Has Switzerland just banned catch & release fishing, insisting that anglers humanely dispatch everything they catch?
From the Chattanoogan:

Catch and Release fishing will be banned in Switzerland from next year, it was revealed this week.
And anglers in the country will have to demonstrate their expertise by taking a course on humane methods of catching fish, […]

It’s not as if we expected more. The administration’s last three Coumbia Basin salmon recovery plans have been found so wanting by a federal judge that he ordered the administration back to try again.
After all, these are the same Feds who wanted tried to escape a workable salmon recovery plan by suggesting the dams are […]

This story’s been saddled by shifting facts, but the basics seem clear; a raft on the Upper Sac overturned, and while it continued its downstream trip, its seven passengers were “stranded” mid-river.
After passing train crew saw (and heard) the group, a Highway Patrol helicopter was called in to rescue them:
Seven rafters were stranded on […]

In what can only be interpreted as another example of the Trout Underground’s Increasing Domination of the Global Media Landscape, the San Francisco Chronicle picked us as their Blog of the Week (page G3 in the Sunday Chron):

Here’s a portion of the review:
TONE: Flip, breezy and wiseacre. No altar-and-candles devotion to fly-fishing tradition.
INTERACTIVITY: Plenty […]

The always-alert Aquafornia blog posted an excellent summary of California’s snowpack woes.
The Reader’s Digest version? While Winter storms promised much, a dry spring means the Sierra snowpack has fallen far short of early expectations.
Faster than you can say "rationing," every major paper in the state jumped on the story.
From the Contra Costa Times:
California’s snowpack is […]

UPDATE: Alert Underground Reader Steve found the May dates/flows for us)
The McCloud river is one of the most beautiful stretches of water you’ll ever fish — and given the number of people who crowd it ever year, a lot of people seem know it.
Running the ten days from May 5 to May 14, PG&E will […]

Online auctions are all the rage with conservation groups; first Trout Unlimited auctioned a spot on their On The Rise TV show, and now the Alaska Sportsmen’s Alliance — who are opposing the Pending Pebble Mine Disaster — is auctioning a week for two at one of Alaska’s top fly fishing lodges.
[UPDATE: You can see […]

Trout Unlimited’s raising money by offering bidders their own shot at instant fly fishing stardom — an appearance on their On The Rise TV show.

Face it: the odds of the Trout Underground winning any auction in excess of $20 are slim (I don’t have more than $20), but if a wealthy Undergrounder won and […]

Deep Trout — the Underground’s undercover political operative at the California State Capitol — forwarded some good news for those of us who don’t want Lake Shasta flooding miles of the Upper Sac, McCloud, and Pit Rivers.
The California State Assembly passed Joint Resolution 39 (46 to 29), which recognizes the Wintu Tribe (who deserve it):
Assembly […]

Like any taxpayer, the Underground is happy to see his hard-earned tax dollars being put to their best possible use, and at this point, I’ve gotta say I’m not that happy.

I learned (via the Sacramento Bee) that the Weed-based Mt. Shasta Brewery is in trouble with the Feds because his bottle cap contains the words […]

Signaling an end to drunken brown trout orgies all over England and Wales, the stocking of fertile brown trout will cease by 2015. In their place, triploid (infertile) brown trout will be stocked in an attempt to "protect" wild fish stocks:
“Our research has shown that inter-breeding between farmed and wild brown trout lowers the […]

This sobering bit of news from the Redding Record-Searchlight:
A San Jose man died after he and two companions were thrown from their drift boat and into the Sacramento River after they hit the North Street Bridge in Anderson Monday afternoon.
Construction workers building the new North Street Bridge spotted the three men and were able to […]