Musings

Editor's notes: This post written Saturday night, to be published Sunday morning on the way past the hotspot. Also not that anyone cares, blogspot's clock is weird. it's several hours fast and not an even number of hours like it's a time zone issue. I might post this around 7:00 AM tomorrow Mountain time, but it will say I posted it several hours earlier, if it's still behaving as it was. Anyway.

No pictures today. The camera battery is dead again, and charging.

I'm settled in to a new camp, in a national forest campground near the Madison River, and I like it here, no complaints. This is nice since I had complaints of one kind or another at my first two camps. This one is comfortable, quiet (so far) peaceful and feels private, without being so far removed from the place I want to fish.

Nostalgia: Someone famous said that hunger is the best sauce, but I nominate nostalgia for that honor. As a boy scout, I camped once a month, in all seasons, for years. My supper on the first night in camp was almost always the same: canned beef stew and canned peaches. It was quick and easy, on a night when there was much to do. I bought a can of stew, same brand I used to eat, for this trip. I opened it tonight, on my first night in a new camp, and heated it in the can over a campfire. I ate the peaches at room (forest?) temperature, because that's how I ate them back then, in summer. If it was winter I would have heated them, too. The smells and flavors took me back to simpler times.

It was never wonderful food and it still isn't, but what it lacks in flavor it makes up in memories. I thought of people I haven't thought of in years or spoken to in decades. Not all the memories are positive but they are all important. Looking back I can see some of how I became who I am, and how and why I changed later in life.

That's more ponderence then I expected to get from a can of stew.

I only ate half of it because that's a whole day's ration of fat grams, something that didn't concern me as a boy scout. I'll finish both cans tomorrow for lunch probably. Supper tomorrow will be on the riverbank and this isn't good pocket-of-fishing-vest food.

Usage and park policies: Yellowstone handed me a park newspaper when I paid my fees, and it had a section on "issues" which was interesting enough I read more on their web site. It got me to thinking of other issues.

I learned that the science behind DNA testing, which has made millions of dollars for the patent holder, began as "bioprospecting" in Yellowstone. A scientist was studying unique life forms in the high temp, high acid environments of the thermal areas and found something useful that is now synthesized. Nothing was taken from the park except samples and knowledge, which seems like good usage to me. Some say the park should get a cut of the profits. Others question the appropriateness of such study being done in a national park at all. I think good scientific knowledge is a good thing, and that advancing knowledge is or should be one reason for having national parks.

I learned more about aquatic parasites. It's important for us sport fisherfolks to carefully clean our equipment before moving from infected water to not-yet-infected water, which really means, every time ya move from one drainage to another, or even up a tributary, unless you're sure you have up to date info on what's infected and what isn't. Nobody knows too much about the whirling disease parasite and how it moves, but it's reasonable to think transferring water in boats or mud on boots isn't good. Whirling disease has decimated trout populations in some places including one creek in Yellowstone.

The tiny Aussie mud snail damages habitat and competes with aquatic insects (trout food) for algae. It can be transferred easily from stream to stream in the mud stuck to felt soled wading boots like mine. Yesterday I fished the infected Firehole River in the morning, and the uninfected Gibbon in the afternoon. Now, how does one wash one's boots, while wearing them, in the infected river, removing all the mud, and then get out of said river without getting any mud or tiny snails back on one's boots? I think one would have to take the boots off and "wade wet" or maybe lay belly-down on the bank and wash the boots by hand? Officially recommended methods include a power washer, a car wash, or drying them in the sun for five days. None practical in Yellowstone.

So what did I do? I didn't wade the Gibbon. I fished from the bank in my hiking boots, and settled for the part of the stream I could reach that way. But I wonder how many fishermen are not willing to make that sacrifice? Or how many are willing to get wet to wash their boots, or drive 15+ miles out of the park for a car wash?

It's tempting to suggest the park should offer some sort of facilities for washing gear, to better protect the rivers. But this park doesn't even offer sinks to wash your hands after using a pit toilet, so that's going to be a hard sell.

After I fished the Firehole again this morning and before travelling to the Madison River, I stopped in West and washed my boots at a car wash. I saw two other fisherfolk doing the same thing.

Usage conflicts in general: On the Henry's Fork, I encountered lots of people floating by on inner tubes. I wasn't too annoyed but the guide was grumpy about it. He seems to think that the very best trout streams in the world should be reserved for trout angling usage. I can understand that. But, I don't live near such a stream so can't we apply that to the best trout waters in Missouri too? Okay, there's no floating in the MO trout parks so that's a bad example but my point is, the public lands and waters belong to the whole public, and if you start setting limits where do you stop?

Picture the perfect trout stream. Now the perfect innertube stream. If they aren't the same, then you know something about one or the other activity that I don't know. Clean, clear, moving water thru pretty country. Who's is it?

Kayakers are never a problem. They call out a familiar greeting "where do you want me?" and watch for me to point with my head, because they know my hands are full (flyrod in right, flyline in left). If I'm confident, I can point behind me and then time my backcast so one goes in front, the next behind, the kayak as it speeds thru. I'm not that confident. I usually point the kayaker forward, to go between me and the fish, and flip the backcast behind me and drop it there for a few seconds. Better then dropping it in front of me and risk spooking the fish, if they should see the flyline float over them at a moment I can't pick it up because of the kayak. I don't mind missing a few seconds' fishing, one or two casts at most.

But the tubers haven't been taught that "where do you want me" etiquette, and they just see a guy standing in the middle, casting to one bank and back-casting to the other, and think there's nothing they can do. And there isn't much. Inner tubes just aren't that maneuverable, even if they knew where I would prefer they go. And they take several minutes longer to float thru then a kayak.

And they have just as much right to the river as I do, and I don't know that I can justify a "special use" arrangement. Sometimes the side of conservation wins out in these discussions, but the tuber (assuming he doesn't litter) isn't hurting the environment, arguably, as much as the fisherfolk even though, out here, we try very hard not to kill the fish.

Smaller lakes disallow powerful gas boat motors, in most cases. That might be partly about conservation, and a lot about noise and reducing wake to make it more pleasant for others. Fisherman can (in some cases) still use a quiet electric trolling motor, but water skiers and personal watercrafters have to go elsewhere. Maybe designating this river for fishing only and that one for tubers is no different then that.

And then of course there's money. Fishermen like me come from far away and spend some pretty serious money, on tackle, licences, guides, groceries etc. helping the local economy. Floaters come from nearby, so their grocery money would stay in this economy anyway. Not to make judgements but my impression was that they were mostly working families taking a vacation on the cheap, staying in campgrounds (like me) and bringing their groceries and beer from home. The sport fishing industry has some influence around here, and lots of rich friends. Who advocates for the floater?

So I don't get too steamed when I have to stop fishing for five minutes for a flotilla of tubers to go by. On the Henry's it happened four or five times a day.

One more usage issue to close with: I noticed a couple of trucks in Yellowstone that were probably farmers or ranchers passing thru. There are highways around most of the park, but there are some cases where, if you're going from A to B, the most direct route is thru the park. Now, there's a fee to be paid at the gate, $25 for 7 days and probably a cheap seasonal rate available. I can imagine that a year ago, it didn't make sense to pay a fee to save a few miles. But now you're saving $4 for every gallon you reduce. The traffic jams in Yellowstone don't seem to happen anymore (at least I didn't encounter much of it) since they started enforcing "don't feed the bears." The rancher who lives nearby might have a season pass just for recreation, so he's not actually paying anything extra to haul feed or whatever thru there.

What ya gonna do? A weight limit? These weren't simi rigs, they were farm trucks one size larger then the big pickups, probably a 16-20' bed and six tires. It probably weighs less then some of the RVs they allow in there. So is it fair to say a family of two to six people can spend a week in the park in their camper for $25, but a smaller farm truck can't pass thru for the same fee?

Enough for tonight. Fishing report, pictures and more words of wastedom tomorrow or the next day.