Yellowstone Park, is it being loved to Death?

National Park Service The National Park Service’s report on the continuing issues of Yellowstone Park is full of grim news. Daily visitations continue to climb, leading to stress on the infrastructure, and all the invasives spread by car tires, clothing, and felt soles, continue to resist efforts at controlling them.

On Yellowstone Lake:

Nearly 550,000 lake trout have been removed from the lake
since 1994, including about 146,000 in 2010. The number
of lake trout caught per 100 meters of net has been rising
since 2002, suggesting that the lake trout population has
been increasing faster than the fish are being removed.

On the creepy crawly invasives:

First detected in the park in 1994, New Zealand mud snails
are now in all of the major watersheds, where they form dense colonies and compete with native species.

… and on us:

After exceeding 3 million for the first time in 1992, annual visitation at Yellowstone fluctuated between 2.8 and 3.1 million until new records were set in 2009 (3.3 million) and 2010 (3.6 million). About 70% of the visitation occurs from June through August. Although there are no day use quotas, lodging and campgrounds in the park can accommodate only about 14,300 visitors during the summer, while daily visitation during July 2010 averaged 30,900. Fall visitation has increased since the 1980s and now comprises about 21% of annual use; winter visitation has never been more than 6% of the annual total.

With all those vehicles and their sticky rubber tires, over 20000 acres of invasive plants were treated, many with herbicides, a first for Yellowstone. Campgrounds and trails are consistent sources for most of the vegetative invasives, suggesting it’s us at the root cause.

With little change from the 2000 plan, and a harsh economic environment, it suggests “fighting them to a draw” might be a valued outcome, given a Congress with little sympathy and no mandate other than steep cuts in spending.

There are no boundaries to a fly tyer’s depravity

A box of Twinkies inhaled in a moment of weakness, $3.49 …

twinkie_golden_delicious

New sneakers that motivate “Fatty” to walk twice as fast to shuck unwanted flab, $65.00 …

Merrill "Felony Flyers" walking shoes

… an inattentive bird owner who puts a $4000 parrot with his ass hanging out the window …

A handful of Blue and Gold Macaw

 

The uncharacteristic positive post on fishing

I not sure of the pattern, but I'd guess there was a bead head on itBeing as they are simply numbers, you can ally yourself with the half-full crowd, or go with those as thinks them half-empty.

Most of the angling media has been citing small upticks in angling as a resurgence in the sport and a sign of a stronger economy, yet most of the story remains unpleasant with more to come. Wishful thinking and small upticks in statistics aren’t likely to keep us out of another trough before all those ripples from the mortgage wreckage grows quiet.

Call it a gift from your neighbor and our pals in Europe, and take it along with the rest of the damn lies and statistics, with a generous leavening of salt …

The National Sporting Goods Assn. found that sport fishing in California dropped from 5 million people in 1985 to 3.1 million in 2004. That number took another dip this year, to 2.5 million.

The California Department of Fish and Game also shows that in 2008 it issued 2.8 million fishing licenses. Last year the number had dropped by 400,000 and through Aug. 30 of this year by 300,000 more.

– via the LA Times

Add all that up and you can see why the body politic plans to kick the environmental lobby to the curb, given that since 1985, half of California’s anglers no longer purchase licenses …

Yet in uncharacteristic upbeat style I’ll suggest us longtime Californio’s have merely opted to fish illegally, rather than donate all that license money to be pissed away on the Governor’s pet projects or civil servant pensions.

If the government can redirect the cash as it sees fit, we can decide to keep the cash and blow it on munchies or Starbux and simply take our chances. Due to the budget most of the wardens have been let go already, and with hatcheries spreading Whirling Disease and Didymo, what are they really going to do, take away our birthday?

In a short 25 years we’ve lost half the anglers and three quarters of the fish, yet based on those numbers we’re still winning!

(… and you were expecting another downbeat we’re-all-gonna-die post.)

Fly fishing upstaged by real guides and real guns

puttheroddown1 I warned you often enough, instead you listened to those lesser prophets who insisted girls would adore you for staring at their anatomy, now they think fisherman are all creeps, and have chosen hunting instead.

Legions of taut and bronzed, out of work, single-parent, womenfolk tasked with raising both flavors of offspring, newly interested in the out-of-doors and wilderness adventure, and can vote – and because of a couple out of control fishing websites – and your instinctive leer, they’re lost to us forever …

I’m not so sure I buy into the rationale for the sudden trend as published, with the economy teetering on the brink most parents will insist that food on the table pales in comparison to all else, especially where children are concerned, and a shotgun and a couple cases of ammo might be a better investment then gold, given how much easier it is to train in weapons, purchase some, and than take someone else’s doubloons at gunpoint …

Hunting implies dusty trucks, battered coolers, sharp knives, and guts; a oneness with your surroundings that only death and the controlled napalm that an aging GM heater can provide.

“Ma’am, I’m pretty sure you were low and away on that last shot, I believe you vaporized both his nuts. Rather than chase that high-pitched keening Wildebeest, who’s in obvious pain – and liable to be really pissed into those brambles – why don’t you and I retire to the truck for some hot coffee, while he bleeds to death in them bushes?”

Meanwhile you’re urging her to wade a bit deeper into cold water – and if she’s really patient and attentive she’ll get to remove a barbed hook from her icy and slimy quarry, while imbedding it into her wrist when it leaps to freedom …

With the main event being a guide lunch that someone stepped on, whose condiments are ageless, and meat unidentifiable …

All fly fishing can really offer in comparison is some sweaty handshake with a well intentioned,  “if you catch it you’d better let it go” admonition – which doesn’t put much food on the table, and a “OoO, wash your shoes as they might track nasty into the creek “ – which is what she told her kids, but they didn’t listen.

Both are suited to a nasal, high-pitched delivery which can be hampered by the intentness of our stare at Miss Bronzed & Heaving’s upper torso, who is pretty tired of our admiration, and would love punctuating our fantasy by ratcheting a live round into her newly oiled sidearm.

… which warms nicely when fired repeatedly …

I’ll finally get to know whether Great Blue Heron tastes like Chicken or not

Guy_Fawkes It was painful watching the Republican debates the other night, what with each candidate insisting they’d remove any regulations that slowed job growth. It appears our rivers and estuaries will be drilled like a root canal, most migratory species extincted, and a steady runoff of industrial waste and toxins into whatever you fish most …

… and all them students clapping merrily as if they’d heard profound for the first time …

Democrats aren’t any smarter and it’s liable to be a tough couple of decades if the pursuit of jobs and deregulation meets the Son of Global Warming.

While us fishermen mill about in disarray, given all our hard-fought environmental protections suddenly under scrutiny, and most of our conservationist bodies still fighting over felt soles and “who stepped in what” we might have to form our own clandestine “Occupy The Esopus” movement – with what remains of angling’s lunatic fringe …

Which aren’t as plentiful as they once were. Caring for the fish was overtaken by “caring more about your rakish figure in outdoor duds” – how the thousand dollar fly rod and the Cafe Mocha neutered most of our real outdoorsy types, them that lacked a full set of teeth or most of their frontal lobe – and thought like fish do. The rest of us didn’t help as we gave them the cold shoulder thinking they gave the rest of us a bad name.

“Old Timey Conservation” meant if you found 12 sticks of dynamite on the creekbed we might’ve drawn short straw for which dam to make porous, or showed some real ingenuity by making the casting club pond manager decide to lengthen the club’s ponds (with a bit of Fourth of July pyrotechnics) to accommodate a Spey class…

… but to merely give it back to the law, that’s a waste.

The damn environmental element isn’t mad enough yet to understand that what you tracked onto the kitchen linoleum with your contagion-bearing felt soles could soon be the least of your environmental worries.

Here’s hoping you all listened closely.

Is good dental hygiene incompatible with dry fly fishing?

No flossing As Oregon evolves their fishing regulations to make salmon snagging less profitable, the unattended consequence could be shortening the fishing day, denying dry fly fishermen that last hour of twilight awesomeness.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife is about to launch a public process aimed at revising state fishing regulations, something the agency does every four years. And ways to curtail flossing and other snagging techniques will dominate the discussion.

Every fly fisherman knows that last hour (actually that last couple of hours) after sunset is the best part of the angling day, when diminished light triggers the evening hatch, makes the angler less glaring as a predator, and shrinks 4X to the diameter of 6X, or so the fish think …

At issue is “flossing” a salmon; swinging a weight and hook through salmon holding water hoping to thread the leader through an open mouth and slamming the hook home on the outside of the jaw – rather than in the arse, stomach, or fin like traditional snagging.

That goes the same for flossers using monofilament, lead and hooks or the fly-fishing flossers stripping a fly line over the gums of open-mouthed salmon.

– via the Mail Tribune.com

Fish hooked in the inside of the mouth would be the legal caught, all other fish must be returned to the water.

Shortening the fishing day is one of many options being discussed at present, if successful it’ll require us visiting anglers to be doubly mindful of the time of day – given they resent us Californio’s for retiring there in the first place, for our importing high real estate prices and consumptive cultural rituals to our heretofore sleepy Northern neighbor.

It is us spreading it, mostly it’s you doing the clicking

Deep down I couldn’t shake the feeling that with all its soiled nooks and crannies the Internet was somehow connected to the spread of plague …

How Didymo spreads You going to click the button?

It’s not the wading boots, Meathead, it’s the spread of broadband and the cell phone you can no longer do without that’s despoiling our watersheds …

Intent on looking up the correct spelling of “Paraleptophlebia” and that big “Download Now” button throbs fetchingly, and you get sucked in like a Carp for an Spicy Peanut boilie.

Naked women with big boxes of free flies simply don’t exist, even if the Internet claims otherwise …

It may be time for us old guys to face fly fishing’s new music

frenzied_sweetcorn I’m rethinking all the bustle and commotion over how we’re no longer practicing something our Poppa once did. How our doing without Twinkies and store-bought Latte makes today’s outdoors an expedition on par with Shackleton’s Voyage, extreme survival, mere fishing transformed into an adrenalin-fueled primeval.

Competition and adrenalin is what we truly crave, fishing is just a means of getting there …

Fishing lacks the broken bones and has no contact between anglers, no pads or face masks, and doesn’t look much better under the hot Klieg lights of television, with few saints and less demigods – and no one trading paint in the pit area…

But they may have a point.

My generation picked fishing so we could decompress from both family and work – preferring the solitude and silence the Great Outdoors offered to heal the soul so we could return to the Big City fit for another grueling tour.

Somehow the “Rest and Relaxation” became today’s competitive and arduous, compliments of youth-oriented marketing and a generation that measured their worth in how much they owe versus how much they bank.

But that’s merely sour grapes, given the ability to “unplug” is fast disappearing, complements of satellites and broadband, and “them as inherits” might have had the right idea about the woods all along…

Most of the Pristine is on its last legs and requires tackle that can ferret out those few remaining fish from super-deep or super-fast, neither of which fly fishing has been any good at …

… which may explain why 3/8 ounce jig heads are considered flies, given that this new fishing lets us bring guns to gun fights …

I think I’ll dispense with the closetful of high-tech fabrics, the illegal SWAT gear, and those hideously expensive fly rods, which will get us clear of the adrenalin junkies who insist matching the hatch involves base-jumping with Mayflies …

We can watch them plummet earthward while we rest easy in our lawn chair and reacquaint ourselves with inexpensive rods, cold beer, and the new bait fishing …

AintDaddiesBait

That ain’t anything your Daddy fished …

The new EXTREME bait fishing made so by enormous amounts of Soy and your propensity towards flatulence …

The only real difficulty will be humping that cooler down from the parking lot now that we’re done with all the deprivation and Mother Nature crap. Fabric-based solar panels will energize our civilized comforts that accompany us back to the creek. Cell phones and Microwaves, televised football blaring while we ignore the rod and reach for a double fistful of those Spicy Peanut numbers – followed by the White Chocolate.

Poppa never had it so good. Potted meat and soggy bread, branch water and a long hike upstream to get away from us truly comfortable and well-rested angling types …

Where we get all solemn and lay it on overly thick for the non-fisherman

Fishing being a more painful variant of masochism, whose practitioners lust for big fish knowing they’re accompanied by hardship; cold rain, poisonous snakes, blisters, and other trappings of kink, yet are still at a loss to explain its attraction to normal folks.

While traveling last week, I did have time to inhale a small salad while enjoying the banks of the mighty Eel River. In between bites I noticed a bit of motion in the water and am rendered vengeful and solemn by the sight of 200 large salmon milling in a circle only feet away …

Nothing like a fish that appears to be six inches wide at the back to give a fellow real trouble swallowing lettuce …

Eel River at Weott, California

My accomplice was oblivious to the spectacle as he was negotiating  three inches of rare roast beef and a monstrous hard roll, while giggling at my self-inflicted dietary choice. Suddenly one of the larger fish comes cleans out of the water and dampens us both …

“Dude, that was a salmon.”

I nodded the affirmative as he noticed all the other fish leisurely rolling in contentment, finning their way over to give me the finger, then swimming a lazy circle to repeat the insult.

He exclaimed, “ I can run us back to Fortuna and you can buy a rod and reel, and we could be back in an hour…”

I shook my head, “No, fishing is a karmic-Zen-Masochistic thing – and while I don’t expect a non-fisherman to understand; the reason the fish are here is because I lack my fishing gear. In physical terms, both fish and fishing tackle are positively charged ions – and can never occupy the same space – nor get close enough to one another to cause harm – as their natural state repels the other.

If I had brought the gear we’d be standing in a torrential downpour with a flat tire, fishless – or that prominent badge on your truck would cause Weott’s version of “Jimmy Olsen Cub Reporter” to stop and immortalize us for the six o’clock news and the both of us holding big dripping fish and a pink slip …

Driving to Fortuna is for godless amateurs – who’ve not fished enough to learn this truism …”

At this point he’s looking at me fixedly, jaw open and roast beef visible, “OMFG, that’s some serious hokey horseshit,” he says.

I’d tried to explain it and failed. Now I was content to wave as the fish swam past knowing it as a quasi-religious truth recognizable only by those that believe. Not the old-timey religious types – more like those that are fool enough to stand in cold water and have done so enough times to recognize this immutable Law of Nature.

We aren’t as svelte as all that – nor is this Colorado

As soon as I mentioned the waves of famished fish eagerly casting themselves in the path of anything Olive, I knew I’d overstepped the boundaries of both physics or logic and brought unwanted voodoo magic into the mix.

Fishing being a simple exercise in Chaos theory most days, but if you promise anyone anything about the day in advance of the reality, you’ve hexed yourself completely, and Einstein and all his theories no longer matter.

And we fall for this ritual time and time again, simply because most of the retelling is done Monday at work – and any sharp pain as the pin is passed through the doll is assumed to be lunchtime gas or that second donut …

… so we delight in stretching truth or predicting how well we’d do if we all skipped work – and the curse wears off by the subsequent weekend, with us none the wiser to all that dark evil we’ve conjured.

Travel Writer makes like Colorado only more squeamish Naturally, I mention to TravelWriter how me and his Dog, which is no longer his Dog as it ignores him completely, have been faring and how he might want to hone his skills on some aggressively eating fish – and I have to listen to how much better the guides were as they rowed him through most of Colorado, versus the fart bar and lukewarm bottled water I’m serving on my stinky little creek …

And if that’s not enough he adds insult to injury by snapping my profile – which suggests the 26 pounds of lard I’ve removed from my frame through Herculean husbanding of calories, would be best served by another 26 pounds of lard yet to go …

Neither lean nor svelte, just overhang

Note my ever-present shadow, rooted to my side in case I need to be defended against hamburgers, whose recent discovery that not every home insists on dry kibble, where weekends can be woodsy adventure versus shackled to the garage, and in better homes Taco Bell is served on fine china even …

… and while fishing was off compared to the last couple of outings, we still got bit regular, just not regular enough to make the occasion memorable enough to brag come Monday morning.

Outside of swarms of small Pikeminnow on #20 dries, whose unwelcome hex will have been voided by my next visit to the creek.

While much has been made about all the fish we released, it’s what we kept that makes all this exercise worth while.

Fat of the Land

Me and Dogbert played along until our fellow angler turned his back and we made off with a goodly assortment of plunder. Walnuts, pears, persimmons, and fresh chard lend precious vitamins to any meal, especially the greasy, leaden variety I’d promised to preserve canine loyalties.