Late Winter Update & March Guiding Schedule

 Two consecutive great ice years for Connecticut, what a treat! I've been greatly enjoying putting the hours in to get much better at hardwater pursuits, traveling a little further afield, and putting in as many consecutive hours out there as possible. Noah and I have been ice camping when the opportunity arises, even in some very harsh and cold conditions. It has been extremely enjoyable and I've been very okay without casting a fly into open water in a couple months. 

Lake trout are a fish that is growing on me more and more, both in open water and on the ice. They're aggressive but also moody, capable of producing blitz level feeding windows and long, slow periods just as easily. They're very pretty too, and they don't taste bad at all either... in my limited experience of exactly one laker kept. They're oddly like small bluefish in flavor. Tremendous fish, all around. We just need to figure out big lake wild rainbows and landlocked salmon next. 

On the home front, I've been doing quite well with big bluegills, not as well with crappie as I'd like, not as well with perch as I'd like, and laying into the stocked trout because, well, of course... that never changes. On the crappie and perch front I do have a hard time believing that over harvest and the now limitless regulations aren't at least partially to blame. Time will tell, but there certainly don't seem to be as many big crappies and perch in popular locations as there were even five years ago. This probably isn't an audience to whom preaching selective harvest would make any difference to, but man... I wish people were a little more conservative with their trophy panfish harvesting. 

On to March, though. The mud month is only seven days away, and it promises to be a very muddy March this year. There's a potential blizzard on the way as I write this, and still 2-8 inches of snow on the ground from the big January storm depending where in Connecticut you are. This is good; very good in fact. We went into winter with a big deficit and depleted aquifers, the more snow we get the better. It's good for river health but also good for floating. It looks like March will present a number of opportunities to float rivers, both for trout and Atlantic salmon. March is my personal favorite salmon month during the Connecticut season. Fish are often well spread, can be aggressive, and if you do want to keep one it is definitely the best time to get one that has much better flavor than they do when they're first put in. I'll be doing floats basically whenever the weather allows, as the ice is now leaving and many days in the long term forecast exceed 40 degrees. If you'd like to try it, let me know!

John Kelly caught this show stopper with me back in December.

When the Salmon, Willimantic, and Farmington are floatable I'll be doing those as well. As it stands those aren't, but they should come into form soon. The Salmon is still iced up heavily and at the least the Merrow Rd. gauge on the Willy is reading "ice effected, so for now it's a waiting game. We had a lot of fun on both rivers last year, though, and I'm looking forward to putting the NRS down both again in 2026! The Farmington is the Farmington... if you want to fish it I'll take you. 

Alternately, the carp season is coming and coming fast. Most years we do have great fishing in March, odds aren't bad that the same is true this year even though it feels cold now. April is filling in already. If you want dates in April, reach out ASAP while I still have some schedule flexibility. It's shaping up to be a really tremendous flood plain season. It sort of always is, though. If you haven't experienced that fishery, you owe it to yourself to do so!

Pete with a good un'

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The Fight for Conservation

 That's the title of one of Gifford Pinchot's publications. I'd call it a booklet- it's a very short and easy read -and I recommend it not just to any outdoorsman but to any American, because it lays bricks for the foundation of how resource and land management is meant to work in this country. The understanding of that is paramount to being an informed citizen. Gifford Pinchot was a pivotal figure of the conservation movement, one of the forefathers of the US Forest Service, a Pennsylvania Governor, as well as a Connecticut Yankee and Yale graduate. Down low on the Farmington River, in Simsbury where Pinchot was born, a big old Sycamore takes his name. 

The conservation movement evokes certain images for many individuals... perhaps you picture vegan hippies tying themselves to trees in a haze of cannabis smoke. That might make reading The Fight for Conservation a confusing experience for you. The writings from one of the key individuals who started the conservation movement focus more on economics, national security, and prosperity than on the sort of fru-fru peace love and harmony ideas often ascribed to that movement today. That isn't because Pinchot didn't care for or appreciate nature in a spiritual sense, far from it. He just understood that a country's prosperity is directly tied to how it preserves, conserves, and develops its resources. The Forest Service's roll goes miles beyond a sort of park ranger perspective, to that of fireman, mine geologist, farmer, and more, and the role of federal land isn't just to provide a place to recreate- see Land of Many Uses -but to safeguard resources for development. "The first principle of conservation is development, the use of the natural resources now existing on this continent for the benefit of the people who live here now."¹

How, then, would Gifford Pinchot feel about the possibility of a Chilean-owned mine in the watershed of the famed Boundary Waters in Minnesota, the countries most visited wilderness area. I'd make the case that Pinchot wouldn't support the development of this particular resource at this particular time in this particular way. Mining was changing in Pinchot's day, with the "mom and pop shop" mining claims on federal lands beginning to cede to larger companies. A lot of federal land mining that fell under Pinchot's supervision was quite small scale, and that does still exist. Small scale gem, mineral specimen, and precious metal mining still exists and some individuals do make their livelihood off of that. That didn't really describe Minnesota's iron mining. In 1910, when The Fight for Conservation was published, development of the Mesabi Range iron deposits was in its early stages. They were never really small operations. Many started as underground workings but have all transitioned into open pit mines by the present day, leaving a broken scar visible from space as a red-brown blemishes stretching northeastward from Grand Rapids to Babbit. These mines are or were operated by a variety of companies, some US based in Cincinnati and Pittsburg, others foreign owned. Foreign ownership leads to big questions for "the benefit of people who live here now". Mining has been a fundamentally key part of the prosperity of Minnesotans, but how much of the prosperity will the area feel with another foreign owned mine and ever progressing automation? I don't actually know the answer to that, but I have a hunch... 

Furthermore, will this mine poison the boundary waters? 

Maybe. It certainly could. It isn't the first mine in the watershed, either. Dunka River, just to the south and flowing into the same lake the proposed mine would abut, skirts between the open pits of two other mines. Perhaps it's less egregious than the immediate abutment of the proposed mining underground project to Birch Lake. And perhaps the byproducts of this copper, nickel, cobalt focused mining are worse than those of the taconite mines .The company that would run this mine has a history of failing to comply with water management regulations, and the Forest Service under the Biden administration put out an environmental assessment stating both environmental and economic concerns for the region. A 20 year mining ban was placed, what we're seeing now is the attempt to undue that. It stands to reason that Pinchot might fall in favor of the continued ban, as the boundary waters themselves represent a resource already developed and an existing driver of economic benefit to the region. This mine certainly could threaten that. In many regions, outdoor recreation is now an outstanding source of employment and economic growth. In 2024, both Ag, Forestry, Fishing & Hunting and Arts, Recreation, Accommodation & Food Service contributed more to Minnesota's GDP than mining.³ That suggests the resource more worth developing and in turn preserving is the Boundary Waters, rather than this individual, depletable ore deposit. 

 I'd think Gifford Pinchot's head would spin if he saw what resource management were like today, with massive percentages of US mining falling under foreign corporations, fire management fundamentally flawed, water power and canal infrastructure falling out if favor, and scientists understanding of land and resource management completely repaved and resurfaced from his time. It would probably be a confusing world to him. Perhaps disappointing, even. 

That's just speculative. I have no idea what he would thing. If you don't want to see this new mine in watershed of the Boundary Waters, though- and yes, I know I'm extremely late and the senate vote could happen any moment - here's an avenue for comment: https://www.backcountryhunters.org/get-involved/take-action

1. Pinchot, Gifford. The Fight for Conservation. New York, Doubleday, Page & company, 1910. pp. 18-19

2. Staff. (2022, November 8). Agencies announce critical next step for the Boundary Waters. Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. https://www.trcp.org/2022/06/24/agencies-announce-next-critical-step-banning-sulfide-ore-copper-mining-near-boundary-waters/

3. What is the gross domestic product (GDP) in Minnesota?. USAFacts. (n.d.). https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-gross-domestic-product-gdp/state/minnesota/