Ha! I fished yesterday, so expect a report soon. A great time indeed, especially if you’re into wild fish, dry flies, and stunning views (and who isn’t, damnit).
Still, before too much time slips away, I wanted to do a “catchup” post of all the interesting little tidbits that I haven’t had time to mention before.
Important stuff….
Mothers Day
Ed at the Flyfishin’ blog kicks things off this morning with a stunning essay written to his mother, who sadly passed away a few days ago.
A good read indeed, and timely given the day’s focus on moms everywhere.
Sure, my mother occasionally posts right here on the Trout Underground, so I’ll take of this chance to wish her (and all the other moms out there) a Happy Mother’s Day from all the fly fishing afflicted sons out there who are too busy throwing hooks casts at trout to call.
Happy Mom’s Day Mom!
Donny Beaver & the Spring Ridge Club
I thought my last Donny Beaver/Spring Ridge Club post was too far down the list to attract much attention, but a spate of new reader comments has brought that one back to life.
A short summary? “You can feel the love for Donny.”
Fishing News
It’s spring, and even the guys who didn’t fish all winter are hitting the water now. Here are a couple of highlights:
Ken Allen of Maine Today writes an article about small-stream fishing for Brookies.
Peter Kaminsky pens a nice piece about fly fishing the Delaware for the New York Times (found via MidCurrent). Want to guess which is his favorite bug?
Your 3-gigahertz computer may become obsolete, and “The Sopranos†may pass from the television screen, but the poetically named insects that excite the appetite of trout follow a never-changing script. The cycle begins in mid-April with the Quill Gordon and climaxes in June with the Green Drake. Right in the middle is the most fabled hatch of all, the glorious Hendrickson.
Finally, the Trout Zone blog taps into the ongoing “frogs vs stocked trout” controversy that’s been brewing in many of the state’s backcountry areas for several years.
Frankly, I welcome a review of trout stocking programs due to their impact on fish the like the McCloud Redband and Golden Trout. And yes — though it means some backcountry lakes will probably go barren — the mountain yellow-legged frog deserves protection too.
Let’s hope for some intelligent use of hatchery trout in the future.
Support for Snake River Dams Weakening
One of the best conservation/environmental blogs is Ralph Maughan’s Wildlife News. Today he’s posted about the Snake River Dams — and references a story by the New York Times about the ongoing erosion of support for those dams which provide little but cheap transportation for grain farmers, but have a huge impact on the Salmon runs.
Central to the loss of support have been assertions that the owner of the dams has greatly overstated the amount of power generated, and farmers — the natural allies of the dams — are starting to question their utility.
Shame PacifiCorp (owner of the Klamath dams) can’t be so accommodating.
Meanwhile, Back at the Klamath
A lot’s been happening on the Klamath, including a trip by representatives of American Indian tribes to confront Warren Buffet (whose Berkshire-Hathaway company owns PacifiCorp) with the loss of their way of life.
Basically, Buffet fumbled the ball, saying it was up to the regulatory process to decide the fate of the dams.
Worse, PacifiCorp has lately been making noises about a “negotiated” resolution to the problem of the dams, and frankly, I found their insistence puzzling. Nobody I talked to suggested a resolution was near.
It now appears they’re trying to leverage groups into accepting an negotiated agreement — one which many suggest is the result of the Bush Administration trying to hijack the issue for political purposes.
According to one of the environmental groups on the “outside” of the negotiations (they say they’ve been “voted off the island”):
The 23-page settlement proposes up to $250 million to ease soaring electricity costs for irrigation pumps and possibly finance a renewable energy plant.
Farmers and other big landowners could also be shielded from endangered-species restrictions invoked to revive imperiled fish species: the salmon, two types of suckerfish in Upper Klamath Lake and the bull trout, which is found in upstream tributaries.
I’m all for protecting farmers as much as possible, but at some point, we have to question the economic utility of any farming operation that requires massively subsidized water and subsidized power (Klamath basin farmers long enjoyed low-cost energy to power irrigation pumps, and want that subsidy returned) to operate profitably.
I suspect that thought will get lost in the hyperbole too.
For those who haven’t had enough, here’s a link to a story about a fisherman joining in the lawsuit against PacifiCorp after witnessing the damage caused by water quality issues due to the lower two dams.
Frankly, something about PacifiCorp’s push for a “negotiated settlement” smells like a river full of dead salmon. I’d love for an insider to chime in with an explanation for the sudden interest in compromise, but from here, it looks a lot like they were losing the legal battle, and are now getting help from a utility-friendly administration in an attempt to save what they can.
Undergrounders?
[tags]fly fishing, fishing, klamath, snake river, dams, pacificorp, spring ridge club, warren buffet[/tags]
The Kern River Hatchery just received a grant to begin a program to raise and stock native “Kern River Rainbows”. It’s an exciting development, owing in no small part to the combined work of three different fly fishing clubs. Ralph Cutter, in his book “Sierra Trout Guide” recommended this course some time ago, since continued stocking of the Kern with hatchery Rainbows would have the effect of hybrizing the Kern River Rainbow into extinction. I’ve caught a number of ‘em; they’re quite pretty.
As for the frogs vs. trout controversey, currently D.W.R. is using it to eliminate the flow in Piru Creek, thereby extinguishing the existing trout population that lives in the tailwaters of the Pyramid Lake dam. Piru Creek is about 50 miles from Los Angeles, and is an important resource for local trout fishers.
An effort is being made by Friends of the River to stop D.W.R.’s proposed action. We’ll see.
Jim Webb(Quote)
Jim, thanks for the information. I know DWR is playing shell games with Piru (twice now I’ve responded to emergency requests to support the creek) with the frog as a pretext.
What’s their real goal — do they simply want to escape minimum flow regimes?
Tom Chandler(Quote)
I think that’s it; plus, they can probably sell the water for a not-insignificant sum of money; ship it over to Castaic Lake. But they do have the backing of an environmental group espousing the virtue of the red legged toad, or some critter like that. Friends of The River, and a number of individuals from various local fly fishing clubs are petitioning F.E.R.C. to deny the D.W.R. application. Visit the Friends of The River web page. http://www.friendsoftheriver.org
You know what Mark Twain said: “In California, Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over”.
Jim Webb(Quote)
Dear Trout Underground:
I am an ‘insider’ on the Klamath FERC negotiations and wanted to commit as invited to in the column. What we (Tribes, enviros, fishermen) have set out to do on the Klamath is see the largest dam removal in world history happen. From the beginning, we realized that such a big hairy audacious goal would need bipartisan support to succeed. WE simply won’t pull this thing off w/o the support of the whole Klamath Basin community.
Thus we have been meeting with farmers for over two years to see what we need to do to secure their support. Since the four dams targeted for removal don’t provide irrigation diversions, it seemed reasonable that there was an opportunity to work together here.
What has evolved is a plan to 1) fairly balance water between ag and fish in a way we can all live with (and boosts flows at critical times of year and in dry years for salmon), 2) remove four dams, 3) affordable power for ag 4)a salmon and steelhead reintroduction plan and more.
The settlement we’re working on is big and no piece of it will stand alone. In other words the pieces only work in the context of the whole settlement.
WE will be shareing more details with the public in coming weeks.
As for PacifiCorp, we’d love to get them on board. As FERC and the California Energy Commission studies have found that dam removal is cheaper than relicensing, PacifiCorp should be interested in saving money. However, the company may be content to simply pass the egregious costs associated with bringing these old dams into comliance with modern environmental standards on to their ratepayers. That we will have to work to prevent.
S. Craig Tucker(Quote)
Craig: Thanks for weighing in with information about the settlement.
There have been some organizations unhappy with the direction the settlement has been taking, and I’m also reading information from other organizations suggesting the two “outside” groups aren’t interested in a resolution to begin with.
As an outsider in the talks, it’s hard to know what’s actually happening.
I will admit to having radical’s simple world view around the whole situation, but if you can get the dams removed and enough water to keep the fish alive, then cheap power to irrigators is probably a small price to pay.
It’s interesting that you’re talking about getting PacifiCorp “on board.”
In a press release and through other media channels, they’ve recently started trumpeting an “imminent” settlement — and this after we heard little about the possibility of a settlement during the legal maneuvering surrounding the relicensing.
I still wonder how minimum flows will be protected during the drought years sure to come; it’s been my understanding there simply isn’t enough water to go around.
I’ll wait to see the settlement before commenting; I’d love to see the refuges protected as part of the gig, and I’d hate to see PacifiCorp dumping the costs of bringing the dams up to date on ratepayers instead of shareholders.
Tom Chandler(Quote)