He and John Gierach are the reasons I still subscribe to one of the Big Three fly fishing magazines, and while you should read the short interview in its entirety, I’ll excerpt one of the questions here:

It has to be frustrating and depressing at times being a conservation writer in this age of widespread habitat damage and loss—what keeps you going?

What keeps me going is that I’m old enough to remember how far we’ve come. When I went to work for the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife there was no Clean Water Act, no Clean Air Act, no Endangered Species Act, no Environmental Protection Agency. I recall arguing with a fisheries biologist about DDT. “It will never be banned,” he proclaimed. Two years later when it was banned he said, “The ban won’t make a difference.” Since the 1920s my family has had a camp on a New Hampshire Lake. Eagles and loons had never been seen there by any of my relatives until about 20 years ago. Last week two bald eagles spent most of the morning in one of our big pines, and we heard loons all night.

In the face of invasive species, dewatering, access issues and an energy development free-for-all, it’s sometimes hard to remember just how bad things had gotten before they started getting better.

I’d suggest that’s a healthy perspective, at least if you want to avoid burnout.

Finally, I’ll leave you with Williams’ always-provocative thought about the incredible growth in “canned” hunting (where often semi-tame animals are hunted in enclosures):

Real hunting is to canned hunting what holy matrimony is to prostitution.

See you fighting the good fight, Tom Chandler.

Williams – never shy about calling it as he sees it – put his scalpel-sharp prose to work on a satirical piece that almost had me shooting slaw dog out my nose, including the two passages I’ve excerpted below.

In the first, he’s speaking about the museum:

Then it hatched a form letter (at this writing under review by the vice president’s staff) in which it offers lengthy and incomprehensible excuses for inviting Cheney, while likening him to Jimmy Carter and Franklin Roosevelt. It then implores Cheney’s critics to “continue to support the museum and its mission.” I will certainly do so, and to prove it, I have redrafted the form letter for the museum, at no charge:

“Dear [name]: We need to generate revenue, so we searched hard and long for a guest of honor who would fill the room at our spring meeting. Finally, we hit upon Dick Cheney, arguably the most dangerous enemy of fish in our generation. What’s more, Mr. Cheney, who angles for trout in Wyoming in one of the rivers he hasn’t ruined with gas and oil extraction (which happens to run through his ranch) is an accomplished and safe fly caster. In fact, he hasn’t wounded even one of his fishing companions.

“We completely understand that applying green lipstick to this arch environmental villain, aptly dubbed ‘Darth Vader’ in fish and wildlife conservation circles, is outright whoring. But that’s the genius of our plan. This kind of prostitution is legal and no less lucrative than the standard, unlawful variety.”

Williams is not finished, and this next bit is my absolute favorite part:

“Please recall also our mission statement: ‘The American Museum of Fly Fishing promotes an understanding of and appreciation for the history, traditions, and practitioners, past and present, of the sport of fly fishing.’ You cannot deny that a major part of that history and those traditions is the systematic destruction of rivers by special interests and the politicians who front for them.

Can there be a better choice than traditional practitioner Dick Cheney—the man who gave the West the biggest fish kill it has ever seen when he attempted to wean Klamath River Chinook salmon from water, who trashed the Endangered Species Act, who virtually canceled the Clean Air and Clean Water acts, who suppressed science, who ruined the lives of dedicated resource professionals, and who ran Christine Todd Whitman out of the Environmental Protection Agency?

Want more? Read the whole article at the The Missoula Independent Online

And without a trout at the end of any of those drives – and all my little small streams closing as the General Trout Season ended on Saturday – you could say my “regular” season ended not with a bang, but with the whimper of tires on the highway.

Fortunately, California’s progressed to the point that they carelessly left a few places for us to fish during the winter, and yes, I damn well plan to take advantage of them (starting this afternoon).

Still, I gathered this collection of interesting bits (often Internet stories) that don’t quite fit anywhere else, and thought I’d turn you on to them, if only for the opportunity they afford to rant (never pass an opportunity like that).

Yes, my fishy friends; it’s the Monday episode of the Underground’s Internet Wrapup.

State of Our Trout by Ted Williams

While enviro writer Ted Williams doesn’t quite walk on water, nobody writes about the liquid stuff better, at least not when it comes to fish, fisheries and wildlife. Thus, when Williams starts writing about the “State of Our Trout” it’s time to start listening, and as a bonus, you don’t even have to subscribe to Fly Rod & Reel to read it.

Part I and Part II have been posted on William’s regrettably oft-broken blog, so now you can read his cut-to-the-bone accounts of the fight to save Lake Davis from pike (and potentially California’s salmon & steelhead populations along with it), plus follow along the path taken by cutthroat recovery efforts.

Williams infuses his stories with drama, and unlike so many writers seeking a non-existent “balance,” doesn’t take prisoners from either camp.

In turn, he castigatges anti-rotenone activists for blocking recovery of native species; puts a bulls-eye on the backs of “environmental” groups willing to selectively apply the Endangered Species Act; attacks those attempting to gut the ESA; and even hammers outfitters actively opposing native trout recovery.

Williams gets two fins up from the Underground.

State of Our Industry (Sorta)

In the fly fishing industry – where most of the market “leaders” can’t even get their shit together enough to send a regular email/enewsletter to their customers (the marketing equivalent of going fly fishing without knowing how to tie a fly on a leader) – this Internet Retailer article about Orvis should open a few eyes.

Orvis is plowing ahead with all sorts of interesting e-commerce moves, and you don’t need my 23 years in marketing (or read my engagement marketing white paper) to know that companies survive downturns by doing what’s smart right now instead of waiting for the next Movie to save your ass once the weather turns ugly.

And yes, I can already hear the “dog-bed” mafia getting ready to savage Orvis for their lifestyle sales, but frankly, I’m not interested. Find me someone else in the industry – outside of Green Poster Child Patagonia – who’s doing as much to restore fisheries, and I’ll spotlight them.

Underground Namesake Shoots, Scores

Many of you think you know all about me from the Underground, but I’m here to point out you don’t.

For example, most have no idea I wile away the winter hours shooting target airguns (I suck, but I do it), which is why I can’t possibly pass up an opportunity to bask in the glow of target shooting success – even if that glow is only reflected on me by Air Force Academy Student Tom Chandler, who shoots scores I never will.

You, my friends, have stumbled on the story where we name Tom Chandler (the young one with good eyesight and non-shakey hands) The Official Underground Director of Shooting Sports and Pathetic Ego-Gratification by Proxy.

You can read about Chandler’s triumph in a recent match (overall points winner with 1172: smallbore 587, air rifle 585), and yes, you can expect more reflected-glory bragging as Chandler’s competitive season progresses – despite the fact I don’t know this kid, and he sure as heck doesn’t know me.

And here you thought it couldn’t get any stranger here at the Underground.

And you were wrong.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

fly fishing, fishing, ted williams, target shooting, orvis, patagonia, wild trout recovery, native trout, wild trout

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Those willing to clear cut, overfish or pollute public fisheries into oblivion have enjoyed the most permissive administration in modern times, and given the fleeting nature of all things political, they’ve mined it for all it’s worth.

In Ted Williams’ latest book – Something’s Fishy – he exposes those actively participating in the destruction of our fisheries in a muscular collection of essays and articles.

In Williams’ capable hands, his well-researched pieces – especially the people and stories – leap from the page like characters in a crime noir novel.

In fact, at times it does feel like I’m reading a script (though if I were, every story would have a happy ending, which they don’t), but Williams is simply saying laying bare what few want to acknowledge.

A good example is this early passage from “Salmon Stakes” – an essay about the ongoing battle for the Klamath:

In an effort to appease irrigators, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BuRee) had dewatered the Klamath River, which drains a 9,691-square-mile watershed of high desert, woods, and wetlands in southern Oregon and northern California. By July the agency had cut the flow from its Iron Gate Dam from 1,000 cubic feet per second – previously deemed by the administration as the bare minimum necessary to prevent extinction of the system’s coho salmon – to about 650 cfs. From July 12 to August 31, more water went down the main diversion canal to irrigators than down the river to salmon.

Meanwhile, farmers were getting – and wasting – so much water that they were flooding highways and disrupting traffic.

Williams continued to build the suspense by highlighting the methods used to silence scientists protesting the diversion, and, sadly, the result was the largest die-off of adult salmon man’s ever seen.

As one knowledgeable federal insider told me, “Williams isn’t always fun to read, but he’s almost always right.”

That’s a pretty good summation of Something’s Fishy; it’s not always easy to read (if some of his essays don’t make you angry, then you might want to check for a pulse), but it’s always fascinating.

Still, sprinkled among the hard-hitting environmental essays are a handful of more lyrical pieces, and two things become clear.

First, Williams’ strength as a writer is often obscured by his subject matter. When freed from its journalistic reigns and allowed full play on the page, his prose delights as much as it informs.

“Finally the great fish came up and over the lip, and, rod low, I skidded her onto the wet weeds. There was more than two feet of her, and, even if she didn’t belong in Patagonia, she was the most beautiful thing I had seen there – the essence of the trip, if not the place. I needed two hands to hold her while she caught her breath.”

Second, Williams is a rare beast; he’s an environmental writer who is also a sportsman.

In truth, it’s his sportsman’s perspective that makes him so valuable to the sporting community

While the bulk of Williams’ essays are focused directly on those who see wilderness (and the laws protecting it) as something to be mined and slashed into oblivion for short-term profit, he also displays little patience for sportsmen on the wrong side of the debate

In this passage, he blasts an Idaho fly fishing guide was fighting the reintroduction of cutthroat trout:

“When the state of Idaho sought to restore native Yellowstone cutts to Island Park Reservoir, one prominent guide – and educator of local anglers – declared “They’re stupid, and they fight like slugs.” So fierce was the public opposition that the project was abandoned.”

“Environmentalists” who stymie native trout recovery programs with misleading, fear-based campaigns about the use of short-lived, fish-selective poisons also fall into Williams’ cross hairs.

In fact, one essay “Save the Redwoods: Kill Everyone” takes an “environmental” group to task for their blind, tree-sitting pursuit of a logging company who happened to be one of the most responsible on the West coast.

Still, the real targets of Williams’ essays are those who would lay waste to a whole ecosystem for the profit of a single oil field, mine, or other extractive industry, and it’s in these instances that Williams’ penchant for research truly shines.

His ability to expose lies and hypocrisy is uncanny. He’s also a tireless champion not only of fish and wildlife, but also of those who would protect them, and whose careers stand in jeopardy as a result.

Something’s Fishy not only informed (and at times inflamed) me, but it’s become an invaluable resource for my own writing efforts. Williams packs a lot of information into a short essay, and his article about the Klamath River revealed things to me I didn’t know – and, I live here.

This brings me to a criticism of the book. While original publication dates can be found in the back of the book, Williams fails to set his essays in a time and space relative to the reader.

While I understand that William’s essays are previously published, I had no way of knowing if the issue I was reading about was still extant, when the article was actually written, and if any course of action was still relevant (an epilogue or two could have been handy).

Of course, Williams is a journalist and not an advocacy group, and the Internet makes researching most of the issues an easy job.

Something’s Fishy is a weighty book: I counted 52 different essays, spanning fishery issues worldwide. Taken as a whole, his essays on salmon alone amount to a book’s worth of research into the West Coast salmon and Atlantic Salmon issues – neither of which is simple for the bystander to experience.

Almost all of the books I receive for review are given away on the Trout Underground, but I’m retaining Something’s Fishy purely for its research value, though you’ll have to excuse me for also enjoying the writing.

Something’s Fishy scores on several fronts, and it’s a good example of the kind of book that should sell as well as anything in the fly fishing space, but (sadly) almost certainly won’t.

You can always rely on Williams to cut to the chase, which he does with the precision of a surgeon in this High Country News article outlining the futile, misleading attempts to blame salmon problems on predators:

Suppose the Bush administration prevails against squawfish, sea lions and terns. Is it then going to pacify the rest of nature? Will it attack cormorants, which eat more smolts than sea lions and terns combined? And what about orcas and those smolt-swilling walleyes and coastal cutthroat trout?

One gets the impression that if seismic activity threatened an obsolete dam, our federal government would try to rearrange earth’s tectonic plates. On the Snake River, we can save dams or salmon — not both. The administration knows this. Its war on predators is based on deception. There can be no end and no victory.

It’s short, and because the article so nicely sums up the futility of the existing plan (the Underground’s offering even money that Judge Redden goes nuclear on the government’s latest plan), it’s a two-minute education on an issue that is not going to disappear.

See you on High Country News, Tom Chandler.

Something Fishy

Published in October 2007, I made a note to get a copy and promptly lost the note, though I’m rectifying that oversight right now.

Williams is one of the handful of writers that sets Fly Rod & Reel apart from most other mainstream fly fishing magazines; he attacks environmental subjects with energy, taking few prisoners and leaving few questions unanswered.

His unabashed defense of thoughtful environmentalism (he’s taken the greenies to task on more than a few occasions) has converted me into a lifelong fan — and no doubt cost Fly Rod & Reel a few subscribers and advertisers.

I’ll review it as soon as I get it, though if you’ve ever wondered why our salmon are disappearing, our saltwater gamefish are in trouble, and our management policies are making things worse, then just order the thing today.

See you at the reading lamp, Tom Chandler.

You’ll find support for fisheries popping up in extreme circumstances (salmon runs collapsing, etc), but by and large, fishermen and fisheries groups (like CalTrout and TU) are on their own, or living an uneasy partnership with whitewater/river groups who don’t always share the same goals.

Williams weighs in:

Fish are every bit as beautiful and colorful as birds, but few environmentalists ever see them because few are anglers. For instance, when you log on to the website of the Adirondack Council you hear the vocalization of a common loon — the symbol of wilderness.

The council sees and hears loons, but it doesn’t see or hear the brook trout that sustain loons and that are also symbols of wilderness.

Wild brook trout in the Adirondacks have declined by roughly 97 percent. Today only about three percent of the park’s brook-trout habitat still sustains brook trout, and the figure would be only 0.5 percent had not the state used rotenone to reclaim ponds infested with alien fish. But the council, which chooses not to learn about rotenone, has basically blocked its use in park wilderness.

We’ve had rotenone use blocked by environmental groups right here in CA, including some programs aimed at removing non-native rainbow species in favor of native-in-that-range Golden Trout.

Then again, even fishermen haven’t universally supported removal of rainbow and brown trout in favor of cutthroat reintroduction.

Do native species matter? Should non-natives be removed to reintroduce natives to their ranges?

Read more at: When Environmentalists Turn Against Nature – Ted Williams

UPDATE: Apparently, the worst problems have been fixed for now (though the site still kinda bites). 

I’ve made little secret of my respect for outdoor writer Ted Williams, so it’s a little startling to see this posted on his FR&R blog:

Note to My Blog Readers.

Unfortunately our new website refuses to let me and (some) others post reader comments. This and other (apparently uncorrectable) technical deficiencies have obliged me to cease posting indefinitely. When and if they are corrected I will resume. Sorry about this.

Best,

Ted

Ouch.

I’ll say it out loud; Fly Rod & Reel’s Web site makeover has been an absolute train wreck. It seems to have been designed with only a passing nod to current user interface standards, and though I’ve spent a fair amount of time over there, I’ve never been able to make the thing work.

You know it’s bad when your star attraction quits posting in a fit of technologus interruptus. (And Ted — if you’re interested, I’ll build you a blog that works this weekend. Just say the word).

See, the idea is…

The point of these new Web 2.0 technologies (like this here blog) is they’re supposed to make it easier for people to engage with each other, and yet the FR&R makeover has had the opposite effect.

I don’t mean to beat up on FR&R; they’re a literate, bold magazine, and I’d love to see them survive the fast-approaching publishing upheaval, but it doesn’t help when your online presence pretty much sucks.

The whole fiasco speaks to disconnected management or a Web development company without a clue (or both).

Of course, this plays nicely into the “future of fly fishing online” opinion piece I’ve been pushing around my plate. Be a good time to get that written.

See you online, Tom Chandler.

Technorati Tags: fly rod and reel,ted williams,fly fishing blog

In the current issue (January/February 2008), Williams does a masterful job of exposing the “Wise Use” movement — the same folks supplying the juice behind the temporarily derailed Siskiyou County Natural Resource Policy.

Of course, that’s same policy that tried to take away your legal right to access and Siskiyou County’s rivers. And yes, that’s the same policy that was eviscerated by several hundred e-mails from the Undergrounders.

There’s no online link to the Williams story, so if you want to see who’s really behind the attempts to kill your right to access public waters, you’ll have to buy the magazine.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

And while we’re throwing props the way of the dead tree media, California Fly Fisher ran a news item about our battle to beat the Siskiyou County Natural Resources Plan. Good on ‘em.

Sadly, this whole matter is far from dead; a certain unpopular-with-fly-fishers County Supervisor has said she’s not much interested in getting public input on the Natural Resource Plan, and that she’s convinced there’s no legal basis for public access to the Scott and Shasta.

In other words, it ain’t over yet. I suspect they’ll try again, only this time, they’ll know the world is watching.

Better refine those mad letter writing skills, Undergrounders. Bet we’re going to need them.

See you on the river, Tom Chandler.

Conservation writer Ted Williams sums up the questionable background of the fish:

I learned further that an aquaculture operation called CanGro on Lake Diefenbaker produces over 100 Tons tons of finished commercial fish products annually. The operation is vertically integrated from hatching to processing. Fish are raised inside from egg to feeding size, then moved to net cages in the lake. The fish raised are steelheadXrainbow crosses and triploid females. Apparently the record fish was one of triploid females that recently escaped from CanGro net pens.

In other words, the “pending” world record (IGFA) was raised in a pen, genetically manipulated to grow huge, and regularly fed. Not exactly in line with the “spirit” of the rules, and it raises some pretty interesting questions — which I expect you to answer.

Can anything raised (and fed) in a pen be a “real” world record? The floor is yours…