A brainy science guy says it could happen.

Money Quote:

“It is possible to approach 1 million fish. Restored habitat from augmentation is on par with rivers we are studying that have those numbers,” he said. “It is so much different than the status quo. There aren’t hardly any fish in this river and there should be…”…Stanford said the Yakima River was once the primary producer of wild fish in the Columbia River Basin and could be again with additional water….

…He said in addition to water, the river system needs more river side channels and a bigger flood plain, a diversity of fish stocks, and a way to reduce the impacts of commercial fishing in the ocean…

Music is a big deal to the Buster gang, and here’s a new release that has tickled my fancy as of late. And who doesn’t like their fancy tickled from time to time? 

Ben Nichols, lead man of Lucero, is up to some more badassry. He’s going solo this time with the EP, The Last Pale Light in the West. This is the O-fficial companion piece to the theatrical release of Cormac’s Blood Meridian. I have given it a few spins and I am loving it. Like 169% loving it. The Last Pale Light in the West doesn’t officially release till October 10th, but they’ll give you a digital copy till you can get your hands on the candy. And Salty….breathe in, breathe out.

Track listing:

1. The Last Pale Light in the West
2. The Kid
3. Davy Brown
4. Chambers
5. Tobin
6. Toadvine
7. The Judge

Ben Nichols -vocals, acoustic guitar/Rick Steff - accordion/Todd Beane - pedal steel

There’s been plenty of awesome released over the last few weeks…Old Crow’s Tennessee Pusher and Calexico’s Carried to Dust being two prime examples. Git those two while I’m at it.

From Matt M.

Send yours to salty@busterwantstofish.com

steelhead/cutt hybrid

another steelhead/cutt hybrid

In these parts every fly fisher has a place in his heart for the sea run cutthroat. The sea run ekes out a living amongst larger and more aggressive pacific salmon and steelhead. Never going far out to sea this humble fish meekly cruises the shorelines and estuaries barely sustaining itself in the best of times.

Enter the steelhead/coastal cutt hybrid; big, fast and badasss. Sultan of the Sound, Czar of Sloughs, Scourge of Sculpins, Do Not Test the mighty steelthroatcutthead!

Close personal friend, lights out fly angler and cryptographer, David S. sends these pics.”There are a number of things about the fish that make it unique: Not many spots on below the lat line, very rose colored cheeks and longer snout .”

The long snout is for killing sharks David. Ever see a great white in Puget Sound? No. No you haven’t.

It’s the edges we seek;  the ragged boundaries between the gloomy haven dominated by conifers where all sound drops to a whisper, the bright, berry-laden  underscrub  interspersed by young aspen, the lush creek beds, the occasional open sage expanse. Diversity increases, sometimes dramatically, along these lines – what ecologists would call “edge effect.” We cross through all of these transitions, making somewhat educated guesses, keenly aware that we know little and that pretending we did would be foolish. The truth is, they could be anywhere. Drop one in the action and fill the magazine. Maybe they’re still feeding on the waning supply of service berries, though apparently not in the same spot they were the other day. So instead we walk, probe and listen.

An hour goes by. An hour of traversing hillsides, climbing, dropping, stopping at the sight of movement in the corner of the eye, slipping on wet vegetation and ass-planting hard, scattergun held protectively overhead. Getting up, taking two steps and wheeling on a dime, gun shouldered on a panicked robin. Safety engaged  again.

Two hours without a flush, and the talk drifts to how much a dog would help, though neither of us currently have one. Without the advantage of scent, the responsibilities of flushing and retrieving are up to us, knowing our efforts pale in comparison to a well-trained Brittany right now. Discussion of the virtues of various breeds and a pup for the not too distant future. Navigate through a copse of dense, young aspen. A flush now would be an impossible shot. Grasshoppers crackle on a warm September afternoon and the autumn-thin creek meanders down below, native cutthroat hovering under cuttbanks.

In then end, we return to the truck with little light remaining, game bag empty. I walk into the house, hit by the smells of dinner cooking. The better half knows the score – you never plan on having grouse for dinner.

From WashingtonPost.com today comes an interesting article on Palin, the Pebble Mine, and the defeated Prop 4. A few excerpts here:

“…The two sides spent more than $10 million — unprecedented for such efforts in Alaska — and throughout it all, the state’s highly popular first-term governor, Sarah Palin, held back. Alaska law forbids state officials from using state resources to advocate on ballot initiatives.

Then, six days before the Aug. 26 vote, with the race looking close, Palin broke her silence. Asked about the initiative at a news conference, she invoked “personal privilege” to give an opinion. “Let me take my governor’s hat off for just a minute here and tell you, personally, Prop. 4 — I vote no on that,” she said. “I have all the confidence in the world that [the Department of Environmental Conservation] and our [Department of Natural Resources] have great, very stringent regulations and policies already in place. We’re going to make sure that mines operate only safely, soundly.”

Palin’s comments rocked the contest. Within a day, the pro-mining coalition fighting the referendum had placed full-page ads with a picture of the governor and the word “NO.” The initiative went down to defeat, with 57 percent of voters rejecting it…

The state ethics panel is examining whether her comments violated the law against state advocacy on ballot measures; it had already ruled that a state Web site was improperly slanted toward mining interests…

For Palin to intervene as she did, with a brief, seemingly off-the-cuff statement just days before the election, also showed a lack of serious engagement on complex and important issues, initiative supporters say. Palin, they say, was simply going on the word of officials in her administration that the existing regulations sufficed, without taking into account their possible biases: Her natural resources commissioner hails from the mining industry, and mining companies directly subsidize some regulators’ salaries…”

“She says, ‘I’m going to take off my governor’s hat,’ but the only reason the press was there was that they were called to a press conference by the governor… Being governor is not a costume — you either are the governor or not.”  - former Alaska governor Tony Knowles

The full article here.

Mike S., winter view.

 Mike S. with optional spawn

send yours to salty@busterwantstofish.com

It’s aaaaaaaaallll TALK!

Buster detects the el supremo from the room at the top of the stairs.

Purple King Variation – Fly & photo by Ginseng Sullivan

From Brain W in Colorado

Send yours to salty@busterwantstofish.com or not. I have plenty of Russian viagra offers hitting that address daily.

There’s a run on the local where, of late, we’ve found ourselves, sans jacket, in certain occasions of an unexpected shower. Yes, this is Oregon, west of the Cascades, and “unexpected shower” is something of an oxymoron. Thus perhaps we are the unjacketed moron….

None-the-less, there we’ve been, and there, to the rescue, has stood our newest bestest friend,
the Rain Tree.

It is sad to realise that her welcoming tendrils are only such due to the advance of her demise. The river cobble footing washed bare and in a stage of dismantle, her formerly earth-bound roots exposed as gnarled benches, rails and hammocks, only how many south-westerly-fueled deluges away from that sudden and sickening crash.

But today she stands. A shield from the heavens’ cold soakings. A place to climb onto, to settle into. To watch, to listen, to smell the rain, and, depending on the duration of the shower, to may be even get lit.

Trout anglers who fish in Oregon’s north coastal streams can keep some of their catches beginning next year.

Two steps forward, one step back as ODFW decides to remove protective regulations for Oregon’s wild sea-run cutthroat trout. State biologists have determined that improvements in watershed and forest management have been so successful that it is now prudent to harvest native cutts in Oregon’s northern coastal streams.Buster says that you whites spend too much time smokin your own pipes.

“The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold than to trust him not to draw his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”

-Thomas Jefferson

The Weekly Standard has, for its cover story, a overly long first-person account about fishing with Vice President Dick Cheney on the Snake River. Sure, it’s about fishing and all but even though I couldn’t finish the thing, I’m still feeling like a thin film of Cola, fryer grease and that dog hair-spiced goop that collects in my truck’s cup holders has been smeared over my skin.
The writer, Matt Labash is described by Wikipedia as, “someone who fly-fishes with a fanaticism bordering on mental illness”, and asserts that, “I don’t believe in reincarnation, but if I did, I’d hope to come back in my next life as a spooky brown trout, so that when I came back in the life following that one, I’d have a better idea of how to catch myself.”
A heterosexual, he nevertheless keeps on his Weekly Standard office desk a copy of Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men From The Rural Midwest, a picture book. “I used to have problems with chit-chatty coworkers endlessly pitching camp in my office. Then I started displaying Farm Boys. Now, most of my office chats are away games, with me in control of the schedule. I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
Huh… Interesting… Perhaps blowing creepy old men is now considered a heterosexual activity. Who knew?

For the second time in a year, it’s been sighted. Buster recommends that you find your own copy.

From WDFW:
“The maximum number of steelhead encounters, which are set by WDFW’s permit with NOAA Fisheries, have been reached.”

From Local Steelhead Outfitter’s website (before he redacted it):
“Me? I take off for the Methow Valley again to chase the big Westslope Cutties again, but this time we will spend half our time skating Crystal Caddis for you-know-who. So very perfect. The Met is really low right now, so we will have to choose our waters carefully.”

Buster Translates:
Professional fisherman ruin it for everyone else.

For more scuttlebutt click here.

Your state forests at work getting worked.

Below: Aside from the many new cuts in the foreground and faraway, note the active slide in the center right of the photo below. The slidepath leads directly into the north fork headwaters of one of the North Oregon Coast’s more productive salmonid spawning grounds. And the rains haven’t even started yet.

Got these photos yesterday from a friend who’d probably been a lot happier glassing for elk than standing on a mountain top shit-shocked at the upped cut since Big Timber cash swayed Oregonians into voting down Measure 34.

Measure 34 would have set aside our Tillamook State Forest for 50% logging and 50% for conservation, clean drinking water and serious step forward toward rebuilding the sadly-depressed north coastal wild salmon, steelhead and cutthroat populations (including ESA-listed coho), the health of which guarantees sustainable long-term income for already-troubled coastal economies affected by past boom/bust logging.

I’d make the parallel between logging in a headwaters area and a foreign-interest fueled gold and brass mine in, say, the Bristol Bay headwaters, but you’re smart enough to see where i’m going with all this. We present this as a reminder of the private, extraction industry’s intent on bending over a commonwealth public resource while that same public sits fat and complacent in front of their glowing 78″ flat-screen, putting their temporary pacification-disguised-as-comfort above our future generations’ right to walk their State Lands among big trees, drink clean water and fish over native fish.

Something to keep in mind as we as a nation move towards November 11th, regardless of what way you lean politically.

Fire Hazard? Or future insurance that what was left uncut will soon be fit for salvage logging?

Directed by Chris Patterson

Written by Tom Bie

Produced by Jim Klug

Guaranteed to SUCK long time, in the best possible way.

Check the trailer here.

From the LAT:

“Frank Mundus, shown in 2005, was thought by many to have been the model for Capt. Quint in ‘Jaws.’ Peter Benchley, who wrote the novel and co-wrote the movie, fished with Mundus in the late ’60s. Over the decades, Mundus caught a number of great white sharks, including harpooning a 4,500-pound great white in 1964 and helping catch a 3,427-pound great white on a rod and reel in 1986. “Shark fishing with a legend like Frank Mundus, the best at what he does, is like playing baseball with Mickey Mantle,” writer Russell Drumm told the New York Times in 1998.”

Full obit here and if you haven’t, read Russell Drumm’s “In the Slick of the Cricket”