Letting Pictures Speak

Blogging Aint Dead...

Nope, blogging isnt dead.  You just have to find great content

I'll admit it, there's been a couple of times over the past year that I've really been bummed out as some of my favorite outdoor blogs have gone the way of the wooly mammoth.

Buster's Wants To Fish.  Dead.  So many others, withering at the vine without posts for months and months.

Writing this stuff, I begin to wonder.  Why are these great creative and well written blogs dead or dying?

The truth is.....some are gone, but many others step up with amazing content to fill the void.  Running a blog can be a time consuming proposition, and there can be a finite life cycle to any project on the intewebz.  Life changes, evolves and moves on.  Great sites come up daily to fill the void.

You just have to find them.

Case in point,  if you're about fly fishing, upland and waterfowl hunting, mountain biking and a lot more, go check out THIS LONG HAUL.   This project is founded by two buddies who have their own style and voice, which brings great diversity to the content.  The photography is excellent as well

Couple other great blogs that I have recently found and love....

Dawn Patrol --  This dude's got soul.  Connectivity to the land and his family and the ever present wanderlust to find out what's in the next run around the bend

Illcentrifugal-   Photography that makes me think and laugh all the time.  So much is captured in just a photo, they do truly represent a thousand words.

Stalking the Seam-  Bursting with content, 2 guys that are extremely on point with consistent writing that I love.  The guys are family men just like me, balancing their passions for the outdoors

The point is, the content is there.  If you find one you love, spread the word about it.   We who write these blogs can say its only about a creative outlet, but it's awesome to know when people like what you put out there.

Blogging isn't dead folks.  The content is there, go find it.

Tomine's Closer To The Ground

Firewood man, firewood.  It's all about firewood.

I'll come back to that in a minute.

Recently I was given the opportunity to dive into Dylan Tomine's book, Closer To The Ground.  The book centers around the yearly cycle of what the land, rivers and sea give to us to sustain us throughout our time here.  Tomine and his family do their best to be in tune with the seasons and the bounty each one brings.  It's a lesson that we as a American culture struggle with when you can get avocados and strawberries in January and a steak is down isle three wrapped neatly in cellophane
.
What do you mean you dont have this (insert out of season fruit or vegetable)?

It's awesome.

Appreciation for what is available is completely lost on us when you can have anything at any time. Tomine's stories and lessons take you from January to December.  Winter razor clam digs, the holy grail of spring chinook on the Columbia River, to setting a garden, pulling crab pots and being on point to when the wave of salmon hit the coast.

Then there's the ever present search for grade A top quality firewood.

This really hit home for me because the house I grew up in and still to this day our lake cabin were and are heated by wood.  Finding that buckskin tamarack was like finding standing gold, and then the labor thereafter was so much fun as a kid and so necessary for my father to take pride in.

Tomine spends a solid amount of this book talking about firewood procurement.  The process of finding, cutting, stacking and drying is just that, a process.  You cant flip a switch on a wood stove and get continual, even heat for as long as you want.  To heat your home with wood, you have to be prepared, months in advance.  You have to be ready to capitalize on windfall and get it stacked before some one else does.  The stress of an ever dwindling woodpile in the face of 6 more weeks of winter is a real thing that most dont experience, and there is a razor's edge truth to it.

Beyond that, you can feel his kids joy in finding the "showings" of clams on a windswept beach and the subsequent feast the family has just hours later.   Along with the stories, there are family recipes in this book that take the bounty of the land and helps you create amazing dishes to serve to your family and connect over.

It's the same joy I get from catching a fish and then taking it to the dinner table....then watching my kids and wife enjoy it.  Providing brings me pride, and knowing at least where a small percentage of my food comes from is of the highest importance to me.

There are so many great lessons and stories in this book that I highly encourage you to pick up a copy and share experiences like these in this book with your family.

Did I mention I love this book?

Pick up a copy of Closer To The Ground HERE through the publisher, Patagonia.

Lets hope that a resolution you can take into 2016 is to do just that, live closer to the ground.

Toofy Critter

The things you find on the riverbank....

Public Lands...Your Property

Beyond this sign is one of the most spectacular pieces of public ground in the lower 48. Spectacular fishing, hunting, hiking and camping.  Canyon after canyon and carved by one of the biggest rivers in the west, it is OUR ground.

Public Lands.  Our property

But the placement of this sign could seem a bit funny.   Where the department of fish and game parking lot is, then to this sign, you have to walk through a very private, locked off community.    

Thankfully, the home owners of this area are amicable and don't impede the usage of our lands. Friendly waves with smiles meet us as we walk through to our destination up river.  

It could be different.   I am always in fear of one bad experience with a hiker, angler or hunter and those homeowners could make it tough for all user groups.  You already have to hike down a trail to get to the beach, then cross over a fence to access the road you need to be on but a more aggressive fence could steer off the less than intrepid crowd.   Instead of smiles and waves, the proverbial stink eye and mean mugs could dramatically change the mood.

Across this country there are countless examples of public land being shut off to access because they're surrounded by private lands that say no to easement and effectively shut the ground down.

Crazy right?  

Its a serious issue that is a quagmire of a problem, but there are groups out there dedicated to making sure that we as sportsmen and women have a place in the public commons.

I highly suggest joining both The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Backcountry Hunters and Anglers, groups who's core mission is to preserve our outdoor heritage on public land. Get involved today with this issue.

Beyond steelhead conservation, land use preservation has become of a pillar of what I believe in an fight for.  Without public land, we loose the user experience.  Not all of us have private land access, but we all have our land, the public's land to use and be a steward of.

A Spey P.S.A.

Not my finest cast, not by a long shot.

Wind.....wind, wind is thy enemy.  

Lets just say you're out there casting away and the wind changes directions and you're mid way through your cast progression  and you drop your anchor in a somewhat suspect place too close to your body

Reset the damn cast.    Dont be stubborn, just reset.   There's your public service announcement.

Otherwise,   you hit the go button and the sink tip and fly smash into the back of your head.

F#$K!!!!

Thank god it didnt have barbell eyes.  

WSC Year End, With A Carrot...

It's that time of year that every non profit that you interract with is going to putting out their year end appeal for donations, and rightly so.  Tax benifits aside, the impact of year end giving to non profit groups is the lifeblood that keeps the good work going

The Wild Steelhead Coalition is no exception to the rule.  We are a volunteer driven organization that does the best it can to provide the most amount of impact for the small budget we have.


In 2015, we spent zero dollars on office space, staff, or fishing retreats. Instead, we used every dollar you graciously provided to fight for wild steelhead. And boy, did we get some great stuff done. 

With your support, in just 12 short months together we:

Scored a huge victory for struggling steelhead stocks on the Olympic Peninsula by successfully championing a years-long effort to reform antiquated sportfishing regulations, including finally ending the sport fishing harvest of wild steelhead in Washington. 

Spearheaded a campaign for the creation of much-needed Wild Steelhead Gene Banks (also known as wild steelhead management zones) on the entire Skagit, Elwha, and Puyallup watersheds.

Convinced the federal government to more extensively study the impact of hatchery steelhead on threatened Puget Sound wild steelhead.

Served on numerous steelhead advisory groups sent countless letters to state and federal government entities, and hosted a handful of successful events.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…

We'd love your support to continue our work this coming year, and we're going to dangle a nice little carrot your way

Starting from November 15th through the end of the year, anyone who donates over $50 is in the running to win an ECHO Glass 7129-4 spey rod, courtesy of the good folks at ECHO Fly Fishing themselves

DONATION LINK

Thanks in advance for the support, and we look forward to giving are all again in 2016.