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Good Company, And Lots of It Sometime in the next few days, a fly fisherman will download this issue of A River Never Sleeps from the ‘Net, and register our one millionth hit. According to our statistics, the odds are that that visit will come from a fly fisherman somewhere in the United States, where anglers account for more than half of our traffic. But given the nature of the Internet, it could come from anywhere. After the U.S., our audience comes in order, from Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, South Africa, Sweden, Japan, France, Singapore, Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, New Zealand, Switzerland, Norway, Finland and Chile. Two fly fishermen log on regularly from the Russian Federation, but they account for less than 0.01% of our hits (don’t ask us how a computer program tracks that, but it does) and it seems unlikely they’ll be the ones to record our one millionth hit. Not that it matters. We can’t tell who it is, or where they are, so no prizes will be handed out. Our tracking only gives us country of origin, as well as the number of hits, files downloaded and time of visit. It doesn’t tell us who your are - but we expect that we’d like the vast majority of you, if we ever bumped into you on a streambank. We do know that the content of A River Never Sleeps is appreciated by fly fishermen around the world. And we know from the letters we get, and from the notes on our Guestbook, that the people we’re reaching share our view of the world. We love fly fishing. We pursue the sport with dedication and passion. We care deeply about the environment, and place the needs of conservation above all else. Much of our content reflects our fishing experiences here in British Columbia, on Canada’s West Coast, where we make our home, and chase steelhead, salmon, trout, bass, sunfish, grayling, whitefish and northern pike. (We will go after carp if we ever get a chance.) But we are branching out as much as we can. This month we’ll take you after Kingfish in New Zealand and Atlantic salmon in Ireland. We know that a large part of the attraction of A River Never Sleeps lies in the fact that it comes from British Columbia, a fabled land, where some of the world’s greatest fishing for wild trout and salmon can be found. But we - like you - dream of fishing in other places too. We hope you’re near good water. We hope that when you sign off, you can get out, forget the fast, electric buzz of the world, become mesmerized by the sound of a fly line cutting the air - and feel the jolt of a fish striking. But until you get on the water again, welcome aboard. Reading this site, you’re in good company. What do you think? Visit our online discussion area and post your views. Letters can be sent via e-mail to: letters@ariverneversleeps.com
The Editors: You are to be commended for your even-handed coverage of the Steelhead Society debacle and the Auditor-General's report. Understandably, the leadership of the Steelhead Society wants to cast the A-G's report in the best light, to wit, that there was some sloppiness but no out-and-out malfeasance. Fair enough. But they should not delude themselves that they have regained the moral high ground, especially when they muse out loud about embarking on the slippery of slope pursuing legal redress against their critics. The whistleblowers did a service by drawing attention to what was, in the final analysis, pretty awful conduct with public money. The leadership of the Steelhead Society could do themselves, and the society, a service, by responding with contrition - not the threat of lawsuits. Ian Gill The Editors: First and foremost your site is dedicated to sportsman and the dreams of pursuing fish, which is so awesome. I love the thought of seeing schools of wild steelhead & salmon returning to the fresh water so that a young kid can bend his cheap fly rod on a fish with a fly he tied in a class at school. More so than that it is the preservation of species and sport that must continue. I grew up in northern Wisconsin where it was common place to throw plugs numbering more than dozen trebles to fish that required a 22 pistol to land! (At one point and time, that was the mentality.) The musky was probably one of the most sought after fish, people came from miles around to fish for “the fish of a thousand casts.” In the early 80's the sport got a wake up call when the fish received a 36 inch minimum requirement. Since the the 80's the fish has made a miraculous turn around and musky fishing has never been better. With additional trophy regulations put on native stocks, and barbless requirements in place, the fishing has improved. Unfortunately, sport fisherman armed with 22's and 12 inch lures covered with barbed hooks, weren’t the only threat. Natives have a spring season in which they harvest 40-50 inch fish - with spears. Those big fish represent a majority of the breeding fish. I see what is at hand with the fish in British Columbia and along the Pacific Coast or North America, where stocks continue to decline. But there are examples of turn arounds. Take for example the Great Lakes, where there are now flourishing runs of steelhead and salmon. That fishery has turned 360 degrees in the past 15 years. I believe the Pacific runs can be restored and they will. Keep up your site and keep preaching to kids, because they are the ones that will save the sport. It all starts with that cheap fly rod and a dream. I know, I'm 28 years old and have that same dream. I've seen the the sport change for the better and continue to do so. I hope the governments and the sportsman can agree to give something up, because that is what it is going to take! No fishing, no netting - that means Natives, Canadians, Russians, Japanese, and Americans. We have a lot to learn but there is proof out there that we can make it work. Give a little and get a lot! I'm 28 and in that short time to live, look what I've seen transpire. This is the beginning and the sport will get better if we continue to educate the sportsman on success stories and the improvements that have been made. I thank you for your site and hope that my story gives all fisherman hope. In the past 15 years my fishing's gotten better due to just awareness and few simple restrictions! I know this is a complex issue and involves a lot of detail but we have to be aware that if we give a little we will get a lot more in the next ten years. If it takes putting down our rods like the people in Washington this spring - so 5,000 native fish can spawn without interruption - so be it. I believe it’s the beginning not the end, and we should be thankful! Tony Fallow The Editors: Just a note to say how much I am enjoying your well written articles. I live in Victoria, on Vancouver Island, and am an avid fly tier and fisher. The Island needs more coverage for there are tons of us over here. The most difficult subject I find is trout fishing in small rivers ‘cause there aren't many opportunities such as the creeks you write about in your great magazine. There just isn't the food I guess. Anyway I use the Net a lot for my hobby and haven't found anything that is written nearly as well as yours. Thank you very much and good luck. David Eyckermans David: We shy away from articles that say - Hey, great fishing here, come on and join us! - because you know what would happen. You'd go to your favorite run of a river and find 10 guys there from Germany who just flew in after reading about it on the Net. One thing we will try to do in the future is to explain how coastal rivers work. They are, as I'm sure you know, very nutrient poor, and have great fishing only at certain times. I also believe that because of the massive decline of salmon stocks, many of the rivers have simply lost the nutrient base they once had, which supported stocks of decent-sized resident cutthroat. I think those rivers can come back, if we get the salmon into them, or use artificial means to boost the nutrient levels. I hope you've seen our Keogh River article. If not, look it up in the back issues. It's a living example of what happens to a river when it gets the nutrients that it should have. -Cheers, The Editors: The "Achilles heel" of the salmon farming industry is finally coming back to haunt it, namely that for each pound of farmed salmon produced, at least 4 pounds of wild fish from commercial fisheries must be caught, rendered (concentrated) into fish meal, and then reconstituted into the highly sophisticated salmon pellets now used. Recent testing has found that, as expected, the combined pollution in the North Sea and the other areas off the European coasts where the massive European "fish meal" fisheries are carried on (largely by bottom trawl gear) are contaminated with dioxins and PCBs. Farmed salmon, when they eat this meal in form of pellets, concentrate the toxins. This revelation can only cripple that segment of the fish farm industry that depends upon European meal, and now put the Peruvian fish meal producers at a huge economic advantage over the long term. Overall, this development, driven by the ultra-sensitive European consumer (since the "Mad-cow disease" scare), can only make salmon farming in British Columbia less profitably as the Peruvian suppliers raise the prices of their "clean" fish meal. In the short term, it appears that the wild fish fishmeal fisheries in Peru are going to be the big profit-takers. Note: The Fish For Life Foundation is looking for new information on the ownership/control of the fish meal fishery in Peru and Chile, to gain a better understanding of these industries. Are they in fact controlled in various ways by the fish farming corporations already? Major fish meal price increases would indicate these fishing operations are at arm's length from the large salmon farming firms, but incentives to take over or control the Peruvian and Chilean fishing companies, and also to greatly increase quotas (and overfish) will now be much stronger. Final Analysis: Certification of the world's fish meal fisheries by the World Health Organization, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and especially agencies at "arms length" from governments agencies is the only credible way to deal with what quickly has becomes a "lobby of science" by the huge corporations involved. These corporations lobby to control the extent of government testing and to influence governmental communications regarding the testing of these food additives. In Canada and elsewhere, the trend has been for the corporate fish farming sector to very effectively lobby the government (including, it now appears, the CBC, who are now not going to carry a previously planned program on the UK salmon farming controversy). In the case of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, a policy now exists to expedite the expansion of the salmon farming industry, including if it means "writing off" many wild salmon populations. This is now occurring in the Bay of Fundy as the last wild stocks now approach extinction, with no DFO plans to curb or even regulate the local salmon farming corporations, which clearly will now prevent rebuilding due to the dominance now of escaped farmed salmon. Despite the major negative implications for wild stocks, the Federal government has also delivered massive "bail out" subsidies to enable salmon farming companies to deal with financial losses caused by huge disease epidemics that have occurred in recent years in the bay of Fundy. Note: Attempts to replace the fish meal component of salmon pellets with vegetable matter continue to obtain funding from government in Canada and elsewhere, but the practice within the salmon farming industry has been to use more, not less, fish meal and oil in the feeds, to obtain the competitive growth rates needed. DFO expenditures for this are large, and are coming directly out of the old "wild salmon" conservation\management budgets. -David Ellis {E-mail letters may be edited for clarity, taste and brevity. It is understood they express the opinions of the writers, not the editors.}
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