In the event the Pebble Mine horshenanigans weren’t enough to make a super intelligent, worldly wise fisherman like you an absolute advocate for eating wild salmon instead of dye-added, farmed frankenfishcancer, here’s yet another compelling reason to demand wild salmon both at home and from that swanky-ass sushi joint you gotta take your lady to before she’ll give up the luscious poonany.

If it doesn’t say wild salmon on the menu, it’s not and this is the shit folks support when they order farmed salmon:

Nootka Lice Problems from Twyla Roscovich on Vimeo.

Once again, thanks to Saint Alexandra Morton. Someday you’re gonna be a known as a national Canadian treasure for telling these truths.

A long cold hinterland winter here in Freestonia doesn’t mean that the fishing stops entirely, but it does slow down, and that means increased exposure to the noisemakers. You know, the ones that force-feed us the narrative of our lives, that thin clammy broth of postures and judgements and cheap shiny plastic crap that we can’t live without. The noise comes from the tubes, the mailbox and the halls of power in 30-second sound bytes and bumper sticker platitudes, telling us what’s important, what should be dismissed with scorn, conveying our targets for rage and humor. Even the goddam Olympic Games, something that’s supposed to celebrate the hard work of dedicated amateurs, shows up shrinkwrapped in disposable computer-animated bubble packaging that’s obviously been designed and focus-grouped years in advance, complete with instant blowdried celebrity hero toys ready for tomorrow’s water cooler worship. Collect ‘em all, $14.99.

(Haha see, Shaun stowed away on Tuesday’s delivery and stocked all this sk8punk stuff in the dead of night, because he’s a subversive nutty scamp®. What can we do? On sale now.)

The noise is the anthem of the Transnational Lizard People, who purely through the power of cash have erased the importance of place, allegiance to country, recognition of borders, and necessity of breathing, eating, drinking and being of this place where we plant our feet. They recognize no law, no neighbor, no change of season or migration. They experience no hunger or sickness or fear. No disaster matters, except as an opportunity to pad those numbers. Their decisions and actions bear no consequence, aside from possibly being hauled before a Congress of their own creatures for an afternoon show trial, let’s get it over with so we can all go get drinks. With any luck they’ll soon have cash-powered spacecraft so they can all lift off and blast each other with beams of numbers that used to represent something of worth, and be free of the bothersome bounds of the human experience. Man, we’re all such a nuisance.

But here’s the thing: we’re not all where we’re supposed to be, fretting over today’s manufactured outrage on one side of an aisle or another, shaking our heads about who’s fucking whom and oh how could he do such a thing? Sometimes we very deliberately dash out of the pasture and do things that the handlers never counted on. See, there are no blue lines on their demographic maps. They can’t conceive of a shade of green in winter-dormant cedar and water that’s deeper than the one in their veins. Eventually we’ll probably be rounded up and put down for the greater good of the herd, but we likely won’t hear them coming.

Don’t know how many folks will find this one interesting or applicable in their corners of the world, so if you’re not into reading more about the stupidity and greed happening here in the Northwest, we suggest you skip this and groove on some rather uplifting wordwork from the Gaper and our new mop-boy G_Smolt by scrolling down the page.

Here in our corner of North Oregon, however, we’ve been closely following a study that has found the sodium sulfites in cured eggs responsible for juvenile salmonid mortality rates as high as 35% for a number of reasons:

1. The social angle: To see whether egg guys will cling to proven-deadly sulfite cures as they bitch about dwindling salmon returns, or to see how serious they truly are about doing what they can, whatever they can and whatever it takes to make returns better, even if that means abandoning the reliance on sodium sulfites in their age-old, tried and true bait cures and catching a few less fish each season.

2. The economic angle: To see the ODFW, fishing industry and guide response to this; whether they’ll refute or dodge science (as has become quite popular out here in the Northwest with regard to wild fish policy) and if/how they’ll try to defend proven-deadly sulfites in the name of the whorish almighty dollar. Now, the industry and guides we have no faith in, really, because it’s business and we all know what happens on the greed-o-meter when you monetize something. in the case of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, an public agency, we find their refusal to do anything more than simply recommend manufacturers stop using sulfites extremely telling about their relationship with the fishing industry (in a cock-down-throat sort of way).

Below is an article by Jeff Mishler (and you thought he was just a punk-ass Drake writer, right?) that’s worth a read, in my oh-so-humble opinion. Love to hear some thoughts from both non-egg guys, as well as egg guys who’ve stumbled over here and still fish sulfite-cured bait. And please, fight nice, kids. But do fight. I’d like to see this one get hashed out some.

CHEMICALLY CURED SALMON EGGS KILL JUVENILE SALMON AND STEELHEAD AT RATES AS HIGH AS 35%. NOW WHAT?

By Jeff Mishler

In April of 2008 I approached the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife with the framework for a study to determine whether chemicals in commercially made salmon egg cures were toxic to juvenile salmonids. The results of the study proved Sodium Sulfite, used pervasively as a preservative and bite enhancer in commercially available egg cures and cured eggs killed juveniles at rates up to 35%. Sodium Sulfite is listed as a regulated toxin by EPA and regulated under the Toxic Substance Control Act. In the wake of this study conducted by ODFW at an Oregon State University research facility, the staff at the fisheries department at Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife have only recommended that the use of sulfites cease and are not willing to regulate the use of Sodium Sulfites by adopting new rules. According to EPA, a toxin must only cause harm, not mortality, before regulation under TSCA guidelines must be enforced. As noted in the study’s summary, sodium sulfite present in cured salmon eggs and used as bait by sport anglers caused mortality on juvenile salmon and steelhead at rates as high as 35%.

See ODFW press release and study results:

BACKGROUND

Fisherman use cured salmon eggs 12 months a year on waterways and lakes from Alaska south to California and East to the Great Lakes, where the use of bait is allowed. Eggs are fished using a variety of methods; back bouncing, drift fishing, bobber or float fishing, diver and bait and plunking. Of the techniques used by egg fishermen, bobber fishing presents the bait for the long intervals in the slow water zones inhabited by juveniles. Back bouncing and diver techniques present the bait near the bottom at a very slow rate of downstream travel for long periods of time. Plunking presents the stationary bait very near the bottom indefinitely. Drift fishing presents the bait near the bottom traveling downstream at a rate slightly slower than the current for an interval of less than one minute per cast.

Anglers target spring Chinook, fall Chinook, Coho, late winter steelhead, summer steelhead and resident trout with chemically cured salmon eggs. These proprietary chemical cures contain powerful sulfites, formaldehydes and other toxic chemicals. Cured egg use in the spring and summer coincides with the out migration of young salmon and steelhead. It also coincides with increased consumption of food by all resident salmonids, driven by an increase in water temperatures, post spawning metabolism, and increases in the abundance of aquatic food sources. When presented a bait of chemically cured salmon eggs, juveniles can be observed feeding on it aggressively.

In a real world fishing situation, with an abundance of juveniles present, it is not uncommon to observe 100 or more juveniles of varying age classes attack an egg presentation when it is paused only momentarily at the side of the boat, before making another cast. I also witness discarded baits attacked voraciously by juveniles.

IMPACTS ON JUVENILES IN THE WILD

I worked with OSU and ODFW staff to design the framework of this study. In light of the results, I believe sport anglers are impacting populations of wild fry, out-migrating smolts, one and two year-old juvenile steelhead, resident and sea run cutthroat trout, and resident rainbow trout by choosing to fish with chemically cured salmon eggs.

The impacts on juvenile populations could be profound when one figures: (the physiological impact of one exposure on a quantity of juveniles) x (the number of chemically cured egg presentations made by one angler) x (the total number of anglers fishing chemically cured eggs on a given day) x (the number of angling days). Millions of juveniles are exposed to the toxin Sodium Sulfite daily during peak angling seasons.

NEXT STEP

How do we get the ball rolling towards an enforceable ban on the use of sulfites in baits?

1) Add two words to ORS 498.046 to include “fish and”.

Current rules state:

498.046 Making toxic substances accessible to wildlife prohibited. No person shall place any toxic substance where it is accessible to wildlife unless the substance used and the method of application is approved by the state governmental agencies having authority to prescribe or implement environmental control programs. [1973 c.723 §81]

Proposed change:

498.046 Making toxic substances accessible to wildlife prohibited. No person shall place any toxic substance where it is accessible to (fish and) wildlife unless the substance used and the method of application is approved by the state governmental agencies having authority to prescribe or implement environmental control programs. [1973 c.723 §81]

This is a simple fix that will in essence protect millions of juvenile salmon and steelhead, some stocks listed under the ESA as endangered or threatened, from unnecessary exposure to a known lethal toxin. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year trying to recover stocks on the Lower Columbia alone. Ethically, it’s wrong to place toxins in the water, ever. Fishing with chemically cured eggs and baits is voluntary and without a change in the language of law, there is no incentive for fishing guides who depend on catching salmon and steelhead, at all costs, to change behavior regardless of ODFW’s soft recommendations. Who could argue against the rule change? What, they support placing poisons in the river, though the voluntary actions of sport fisherman?

2) Ask the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission to reconsider ORS 498.208 in light of the ODFW/OSU study findings.

Currently, the Fish and Wildlife Commission allows the use of eggs as bait as an exception to the rule:
498.208 Use of electricity or foreign substances to take game fish prohibited; rules.
(1) Except as the State Fish and Wildlife Commission by rule may provide otherwise, no person shall:
(a) Use in any body of water any electric current that may attract, frighten, retard, stun, kill or obstruct the movement of any game fish.
(b) Place in any body of water any foreign substance such as blood or fish offal or any gas, chemical, drug or powder that may attract, frighten, retard, stun, kill or obstruct the movement of any game fish.
(c) Use in any body of water any explosive device for the purpose of taking game fish.
(2) No person shall possess any game fish that the person knows or has reason to know was taken in violation of subsection (1) of this section. [1973 c.723 §92]

In the light of the study results, they have not reconsidered this exception. I believe they should.

3) File a Citizen’s Petition with EPA to begin enforcement of Toxic Substance Control Act provisions.
EPA will be required to conduct additional studies to determine safe levels of Sodium Sulfite in commercial bait cures and enforce reporting from manufactures of such products.

CONCLUSION

Prohibiting the use of the preservative Sodium Sulfite in cured salmon/steelhead eggs (used as fish bait) is a common sense response in light of evidence proving exposure to the toxin is lethal to young salmonids. Unfortunately there are those who value angling opportunity and business profits more than the recovery or survival of stocks balanced on the brink of extinction. We don’t know whether salmon and steelhead adult populations experience net impacts after exposure to Sodium Sulfite as juveniles. Many of these stocks are struggling populations in freshwater environments where summertime flows are low and water temperatures high. The impacts of exposure could be profound where adult Spring Chinook and various age classes of juveniles share freshwater sanctuaries.

This is a no brainer to me. You’re either with the fish, or you’re not.

Jeff Mishler

I find myself asking this question when faced with any major life junction.  Considering that I’ve put off most “serious” life decisions for the past decade in the interest of wearing wet waders and not worrying abut the condition of my beard, they’re starting to stack up.

I’ve been fired from exactly one job in my life. I was once the lowest tier manager at a reasonably successful restaurant, they fired me on my 25th birthday because I missed too many meetings. I missed the final meeting due to a 48 hour stint on the Snake that was only supposed to last 24. While the meeting came to order in a musty basement office, I shivered slightly beside the resting embers of an early morning firepit, trying to rekindle the flame of the previous night. When I finally returned to work my next shift (in my defense, I only missed meetings, I never missed work) I was told that I was no longer needed. Instead of looking for more work, I spent the next week camped beside the Missouri with my dog and a marginally employed buddy. Happy Birthday motherfuckers.

Now into the fourth decade of this whole breathing business, I’ve come to realize that the channel I’ve chosen to take has it’s drawbacks, despite what current fishing media would have you believe. I’m tired of being broke, single and odoriferous. I’ve started to take steps, work on finding some balance. I put graduate school applications out into the ether of academia, but only to schools in VERY close proximity to favorite rivers. The woman I moved in with a few years back, when I was a part-time boyfriend, absent four months of the year, has started making less-than-subtle references to a marriage that I should be smart enough to propose. I sold my truck and bought a Subaru for the savings in gas consumption, but made sure to get one that could still easily tow my boat.

Of my close group of high school friends (maybe a dozen people), four are now attorneys (ONE THIRD! holy shit, do you think there are too many lawyers out there?). Two remain unmarried, and  half have spawned multiple times. There are three of us who don’t already own homes. As for my dirtbag fishing buddies? We’re all stagnated in a state of intermittant contentment puncuated by stretches of abstract melancholy. None are married. We’re all broke and without equity (except for the ones with trust funds), and have chosen employment based on flexible schedules and low commitment rather than personal fulfillment. We toil in custom seat-cover factories, restaurants, fly-shops, bronze foundaries, or night-shift sex-shops and never because we give two shits about the job but because the job allows us the flexibility to take off when the call comes in saying “The chrome is in the bucket, I repeat the CHROME IS IN THE BUCKET”.

There has been a lot written lately about the “fishing bum” moniker. There have been movies and stories and articles glorifying the grand lifestyle of the bum. There have been counter-points made to mention that true “bums” push shopping carts full of bartered or cast-off goods that they treasure, and are often homeless and mentally unstable. I would argue that I have spent a good deal of time with fishermen who nearly fit that profile. No one has made any movies about these guys. Guys who honestly live in their cars through rocky mountain winters so that saved rent money can purchase gas, hooks, feathers, tippit, and gas station burritos. Guys who have bartered their way into top quality gear without spending the sort of money one pays for Hodgeman brand neoprene. I can also tell you that it is not nearly as glorious as it has been made out to be. It’s a lonely, uncomfortable and smelly existence. That said, those friends of mine who followed the mainstem flow make sure to tell me how covetous they are of my back-braid shenanigans. How can I tell them I spent the last evening in fuzzy slippers on a soft couch eating homemade soup, holding hands beneath a blanket and watching Olympic ice dancing? Even more difficult: how can I tell them that I ENJOYED it?

I don’t know if it’s possible to walk a line between these two seemingly opposed modes of existence, but I’ve decided to give it my best shot. Doubtlessly, there will be sacrifices on both sides. I won’t be able to drop everything and chase that Skwala hatch on six hours notice. But neither will I have to lay in my tent in the rain (or snow or hail) listening to the vastness of the air around me and spooning with a damp golden retriever wondering how I’m going to make rent when I get back to my crumbling bachelor pad and bare mattress. I can’t help the fact that I view the world from beneath the brim of a battered fishing cap and wouldn’t change that perspective if I could. But I hope that way of looking at things can extend beyond the reaches of rainy-day rivers and skanky Gore-Tex.

To the winter steelheader, stepping in to new water is a high test of faith. On home waters, after becoming intimate with the textures and subtleties of your favorite grease and learning which rocks don’t like being stepped on, you can play the game with brazen ease. After a few years of deconstruction, moonlight chanting, and the occasional impromptu grab-dance, you get a feel for what’s going on beneath the mirror and can adjust your game accordingly.

Stepping into the strange requires a certain humility, a deference to the river and her bed. Your choice of fly isn’t based upon any understanding of the current fashion trends in this flow, but more on a hazy, atavistic reckoning, a gauging of the new environment you are in. Tentative steps are taken on unfamiliar rocks, and you begin to cast clumsily, almost apologetically. Pushing you around, the current reminds you that it will tell you how things are going to be here, thank you very much.

But the fumbling casts soon become fluent questions, asked of newly-sighted seams and interesting tidbits in the jumbled flow. The questions develop into a halting conversation, and the flow of the game takes on a tenor of familiarity. As confidence builds, the questions become deeper, trying to see past the coquettish veneer that the river wears.

With confidence comes the exposition of faith, a scattershot cobbling of elements from the practical and the supernatural, influenced by equal parts logic and campfire smoke, the firm belief that the Daughter of Fog is watching, and the hope that she rewards her acolytes with the opportunity to dance with one of her charges.

Most likely, your faith will get you nowhere. You emerge from the end of the run, thinking about questions you could have asked but didn’t, wondering if there was something else you could have said, maybe something that the river coyly whispered that you didn’t quite pick up on. These things will gnaw at you, make you question your decision to try new water.

Occasionally, randomly, Creek Woman empties her basket for you, and the faith is validated.

g_smolt – tropical disease specialist, sushi chef and bounty hunter – is in the house.  He will be taking names.

 ”It’s premature for any reasonable person to formulate an opinion on whether this project’s benefits outweigh the risks.”

- Bruce Jenkins, COO of Northern Dynasty Minerals (quoted from the film, “Red Gold“)

Fast forward. Reported last week in the Anchorage Daily News:

“The companies seeking to develop the massive Pebble mine prospect in Southwest Alaska have agreed to pay a $45,000 fine to the state for unauthorized use of water at their drilling sites.

State regulators said Friday they have suspended the permits for exploration at the Pebble copper and gold deposit…”

More here.

So, Mr. Jenkins, if I have this straight, your company can’t even be trusted to do something as basic as draw water from the correctly permitted sources for some comparatively small-scale drilling, but you want us to trust you with building and operating the largest open pit mine in North America on the headwaters of critical wild salmon habitat?

Not a fucking chance.

Fly Tying Uber Geek Alert!!!

Our West Seattle neighbor P. Diddy pushes the envelope to the near genius level…

“Making a sandwich? Put it Down. This riff’s coming and you owe it money”- Christian Finnegan commenting on “Enter Sandman”

I was 11 years old and trying to pay attention to my homework with MTV on in the background. This was the era of glammed out hair metal, when you could be forgiven for confusing Vixen for Poison. I remember just stopping what I was doing and swiveling around to see what the hell was that. What started out as a somewhat mellow intro has just kicked into some super heavy shit. I mean heavy beyond anything I had heard at the time, being limited to commercial radio and MTV (this is pre-internet for those of you wondering) for my musical options. And what was up with this video- some guy, a quad amputee who can’t talk, tapping out “SOS” and “Kill Me” via morse code. This shit fucking scared me in a way that “Friday the 13th” hadn’t. As a kid in Reagan’s America, there was nobody talking about the costs of war on an individual level, never mind this existential examination of being locked up in your own skull due to one. After a few moments reflection, that last sentence is true in any era. Follow that up with black and white performance clips, where the band is in jeans and t-shirts without any evidence of Aqua Net being anywhere near the set. Way different than anything else out there at the time.

Flash forward a few decades and Sainted Wife (A huge Metallica fan though one probably wouldn’t guess that when meeting her) and I are up late flipping through the channels when we catch Metallica’s “Behind the Music” episode. That lead to us digging CDs out of boxes and waking the snoozing dogs up with some classics. I’ve become re-aquainted with their first 4 albums- “Kill ‘Em All”, “Ride the Lightening”, “Master of Puppets” and finally “…And Justice for All” over the last week. Depending on who you go fishing with, these albums aren’t “classic” camp selections, unless you are in a KOA, then game on, but they are still classics in their own right.

Debuting with “Kill ‘Em All”, the band lights off one of the first thrash metal albums. Showing the influence of both punk and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal (especially Motorhead), cuts such as “The Four Horsemen”, “Hit the Lights”, “Seek and Destroy” and “Metal Militia” display both the ferocity of punk and the virtuosity of metal. The next album, “Ride the Lightening” expanded musically, and began to develop themes that would dominate the Hetfield’s lyrics as well as go beyond the typical “party all the time” ethos of 80s metal. “For Whom the Bell Tolls” prefigures “Disposable Heroes” and ”One”, while songs like “Fade to Black” address themes of alienation and isolation that were further developed in “Master of Puppets” and that speak to any pissed off 15 year old.

“Master of Puppets” just rocks. If you are going to get one Metallica album, get that one and crank that fucker.

I have to say, despite the impact that “One” had, and still has on me, I find “…And Justice For All”, the least satisfying of the bunch. I say that not because the songs are bad, but that they are overlong and could have used a little trimming, but that’s just me. Anyway, enjoy some videos[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLBpLz5ELPI[/youtube][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX-KjkdDozQ[/youtube][youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WElvEZj0Ltw[/youtube]

Sweet footage of various Western hatches from RA’s new vid, “Off the Grid.” Whole lotta feeding goin’ on. Have a beer with it, and remember that days are only getting longer…

chasing hatches from RA Beattie on Vimeo.

Dispatch via email:
“Walked downstream for over an hour, turned around right as the thick clouds magically disappeared, the air warmed, and the cicadas started to go crazy. I have no idea how many fish I hooked, but it was pretty ridiculous.”

Uh huh. Damn.

“When all the dangerous cliffs are fenced off, all the trees that might fall on people cut down, all of the insects that bite have been poisoned…and all the grizzlies are dead because they are occasionally dangerous, the wilderness will not be made safe. Rather, the safety will have destroyed the wilderness.”

- R. Yorke Edwards

It would be a stretch to say that I’m comfortable with the fresh tracks on the bank beside me. Far from it, actually. The bear is undoubtedly still near. But concern for my self-absorbed comfort aside, it still somehow feels right. Having to frequently look over my shoulder puts me firmly in context; anchors me, to a place at least one notch down from the easy chair of my accustomed apex. It makes me more aware of my own complicity in all this, more connected to the semblance of a predatory act I’m in the midst of committing as I tie on this imitation, hoping to fool yet another of the many resident consumers in this place.

Warm and fuzzy notions of “nature” are just that, when you’re standing in the middle of it. It all comes down to predation, everywhere you look, at every level. Our largely removed perception of it is comprised of what we choose to sympathize with, and just as importantly, what we choose to ignore. Think of it from the point of view of the caddisfly I just watched being consumed without hesitation – think of how terrifying trout must be.

I look upstream, trying to spot the person I came here with. He is already out of sight, picking pockets and moving, as is his nature when he fishes. I look downstream toward the boat, survey the landscape that surrounds. If the animal were to make a reappearance, it would likely be in the open space between myself and the craft that brought us here, the sheer walls elsewhere funneling he/she(?) onto the wide gravel bar. I run through scenarios of what I might do if an 800-pound, territorial animal were to cut me off from the boat, all the while trying to simply focus on the task of fishing, but the fact is I can’t focus. Not entirely. I am alone here, out of earshot of anyone, an hour-boat ride from the nearest road. There is no cell reception. No magic button. I realize that if this is what is to happen, there would be nothing I could do.

This isn’t relaxing. But the truth is I don’t necessarily want it to be, either. In the end, I catch nothing. But neither am I caught.

Pardon the blatant industry shill here, but a few of the signature tiers are friends with a few of us and we’d be better off in the grand scheme of wallet health if they were getting paid more so they could buy their own breakfast burritos. Plus, in all honesty, we know the dudes who did it and frequently use Idywilde’s owner Zach for free gas to the river. Zach always rolls with a Jetboil and makes you coffee and noodle soup and stuff while fishing. Class act, that one, and one hell of a stick on any steelhead river.

Anyway, the new site’s pretty sweet, which you’ll immediately realize when you check it out, has cool bios of the tiers, a killer blog that’s bound to get even better as Zach finds his “voice” and you can sign up to get photo collage emails that feature Brian O’Keefe’s latest photos and exploits. We consider that in itself pretty worthy because Brian ends up in places we’ll pretty much never, ever see, yet we do not hate him for this. Point your pupils there, if you’ve got some time.

And dig this toad as proof he can fish: Zach “The German” Mertens with his gameface/I-must-break-you look and one hell of a fucking January steelhead. And no, this is not a BC fish:

It comes in many forms 

via Choppertown Nation 

via The Chum and oh yeah, the good part starts at 1:35, so just fast forward.

 Yeah, I know, it’s cliche and it’s been done but I like my dog and I like my fishing buddies dogs and I like my driftboat. So, much like that guy in the office who insists you look at photos of his kids because they’re obviously more interesting and attractive than all those other boring photos of other people’s kids, I am forcing you to look at photos of the dogs I love most in my favorite craft. Please jump in and contribute your own photos of dogs in driftboats, but do remember that they won’t be as cute as mine.

Lehua sitting in the best possible place to interfere with rowing.

Lehua and Cassie in their favorite slumbering spot.

Cassie proving that she’ll sleep anywhere

Bear all tuckered out from a day of drinking and fishing.