As most of you know, I run a semi-pro fishing blog. What you don’t probably know is that it gets well over 25,000 page views a month and it is providing a business boost for the company we’re running it for. It’s not like I’m ready to quit the day job and retire here, but it’s pretty successful and  commands a certain responsibility to the readers and fly fishing community.

But as with anything, there are always a few assholes in the bunch. You could argue that the internet breeds them — faceless exchanges with people with zero attention span and no barrier to publication. But I’ve always encouraged people to make their point and let the community put them down. The problem with that is the process isn’t always pretty. In fact, it can be a turnoff for readers to see a bunch of negative, name-calling bullshit on a site.  It reflects on the blog owners.

We recently reached ass-clown saturation on our site and I decided to turn off the comments. It wasn’t worth the headaches. We had anti-environment idiots, blowhard competitors, and one specific douche that I think gave Karl and ulcer. My view is that the site offers information and entertainment, but it is not a forum. If you want to bitch, go join iFish or Westfly.

I could have blocked IP addresses, selectively published comments and kept the nice ones. But that seemed like too much work (and it rankled my journalistic ethos). The solution, in my opinion, is to publish a post saying “Comments are off” and that we welcome dissenting viewpoints, intelligently written by people using their full names and affiliations. We also welcome reader reports, questions and photos — send us your feedback through email.

On one hand,  I think the blog format is successful in part because of the readers’ ability to comment and interact with the content (though Google visibility and immediacy are probably more important features in this case).

On the other hand, we are editors and experts, running a professional site and we don’t have to provide a platform for idiocy. There’s enough of it already online. This isn’t a public service, it’s a business.  

Let me know what you think… leave a comment.

So the last week, DW and Misty have been out in Oregon, having a good time, seeing the sites. Last weekend we camped outside of Prineville at the Ochoco Lake campground, operated by Crook County (a pretty great place I must say). We hiked Smith Rock at dusk on Friday and ran into a retired homicide detective who showed us photos on his digital camera of a giant rattlesnake ready to strike that he’d seen on the trail… great. Supposedly they come down from the rocks at dusk to the river (and trail). We also had an awesome dinner at the Terrebonne Depot — highly recommended. We also hiked to Stein’s Pillar, a great 2-mile out trip to a viewpoint of a giant spire coming out of the sage brush, lots of wildflowers on the trail. We stopped by Painted Hills and had a chance at some cool photo opportunities with an oncoming storm.

Then Sunday we drove to Maupin to do a whitewater trip on the Deschutes — a great time and good idea until the guide asked if we wanted to swim through the last rapid, a Class 2, in our life jackets. Seemed like a great idea at the time, until I got in the water (52 degrees). I also swam out into the middle of the current to get the full effect of the waves — a brilliant idea. Rather than riding the 3-foot standing waves, I kind of went through them — drinking a significant volume of the Deschutes in the process. I was treading, trying to keep my head above the water instead of relaxing, wasting energy, and not paying attention to when I was supposed to swim back to shore. I was further out than the rest of the crew and floated past the soft water when Katie yelled for me to swim. My brain wasn’t really working right — the cold water was getting to me. I started swimming toward the bank to my left, but the current was just taking me downstream into the next rapid. The guide was standing on the shore with the throw bag asking if I needed it (shit yes, throw the rope). He made a great throw and I caught it and he swung me back into the bank. I just stood there a while with the guide, a 20-year old kid who had simultaneously saved my life and nearly killed me.

I’ve always respected the river and considered that one day it could take me or my brother down. I think about it a lot when I’m just about up to the top of my chest waders and my toes are slipping as the gravel underneath them washes downstream, trying to get to a better position on a winter steelhead hole. But that experience really helped reinforce the fact that I’m not nearly invincible, and a clear head and caution should prevail on the water. I also got the sense that death can be a really stupid, flippant event if you let it. Which is scarier than the river.

I’ve been back from vacation for a little while now, but have been slow to return to blogging. Getting back into the swing of things at work has taken its toll. Plus there’s lots going on, like KP’s graduation from the U of Oregon with a masters (see below). And I’ve got Man Of War here for an extended Oregon tour 2008. Earlier this week we headed out to the coast. I’m rushing this post because we’re headed to Eastern Oregon for the weekend, camping.

I’m leaving tomorrow for the annual Northern Migration. I’ve been going to a lake in Northern Ontario for well over a decade with my family, and every year the fishing seems better than the one before. I missed the trip last year, due to the Alaskan Brown Bear hunting trip, so this year is going to be huge.

Pike are sentient, cruising the shallows, looking, skulking. They’re more like a dog that you have to fight off, hand to hand combat style. They are aware of you more so than other fish it seems. And Pike are big enough and aware enough to actually be fighting you — not the thing in its mouth. Pike bite the shit out of more people in our group, it’s the number one injury on these trips. I’m not saying they are trying to bite us, but I am saying that they don’t pass up the opportunity if you’re giving it to them. And number two injury? Treble hook to the soft flesh, thanks to a thrashing pike. Nothing gyrates like a 30 inch pike with 8-unencumbered hooks swinging from its beak. And god, they never stop when they get one in. If they land a hook, another head thrash is immediately forthcoming. Just digging in.

Some photos from the 05 and 06 trips:

I’ll be back on board June 9th. No fone, no internets. FYI: We’re doing a friendly virtual pike on the fly competition with Fishing Jones.

Last weekend we did an awesome hike with C-dawg and Amy on the Eagle Creek trail to ther Mark Hatfield Wilderness in Northwest Oregon. I took a billion photos, several of which are of various flora. I’d just purchased a new plant ID book, so I’m going to go through the plant shots and try to identify them on the blog. But for now, here is the scenery:

I’ve decided to sit down every day and jot stream of consciousness for 15-30 minutes with no discernable goal, in a notepad. I guess the idea is to jar loose some new ideas, original thoughts. I spend so much of my life reporting on other people’s thoughts and observations, that I’ve started to forget I have thoughts too. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe no one does. It’s all just regurgitated versions of someting that happened, just reordered, reworded.

I wrote bad fiction in college, lots of it. I figured I’d probably write bad fiction for a living. As it turned out, writing about air conditioners for computers was a lot more lucrative. You’d think I was writing original thoughts back then, but most of my fiction was autobiography with a helping of Stephen King.

Once or twice a month, I wonder what my fiction would look like if I started writing a few pages a day again. I secretly harbor this fantasy that I’m somehow becoming a better fiction writer, just from getting older and being a reporter (even though I’m not writing any fiction). It makes a kind of sense, since each successive, older version of myself finds the previous version’s writing crappy and immature, but promising enough that maybe someday…

I write a few sentences in an essay about the grizzly bear hunting trip last year, and I’m paralyzed by how meaningless the words seem on the page. 10% of it might be worth reading. But 90% useless seems to be about on par with everything else I’m reading lately, so maybe there is hope.

The contents of this post was generated in my 20 minute notepad/pencil experiment, writing about what I was writing about. But I aslo delved into this idea that I like the disorderly edges of things. Composition and entropy (like an old house being swallowed by the forest), river and stone, morning and evening. I like the edge of intimacy and strangeness — when I was a kid I’d be riding in my parents’ car, looking at houses from the dark outside and imagine what kind of life was going on inside the window. What’s happening in that room with the incandescent glow bouncing off the ugly, unfamiliar walls? What are they watching on TV? Why aren’t the people in the room talking?

Anyway… not real useful stuff. But like I said, 90% crap is expected. I may or may not publish all of these, but it did seem like a decent way to keep the blog populated.

Pretty good headline, eh? Well, it was a pretty good weekend. It started out with a keg of Ninkasi at my house on Friday night. I did what was expected, grilled food, drank beer, pitched horseshoes and eventually busted out my guitar. The crowd actually cheered when I threw the lyrics and chord chart to Long December into the fire. Looks like it’s time for a new set or give up the rock. We kept it PG till most of the respectable people left. At some point in the night, I did a keg stand and that pretty much ended the festivities. Apparently, people aren’t big on keg stands out here.  

The next day we had another BBQ, this time for TU Chapter 678 and I was on catering duty. The crew: Karl, Paul, Todd, Brent and the Shelly Posse managed to tear down a bunch of invasive blackberries from a streambank on the Willamette River that our chapter has been working on for a while. For a full post on the project, check out the Mule’s site.

Later that day, The Mule and the DoubleD and I headed out to find a little known, completely random lake in the Oregon Coast range. The lake was formed when a landslide blocked a creek off the Siuslaw River. We figured it was a good bet for fishing, since all of the West Side rivers were blown out from high temperatures causing crazy snowmelt in the Cascades.

What we didn’t bet on, but should have, was bear. In a half mile hike, we counted over 15 piles of bear shit and each pile seemed to get wetter and fresher as we followed the bear down the trail. I’m assuming it was a mother and cubs, because we found some big turds, but also some little paw prints. Not a good sign. I was on point, so I stuck my giant float tube out in front of me like a sheild and pushed on. The fishing was uneventful, but the trip was great. More on that on the Fly Fishing Blog when I get time to write it. The Mule has it as well.

Then Sunday KP and I stopped by the Mt. Pisgah Arboretum Wildflower Festival and Plant Sale. I picked up a nice potted salmonberry bush. I’m going to try to grow it in a container on my back porch.

We spent the rest of the day up at Pfeiffer Vineyards under a giant madrone tree and then hiking the woodpecker loop at the Finley Wildlife Refuge. Some pics below.

So I think I’m done being smug about the fishing in Oregon. The boys back east are banging it up this spring. My brother is killing it off the coast of Brooklyn and the big man Matt Z. is literally crushing monster brown trout on the Delaware River, seemingly every other weeknight. Matt Z is coming out here tomorrow, and I’m not we’re going to stack up. Check the tale of the tape:

You goons need your own blogs.

Not to toot the old horn here, but for those of you who don’t check in on the Oregon Fy Fishing blog regularly, please see the Bauer fly reel Factor Tour post. I think it’s an awesome video (of course) and it’s a pretty good read if you’re interested in how a small manufacturing business survives with the majority of its operations in Oregon. I’m looking forward to any feedback you have.

Well folks, the Post-Bush era of climate change policy has begun in the U.S. Senator John McCain in a speech in Portland yesterday addressed global warming, vowing to set limits on green house gas emissions and to implement a carbon cap-and-trade scheme.

So if the anointed leader of the Republican party is on board to reduce carbon emissions, you might think a Republican, Oregon senator up for election this year might want to get behind this issue, since it’s obviously important to his constituents.

In fact, according to the Register-Guard McCain spokesman Jeff Sadosky said McCain chose Oregon as a backdrop for his climate change speech because it is a state with “a high percentage of independent voters and a reputation for weighing environmental issues when sizing up candidates.”

Nonetheless, Gordon Smith is unfazed and has kept his head in the sand. Smith has had ample opportunity to take a leadership role for Oregon on climate change policy by joining Senator Wyden in sponsoring the Warner-Lieberman Climate Security Act, but instead he’s chosen to duck that responsibility.

Our fisheries are in decline, and are further threatened by global warming, especially in the Columbia Basin. Even if you feel that climate change is inevitable, an act of God, etc., you need to be behind the Warner-Lieberman Climate Security Act if you care about fishing. The fact is that climate change is happening and a Cap-and-Trade system will help fund wildlife projects that will help our fisheries adapt to a warmer, changed earth.

Gordon Smith is running agains two Democratic candidates with strong environmental records. I urge you to read up on Jeff Merkley’s environmental info as well as Oregon Dem primary primary candidate Steve Novick. And please sign up for the National Wildlife Federation’s Target Global Warming Campaign.

Contact Gordon Smith:
Washington, DC Office
404 Russell Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202.224.3753
Fax: 202.228.3997

Eugene, OR Office
Wayne Morse Federal Courthouse
405 East 8th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97401
Phone: 541.465.6750
Fax: 541.465.6808