Outdoor Tips
Is it common to limit-out when steelhead fishing?
How to Catch a Steelhead
Is it common to limit-out when steelhead fishing?
No. Is the short answer. The longer answer is more about the factors that limit the limits of steelhead fishing. Even guides fishing with other guides find it more of a rarity than a commonality to limit-out when fishing for ironheads. Steelhead are not easy to catch because there are so many variables to consider when fishing for them.
The size of the run, migratory nature, and natural habits of this species of fish make it a huge challgne to catch. Like most things that are more of a rarity, is also why it is such a coveted trophy, when subdued by hook and line.
Unlike rainbow trout that may find residence for long periods of time in one hole, the steelheads mobility tend to make it more elusive. They also seek certain types of water more frequently than others, so it pays to try and learn how to identify areas that hold more potential.
Time is the critical factor to have plenty of, to catch a steelhead. To learn more, read the next story.
How to Catch a Steelhead
The most important factor effecting the success of catching steelhead is the premise that you have to go where the fish are. At first, this may seem self-evident and over simplified. However, when I see a lot of fishermen casting into areas of the river that rarely holds fish, or into water which only an occasional fish will pass through, it is clear that a lot of fishermen do not know where the fish are.
When you go to the doctor for a physical and he/she hits your knee with the little rubber hammer to check for your reflexes, what happens? He has to hit the right spot before he can get your reaction. If he is a few inches off, he will not get your response. It is that simple.
Same for steelhead fishing. You can be off by only a foot or two, but often that can be all the difference in getting a fish to bite or not. The difference between calling 911 and 912 is only one digit. But the destination called will provide a much greater difference in desired results.
Steelhead fishing is like hunting. You must cover a lot of country to find the quarry. Once you are at the river, you must spend a high percentage of your time in the area that the steelhead spends a high percentage of its time. All else is an exercise in inefficiency and mostly futility.
How does one learn where the steelhead are? In my estimation, there are only two ways. One is to spend tons of time casting into many types of water to figure out where the fish hang out. This is a trial and error method and requires a lot of time. The bigger the river, the more places there are to test and the longer it takes to experiment.
Two, go with someone who is already an experienced (successful) steelhead fishermen and learn from them how to identify waters that are high percentage areas. Then spend your time testing those areas. This will greatly reduce the amount of time it will take to learn where steelhead rest and what parts of the river they favor for migratory travel routes.
Resting spots that steelhead use while traveling upriver are called lies. Basically, as they pass through a rapid or heavy turbulence they rest at the first place above that strong current that provides shelter from swift water. Like any animal in nature, they observe the natural law of conservation of energy
Like long distance runners that use the same dynamics to save enough energy to finish a race, steelhead seek vacuum areas behind rocks where resistance to current is the least.
This is where they spend much of there time. Rocks as small as a volley ball can be enough shelter in some cases.
Sandy bottoms provide no shelter, nor do they have the substrate to hold invertebrate or insect food items that steelhead seek. Fishing on a sandy bottom is like trying to sail on a calm day. A freak gust might rarely happen, but most of the time you will go nowhere.
When traveling upriver steelhead favor moving current where water is more oxygenated. Like a mountain climber in the high altitude, fish need more oxygen to sustain endurance while in a transitory mode. Fast water also keeps potential food washing down the river and close by, so fish do not have to expend extra energy swimming around slow water searching for it.
Study the dynamics of the current, geology, and morphology of the landforms. Observe what landforms may constitute the bottom and how they might effect the river's current.
Then think like a fish and how you would use the system, and cast your line to all these places until results good or bad reveal the steelheads subtle truth.
Stories
Can You Hear The River?
Earth Today, Mars Tomorrow
Small is Big
Is a Tree Really Wasted?
How to Find Nature in the City
Wolves - Love or Hate Them?
Turtles and Hypnotism on the Salmon River
Can You Hear The River?
Think about it. You are now reading this material via the internet. How is the internet powered? Right, electricity. Where does electricity come from? Right again, the river. The very energy that brings you this information is the same energy that you will feel when you travel in a boat on the water.
Of course there is a wide variety of amps, watts, and voltages. Each dynamic of the river provides these in physical form, from flat water to outrageous whitewater. The charge contained in the whitewater is strong enough that it often elicits outward expression in hoops and hollers as people feel its spirit the most.
You are already connected to the river. Whether you turn on a light so see what was in the dark, or go to your computer to link up with other destinations, you are seeing and feeling the spirit of the river.
And like links on the internet of cyberspace, the connection from A to B also represents the biotic pyramid through which all life is interconnected. From search engine to website menu, to website, to website page, the layer to layer, link to link represents the flow of energy through the system. Just as soil provides the foundation layer for the plant layer above, then insect, then birds, then rodents, and so on until large carnivores making up the apex, the internet describes a similar base, outwardly though which all energy dissipates.
It is all tied together in one form or another, but at its base is the river. As the power leaves the river to each successive level, its power is diminished by the process of distribution. That is why the highest form of power is at the river. To feel the utter essence of the power that moves through all things, one must go to the source. Can you hear the river?
Earth Today, Mars Tomorrow
What Is Ecotourism?
Empire building, corporate giganticism, and capitalism, verses community stability and natural resource sustainability. On a finite planet unbridled growth of people and business eventually exhausts the resources that support them. Such a system champions exploration into space to seek new frontiers to pioneer. Once natural resources are depleted on one sphere, new ones must be found to enterprise elsewhere.
Earth today, mars tomorrow is a form of escapism that amounts to running away from social and environmental accountability for the earthly problems that arise. Finding answers to problems at home are not found somewhere else. They are found at home by soul searching and facing the truths that reside inside. When pointing a finger elsewhere, three fingers always point back at you.
Populations of people are made up of various communities with diverse cultures. However, common to them all is the fact that they are all made up of the individual person. So the action of the individual person does makes a difference to what happens to the whole. Fifteen ounces will never make a pound until that last ounce is added to the mix.
The owner of Oracle ( a software company second only to Micron in representing earth's largest business enterprise) in a recent interview on 60 Minutes, admitted that he had spent one hundred million dollars to win the America's cup and that he was obsessed with winning. One of his ex-employee's claimed that his boss would get to the top no matter how many people he had to step on to get there.
In a world filled with starving people and huge environmental problems, one wonders what effect one hundred million dollars might make towards the betterment of mankind.
At what costs are we willing to accept to gain dominance on the planet?
Recreation seems like a benign endeavor, yet you can't plant a flower in a garden filled with too many people. Plants need sunlight to grow and that's not available if a human foot is standing in the way. Even in the adventure travel and the recreation industry, there are those who push at any cost.
Ecotours is the buzzword of the times and everyone wants to get on the bandwagon carrying it. But even outdoor recreation has its empire builders whom will do whatever it takes to increase business.
What is ecotourism? It's a term coined by joining the words ecology and ecotourism. Ecology describes a whole science of the relations of the organism to the environment and all conditions of existence. Tourism is the where-to-go industry. Thus, in theory, ecotourism essentially means traveling to an area in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.
However, in reality, it often is just another invention of advertising to hawk the marketplace for more business. Many imposters with questionable self-interest agenda's may bring a civic smile to Chambers of Commerce, but at what ultimate cost?
In the man-earth equation, ethical restraint is the mechanism of sustaining natural resources and cultural integrities. Being self-aware is of high value to the whole human enterprise.
Ecology teaches that the dynamics of animal populations can provide analogies to our own problems. If we can learn how a small part of the system ticks, then maybe we can discover how the entire mechanism ticks. Developing a perception of the deeper meanings contained in the mechanism is where hope for the future resides.
Killing all predators to increase a deer herd, only brings devastation to the range in the long run. Natural predator-prey cycles allow populations of both to fluctuate at a healthier rate on stable grass ranges. Deer can bounce back faster on fertile ranges with predators than depleted ranges without them.
Real progress is knowing when to say no, to the things that are self-defeating. . Ecotourism is about recognizing when to practice self-restraint. To put 8 people in a raft designed for 6, or run as many people through the system as possible is not ecotourism.
Even in adventure travel and the recreation industry, restraint is a virtue of wisdom in the long run. Maintaining the integrity of our natural resources is a product of our education.
Small is Big
Floating down a remote and isolated river serves as a vehicle to leave the fast pace of society for the tranquil waters of solitude. How does this transformation from the scattered impulse patterns of a day to day grind change into a more soul focused existence, actually work?
Try sitting in a hot tub and concentrate on the reflections you see in the water. The view you see on the waters surface is always marbled with the vibrations caused by any body movements or outside wind. When all actions stop (body and wind), all forces serving as a resistance to your view are quelled and the reflection is pure. Your view is distilled into clarity when all vibrations (ripple effect) cease.
The image you see in the hot tub is blurred until it is focused. Likewise, you can only hear yourself think in true silence. The absence of sound is where you hear your true self. That is why silence is golden. It is where you hear the voice of the Great Mystery which moves through everything.
The clarity of your view and degree of silence is the bottom-line essence of what you see and hear. Thus demonstrating, the mechanism by which you can find the essence of your own soul when you travel to places with the least amount of resistances. A minimum amount of distractions is the best way for you to get back to source and the core of who you really are.
A river that traverses wild country, away from the developed world, with a small group of people, away from the masses, is your best chance for reconnecting to yourself. The landscape offers more options to accommodate the interests of a small party of people than it does a large one.
A small group of people can camp at every place a large one can, but a large group of people cannot camp at every location as a small one can. A large group is limited by its own size far more than a small group is, in many ways. The time it takes to make and break camp, eat meals, enjoy swimming, hikes, and other activities is more consuming, the larger the group, for example.
The least amount of distractions there are, the clearer will become your reality. This is where the true nature of nature is found. Your own nature, your own spirit. Being in spirit is where the word "inspired" comes from. Inspirations are where your life dreams are born.
Dreams are the kindling that ignites the fires inside. Go to the places where your best chances for dreaming big are actualized. Seek inspiring places to be inspired.
How To Find Nature In The City
A microscope allows one to see into the small world, while a telescope allow you to see into a big world.. Unaided, your eyes see the world in front of you. You choose where your eyes go. What they see is then left up to your mind to interpret.
Merely looking is not to see. Understanding what you are looking at is to see. To understand what you are looking at is open to your interpretation. Interpretation is a choice. You can choose to see a glass as half full or half empty.
Nature talks to those that choose to listen and see with an open mind and heart. Her messages are found in what the creatures and the elements transmit. Their transmissions are for your interpretation. Your belief system will bias how you look at the world. Your interpretation effects how you understand the world, and that in-turn determines how you will see it.
In a city there are a lot of distractions away from the natural world. Pavement, asphalt, buildings, wires, poles, traffic, and masses of people all compete for the attention of your eye. So how do you find nature?
You consciously shift your thinking and direct your eye to another direction. It is impossible to keep elements of the natural world totally quelled. They are all around you. All you have to do is look for it. Insects crawl across the sidewalk, birds fly across the parking lot, trees blow leaves in the wind. All of these creatures are going somewhere, creating their own stories in this world.
Take some time to follow them. See where they go, what they do. Their story contains a theme and a message, just like any story does. What you get from the theme varies according to your own circumstances in life.
But in a city, be careful not to get hit by a car when you are tracking down a beetle near the street. Be aware of all things in nature, for predations are not always made by animals. That is the nature of nature.
Is a Tree Really Wasted?
Much talk is made about the waste created by forest fires and the burnt trees allowed to stand unharvested. But, what does the word waste actually mean, anyway? One term the dictionary uses is that waste means lying unused. But unused by what or whom?
Many people only look at things in nature that can either be used or not by man. If man cannot make a use of it, it is wasted. In that sense, the meaning of the term of waste is derived.
In actuality, nothing in nature is ever wasted. Everything is connected and tied together in some way with all else. There is an essential tie between the living and the dead. All living things eventually die, but all death provides growth for the living. Micro-organisms provide the mechanisms of decay. The process of decay converts organic material into nutrients and the energy form that brings about new life.
A dead tree in the forest provides food for many entities, from carpenter ants, to woodpeckers, to microbes. Fire ecology research indicates the value of old growth, including dead trees, actually provides habitat for many species, thereby validating the reasons to protect these areas.
As humans, it seems hard to share the world with other life forms, when these forms are only appreciated in terms of how they promote the welfare of people. At face value, in the short term it would appear that a dead tree is better used for a board to build houses. But in the long term, perpetuating the energy flow that connects the living with the dead is a wiser choice for sustainable living.
Cycles are circular and a circle has no beginning and no end. It just is.
Wolves, Love or Hate Them?
All people care about the home in which they themselves live, but ideas of how best to do that carries a wide range of diversity. Peoples perceptions of nature and their interpretations of all the relationships that weave the web of all creation determine their behavior.
Much controversy was stirred up in Idaho with the reintroduction of the gray wolf in the mid 1990's by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Nez Perce Indian Tribe. The Idaho state legislature barred the Idaho Fish and Game Department from aiding the federal recovery program, so the Nez Perce Tribe volunteered to oversee the endangered species process in their place.
Despite highly charge emotional issue, the reintroduction has been a very successful in terms of wolf numbers. But, hotly contested debates between sportsmen, ranchers, and so called environmentalist is still a contentious subject. Poor information and many false claims continue to perpetuate the emotional flames of anger between opposite camps of viewpoint.
In 1922, during a hunting trip in the Gila Wilderness, Aldo Leopold (whom later became the father of Scientific Game Management) reached a turning point in his thinking when he shot a she wolf: We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes something known only to her and to the mountain. I was young then and full of trigger itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, then no wolves would mean a hunter's paradise. But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.
In Nez Perce elder, Allen Pinkham's words: Sometimes I try to get people to compare plant and animal species with their own body parts. For instance, the buffalo could be the finger, the passenger pigeon another finger, the peregrine falcon another finger; the wrist could be the sockeye salmon. If you relate these body parts to these species, how many would you eliminate before you would say, Stop? You can get along pretty well if you lose a finger, but if you keep doing that, when is it enough? I learned this philosophy from my from my elders. Even Joseph himself said: I am of the earth. Well, if you consider yourself part of the earth, you won't sacrifice those body parts.
Even Aldo Leopold tapped into the same wisdom in nature when he said: Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators.
While high emotions still persist, an old Indian thought about these internal struggles and the wolf within, comes to mind. It seems that there was once an old a grandfather who had two wolves inside himself that struggled with each other. . One was filled with hate, anger, and revenge. The other was filled with love, compassion, and forgiveness. Which one will win? Asked his grandson: The one you feed, he answered.
Turtles and Hypnotism on Idahos Salmon River
(The River of No Return, No Hypnotism)
Several years ago I had the pleasure of guiding a very interesting hypnotist and his wife down the Salmon River for a few days. He was the son of a vaudeville escape artist and grandson of a Cherokee snake oil salesman with his own medicine show. So show biz was in his blood.
One day, as we were floating along, the conversation naturally got around to the subject of hypnotism. My questions eventually lead to the one question about who can be hypnotized? Not everyone, of course, but it did include many who didn't think they could be hypnotized. Including me.
Perhaps you have heard of this guy. His name is John-Ivan Palmer, and his showbiz claim is to be the worlds fastest hypnotist. So, not long after I reveal to him the fact that I didn't believe I could be hypnotized, he looks near the shoreline as we are floating along and asks: is that a turtle over there?
No, its just a stick that got washed up on that rock that looks like a turtle, I say. After all, in over 30 years of running this river I have never seen of, or even heard about any such ridiculous claim. This is not turtle habitat. They don't live in this kind of environment.
But, as we float closer to the object, it does take on a certain resemblance to a turtle. Soon it is looking more real with each foot of our closing distance. Holy cow! It is a turtle. And a big one at that, with about a six inch shell.
By now, I know no one will ever believe me, and I am scrambling for my video camera. Just as I go to turn it on, the turtle slides off the rock it was basking on and disappears under water. No footage for proof results.
Need I say, to this day everyone believes I was hypnotized. I continue to look for that turtle, every trip I make by that basking rock, but so far, Mr. Turtle keeps hiding. Hiding in the river, not my mind. The Salmon River is very hypnotic, but not that hypnotic.
Conservation
Concerned About the Future of Planet Earth?
Who isn't? In this day of global warming, devastating tsunami's, storm-math Katrina's, and melting polar ice caps, it is hard to ignore the weather and our human impacts on the globe. For many years earth scientists have kept track of man's footprint upon the land. They have developed an "ecological footprint," by which to help keep track of our impacts. Following is a brief description of these indicators.
Ecological Footprint
A way of tracking earth's limiting factors (primary and secondary)
An ecological footprint is a way to measure humanities use of nature and estimates the amount of natural resources required per person for a specific lifestyle. That the earth is finite, is a given. All fish, wildlife, and human populations are directly related to three main limiting factors: food, cover, and water. Elimination of habitat remains the biggest factor affereing continued loss of carrying capacities on a finite planet. It is impossible to add one more inch to a square foot of land. (144 inches).
Primary factor: Human populations dynamics is directly connected to understanding impacts to natural resources. History demonstrates that all previous fallen societies have resulted from undermining their own ecological foundation. Too much growth of any animal/human population will eventually deplete the natural resources that sustain it.
Bottomline: pay attemtion to populations growth and promote sustainable levels in balance with natural resources.
Secondary factors: these are represnted by human consumption issues. They are all related to land management decisions that directly affect the use of natural resources and ultimately determine a societies future. Like it or not, the real game in town, is bio-politics. That is how our social system functions and where earth warriors (oarriors in Wapiti world) fight the natural resource trade-off battles.
Bottomline: be informed and active. Appreciate the power of one. You do make a difference.
What You Can Do
Hope is on the horizon. How would you like to join like minded people with a vision of an environmental sustainable economy- an eco-economy? Including a realistic plan with an optimistic roadmap for success?
Yes, the current state of affairs is sadly out of balance. From global warming to ethnic cleansing. Politics is atrociously over-burdened with corruption. Consumption is skyward and unbridled. As Edward O. Wislon stated: To the extent that we banish the rest of life, we will impoverish our own speices for all time."
Enter: Lester Brown and The Earth Policy Institute.
Lester R. Brown, founder and president of Earth Policy Institute, has been described by the Washington Post, as "one of the worlds's most influential thinkers." The Telegraph of Calcutta, considers him "the guru of the global environmental movement."
He is the author of numerous books, including "Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble." This book contains his vision and the concept he pioneered of an environmentally sustainable economy. It includes chapters on food, populations, water, climate change, and renewable energy. He is the recipient of scores of awards, honorary degrees, and is a widely sought speaker. In 1974, he founded: "Worldwatch Institute," and launched "World Watch Papers," the annual "State of the World Report," and the institutes "News Brief." For relaxation, he runs.
Anyone seriously concerned about environment, economy, people, policics, and national/global policy needs this information.
To be more informed: consider joining the Earth Policy Institute. See: http://www.earth-policy.org/ and/or get a copy of Plan B.
