorado's Roan Plateau yesterday. "'Today is a sad day for Colorado,' [governor] Ritter said. 'It's a missed opportunity, one we don't get back, one that falls squarely on the shoulders of the Bush administration.' Although the sale is over, no leases will be issued until the BLM considers nearly 15,000 protests. That could take several months. The protesters include the state, some communities and cities, environmentalists, anglers and hunters." From Conde Naste Portfolio.

Yesterday Paul Hoffman resigned as Deputy Assistant Interior Secretary, and conservationists are hoping that it's another step away from anti-environmentalism in the management of national parks.

As they say in politics, timing is everything. Just a few minutes ago word arrived that new regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would "reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years." This would give the Bush administration the necessary 60-day public comment period necessary before the rules are finalized by the Interior Department prior to November elections. Under the draft proposal, produced by the Commerce and Interior departments, dams, mines and other projects that might endanger threatened species will no longer need review by anyone other than federal agencies. This after "half the unilateral evaluations by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management that determined wildfire prevention projects were unlikely to harm protected species were not legally or scientifically valid," according to Dina Capiello, writing for the Associated Press.

Not only will anglers have more options when it comes to lodging when fishing the Henry's Fork, but they'll get their Wi-Fi too when the state is done with major renovations, which began this summer. "'The unfortunate part is there's not a lot of lodging opportunities, and what was there was in need of repair.' So crews from Idaho Falls' SE/Z Construction began work this summer to take some historic buildings back to the new look they had 75 years ago, incorporating more lodging and dining opportunities along the way. They'll restore the Middle Dude, the Harriman Cottage and the Bunkhouse and remodel the South Dude Barn." Dani Grigg in the Idaho Business Review.

The "dam cam" isn't working at the moment, but the Smithsonian Institution is on hand to film the demolition of the New Hampshire's Merrimack Village Dam, which began Wednesday morning. "Species like Atlantic salmon, Blueback herring and American eels, which make their homes as far away as Bermuda, the Carolinas and coast of Greenland, will be able to make their way as far inland as Milford, he said." Joseph G. Cote in the Nashua Telegraph.

A grass roots effort to stop a New Zealand power company from building a $280 million hydro electricity scheme has inspired local guides and even U.S. anglers to contribute to the cause. "Nelson trout fishing guide Tony Entwistle said the Wairau was a world-class fishery. 'It is Nelson-Marlborough's most heavily fished river, and for TrustPower to say it was not a world-class fishery just beggared belief.'" Laura Basham in the Nelson Mail.

"Anglers driving east on Rio Blanco County Road 8 from Colorado Highway 13 go past miles of attractive water but it's all private property with virtually no access. The Nelson/Prather easement, named after a couple of local ranching families, offered the only public water between Meeker and an easement through Sleepy Cat Ranch about 17 miles east." Dave Buchanan writes about the likely closure of a key access point on the White River in the Grand Junction Sentinel.

It's official: a Idaho state Department of Fish and Game non-game species biologist calls carp a "trash fish." Seriously, though, when it comes to trout versus pelicans, what is trash and what is a threated species makes for lively conversation where the birds have established large colonies near large-scale fish stocking operations. "Anglers have taken matters into their own hands, illegally releasing pigs or even badgers on the islands to eat the eggs, state officials say." John Miller for the Associated Press.

He was stabbed tackling an armed robbery suspect on a California street and won a Presidential "Point of Light" award for helping police with drug busts, but what occupies the time of ex-card shark Herman Garcia these days is saving steelhead salmon -- 23,000 of them according to an article by Paul Rogers. His non-profit group CHEER, or Coastal Habitat Education & Environmental Restoration, pulls trash out of creeks that are prime habitat for spawning steelhead. "He took a job as a program specialist at First 5, a Santa Clara County program that runs childhood health programs with tobacco tax funds. As part of his job, Garcia drives young mothers to the doctor. He helps them fill out insurance forms. And he uses every vacation day to rescue fish." In The Mercury News.

While sweepers and shade may be the best remedy for restoration on streams like Vermont's Battenkill, in the upper midwest it's a different story, says John Weiss in this piece about the continuing recovery of Minnesota's Trout Run. "The prescription is basic and effective. Make the streams narrower, put in the lunker structures, add the boulders to hold down the structures, reshape banks so flood waters can get out and deposit sediment, then plant grass." In Minnesota's Post-Bulletin.

In Colorado, it seems the momentum is in favor of squashing the Bush administration's reversal of a roadless-area development ban. Even some who supported Governor Bill Ritter's compromise position to allow temporary roads to reach grazing areas, existing coal mines and oil and gas leases are backing away, according to Sramana Mitra's piece on Forbes.com. "A report released last week by the Pew Environmental Group says at least 97 natural gas leases approved in roadless areas while the Bush rule was in effect could go forward if Colorado adopts its own plan rather than apply the Clinton-era roadbuilding ban already in place."

Patagonia is sometimes not as loud about their conservation efforts as other companies, perhaps because wildlife and resource protection is a part of almost everything they do. For example, their World Trout initiative, which is funded purely through T-shirt sales, has generated over $333,000 for wild trout protection since its inception in 2005.

We got word yesterday that Patagonia is extending their commitment to protecting threatened fish populations by opening up their grant application process to all interested groups. Beginning in August, even the smallest groups can go to www.patagonia.com/flyfishing and apply for funding. Cool beans.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

It looks like New Zealand will be the first country to ban felt soles on wading boots. "The ban, expected to become effective from October 1, would apply to felt-soled waders or footwear with a sole of felted, matted or woven fibrous material when sports fishing. Fish & Game said such boots were a 'high risk' carrier of microscopic aquatic organisms like didymo and banning them would help prevent the spread of didymo." On Stuff.co.nz.

Remember that in most cases you can resole your wading boots with kits like those offered by Five Ten, which include a 5.5mm AquaStealth sole for $24.25.

Claiming that Ruby River landowners are unfairly blocking angler access -- a contention with a long history on this closely guarded river -- the Public Lands Access Association recently filed suit against Madison County to try to get them to force landowners to modify their fencing in three key locations. The usual suspects -- including the chairman and chief executive of Cox Enterprises, whose newspapers include The Atlanta Journal Constitution -- lined up to defend the fences, some of which are electrified.

On July 18 the Utah state Supreme Court ruled that "the public has the right to touch privately owned beds of state waters in ways incidental to all recreational rights provided for in the easement." That's created a flurry of jabs in both directions as private land owners and access rights advocates argue about the real effects of letting anglers use streambeds to move through private lands. Non-angler Vern Williams states the limited-access perspective about as plainly as you can: "Everybody has to poop and they don't poop in the river," Williams said. "These people aren't able to stay in the river banks and like to get out and stomp your fences. They think they can just go do what they want and throw their garbage wherever they want." Patrick Parkinson in the Park City, Utah Park Record.

On October 18, the Catskill Fly Fishing Center Hall of Fame will induct Dave Whitlock, Ed Zern, George Griffith, Art Neuman, Francis Betters,and Ed Van Put, who at age 70 still works full-time as a state fisheries and wildlife manager. "When you fish nearly 55 years of your life in the Catskills, you kind of pick up on the history behind the water you've fished. Along the way, Van Put wrote two important historical books on Catskill fly fishing. In 1996, he penned the critically acclaimed book, 'The Beaverkill,' (The Lyons Press), and more recently, Van Put released his second and broader historical book in 2007, 'Trout Fishing in the Catskills,' (Skyhorse Publishing)."

Let's hope the attitude with which Utah undertook the restoration of the Provo River becomes fashionable. After all, what benefits fly fishers usually benefits a large percentage of the population -- and the economy. The $55 million Provo River project, scheduled for completion this fall, guarantees flows and has already returned a large portion of the river to its pre-dredged-and-diked condition. Instead of spending money on biking and hiking paths -- trusting that visitors will create their own -- the Utah Reclamation, Mitigation and Conservation Commission focused on acquiring land that would give them the flexibility to let nature do its work. "'The river is going to do what the river is going to do,' [executive director Mike Weland] said. '[If] we come back in 20 years and the river is where we left it, we haven't done our jobs.' A crucial factor occurs when spring runoff shoves sediment downstream. As waters recede in summer, they leave wet muddy banks where the river bends. These newborn shores offer fertile ground to falling cottonwood seeds and other plants. As older cottonwoods die out, new ones take their place."

The 300 ready-to-fish fly rod, reel and line packages that Sage, RIO and Redington put together for a one-day fundraiser back in April have resulted in a donation of $60,000 to Trout Unlimited - Alaska for research and communication surrounding the effort to protect Bristol Bay. The three companies were already early supporters of Felt Soul Media's "Red Gold" film project, and a follow-up donation based on matching gifts is expected to reach $40,000. You can find out more about the importance of protecting Alaska's Bristol Bay at www.savebristolbay.org.

For more details, read the full press release.

The state-owned Mount Whitney Fish Hatchery, which supplies fish to much of southern California, was severely damaged by a mudslide that also closed California Highway 395 for several hours Sunday.

The semi-recovery of the Wandle has helped inspire imagination among an odd assortment of Londoners, including Design for London, the agency that advises the mayor, and developer James Bowdidge, who started an angling club -- the Tyburn Angling Society -- which has all the reflections of eccentricity one might expect. "John Buchan might easily have invented it as a pastime for a group of Edwardian boy-men with too much time and money on their hands ("Women members are allowed but must always be addressed in the masculine"). There are no records of any fish ever being caught in the Tyburn, but Bowdidge has a picture of himself standing in waders with a rod directed at a drain outside Claridges and later sent me a photograph of a pinkish fillet labelled with the name of a supermarket as 'Tyburn Salmon.'" Ian Jack in the Guardian.

Call me suspicious, but whenever a fish becomes a food craze among chefs in this country, appearing on the pages of Bon Appetit and being trotted out as the perfect health food, I begin wondering what sinister forces are at work in the background. It happened first with redfish in the 1980s -- they were on the verge of being wiped out by profit-crazed netters. Now, it seems, tilapia are good evidence that not all is what it seems. Frankly, when my wife told me she had found a wonderful new tilapia recipe several years ago, I recalled the words of my friend Peter, who had spent two years teaching the Congolese how to farm tilapia as part of his Peace Corps duties. "Why tilapia?" I asked. "Because they will live anywhere and eat anything," he said. "But you wouldn't want to eat them yourself."

Granted, properly fed with nutritious natural food, tilapia are probably as healthy as any other fish, and they have saved the lives of thousands of people at risk of starvation. But every time science looks more closely at what actually happens when fish farmers get hold of a species, the results aren't good. According to Wake Forest researchers, you'd be better off eating steak every day: "Researchers from Wake Forest University Medical Center say you're better of with a big juicy burger than with this mild, low-fat fish, which turns out to be high in an unhealthful form of fat called long-chain omega-6 fatty acids, especially when it's produced by fish farms." Faye Flam in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

The takeway is no different than what we knew all along: wild fish -- and wild fish habitat -- need protection, if only to preserve some relatively healthy alternative to mass-market food production. With all the attention given to the cost savings of preventative medicine, and with the increasingly obvious costs of not preserving our watersheds (e.g. hundreds of millions of dollars this year alone from the salmon fishing closure in California), I wish they'd crunch the numbers on that one.

"The silt-laden water clears and as water levels fall, temperatures begin to rise. When the water temperature hits a steady 55 degrees, a massive bug known by entomologists as Pteronarcys californica -- the 'Giant Salmonfly' -- crawls out from underneath the rocks it has lived under for several years. It climbs out of the water where it breaks free of its aquatic body, sprouts wings and a brilliant orange torso and flies into the bushes for a massive mating ceremony." Alex Taylor writes about the massive stonefly emergence in Colorado's Black Canyon National Park.

But we particularly like the fly recommendation given by Nam Le in his report on the Cimarron Creek Web site:

"Went to the forks on Friday. It was great. Went into ute on monday. It was great. Went into duncan wednesday. It was great. Everything on top and there was a lot of big fish feeding on top. Just get down there, but load up on flies first. Flies/Methods Used: Chunks of foam. Tattered pieces of hair. Unraveled pieces of hackle. Anything that resembles a stone."

For a truly artful perspective on the annual event, check out Felt Soul Media's trailer from "The Hatch."

There's no question that the striped bass have come back to the Connecticut River. While local guides and fly fishers are seeing the best fishing they can remember, some scientists are beginning to ask if there are too many. Steve Grant writes about the remarkable recovery and the controversy it has spawned. "Stripers eat shad, stripers eat herring. But whether stripers are the main reason for declines in those species has not been established. Stripers also will eat young salmon migrating to sea, but, again, it is not clear that stripers can be blamed for the minimal progress in restoring Atlantic salmon to the Connecticut River." In the Hartford Courant.

Two recent articles on stream restoration got me thinking about the need for more people who are trained to understand how to bring rivers back to life. The first appeared in The New York Times on June 24. It quotes scientists who decry the thousands of riparian habitat restoration projects going on in the U.S. without an adequate understanding of the challenges and opportunities. "'... an awful lot of stream restoration, if not the vast majority of it, has no empirical basis,' said William E. Dietrich, a geomorphologist at University of California, Berkeley, who studies rivers and streams. 'It is being done intuitively, by looks, without strong evidence. The demand is in front of the knowledge.'" (Be sure to look at the Multimedia graphic which shows how dams create long-term problems for stream recovery.)

The second article, from July 3, describes "riparian restoration guru" Bill Zeedyk, whose new book project "Let the Water Do the Work" is written around the idea of "induced meandering." "In a two-hour conversation about rivers, Bill Zeedyk never once uses the word 'water.' Instead, the stocky, soft-spoken septuagenarian speaks of a river as if it's an animal -- one that migrates in seasonal floods, erodes banks to make room for itself, and struggles to evolve a level of flow that will nurture the surrounding habitat."

Maybe I'm still buoyed by lingering optimism from the U.S. Sugar buyout in south Florida, but both articles leave me encouraged. As the science grows, it is more obvious than ever that rivers and streams are critical components of a well-managed society. Who knows? Maybe our kids will have a chance to get doctorates in stream restoration, if the demand continues to grow.

A friend of mine, a Montana guide, wrote in an email yesterday: "PMD hatches have been great, and with so many bugs and feeding fish, it becomes something of a spectator sport for me. It should be for my clients, too, but most of them don't see (even with coaching) a lot of what is going on right in front of them. Most of them don't have the chance to spend enough time on the water to train themselves to see the subtle parts of trout fishing -- the idiosyncratic feeding behavior of a particular fish, the little nuances of current, the differences between riseforms, etc., etc. It's an enjoyable time to be a trout guide."

In a state where, as the governor notes, "no matter what the weather is, we're never more than two weeks from a drought," residents are enjoying the wettest year in almost a decade, and fly fishers -- especially the ones who really know the waters -- are breathing a huge sigh of relief. While snow and mud still clog many rivers and cause no end of headaches for outfitters, the resources themselves are getting a much needed respite. Ranchers won't be fighting for higher draw-downs, Montana and Wyoming will stop fighting over Bighorn flows (at least for the season), and rivers where important populations of fish have been decimated by high temperatures have a few months to recover. In short, if you like elbow room and lots of water, and if gas and airline ticket prices haven't already depleted your bank account, this is probably the best year in recent memory to go fish Montana and other northern Rocky Mountains states.

In the B.C. Western Star, columnist Russell Wangersky writes eloquently about why he's stopped salmon fishing. "July is racing towards us now, when the dragonfly larvae finally crawl up from the bottom and let their skins harden and split in the sun. Then, like bright needles, they will dart and hover in the air and eat many times their weight in blackflies. The outdoors will become slightly more habitable, until the cow bees hatch as well, to circle you like delta-winged biting drones, and those who fish salmon will occasionally even find themselves suddenly riverside in their dreams."

It's the kind of fait accompli that most environmentalists believed would be necessary to break the money lines keeping "Big Sugar" in the business of destroying the Everglades, and yesterday it happened, in the form of a tentative agreement for the buyout of U.S. Sugar Corp. For decades federal subsidies have financed the lobbying efforts of U.S. sugar growers to argue against cleaner water and Everglades restoration. The subsidies, in the form of complicated price guarantees and import restrictions which have ended up costing U.S. consumers almost $2 billion annually, began with a political motivation -- the initiation of the Cuban sugar embargo -- and seem to be ending with one: Florida Republican governor and whispered VP candidate Charlie Christ declared the agreement "as monumental as the creation of our nation's first national park, Yellowstone." Truth be told, Mr. Governor, Yellowstone Park wasn't an environmental disaster recovery effort.

The real story is that foreign competition finally ate the sugar growers' lunch. No amount of price support could adjust for the twenty year decline in sugar prices started when Brazil and Thailand ramped up production. And increasing local efforts to get Big Sugar to clean up its act by filtering waste water further reduced the cash flowing into owners' pockets. The fact is that U.S. Sugar wouldn't have lasted, but it's longer, slower shut down would have meant decades more of environmentally abusive operation.

300,000 acres of Florida land will still be under the stranglehold of subsidized sugar after U.S. Sugar is shut down in seven years. Flo-Sun, the company owned by the Cuban-American Fanjul family, controls 180,000 of those acres, and they are known for effectively playing both sides of the political game.

I think that it was more than political expediency that caused Governor Christ to announce the deal only days after publicly changing his mind on support for offshore drilling. It was the realization that it would be much cheaper for Florida to eliminate the primary cause of Everglades pollution than it would be to continue the failed effort to achieve the goals of the Everglades Restoration project started in 2000. Why it took so long to come to that conclusion is anyone's guess.

Related stories:

The New York Times (Be sure to take a look at the map of sugar-growing lands, which act as a lid on the waters of Lake Okeechobee, water that historically flowed south to the Everglades and eventually Florida Bay.)

The Associated Press

One of the unique aspects of Texas redfish flats is that they often wadeable, and kayaks enable anglers to get deep into no-motor zones and the network of shallow lakes that dot much of the coast. As Mike Leggett notes in the Austin American-Statesman, Lighthouse Lakes is one of the most popular, and its value to anglers has only increased since in 2006 Texas made it illegal to destroy seagrasses in the Redfish Bay area. "We will paddle close to six miles during the day, which turns into a quiet, peaceful sojourn over redfish, close to roseate spoonbills and great blue herons and around scattered oyster beds that serve as feeding platforms for the schools of reds that cruise the area."

"The cry is for 'nativism,' a longing for the return of the natives to pre-European perfection. Our land is imagined to have been perfect when in the care of the American Indian, who was thought to roam these mountains and plains in pre-Adamite innocence. Most of us now understand that every brand of human has always been hard on every land in which he has lived -- as the lands have always been hard on him."

In the Boulder, Colorado Daily Camera, Gordon Wickstrom manages not to sound like a strident Darwinist while defending the early practitioners of fish planting. Still, after reading this, I wonder if the loss of one-fifth of all living species every thirty years is not enough to make even the most ardent "naturalist" wonder if we shouldn't go to extraordinary measures to protect the diversity we still have. (If you care to examine the details, a link-rich Web page on species extinction is maintained on The Well by Dr. David Ulansey, Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.) I think it is fair to say that blithe romanticism has a place on neither side of the argument.

Did you know that tarpon tagged in southern Mexico sometimes find their way to the mouth of the Mississippi? Or that the likely spawning grounds of a large portion of tarpon are in an area that is being considered for offshore drilling near Florida? Or that there are now believed to be three species of bonefish in Atlantic waters, and eight in the Pacific? And that bonefish grow considerably faster in the Florida Keys than in the Bahamas?

I learned that and more last night at the Grand Bahamas' Pelican Bay Hotel, where Dr. Aaron Adams -- author, director of operations of Bonefish & Tarpon Unlimited (BTU), and Mote Marine Scientist -- spoke to a group brought here by Orvis. Adams has been traveling around the Caribbean for the past dozen years or so collecting data and encouraging research for these two very important gamefish, and his findings are critical to their future protection. It's pretty cool stuff when you consider that ten years ago there was very little known about tarpon migration patterns and spawning behavior, and that there wasn't even a baseline for bonefish populations in the Florida Keys.

You can find out a whole lot more about tarpon and bonefish by becoming a member of BTU. Better yet, you can contribute directly to the rather expensive effort to track tarpon with satellite tags -- the only way to effectively monitor their movements. It's research that is sorely needed as the U.S. faces the prospect of more offshore drilling and uncontrolled coastal development.

Abel's making a tradition of manufacturing limited edition reels which help raise money for conservation causes. The latest example is a "Golden Trout" large arbor reel with interchangeable spool designed by artist James Prosek. "'The funds from the reel will go toward supporting summer volunteer opportunities in the Golden Trout Wilderness that aim to help protect habitat and in so doing, help conserve Golden Trout,' said Cal Trout CEO Brian Stranko."

By the way, be sure to check out Abel's sharp-looking new Web site.

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

It's not often that an opportunity to save fishing for the next generation comes to a vote, but that's just what's happening right now in the Belize legislature. Thanks to an effort lead by Turneffe Flats lodge owner Craig Hayes, who helped fund an economic impact study showing the enormous importance of tarpon, permit and bonefish to the Belizean economy, the government may be about to designate those three fish as catch-and-release only.

Here's a great opportunity for you to get personally involved by writing a supporting letter to the Belizean ministers of tourism and fishing so that it can be presented by Hayes at an important June 24 cabinet meeting. The ministers are already behind the change, but they need a "show of hands" from U.S. anglers, travelers and business people to keep the momentum going forward.

If you believe that these three fish are more valuable caught and released than they are in a fish market, please take a few minutes to write an actual letter -- not an e-mail -- expressing your thoughts.

Read the extended entry for details on how to write a supporting letter.

"Bill Taylor, [Atlantic Salmon Federation] President, commented, 'This year's Lee Wulff Conservation Award is being presented to Joan Wulff for all she has done to advance the sport of salmon angling, while working tirelessly to ensure conservation of this valuable species. For many years Joan worked along side her husband and, after his passing, she continued the work he had begun, especially promoting live release angling, which saves thousands of salmon each year.'"

Those who have been lucky enough to see a bootleg copy of the movie "Tarpon," filmed in Key West in 1974, have seen a glimpse of what fly fishing for tarpon was like in the early days. The film never made it to market in the U.S. and the original footage sat in a barn in the French countryside for 35 years. Recently, Guy de la Valdene and UYA Films went back to the original footage and produced a re-mastered DVD of the original. Starting today, you can purchase "Tarpon" (UYA Films, 53 minutes, $34.95 plus shipping) from The Book Mailer in Helena, Montana: order online, call 1-800-874-4171, or email orders@thebookmailer.

Besides including some of the only footage of Richard Brautigan, the cult 60s poet and novelist, "Tarpon" also features commentary by legendary guides Woody Sexton, Steve Huff, and Gil Drake, as well as Page Brown, an ardent Keys conservationist. Thomas McGuane and Jim Harrison are also featured in the film, and Jimmy Buffet composed the music. Many consider this film to be the first of the modern fishing films.

Tom Brokaw recently said of the film: "'Tarpon' is a timeless and beautifully executed film about life, sport and culture. You'll be moved, amused, outraged and, most of all, entertained." The film's message about the importance of releasing fish was far ahead of its time and prescient in highlighting the increasing pressure on fish by sportsmen, tourists and boaters.

We're very glad the producers thought the film worthy of the effort and expense it took to color-correct, clean and digitize the film, and we hope you'll support their decision to distribute the DVD. "Tarpon" is a slice of time and a piece of art, but it's also a message that concerned anglers can make a difference in protecting our resources. After more than three decades tarpon fishing continues to be a fantastic experience for fly fishing experts and novices, in part because the artists and anglers of the day recognized the growing threats to the fish and their habitat.

Randal Sumner suggests you consider the per-gallon price of Diet Snapple and printer ink before you let your hatred of the Greedy Rotten Oil Companies get in the way selling that 3-ton rig and carpooling. "The cubicle people seem unhappy, restless and, I sense, horrified that their garages are full of gas guzzlers. What were you thinking when you bought that whopper one-ton truck with a tractor motor, especially if you're not using the thing for work. Now don't get me wrong. I am a free marketer -- I say if you want a big, smoking, rod-knocking beast of a rig, go for it, but then your whining later comes off a bit disingenuous." In the Yakima Herald-Republic.

Settling a dispute between guides who felt using more than two flies was hurting the trout population and those who claimed it was a traditional and accepted practice, yesterday the New Mexico Fish and Game Commission "voted unanimously to adopt the new rule limiting anglers fishing in the upper four miles of the San Juan River just below Navajo Dam to the use of two flies." Read Karl Moffatt's coverage of the issue.

As we noted last month, "Red Gold," a film about the controversy surrounding the building of a mine in the middle of a critically important Alaska watershed, was to hold its premiere at the prestigious Telluride MountainFilm festival. Now the votes are counted, and Travis Rummel's and Ben Knight's work came away with both the Festival Director's Award and the Audience Award, which, as the MountainFilm site notes, is considered by some distributors to be "a much better harbinger of success for a film than a juried award."

Watch the trailer for "Red Gold" on MidCurrent.

Just as rivers like Montana's Bighorn suffer from dramatic changes in water release levels, similar policies exist in other large and important tailwater fisheries in the U.S. east. Many are questioning the simplistic "off or on" policies of resources managers, who seem to ignore the health of rivers in favor of pure risk management. Perhaps the best example is the West Branch of the Delaware, which was visited recently by New York Times writer Peter Kaminsky. "[Al] Caucci was gratified, but disturbed, explaining that wild fluctuations in river flow, like the one we had experienced, disorient the trout. And when a high flow is followed immediately by a precipitous drop, precious insect life is stranded to die on exposed gravel beds, thus depleting the food supply of the river."

Meanwhile, on Arkansas's North Fork River, the massive releases of this spring have caused another problem: warm-water fish invading the tailwaters. Of course dam releases here have been a response to true potential disasters, but it does show how tricky managing large impoundments can be. The state is now electro-shocking the tailwaters and transporting bass and walleye back above the dam.

And finally, in this morning's news The New York Times covers the March breaching of the Milltown dam, which few can doubt will have an enormously beneficial impact on the Clark Fork and Blackfoot Rivers. Not surprisingly, the loudest calls for the dam's removal came after a sudden release of water in 1996 -- in response to the threat of damage from a huge ice jam -- caused a massive fish kill because of the heavy metals contained in the sediment behind the dam.

In a reversal of policy that some say is too little too late, the Bureau of Reclamation went from cutting water flows during a critical spawning period to tripling them in order to release excess water only two weeks later. "The Bureau of Reclamation will increase water flows into the Bighorn River beginning late Friday, as rain and snowmelt raise the level of Bighorn Lake. Bureau Area Manager Dan Jewell says flows into the river along the Montana-Wyoming border will be stepped up over the next three days, to 4,500 cubic feet per second." Mark Henckel covers the policy changes in the Billings Gazette: "'What I've been telling people is that our flow requests are based on maintaining the side channel habitat,' [Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks biologist Ken] Frazer said. 'At 2,500 cfs, most of the side channels are in good shape. The 2,000 was our drought level minimums. When you start dropping below that, you really start dewatering them.'"

Place this one firmly in the category of history's ironies: Zane Grey, who became so passionate about the Oregon's upper Rogue River that he bought a mining claim there, may see his property added to the National Register of Historic Places. That would probably strike the famous angler-author as quite a twist of fate. Why? Grey bought the mining claim as a last resort, since all the land around the river was owned by the federal government in 1926. The Trust for Public Land bought the land from the Haas family, who owned it, and then sold to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. That's the same BLM who is fighting conservationists all over the U.S. west for more drilling access in unspoiled wilderness. Hmmm....

Arkansas isn't the only state that has struggled with too much water this spring. Places like Washington, Oregon and California have seen unusual winter precipitation turn into a torrent of runoff as temperatures rise. But one look at NOAA's Western Water Supply forecasts will give you a sense of perspective. Except for portions of southern Colorado and Oregon, no place is getting hit as hard as western Arkansas.

Still, high waters in Yosemite led Washington Post writer Angus Phillips to spend his days waterfall-watching rather than fly fishing. That in turn "exposed" some of the dangers of hiking in an overcrowded park: "Halfway up Willow Creek, bushwhacking through the scrub oak and pine, we rounded a bend to find a hugely fat, tattooed man stretched out on a rock, stark naked and sunning himself. The women recoiled in mock horror."

As didymo -- the invasive algae otherwise known as "rock snot" -- becomes a fact of life in a growing number of fly fishing waters, some progress is being made in designing solutions to help prevent the spread, including the use of wader washes. On Maryland's Gunpowder River, wooden stands hold black plastic tubs full of strong saltwater, which research now shows does a good job of ridding gear of traces of the algae. Candus Thomas reports in the Baltimore Sun on how the locals are dealing with the problem and includes video and a map of the river's problem section. "Anglers who fish in areas without scrubbing stations should carry in their vehicle a 5-gallon pail, 1 pound of salt and brush and use water from the river to make a saline solution. If that proves impractical, they should disinfect boots, waders and other gear at home in a solution of 1 pound of salt to 5 gallons of water or scrub them down in hot water and dish detergent and then air-dry. The organism can survive on moist surfaces for two days."

Charlie Meyers details the disagreement between those who believe the Rio Grande cutthroat deserves Endangered status and those who believe federal involvement is unnecessary and messy. "Another aspect of all this is the undeniable fact that federal listing is no panacea for threatened species, particularly those whose well-being is linked to water development. One need look no farther than the eternal boondoggle aimed at recovery of four native fish of the Colorado River basin to realize the futility of recovery programs welded to the power politics of water and a seemingly bottomless federal money pit." In the Denver Post.

In a self-described diatribe, Gordon Wickstrom traces the history of Colorado's Boulder Creek and asks the question, Do we need to continue decades of desecration, or should we treat the creek and others like it as our friends? "Boulderites were of two minds about our local mountains. They were resorts of beauty and wonderful places to go, but they were also resources to exploit. If miners were using and abusing the creek's water in the mountains, farmers out in the valley were fighting for it for their crops, while we town folk drank and washed in it as it ran down little ditches in front of our homes." In the Boulder Daily Camera.

Ted Williams says that instead of looking the real problem with salmon recovery -- dams -- squarely in the eye, the current administration, bent on controlling salmon predators, is doing a remarkable amount of tail-chasing. Beyond the fact that recovery can't occur without the removal of four Snake River dams, there is no end to the number of predators. "Suppose the Bush administration prevails against squawfish, sea lions and terns. Is it then going to pacify the rest of nature? Will it attack cormorants, which eat more smolts than sea lions and terns combined? And what about orcas and those smolt-swilling walleyes and coastal cutthroat trout?" In the High Country News.

Despite opposition from some conservationist who argue that toting thousands of gallons of Rotenone into distant mountain lakes is a bad idea, Montana scientists will use their success at Black and Blackfoot Lakes to help convince the public that many more lakes should be poisoned to clear the way for Westslope Cutthroat recovery. "In all, the Westslope Cutthroat Trout Conservation Project will treat 21 high mountain lakes over a 10-year period, poisoning in the fall and restocking in the spring." Michael Jamison in The Missoulian.

For only a second time in the history of the program, an entire watershed received "Wild and Scenic" designation, meaning that local communities must limit development and runoff that might impact Eightmile and its tributaries. "The Eightmile is one of two 'wild and scenic' rivers in Connecticut: The 14 miles of the Upper Farmington River between Colebrook and Canton earned the designation in 1994. An effort is underway to win the same designation for the lower Farmington. The 40-year-old Wild and Scenic Rivers program has protected more than 11,000 miles of 165 free-flowing rivers nationwide." David Funkhouser in The Hartford Courant.

Yesterday California's Fish and Game Commission banned salmon fishing on most of the Sacramento, and on all of the San Joaquin and American rivers. The action follows similar moves by California and Oregon last month to close commercial salmon fishing in ocean waters. "The only exception to the salmon ban will be along a stretch of the Sacramento River from Red Bluff to Knights Landing. During November and December of this year, anglers will be allowed to catch and keep one salmon a day from that zone." On My58.com.

Yesterday Fly Talk's Kirk Deeter turned up a classic example of animal rights activism run wild. In Switzerland, new legislation designed to improve animal welfare includes a provision that "it is not permitted to go fishing with the 'intention' to release the fish." That caught they eye of anglers all over Europe, who want the Swiss to change the legislation before it is too late."It's believed that the legislation could affect as many as 275,000 anglers in Switzerland, who generate around 30 million Euros in annual tackle sales. EFTTA (European Fishing Tackle Trade Association) acting president, Pierangelo Zanetta, said: 'EFTTA does not believe that forcing anglers to kill their catches is either good for nature or for recreational sport fishing - which makes a significant financial contribution to the EU economy.'"

"Since selling his fishing rod company in 1997 to Shimano American Corporation, Gary Loomis has spent the last eleven years at G.Loomis, Inc. in a promotional capacity and assisting when needed on new rod designs. Now, Loomis has decided it is time to move on and focus on other interests, including several conservation projects in which he's involved. He founded Fish First, a group dedicated to restoring salmon runs in his home state of Washington in 1995, and was the driving force in bringing the first chapter of the Coastal Conservation Association to the West Coast."

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

Someone needs to tell the British Environment Agency's (EA) head of fisheries that making fish a cinch to catch by breeding their natural instincts out of them does not create "more sport." Then pat him on the back for doing something to protect wild trout from interbreeding with hatchery fish.

If a photo of former president Bush hadn't been splashed across television screens all night long, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about him going fishing with George Wood and Andy Mill and catching a 100-plus-pound tarpon. But an editorial comment that escaped the Web production team for WPTV.com makes the story a little saltier. It says: "Note to Editor/Producers: To avoid any confusion, it is important to stress that the boat had a legal harvest tag and that the fish was released." The boat had a legal harvest tag, but in the picture there is only a rope passed through the mouth and gills of the fish. What's the big deal? Well, earlier this year Florida FWC officers made it fairly clear to Gold Cup tournament organizers that in order to comply with the state's tarpon tag law, as soon as a fish was reduced to "possession," a $50 tag must be affixed to the lower jaw. OK, it is possible that we can't see the tag in the Bush photo, and one has to wonder about the efficacy and correctness of such a strict interpretation of tag rules anyway. But is it permissible for former presidents can handle fish differently, as long as the media manages the spin correctly? (Note: After this post was written, we did get confirmation that a tag was in place. See comments.) Or should FWC rethink making presidents and tournament anglers punch holes in tarpon jaws, which some think interferes with tarpon's ability to capture food?

"A federal appeals court has ruled the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service needs to reconsider protection for coastal cutthroat trout in the Columbia River and southwestern Washington."

Once again Abel is producing a limited-edition set of reel to promote and benefit an important conservation cause. This time it's the efforts of the Sportsman's Alliance, a group dedicated to raising awareness of the threats posed to Alaska's Bristol Bay by the proposed Pebble Mine. "Abel will produce a limited edition - numbered 1 to 100 - of the engraved reels in a specially anodized red color, symbolic of both the area's sockeye or red salmon and the 'No Pebble Mine' campaign."

Read the extended entry for the full press release.

As Jason Kauffman reports in the Idaho Mountain Express, state officials feel that the recovery of chinook salmon in the Sawtooth Valley has been strong enough to let them consider re-opening the fishery after more than 30 years. "The commission is expected to consider the season on the upper Salmon and another on the South Fork of the Salmon River east of McCall in May, a Fish and Game news release states."

While angling "sportsmen" continue to kill large sharks as if there were an endless supply, scientists are studying the real and dramatic decline of several species. In Florida Bay the shark population has plummeted in recent years. This CNN video shows guide John Milchman working with researchers to capture and sample lemon and bull sharks, which once were so plentiful that "you couldn't hang a bait off of the side of your boat." (Thanks to reader David Dalu for this link.)

Nova Scotia anglers and officials are surprised at the rise in the number of rainbow trout being caught in local rivers, the likely result of a hurricane damaging a coastal fish farm last fall. The concern: that rainbow trout, which eat salmon eggs, will do damage to native fish populations. "The fish, which are not native to our waters, are suddenly being caught by anglers everywhere from the Mersey River in Liverpool to the Sackville River in Halifax Regional Municipality, and it’s all because of post-tropical storm Noel. Wind and storm surges ripped apart Ocean Trout Farms’ aquaculture cages off Coffin Island in Queens County last fall, releasing about 500,000 farmed fish into the ocean." Renee Stevens in the Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald.

On New West, Bill Schneider asks a reasonable question: Why aren't there more fly-fishing-only sections on U.S. rivers? "Is it so much to ask that a small percentage--let’s say about 2 percent--of these steelhead rivers be set aside for fly-fishing-only? If an equal amount of stream (or more) must be set aside for non-fly fishing, I’m sure flycasters wouldn’t object." Well, the answer can probably be found in the failure of state governments to distinguish between resource management imperatives and "social" management issues, where those who feel their right to fish any old way they choose usually scream the loudest. A perfect recent example is the Wisconsin DNR bowing to public pressure against regulations on the Prairie River. (Thanks to reader John Koch for the Prairie River link.)