(Conversation with Bob Mallard starts at 42 minutes)
As sort of a rebuttal to the recent podcast with Kirk Deeter that I recently highlighted, Tom Rosenbauer had Native Fish Coalition's own Bob Mallard on to discuss the objectives of the native fish movement. I'll let the discussion speak for itself.
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| Native lake chubsucker, Florida |
I've been writing this blog for nearly a decade. When I started out I was a kid. I'd still kinda consider myself a kid. If you've been here from the start, you've watched me grow as a fly angler. I'd only been casting a fly rod for two year prior to starting Connecticut Fly Angler and been seriously fishing four years. You've watched me know basically nothing, then think I knew a lot while still basically knowing nothing, and morph into a fairly well rounded and accomplished young angler who can say without a doubt that he has far, far more to learn ahead than he's learned already. You've watched my writing change and improve, yet remain spattered with errors any time it isn't edited. This blog has remained a constant part of my life over the last 10 years while virtually everything else around me changed dramatically.
It's time for a change here too. I feel I've taken this blog in it's current form as far as I can carry it, and honestly I've gotten progressively more and more burnt out. I've poured a ton of time and effort into this blog and it certainly aided in getting me where I am presently as a guide, writer, and career angler. But its just getting too cumbersome for me to try to hold onto a three or four post a week schedule without generating more income from it. I'm also tired of feeling the need to create content from every day I'm out fishing, and some of you have watched this blog shift from near-daily content and often day-of fishing trip reports and stories to delayed and more spread out posts.
From this point onward, I'll be writing only one real post weekly for this blog, to be published on Monday or Thursday. The content will shift away from reporting on my recent trips to fun short stories, technical discussion on fishing strategies and flies, and conservation updates. Guiding updates, class schedule announcements, and other such things will be sprinkled in, probably once a week or so. So, probably, one or two posts a week on this blog for the foreseeable future.
I'll still be doing what this blog currently is, but not here and not as often as I used to. At least two posts a week will go on Patreon, so for a buck a month you can still get pretty much the OG Connecticut Fly Angler. I hope to see some of you hop over there, and to those who already have I can't thank you enough. I'd have quit this long ago were it not for some of you liking it enough to actually pay for it. I still find it hard to believe anyone would; I've always had this crippling impostor syndrome that kept me believing I didn't deserve any credit or attention. I really can't say enough, thank you all for embracing my silly little fishing stories. I've made so many great friends and memories through this journey, and have no doubt I'll only continue to.
So it isn't over, really. Just changing. See you next time, and thanks for hanging around.
Until next time,
Recently, Tom Rosenbauer hosted esteemed writer, angler, TU higher up, and "conservationist" Kirk Deeter on The Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast, for a conversation that aired under the title "Have we gone too far with native species?".
My immediate thought was, well, what the f***?
I have long been fans of both Rosenbauer and Deeter both. But the conversation that they had was wrongheaded, inaccurate, and inflammatory. It also shows why anglers can be horrible conservationists. Anglers, without fail, have preferential views about the fish they target. These views can get in the way of conservation when the fish an angler likes to catch the most is a non-native species. In the podcast, Deeter talks about his love of brown trout. I think we all get that here, I adore brown trout. They're one of my favorite fish to pursue. But Deeter goes on to propose that they are not an invasive species because "they didn't swim across the ocean, themselves, and climb into these rivers".
Apparently Kirk Deeter is completely unfamiliar with what scientifically defines an invasive species, because if brown trout had in fact swam across the ocean and colonized American water on their own, they would in fact not be invasive at all- that would be a natural range expansion. If what Deeter says were taken at face value, no species considered invasive today would actually be invasive. Cane toads in Australia, cichlids in Florida, wild pigs throughout the world... these are invasive species, the poster children for the concept. None of them got there on their own. We put them where they are. Brown trout are invasive too and for the same reasons. Let's get that fact straight. Connotations and feelings aside, brown trout are invasive. In many cases they have huge negative impacts on the ecosystems they've been introduced to.
This lead to the insinuation that native fish advocates support the complete, wholesale eradication of brown trout. Some individuals may believe that, sure. I'm not one of those. I've never even met someone that espouses that. That's the straw-man that has been hoisted by those scared to lose their (insert favorite non-native fish). We know that eradicating all non-natives is unrealistic and unnecessary. I am currently among the leadership of the Connecticut Chapter of Native Fish Coalition. NFC is sort of the rising stare of fish conservation in this country, certainly on the East Coast, with growing membership and new state chapters rising up. If we are the face of native fish conservation today, then take our stance as the example. We don't advocate for the removal of brown trout or other invasive species where it is unlikely to result in successful restoration (i.e. the damage is already done), or where they are too socially and economically important. That frankly leaves most places nonnative fish currently exist, so is it really too much to ask to have a handful of fisheries set aside to remove non-natives and restore native fish? I don't think so.
Apparently that's too much for Deeter and Rosenbauer, who go on to cast doubt on the use of rotenone in native fish restoration. Rotenone is a classic issue that shouldn't be an issue. If you are unfamiliar with the topic, please read Ted William's thorough examination here. In a comment on the podcast, Williams gave a list of success stories tied to the use of rotenone: "Saved by rotenone from certain extinction was the rarest trout in the U.S., the Paiute cutthroat, native to only 11 miles of California’s Silver King Creek in the Carson-Iceberg Wilderness of the high Sierras. In fact, that rotenone project has been the only restoration effort that returned a native salmonid to 100 percent of its native habitat. Rotenone has safely and successfully slowed loss of Gila topminnows, steelhead, all five species of Pacific salmon, kokanee salmon, Yellowstone cutthroat trout, westslope cutthroats, Bonneville cutthroats, Lahontan cutthroats, Colorado River cutthroats, fluvial Arctic grayling, landlocked Arctic char, redband trout, rainbow trout and brook trout, to mention just a few. And it has prevented extinction of desert pupfish, golden trout, Volcano Creek golden trout, Gila trout, Apache trout, greenback cutthroat trout and Paiute cutthroat trout."
Deeter dismisses the idea of attempting to reintroduce native grayling to Michigan, something that would only be attempted in select waters and would hardly impact trout fishing in the state at all, per the state's plans. Rosenbauer then brings up the National Park Service's use of rotenone on the Upper Gibbon in a tone dismissive of the strategy. Lacking any familiarity, Deeter deflected to the use of gillnets to remove lake trout from Yellowstone Lake, an action which he commended. He then stated that "it's really a case by case basis".
Mr. Kirk Deeter... I have no expectation at all that you will ever read this, but I'd like to address you directly anyway. That is how it is for us! It is and always will be a case by case basis, for all of us involved in native fish conservation. This idea that native fish advocacy has any sort of absolutes is absurd. That accusation gets levied at NFC all the time, and yet we routinely steer away from addressing watersheds with established wild non-native fish populations because they are already either too messed up to save or too socially important. The Farmington, the Swift, the Deerfield, The Upper Deleware, the Ausable, the Manistee, the Madison, the Green... on and on goes the list of rivers nary a serious native fish advocate would bother even bringing up because we know there is no point. You've created a strawman, a charicature of us, a lie, and it hurts what we are all trying to accomplish. This is anti-conservation.
To answer the question posed by the podcast: clearly, no. We have not gone far enough with native species. And that is made more clear by the ignorance espoused in this podcast by two respected individuals that should know better. For angler "conservationists" still not to know these facts, about what makes a species invasive, about rotenone, about reintroduction projects- that's all a problem.
I'm a fishing guide. I'm a fishing writer. I make a big chunk of my living off of fish and quite often non-native fish. But I recognize that in my role as a conservationist, I routinely need to separate my enjoyment and my business from that work. Having carp, pike, huge largemouth, big browns, and all manor of other fish not native to CT around is good for business and fun for me but when it comes down to it, if it makes sense and is feasible to wipe out non natives from a stream or pond to save or restore and at-risk native species, I'm going to say yes to that because that's the right thing to do as a conservationist. I think that thought process is lost on most anglers. That isn't necessarily their fault, a lot of this is still very new and it hasn't made it in front of everyone yet. Unfortunately Deeter and Rosenbauer were no help at all in this podcast. NFC's own Bob Mallard will be on the podcast soon for a rebutal, and I will post the podcast here when that happens.
Until next time,
January 2022 was, for the most part, very cold. There were a few moderately warm days mixed in but on the whole it was ice, ice, and more ice. The first client I had in 2022 got the best weather. Eric wanted to fish a small stream for wild trout, and I had him on one of CT's Class 1 WTMA's. The day started out slow but quickly picked up in the stretch I go to if nowhere else is producing. Eric caught his first brown trout and a couple others to go along with it. The Ausable Ugly was, unsurprisingly, the productive fly.
The next trip was far less fruitful, though on paper it should have been good from the start. A quick warm up killed the shelf ice and I had my client Jon on some water that had been producing loads of tiger trout along with some giant holdover browns in the weeks leading up. The water was up a bit, which I didn't think should have an impact. Perhaps the disrupting factor was a significant wind and bright sky. It had been forecast to be cloudy, and that probably would have been much better. I had another client who wanted tiger trout the next weekend, so I had to pick a plan B. Luckily I had one, Central CT TMA that for some reason never gets any shelf ice and receives a lot of tigers most stockings. I knew this fall plenty went in, so I hoped I'd have no trouble getting my client on one. The kicker, the conditions were far worse than the previous trip. It was bright, sunny, high pressure, very cold. I was still confident I could get Mike on a trout, and we found one in relatively short order. It wasn't a tiger, but I was happy not to be dealt another skunking.
Luckily, February looks like it will feature much milder temperatures. The snow from the previous big storm has already started to thaw out big time with the rain the last two days, though some of it was replenished with hard sleet. The melt-off will keep the rivers from warming up appreciably, so I don't expect hatch activity or rising trout to be a common occurrence for at least another week and a half.
Streamer fishing and nymphing, on the other hand, should produce fish. It'll be quantity over quality on the trout rivers for a little while, so if you're interested in learning strategies that focus on larger caliber trout (fish over 14" in small streams and fish over 18" in larger waters) now is a great time.
Salmon fishing on the Shetucket River should also pick up again after the water warms, until the first trout stocking which for whatever reason seems to scare the salmon off.
If things get really warm in late February, I'll open the calendar for some very early carp and trophy largemouth trips. It usually only takes a thaw and a day or two in the high 40's to get some of the big fish moving onto mud flats. I'll be watching the forecast like a hawk and I'll post on Instagram and Facebook if a window opens up, if you want to book you'll need to do so quickly as it may only be a one or two day window. This can be an exceptionally exciting type of fishing as it sometimes features quite clear water in places that are often very muddy, requires exceptional stealth and precise, delicate casts, and over the years has produced some large carp for me as well as largemouth from 4 to 6 pounds on quite small flies.
Thanks to the clients I had in January, it was a mostly tough month and I thank you for bearing with the conditions and I hope to see you all again over the coming seasons!
Until next time,
Fly tying materials can be expensive, we all know this. If you want to offset the cost a bit, scrounge up material to re-appropriate at craft stores. Oftentimes the color options are limited and the materials aren't quite as ideal as those designed specifically for tying flies, but in many cases you can find something suitable or even ideal for a few uses for much cheaper than "the real thing". And sometimes you can get exactly the same product marketed in different different packaging for less than half the price. Around the holidays the craft stores and sometimes even Walmart or Target will have silver and/or gold tinsel that is really just the same thing as Flashabou. Michael's and Hobby Lobby also have products that serve perfectly as flash for big esox or saltwater flies. I was grabbing loads of this sort of stuff around the Holidays, some of it at prices under a dollar and most of it under $3.00.
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| Cat approved. |
More recently, I managed to find this funky yarn that essentially looks like polar chenille at a Michael's Cheyenne and I stopped at . It's called Scrubby Sparkle and distributed by Red Heart. The core is a bit more course and unruly than chenilles designed for fly tying, but I've already tied flies with this stuff and it makes an excellent under-body for Gurglers and other foam-backed topwater flies. It would also be a good filler material in large streamers. It comes in a decent color variety and at four buck for 174 yards, it's a steal and will allow you to save the polar chenille and other more expensive but specialized material where it really counts.
From material to build dubbing brushes with, to flash, to foam, there's a lot of stuff at craft stores that is more than serviceable if you want to save a few bucks. It's unfortunate that merely marketing something to fly fishers makes it more expensive, it would be nice to see this go away overtime.This isn't just a sport for the upper classes, and it doesn't need to and shouldn't have an expensive barrier to entry. I definitely recommend a trip to the old craft store every now and then just to see what you can find.