News

Waiting For The Snow To Fall… Online.

January 4, 2012, by Tom Chandler 4 comments

Thanks to Alert Underground Reader [Name Redacted], we can bring you the West’s bad snow news in graphic form (now there’s an improvement):

Not the best news for next year's trout water...

As he said, “Red is dire, Fuschia is worse.” And you’ll notice it’s Fuschia in Northern California.

Yet it’ early; last year’s March snows are what put us into record-breaking territory.

And to be clear, a drought would hammer the rest of the state more than the Upper Sacramento and McCloud, which do OK in drought years.

A drought is harder on some of the small streams, some of which suffered badly under the three-year drought, but are enjoying boosted fish populations after two above-average years.

Even the long-range forecast doesn’t show much happening in my neck of the woods (for fly fishermen, this is real barn burner stuff). We’ll stand by with any breaking precipatory news…

See you on the weather geek sites, Tom Chandler.

More Proof: Hatchery Salmon & Steelhead Actually Damaging Wild Fish Populations

January 3, 2012, by Tom Chandler 5 comments

Another study supports the fact that hatchery salmon and steelhead experience relatively dismal survival rates in the wild — more ammunition for advocates for wild fish (and often, dam removal).

Salmon born in captivity become domesticated in as little as one generation, a new study finds, explaining why hatchery-born fish don’t do as well as wild-born ones in Oregon rivers.

Researchers created an enormous fish family tree using genetic samples from 12,700 steelhead trout (which are in the same family as salmon) returning from the sea to Oregon’s Hood River to spawn. This fishy pedigree revealed the fish that spawned well in hatcheries had offspring that spawned poorly in the wild.

Later, the article quoted a steelhead hatchery fish survival rate only 80% that of wild fish. And the concern is that “hatchery” genes — which result in higher reproduction in hatcheries, but far lower reproduction in the wild — would suppress natural steelhead populations.

In other words, wild fish good, hatchery fish bad. On a lot of levels.

The article makes some intersting points, and is well worth a read.

Gone, Not Forgotten: Martin Seldon

December 30, 2011, by Tom Chandler 1 comment

I never met Martin Seldon personally, but the man knew how important our fisheries were, and he fought like a tiger to protect them. He always contacted me when something was brewing, and I learned pretty quickly the smart play was to listen.

Sadly, just yesterday I received an email from his son saying Martin was gone.

Undergrounders, we have lost us a good one.

See you in better places, Tom Chandler.

——————-
This bio accompanied Marty’s Wild Trout Scholarship:

This scholarship honors the long history of Martin M. (Marty) Seldon’s dedication to fisheries conservation. Marty has played a long and active role as an advocate of wild trout, and has been an enthusiastic volunteer for the Wild Trout Symposium Organizing Committee since Wild Trout-II in 1979. Over the years Marty has been active on the Photography, Awards, and Program Committees, and has chaired the Awards Committee for WT-VII and WT-VIII, and served as its co-chair for WT-IX in 2007. Marty has continued to be active on the Organizing Committee for WT-X.

Among many others, he received the Federation of Fly Fishers’ highest honor, The Order of the Lapis Lazuli Award. He was also the Wild Trout Symposium’s first nonprofessional category Aldo Starker Leopold Wild Trout Medal recipient at Wild Trout-III in 1984.

Marty’s long involvement in wild trout conservation began in the 1960’s, when Marty wrote fishing columns for San Francisco and Central Valley fishing newspapers and was Angler Magazine Conservation Editor. Over the year’s Marty has written extensively on catch-and-release fishing.

Marty has served as a Trout Unlimited chapter president, was a founding director of CalTrout, and has been a Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF) volunteer since 1972. Marty has also served as the Conservation Vice President of the Northern California Council FFF and from 1976-1986 was on the FFF Executive Committee as Senior Vice President Conservation. He has been Chairman of the FFF International Relations and Fish and Wildlife Committees, and managed several FFF fly fishing industry databases. He is presently a FFF Northern California/Northern Nevada Council Director, and a FFF Senior Advisor

Supreme Court To Decide Issues of Commercial Navigability, Public Access For Missouri River (And The Rest Of Us)

December 5, 2011, by Tom Chandler 13 comments

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will hear a case on Wednesday that could have huge implications for river and stream access across the United States.

The question is whether the Montana State Supreme Court ruled correctly when they said the Missouri River’s “Great Falls” were owned by the state instead of PPL Montana — an electrical utility with hydropower installations at Great Falls.

While the case revolves around a few obscure points — one of them being whether the Missouri was commercially navigable during the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition — the outcome could have a huge impact on recreational access, as this quote from the Great Falls Tribune story suggests:

“The fundamental thing here is PPL wants to take land owned by Montana for its own good,” said Bruce Farling, executive director for Montana Trout Unlimited, which filed a brief supporting Montana in the case. “The state of Montana is saying, ‘No, that’s our land, you’ve got to pay rent for occupying it.’”

With state ownership of major riverbeds, the public has more influence over conservation and fishery protection in instances such as the installation of pipelines and bridges, Farling said.

Montana already has the toughest stream-access law in the country, giving recreationists access to any natural stream irrespective of who owns the banks, he said. But the PPL case could affect recreation in states where stream access laws aren’t as strong, and are based on navigability, he said.

To get a sense for the extreme level of water law geekery involved, you should probably read the article, though I’ll try to keep an eye on this one for you.

UPDATE: ChiWulff posted a good summary of this issue here.

See you in court, Tom Chandler

Did the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans Try to Coverup Evidence of Deadly Fish Virus?

December 3, 2011, by Tom Chandler 4 comments

Recently, West Coast fisheries managers were troubled by reports that a deadly virus — which had decimated salmon farms in Scotland and Norway — had appeared in wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest.

Now it appears the Canadian government knew of positive test results as early as 2004, but refused their biologists permission to publish the findings (from the Seattle PI):

A 2004 draft manuscript, leaked out of Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, indicates that the deadly infectious salmon anemia virus was identified eight years ago in coho, pink and sockeye salmon taken from southern British Columbia, Southeast Alaska and Bering Sea waters.

Testing done in 2002 and 2003 “lead us to conclude that an asymptomatic form of infectious salmon anemia occurs among some species of wild Pacific salmon in the north Pacific,” said the manuscript.

But a senior official at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans recently rejected a request to submit the manuscript for publication.

…

The manuscript surfaced less than a month after disputed findings of the virus in fish taken from the Harrison River in B.C.’s lower Fraser Valley, not far from the Washington border, and juvenile sockeye collected at Rivers Inlet about 400 miles north on the British Columbia Coast.

Infectious salmon anemia, or ISA, is a severe disease of marine-farmed Atlantic salmon, characterized by anemia and hemorrhaging livers as well as kidney damage.

ISA has already done a great of deal to salmon farming operations around the globe (British Columbia is home many salmon farming operations), but the fear is that the disease is jumping to wild salmon (Fraser River salmon stocks collapsed two years ago), and that the fisheries department is protecting salmon farms at the expense of wild fish.

The Underground Blowing Shit Up Post

October 26, 2011, by Tom Chandler 12 comments

Take that, Condit Dam — a river-killing structure that was partially taken out the right way (and by “right” we mean by the use of explosives):

Now if only we could convince somebody to involve A few B-26 Marauder fast attack bombers…

Pit River #5 Will Be Blown Out This Tuesday

October 7, 2011, by Tom Chandler No comments yet

PG&E’s conducting flow gate tests on Pit 5 this Tuesday, which not only means high water that day, but likely unsettled fishing the next day or two.

From PG&E:

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has rescheduled to Tuesday, Oct. 11 an increased flow test on the Pit River below the Pit 5 Diversion Dam. The test was originally scheduled for Monday, Oct. 3.

PG&E is conducting a regular test of dam flow gates, which is required by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The test is being done on a weekday in the fall when recreational use of the river is low and before winter rains increase river flows. Water levels will rise about half a foot an hour for about six to eight hours, starting before dawn so that the river stops rising before sunrise.

The increased flows will not be noticeable beyond the Pit 6 Dam. This portion of the Pit River is remote with no established recreational facilities.

The higher flows will not exceed those experienced in fall and winter.
The maximum flow of 1,800 cubic feet per second (cfs) will be held for about six to eight hours, then gradually reduced over a period of about six to eight hours until all gates are closed.

The anticipated flow before and after testing will be 350 cfs.

See you anywhere but the Pit, Tom Chandler.

Steve Jobs, RIP (A Zero Fly Fishing Content Post)

October 6, 2011, by Tom Chandler 13 comments

I was part of a writer/photographer team that interviewed Steve Jobs during his Next years; we conducted the interview at an Ann Arbor trade show the day before the 1989 Loma Prieta/San Francisco earthquake.

Until now, I never connected the two.

Apple's Home Page

Jobs was the consummate showman; the Next workstation hadn’t yet been released, but was supposed to pack engineering workstation power in a sexy 12″ cube.

The Next booth was built in secrecy behind shrouds, and when it came time to populate it with machines, Jobs lined up twelve people — each carrying a Next workstation — and sent them through the crowd.

I couldn’t decide if it was showmanship or megalomania, but later realized it was simply attention to detail — the act of someone who would later throw out expensive, “good enough” prototype smartphones because they featured more than one button.

The interview itself was predictably opaque; Jobs played things pretty close to the vest, and interviewers often tied themselves into knots looking for an opening, which Jobs never supplied. I remember almost nothing from the interview except that he warned us we’d get only one picture at its conclusion.

One.

In retrospect, that fact probably should have opened the interview.

I bought one of the original 128K Macs, a brilliant machine crippled by Jobs’ insistence that it have no expansion slots — one of the decisions that initially wounded the Macintosh in the PC market.

A sleek, no-slot PC is a pretty cripple, but a one-button mp3 player (or smartphone, or tablet) is no cripple at all, and the aesthetic that hampered Jobs in the computer world paid off in the consumer goods markets, where he really hit his stride.

It would be presumptuous to say Jobs eventually realized perfect boxes weren’t the goal as much as a perfect experience (though it neatly explains iTunes and Pixar), and I have little desire to join the thousands already casting about in the dark about a man we didn’t know.

I’ll simply suggest he had the effect on many of us of a long, rolling earthquake, and yesterday the rumbling ceased, and we are the poorer for it.

Former CA Trout Unlimited Director Chuck Bonham Named As New Director of CA Fish & Game

August 26, 2011, by Tom Chandler 3 comments

This, Undergrounders, is great, great (really great) news. We give you the Official Press Release of Goodness:

——————–

August 26, 2011

Today the Governor announced his appointment of Chuck Bonham to the position of Director of the Department of Fish and Game (DFG). Mr. Bonham has served in multiple positions at Trout Unlimited (TU) since 2000, including California Director and Senior Attorney.

As state director, Bonham was responsible for developing, implementing, and managing all of TU’s programs in California. These programs include TU’s California Water Project, Sportsmen’s Conservation Project, and restoration and watershed projects in both northern and southern California.

Bonham also serves on the board of directors of the Delta Conservancy.

Mr. Bonham has been a leader in many of the most ambitious water, land, and fish restoration efforts in California in the last decade, including: the development of the Yuba Accord (winner of the 2009 Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Award); the Klamath River restoration initiative to secure the nation’s largest dam removal and river restoration project while ensuring sustainable local communities; and, the formation of the Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council during the energy crisis in the early 2000s to permanently protect 140,000 remarkable acres of watershed lands and invest in outdoor programs that serve California’s young people.

He received his J.D. and Environmental and Natural Resources Law Certificate from the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis and Clark College, in Portland, Oregon. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal, West Africa.

Mr. Bonham’s appointment requires Senate confirmation.

(click here to link to the Governor’s announcement)

California Poachers Cut Out Middleman, Steal Trout From Hatchery

August 23, 2011, by Tom Chandler 3 comments

Poachers aren’t exactly strangers to California’s fishing scene, but apparently one group of them decided to cut out the middleman and poach their trout directly from the hatchery (from the Silicon Valley Mercury News):

What’s believed to be the first-ever large-scale theft from a fish hatchery in the state has wardens from the Department of Fish and Game scouring markets and roadside stands looking for thousands of pounds of trophy-sized trout.

Workers on Sunday arrived at the San Joaquin State Fish Hatchery to find the gate pried open, blood covering the floors and 70 dead trout left behind. Department spokesman Patrick Foy said as many as 1,000 trophy trout were stolen.

“If anyone smells anything fishy, they should give us a call,” Foy said.

You heard the man, though I’d like to caution the hygiene-impaired Undergrounders to first make sure it’s not their waders which smell like hell before calling Fish & Game.