Hey Front Range – maybe you should have wondered where the water was going to come from before you approved all the rampant development of the last couple decades? Just sayin’…

Haven’t heard of it? House Resolution 1 is the current bill before the House of Representatives, the attempt to address our massive federal deficit. I think most of us would agree that fiscally, we need dramatic changes in the way this country has been doing business. Borrowing 40¢ on every dollar the government spends is insanity, not to mention completely unsustainable.

The unavoidable bottom line, regardless of political partisanry, is that we are simply spending way too much money, and we can’t continue to do that. I get it. But as an angler and hunter, HR1 truly scares the living shit out of me, and I’m trying my damndest to no be alarmist here. It is obviously a huge bill, but here are just a few of the details that you might want to be aware of, and learn more about, if you care about the future of angling, hunting and conservation in this country:

- Amendment #215 (Rep. Bishop – UT) would strip the entire budget of the National Landscape Conservation System. Among other things, the NLCS manages 2,000 miles of Wild and Scenic Rivers. This Amendment would also de-fund management of important sportsman destinations such as the Missouri River Breaks in Montana, which supports some of the healthiest elk and Bighorn sheep populations in the state. Cutting this funding would also have significant effects on many rural communities that rely on sportsman dollars.

- Amendment #216 (Rep. Mckinley – WV) would greatly undermine strip the EPA’s ability to uphold the Clean Water Act by stripping it of the authority to veto permits to the Army Corps for disposal of dredge and fill material in our nation’s waters that it deems would create unacceptable adverse impact, and to designate certain areas as off-limits for such disposal. In short, sludge – even toxic sludge, could pretty much be dumped anywhere they wanted to.

- Amendment #177 (Rep. Herger – CA) restricts funds from being used to implement and enforce the Off-road Vehicle Travel Management Plans (known as Subpart B of the Travel Management Rule), which the Forest Service has spent the last six years working with the public to develop. Unmanaged OHV use can destroy wetlands, severely impact wildlife habitats, cause soil erosion, damage important cultural resources and spread noxious weeds. To get a handle on its management of OHVs, the Forest Service initiated a Travel Management Planning process with extensive public involvement to identify a manageable trail system on national forests. This process is nearly complete. If this amendment were accepted, the investment of time and resources in developing Travel Management Plans for units of the National Forest System would be for naught, and the ecological impacts and recreational user conflicts associated with unmanaged OHV use would grow.

- HR1 would also cut $393 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund - a program that pays for itself through offshore oil and gas receipts. Using the Land and Water Conservation Fund to enhance habitat protections and recreational access helps to sustain hunting and fishing traditions and the outdoor economy.

Why HR1 would, for example, feel the need to cut a program that pays for itself, like the LWCF, hints at some of the possible motivations hidden in HR1. We absolutely need to tighten our fiscal belts. But when you take a close look at the cuts that HR1 focuses on (and perhaps more significantly, the many areas that it doesn’t), it’s very hard not to see a political agenda going on here. We can’t let hard economic times be used as the excuse for a bill that caters to corporate interest to the lasting detriment of our public lands, and our hunting and fishing heritage. And to do this under the premise that it’s about ‘fiscal responsibility’ when the cuts hint at a very specific agenda, is nothing short of manipulative artifice.

I would also recommend reading Hal Herring’s excellent piece posted today on Field & Stream’s blog:

A Crossroads For American Hunters and Anglers: What’s At Stake

And the negative impacts of HR1 described above are only a small part of it. You can find out more about the many harmful riders attached to HR1 by going here.

Recently it’s been brought to my attention (several times) that fly fishermen tend to be backstabbing, petty, vindictive, self-righteous, and downright misanthropic (and not in the good way). This is not in reference to the fly vs. gear fishing dichotomy, we’ve all heard that story and the narrative is both deeply ingrained and repetitive. I’m not going to pick up that rotten salmon and try to revive it.

Lately these conversations that I’ve had (both electronically and in real life with actual beer and inarticulate grunting pauses) have been about the venom that we fly-fishermen seem to have for one another. For a group of people that cultural and linguistic theorists would lump together in a singular “Discourse Community”, we sure do seem to hate one another, and I am as guilty as the rest of you. Think about it, how many times have you wished brutal bodily harm on the guy who got to that one hole you’ve been dreaming about before you did? How many curses have you flung (either under your breath or at the top of your lungs) at the boat that cut you off just as you were getting set up for a productive bank? How many of us have heard and told the stories of stream-side fist fights or (at least here in Montana) drawn firearms?

For me the bile rarely manifests in riverside confrontations; that’s not my style. Besides, when I’m actually fishing it’s pretty hard to piss me off.  I tend to get all itchy in the crotch when it comes to the things that happen around the making of money in relation to fly-fishing, especially in the writing and publishing arenas. I particularly spend far too much time (both in my head and out loud) bitching about people “in the industry”. I do this either to their faces, their inboxes, or just to other people that I happen to know (or have some sort of magical internet connection with).

Currently I’ve been talking a whole lot of shit about a guide/writer who seems to have made it his mission to sell out some of the few secrets that remain in this heavily fished part of the country. The truth is that I think destination writers are the scourge of the artistic earth. In my view they are either lazy or lacking in actual talent and so they have to get their work published on the strength of a little known resource rather than on the merit of their wordsmithing. Usually I verbalize this in a less tempered and more reactionary way however, criticizing the person’s worth as a human being rather than even attempting to see the world from his or her perspective. The thing is, I know this guy, he’s a nice guy. I don’t want to “eat his children” as Mike Tyson once said, and I don’t actually think he’s “a pathetic meatpuppet with the articulative capacity of an ocelot and the dental hygiene of a camel” as I said to a friend about him last week. But I do wish he would shut the fuck up and stop writing about the places that guides fish when they’re not guiding. There’s a reason that we don’t take clients there.

A certain industry magazine and I had a falling out last summer when they wrote up the two shops in this area that I think are solely interested in pimping out the fisheries and making the money. I wrote an overly dramatic and long-winded email to the editor who responded by essentially telling me to calm the hell down. He went on to say (quite politely) that I should be careful about where I deposit my excrement considering that we are all trying to eat off the same table. It was the same advice my father gave me when I was a freshman in college and I slept with two girls who both lived on the same floor that I did (sorry Dad, but it appears that I’m not that quick a study, I’m getting the same advice about proximity of shitting and eating 15 years later).  I was probably making way too much out of nothing, and introducing a whole lot of negative back-talk for no good reason. Perhaps the editor was right. I have no right to stand in judgment, but yet I judge all the same. We all draw our lines in the sand according to our interpretation of morality–”Across this line you DO NOT!”–it’s just that mine happens to be the right one.

None of this is new ground. I’m not saying anything original here. If there is a point to my rant, it is to say this: I lament the anger that I feel toward all those other fishermen, especially the soulless industry types (who are in actuality generally really nice guys) and I realize that I have no justification for it, but I feel it just as strongly and just as viscerally as ever.

So for those of you who will curse my name this coming year: I salute you. As a good friend of mine used to say (it really was his mantra), “we’re all assholes, every last one of us”. Amen, and fuck you.

Post Script– Please do note that I didn’t actually mention any names in the above narrative. That’s gotta be worth something, right karma? RIGHT?

Just in from AP:

KENNEWICK, Wash. — Washington Rep. Doc Hastings says he’ll use his position as chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee to block any bills related to breaching lower Snake River dams.

Hastings says salmon runs are recovering under current management practices and dam breaching is the last resort.

The Tri-City Herald reports the Republican congressman was in the Tri-Cities Wednesday and spoke to the Pasco-Kennewick Rotary Club.

Hastings says he’s concerned that tearing down any Snake River dam puts every other dam at risk. Environmentalists favor removing dams to restore Snake River salmon runs.

The bobber swims in circles for at least five seconds and I scream “SET!” a minimum of eighty times. Eventually, he finds it in his heart to sweep that big ol’ fly pole upwards and stretch that silly plastic line. There is twitching and headshaking. Long deliberate runs circle around the pool and I stifle the whisper that is pinballing in my brain “bigfuckingbrowntrout”. Saying such a thing out loud while staring hard at tense monofilament slicing green ether will automatically turn whatever is on the other end into an asshooked whitefish; such is the evil nature of river alchemy.

“He’s pullin on me pretty good”

“Just keep that line tight”

He doesn’t.

“Larry go git yer camera out I wanna get a picture of this fish”

He turns his attention away from the task at hand to call to his partner in the front of the boat. The line goes completely flaccid as the fish swims towards us. I dig the right oar as hard as I can, spin the ass end of the boat into the current and get his rod bent again.

“Keep the line tight!”

Shit. Ass. Whore.

You can’t call for the camera while the fish is still swimming, you might as well cut the line with your pocketknife. I hope it is the white-dog. It can’t be, not with those oil-rig headshakes. It has to be, any decent trout would have easily spit that barbless hook by now. We have to land this fish. We’re never going to land this fish.

“You seen him yet Larry? I ain’t seen nothing yet, kinda fights like a croaker”

His attention is once again severed from the fish, the first we’ve actually hooked all day,  and again the line goes utterly slack as it swim slowly and deliberately toward us.

Another violent oar-dig and Larry almost goes Greg Louganis over the side as he’s  snapping pictures of water hiding unseen scales and fins and, shit what is this anyway. Please, please don’t let this be a snagged sucker. There’s no way this is a trout.

“TIGHT LINE!”

I am all nerves and coiled spring. I am osprey staring into the green. We are gaining ground and I can see the bobber again. Was that a flash? Another run, shorter this time, he’s about done. Is that him, am I imagining it or can I actually…

“It’s a toad!”

Confirmation. No green back, no translucent fins, no pig snout. Solid brown trout hooked in the mouth.

“Don’t bring your fly line… the plastic line… into the rod tip.”

“Huh?”

It’s too late. The yellow balloon is now jammed into the top guide. The fish has come to the bow and his head is on the way up, I’ve got one shot. I am a pneumatic piston. Just as I fire the net toward the slab of gold, he throws his head out into the current and parts the line. Instead of a shower of water and an empty bag, which is what I’m expecting, the fish is in the net. I have won the lottery, I have dipnetted a 20+ inch brownie, we have absolutely no right to have caught it. It doesn’t hit the 2 foot mark like I expect but weighs in close to 5 pounds.

“Is this good?”

It’s his first day holding a fly rod, his first day on a Montana stream. They are on a family vacation to Yellowstone from Florida and decided to get a half-day guided trip. This is the first trout he’s ever caught. After that fish all we can manage to land is a 5 inch rainbow. At the end of the day, they’re disappointed. I suppose it all depends on your definition of good.

After G_Smolt’s thoroughly tasteless post advocating bead bouncing with a bamboo stick, we felt it was time to get back on track, appeal to our literate readers and pull this place out of the gutter.

But then, well, we got distracted.

Capr fishing explained:

Of course it’s cold and wet. It’s March, at 5000′ in northern Idaho. And it looks like it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. But I’m not going to fall into that over-used trap of describing steelheading as “suffering.” Please. If you think that’s what this is then you don’t really know the meaning of the word. You want to see suffering? Go spend some time in Haiti right now, my friend. Aww, did that bum you out?

I’m standing waist deep in frigid water freezing my nuts off, swingin’ a Fish Taco off a sweet new 13′ stick, and you know what? I’ve chosen to be here. I’m loving every goddam minute of it. I’m trying to figure out how to stay a few days longer. In fact, this is the weather that makes me feel alive – far more than those torpid days of summer.

So dramatize it all you want to make yourself seem like you’re enduring some super-human level of adversity, but we both know it really ain’t that bad. I’ll be coming in above you, enduring all the same “heinous” conditions that you are, on a mission with a huge, shit-eating grin on my face. So buck the hell up and keep stepping down. Or, if it’s really so bad, here’s a tissue – go take your romantic notions of suffering somewhere else, Sally.

Sorry bacon. Next time I’ll just put it on video mode.