One of the cool things about being a [sarcasm]rock star[/sarcasm] in the world of fly fishing blogs is that I talk with a lot of other fly fishing blog [sarcasm]rock stars[/sarcasm]. One of the things that has come up time and time again in our conversations, is the trend each of these fly fishing bloggers sees in their site’s traffic log when a conservation related post is published.

People don’t read posts that focus on conservation or environmental issues.

Sure, there are a few who have a genuine interest in fly fishing related conservation issues, but not nearly as many as who will flock to a blog post about how to tie an improved clinch knot.

Even more interesting was a small social experiment I stumbled upon while writing the now extinct blog, EcoFly. I created EcoFly in hopes of having the web’s first fly fishing blog dedicated 100% to fly fishing related conservation issues (Ted Williams is already out there, but he doesn’t focus exclusively on fly fishing related stuff). I built the website, and like all good little bloggers, created an EcoFly Facebook fan page.

With zero promotion for EcoFly, it had over 400 fans in about 6 weeks. Not bad, but despite a fairly steady flow of content being added to the site, it barely received 1000 pageviews in that same time period.

My theory is that the majority of people out there want to care, or want people to think they care, but when you get right down to it, they don’t really care.

Recently, Moldy Chum did a post about the never ending saga of English Pete.  That guy who caught and kept what is now an IFGA world record for an endangered species, the PNW Steelhead.  Unlike most conservation related posts in the fly fishing blogosphere, this one received a high number of comments, currently 39.  Of all of those comments, this one jumped out at me the most:

I find it interesting how this post on the chum gets so many responses and yet an issue just as big as C&R such as the post about the pebble mine has no conversation from the crowd…unfortunately I feel the base of sportfishers no matter what rod they hold is more bark then bite…I know how many hours I put in actually saving stream but how many does everyone else??? I found it hard to get enough volunteers from FFF and other groups when real work needed done…in other words I think the world just has too many armchair quarterbacks to save anything these days

Despite the way blog stats plummet when a conservation piece is at top of the page, many of the top fly fishing blogs continue to force feed this stuff into your RSS readers- in small doses of course. Since today is Earth Day and all, I’d like to salute them.

The Trout Underground

MidCurrent

Moldy Chum

Buster Wants To Fish

Foul Hooked

Fishing Jones

Singlebarbed

The Anglers Net

The Fly Line

And of course, lets not forget all of the wonderful conservation organizations out there who are making things happen at the grass roots level.

(As always, if I’m forgetting about someone, feel free to give them some love in the comments.)

A few from yesterday-

Unbuttoned

You know the carp are there, but they’re snubbing everything you throw at them.   You cast and cast and cast.  Switching flies.  Moving from spot to spot to spot.  The take comes when you’re somewhere between wondering which fly to tie on next, and whether or not you remembered to lock the car door back at the boat launch.  You raise the rod and watch the water explode a split second before your fly line starts rooster tailing through the muddy water.  Through the rod you feel the fish and the way it just does whatever it wants, all the while trying to ignore the little voice in the back of your head that is telling you that you never got a good hook set at the start of all this ruckus.

And the line goes limp.

Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Bass.

photo: Alex Cerveniak

Yeah, it’s still early April, but you and I both know what’ll be poppin’ a couple months from now…

It was sometime in late Spring or the early Summer of 2006 and I was still living in northern Michigan.  At the time, I was serving on the Board of Directors for the Headwaters Chapter of TU.  One of the things we were trying to accomplish at the time was to assist the DNR, now the DNRE, in their efforts to get a private dam on the Pigeon River, operated by a yoga retreat called Song of the Morning Ranch, to be regulated by FERC.  One reason was that they were running the dam in a peaking mode where they let out a bunch of water, then drop it down to a trickle- over and over and over.  Obviously that kind of release schedule- which is still pretty common on many of our nation’s great trout streams- isn’t healthy for an ecosystem.    We also worried about the condition of the aging dam.  Despite the DNRE’s best efforts, they were unsuccessful despite providing more than enough evidence to show that the dam should fall under FERC’s jurisdiction.  I won’t bore you with all the legal mumbo jumbo, but it felt like FERC just didn’t want anything to do with a little dam supplying power for a group of yoga people out in the middle of nowhere.

Fast forward to 2008.

I had lived in NY for just under two years and was a week away from what has become an annual trip back home to catch up with my old fishing grounds.  The yoga retreat who operates the dam goofed up, and released a massive amount of water and years of sediment along with it, causing a massive fish kill on one of the premier brook trout streams in the state.   When I arrived a week later and saw the condition the river was in, it really had a deep affect on me.  So much so that I’ll credit that event as being responsible for myself finally going back to school to earn a degree in Environmental Science a couple months after.  The DNRE filed suit against the owners of the retreat last year, and that leads us to yesterday’s press release from the DNRE-

Judge Signs Interim Order in Settlement With Golden Lotus Over Faulty Operation of Dam in 2008

Honorable Dennis F. Murphy of the Otsego County Circuit Court on Monday signed an interim order directing Golden Lotus, Inc. to remove a private dam on the Pigeon River that it owns and maintains on its Song of the
Morning Ranch property in Otsego County. Golden Lotus also was ordered to pay a fine totaling $150,000.

The settlement is in response to the faulty operation of the dam in June 2008, which resulted in a significant pollution event and fish kill on the Pigeon River.  Removal of the private dam is contingent on the absence of any
contaminated sediments. Golden Lotus has 30 days to submit a “conceptual plan” for removal of the dam to the State Technical Review Team, established by the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. The plan will outline dam removal, sediment testing and management, and restoration of the formerly impounded area to a stable stream channel. The plan will also describe a replacement for a bridge that Golden Lotus will continue to use, per the agreement reached with the state today.

The order further stipulates that the Michigan Chapter of Trout Unlimited will assist Golden Lotus and its experts in connection with identifying data, testing and documentation requirements, and with the development of a comprehensive and reasonable dam removal plan. The order also directs the DNRE and Trout Unlimited to assist Golden Lotus in identifying grants and other funding sources, other than state funds, to help pay for the activities and construction outlined in the order.

“I want to thank the Michigan Chapter of Trout Unlimited for being a strong partner in this situation and for stepping forward to help Golden Lotus with a dam removal plan,” said DNRE Director Rebecca Humphries.

The DNRE is committed to conserve, manage, protect, and promote accessible use and enjoyment of the state’s environmental, natural resource, and related economic interests for current and future generations.

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Explored a blue line on the topo map on Saturday with Geoff.  Sometimes these types of trips end up being long walks along a stream with nothing to show for your efforts.  Other times, the sweat and day-after soreness are worth it.

We fished upstream as far as our legs would allow.  Plans are already in the works to return to where we left off and see whats around the next bend.

Yes, it’s gonna be a long week at the office…

Black River Dreams is a collection of 16 essays written by Maximilian Werner.  The book is 176 pages long and includes no pictures.  But thats okay, cause you don’t need them.  The author, Maximilian Werner, does an awesome job of painting a picture for you with enough adjectives to make Hemmingway blush- yet they’re not overdone.  I think this may be the first book I’ve ever wanted to loan to my friends before I was even through the preface.

From the publisher,

Black River Dreams is a celebration of the fly fishing life. It is also a record of human awakening. Alternately lyrical and meditative, mystical and sensuous, each of these sixteen essays represents an exploration of the intersection between past and present, spirit and body, water and land, trout and people, ghosts and dreams. Whether Mr. Werner is describing his first and last time fly fishing as a boy on a stream in northern Maine; or the experience of sitting on the river bank with a dear old friend who, moments earlier, told him he had cancer; or the many golden evenings he and his wife cast big dry flies to Apache trout cruising in the dim mountain light, he brings an ecologically informed, poetic sensibility to all of his fly fishing encounters.

The stories take place primarily in the New Mexico/Utah part of the country, however there is a little bit of Maine thrown in the mix as well.  But it isn’t the places so much that I remember as it is some of the experiences mentioned above.

There were also some excellent quotes:

“I don’t think a person can ever really know a place until he appreciates how he got there.”

I’d also say that you can never really appreciate a place until you know how you got there.

Another good one:

“Something very old happens when you hook a fish, but something timeless happens when you lose it”

Then there is the idea Werner presents that we take our stories to the river, and not from it.  How true.

To read an excerpt from the book, check out Green River by Maximilian Werner, only a small part of a great essay on the Green.  To read other reviews, or to purchase the book, CLICK HERE.