A behind the scenes look at what it takes to light up the greatest night in fly fishing.
Trailer for the new film by Jahtrout about the plight of the salmon migration on the Skeena river in B.C. and the many lives and livelihoods intertwined with it.
To learn more: Where Hope Resides
Thanks for hanging in there, Buster fans. We’ve been experiencing some technical difficulties, which is a really nice way of saying some cork-soaking bastidge has been stealing our bandwiff. But have no fear – our quest for world domination is undeterred, and these petty acts of nibbling at our bootheels will result in a quick kick to the teef.
We now return you to our irregularly scheduled programming…
dave hall art work lifted from da chum
One step forward four steps back as ODFW prepares to roll back protective regs and kill wild steelhead on the North Umpqua.
Tell them NO! It only takes a moment.
So get on out and clean that mess up yourself.
Thanks to the Hickmanimal for once again leading the charge.
A supreme evening on the local. And what it’s all about. That is all.
Received from Buster’s friend Alex upon ascending Oregon’s Matterhorn and being showered with rocks by a goat:
“DO NOT BUY YOUR GOAT STUFF FROM THIS GOAT – HE IS A TOTAL DICK!“
Just got off the red phone with the Cap’n and word on the gravel bars says Skagitmaster has finally been cut and the DVDs are ready to ship. Get yer asses over there and buy this thing so Ed can finally get paid for all he’s done for Northwest steelhead flyfishing. Or at minimum, so he can make a few bucks to replace that gotdam ratty blue sleeveless polypro hoody he’s been living in the past eight years.
Props to you both, Jeff and Ed. Time to finally get to that whole fishing thing again.
Dig:
Kudos to Cameron (The Fiberglass Manifesto) and Kevin (Red Dirt Studio) for coming up with a great idea for getting more kids involved in fly fishing. The idea behind Fishy Kid is simple – you go to their website, download a .pdf of their coloring book and print it, and send in the submissions to win prizes from a bunch of different sponsors, including Patagonia, Rio, The Drake, Simms, Waterworks Lamson and many others.
The coloring book contains contributions by many of the leading fish artists around – Derek Deyoung, A.D. Maddox, Jeff Kennedy, Paul Puckett and more. The drawings are pretty freakin’ cool, whether you’re a little kid or a big one (but for now, you’re only eligible to enter the contest if you’re 17 or under). More ideas and educational initiatives are in the works, so stay tuned.
Tomorrow’s the next chapter in the saga to restore balance between timber and conservation, and redefine Greatest Permanent Value in Oregon’s Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests, home to the last remaining ‘healthy’ returns of wild salmonids on Oregon’s North Coast. If you’ve got the time, it’d be hella cool if you showed up and stood with us in defense of clean water and wild salmonids as we testify, once again, to a Board who has shown no signs of listening to the public they’re bound by law to serve.
In a nutshell, the Oregon Board of Forestry is largely stacked in favor of timber [with Board members that are mill operators (Phillipi), big-timber owners (Guistina) and building a personal fortune off the pillaging of our commonwealth resource], and they’re pretty pissed that whole endangered species/spotted owl thing’s preventing them from cutting down and profiteering off of Federal Forests (despite the fact that no one’s buying timber in this economy), so they’ve ramped up the cutting in the Tillamook and Clatsop State Forests to mitigate for that loss of cash to their greedy pockets. This decision to up the cut was made by a board that was split. Previously, Board decisions had been done by consensus, once again proving this Board’s willingness to break any rule necessary to line their pockets with the public’s cash.
Last time, more than 100 anglers and conservationists took a day off of work in the shittiest economy in years, drove who knows how many miles to Salem, OR despite the current gas prices and spoke up in support of clean water, salmon anchor habitats and essentially, we asked for nothing more than a peer review of the science behind the Boards decision to increase the cut, full well knowing the best available science would legally prevent the Board from increasing the cut. Those 100+ citizens were ignored and anecdotally, a few of us saw one Board members’ assistant reading from a pre-prepared recommendation to increase the cut BEFORE that Board member ever listened to the public’s testimony. Said Sierra Club volunteer Donald Fontenot “The Board of Forestry showed its allegiance to the timber industry by steamrolling over the public, ignoring the best available science, and making a political decision to prioritize timber production rather than looking out for best interests of our state forests and the public who owns them.”
A formal petition has been filed by the Sierra Club, the Northwest Guides and Anglers Association, Pacific Rivers Council, Wild Salmon Center, the Association of Northwest Steelheaders, Coast Range Association, Native Fish Society and the Center for Biological Diversity that asserts the board violated the Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) for Forest Management Planning, which states that “plans shall include strategies that: Manage forest conditions to result in a high probability of maintaining and restoring properly functioning aquatic habitats for salmonids……..” In the Dept. of Forestry’s review of the plan revision they stated: “there is a low probability to enhance watershed function…” and “low probability of maintaing or enhancing hydrologic function…..”
The groups’ petition also charges Chairman John Blackwell violated the Board’s own rules regarding transparency and openness at its recent meeting to discuss the decision, failing to disclose letters of opposition at a hearing and allowing only 30 minutes of testimony.
No response to that petition has been given yet.
This is the same issue you might have seen covered in the Scuttlebutt section in the last Drake magazine, and effects the legendary rainforest rivers draining into Tillamook and Nehalem bays. Again, if you can spare some time and good karma, we’d sure appreciate more people making noise at tomorrow’s meeting. If nothing else, pay attention, get the facts and let yourself get pissed enough to join the fight because tomorrow’s just another chapter and diligence will be key.
Since it’s some sort of unofficial last hurrah for summer’s mad knees-bent running about behavior, and also because part of the joy of this weird pursuit is in the characters you meet.
“We had just been invited to join an all day golf scramble and drinking bash hosted by a whole medly of fraternal lodge organizations. Elks, Moose, and Eagles strolled about the first tee. Most of the people were meeting for the first time; our identities seemed secure, but since you can’t be too careful we traded our fishing hats for the fezzes of three staggering-drunk Shriners from Anaconda, then filled out our name cards as Methyl, Ethyl, and Nitrate Blitz.
Not all of the Blitz Brothers were strangers to a golf course. One of them had even played in college. Ethyl had the distance, Methyl the hot irons, and Nitrate, to his bemused delight, found that he could putt. Just like lining up the eight ball for a bank shot, he said. The Brothers for as long as they could maintain their momentum atop the bell curve of enhanced perception were like besotted Jedi knights: the force was with them. The tournament was a scramble, a format ideally suited to their condition.
On the holes that ran with the wind the Brothers were absolutely splendid. They birdied the first and third, then Nitrate drained a thirty-foot putt for eagle from the fringe on the par five sixth. First prize was two hundred dollars, and the Blitz Brothers had already decided to spend it all in one place – like maybe Idaho. Then, on the eighth, Methyl was driving the cart in the rough searching for a hooked ball and lighting a cigar when he should have been watching where he was going. All three brothers hiked the tall weeds to the car, then stopped at a drug store, bought a postcard, drew a map to the cart and signed it with a sketch of a scuba diver, then continued fishing toward the Big Hole River, where it was deemed by popular acclaim to be cocktail hour, and time to switch to gin.”
-from True Love and the Woolly Bugger by Dave Ames, 1996
Seeing as how it seems we at the Buster have all been fishing some and not typing much at all these days, here’s a lazy-ass YouTube posting sent to us by our friends at Bent Rod Media. It’s about Dave. Dave’s their little rower bitch/beer caddy. Everybody needs a Dave. Thanks Dave.
