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RIVER APOCRYPHA
T
he cover of Sam Harris’s little book Lying features one image that immediately says everything you need to know about angling. The final “g” in the word “lying” is replaced by a hook-and-hackle creation resembling a crude fly fishing lure. The message is clear: fly anglers lie. While that trope is universal and inarguable it only touches the surface. The book’s main thesis is that lying is not just morally bad, unethical, and corrosive to relationships, but that telling the truth is easier in the long run. Humbird Humbird has no problem with that. If you ask me, I’ll tell you flat out: those pants make your butt look big; you really are showing your age and not in particularly good ways; if you think that fly you tied up is a good representation of anything a trout would eat you are sadly mistaken; the hat you’re wearing doesn’t show your flair, it brands you a fashion victim; your spouse is right about you working too little and fishing too much; you’re lazy, shiftless, overweight and kinda dull; and certainly and without reservation that 17” fish you are crowing about might reach 14” … if you step on it. Oh, and you’ve smelled better. Halleluiah! The truth has set me free!! Now stop pestering me and get out of here, I’m fishing. Anglers have a reputation of bending the truth on pretty much every aspect of our sport: how many fish we catch, how big they are, how long we’re going to be out doing it, how often we go out, how much we spend on equipment, where we caught the fish we’re bragging about, and on and on. If we’re talking, we’re lying. Goes with the territory. But even if you could eliminate every prevarication, elision, dissemblance, and bald-faced, out-and-out whopper that springs from your lying lips and adhere to the strict truth in everything you say, there is still the problem of those lies that are unsaid but fervently believed. The lies we tell ourselves are the hardest to admit and even harder to eradicate. Hell, just recognizing them as lies is a massive problem.
12
Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt … where you once caught a trout that was as long as my leg … on a Muddler Minnow fished deep … on a 2 wt. bamboo rod … on 7X tippet… during a flood. It’s okay. You just can’t help yourself, I understand. Let’s just move on. So, because I’m only concerned with my fellow angler’s moral, ethical and psychological well-being, let me deflate three of the more pernicious lies we tell ourselves. “The gods do not deduct from man’s allotted span the hours spent fishing.” You hear variations of this on the river quite often, see it on t-shirts, and while this ancient Babylonian chestnut was never believable in a strict sense, in modern parlance it translates to the belief of many anglers that their sport is somehow good for their mental and physical health. Really? Have you looked around at your fellow anglers? Ya know, those potbellied, DEET-covered, jerky-chewin’, cigar-chomping, sleep-deprived, obsessive-compulsives with precancerous sun damage on their nose, forehead and backs of their hands, sitting on the bank to “rest the water” for several hours hoping their favorite spot will finally pay off this time with a decent fish, nervously checking the sky for spinners, or cloud cover, or the setting sun, surveying the flat, undimpled, sterile water that lies before them with angst and frustration. Yeah, that’s gotta be better for ya than running a few miles, eating right or getting a full night’s sleep. The casual observer may look at the sport from the outside and think wading in a river has got to be a decent aerobic workout. Maybe it would be if any of us were wading upriver. That tactic has joined hoop skirts and ticker tape machines as anachronisms of a era that’s long past. Mostly we’re wading slowly down river with slightly less effort than we put into a walk to the mailbox, or we’re standing in place for an inordinate amount of time casting to the same spot over and over, or sitting
on the bank for ages as we claim our spot from those who would dare to fish our honey hole, or even worse, lounging in the front of a guide boat, letting someone else do all the work for us. “Hey, you got any beer in the cooler? Thanks. Can you tie on a different fly for me, this one doesn’t seem to be working.” Sloths are more active than most fly anglers. Neurotic behavior among the fishing classes is widespread and more so among fly anglers than their hardware-chucking brethren. Fretting over which fly to put on, what tippet to use, how close to get, okay, that’s normal, but obsessing over the big fish you hooked and lost so much so that you return to the same spot nightly for three weeks is starting to get a little weird. Ya gotta wear your favorite fishing hat, of course, but if you can’t wash the luck out of your fishing shirt, then you’ve got a problem. Naming your pet whippet Tippet is cute; naming your favorite fly rod “Wonderboy” or “The Precious” is getting creepy. Is it healthy to be hunched over a fly tying vice, tying up fly after fly in some corner of the house from November to March, lost in fantasies about the fish you’re going to catch, ignoring all the things you said you’d take care of after fishing season ends? Is it healthy to disrupt your sleep patterns for three or four or five or more weeks to chase Drakes and Hex, staying out for the chance at a big fish, then schlepping off to work the next morning after two
hours of sleep? Is it conducive to the wellbeing of your relationships with family and friends to be a virtual stranger from April to September? If your kids refer to you as “Uncle Daddy” and you can’t recall the youngest one’s name, but the guys down at the fly shop all know you on sight and send you birthday and Christmas cards, it’s a sign. This is not a health-inducing sport. “A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work.” Mostly you hear this from canoeists trying to say something to ingratiate themselves with the angler whose fishing they’re ruining, but it’s also commonly shared between anglers when the fishing is slow as they pass each other. It sounds nice, but on what metric is fishing better? I get paid to work. Nobody is paying me to fish. Hell, it costs an arm and a leg to keep me in new equipment. On a good day at work I clear some real green. On a bad day fishing I might break a $900 rod or drop my iPhone in the river or lose my damn car keys again … for the fourth time this year. What is wrong with me? Work keeps me out of trouble. My wife never complains that I spend too much time at work. She likes it when I go off to work in the morning, cuz she knows where I’ll be all day and when I’m coming home, that I’m relatively safe while I’m there and that a paycheck will be forthcoming. 13
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“ Ho ne y ,s hi ngwo u l ds u r eb emo r ef u n, i f Id i d n ’ th a ve t os l e e po nt h eg r o u nd . Ic o u l de v e nk e e pa s ho rt woa nd b r i ngt he m ho mef o ry o u , i f Ih a da ni c e b o x . I f Ih a dac l o s e t , myc l o t he swo u l dn ’ tb es owe ta nddi r t ywhe nIb r i ngt he m ho me . And, ho ne y , t ha tc a mpe rwo u l ds u r ema k et hi ng s e a s i e rf o ry o u ! ”
Mo untBa t c he l o r ,
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J o s hGr e e nb e r g
31
INVESTIGATION OF POSSIBLE SURFACE WATER PERFLUORINATED COMPOUND CONTAMINATION NEAR GRAYLING, MICHIGAN STATUS UPDATE / JUNE 21, 2017
F
ish and surface water samples were collected from the of 9 ppb and similar to background levels found in fish from Au Sable River in the vicinity of Grayling according to a other areas of the state. No other perfluorinated complan developed in May 2017. It is not known if a PFC pounds were detected. contaminated groundwater plume is venting to the river, or The current Eat Safe Fish advice includes a recommenif such venting is limited to either the main stream or the dation that no one eat more than 4 meals per month of East Branch Au Sable. The intent of the sampling plan was brown trout from the Au Sable River upstream of the Mio to determine PFC concentrations in fish from a reach of Dam (roughly 35 miles downstream of Grayling) due to river presumed to be exposed to sources from both streams. mercury. At this point PFOS does not need to be added to If those fish had elevated levels, or if the water samples the list of contaminants affecting consumption advice for suggested a focused source of contamination, the fish brown trout taken from upstream of the Mio Dam. samples collected from further upstream would also be Surface water samples were collected from four points analyzed. on the main stream Au Sable and three points on the East On May 30, the MDNR Fisheries Division (N. Lake Branch Au Sable on June 8. The samples were received at Huron Unit) collected ten legal size brown trout and at least ten white suckers from each of two reaches of the river: • Downstream of the East Branch confluence • Upstream of the East Branch confluence (at Ole Dam Rd, s.w. of the National Guard airbase The fish were delivered frozen to the Lansing DEQ warehouse on June 5. The ten brown trout from the first reach (d/s of the E. Branch) were filleted on June 6 and delivered to the MDHHS lab for PFC and Hg analysis the next day. THE MIO DAM (FUTURE WORLD MEDIA) The lab delivered the PFC results on June 16. The lab conducted the analysis with the expectation that payment would be made under an as yet to be developed (or the TestAmerica lab (Sacramento) on June 10; analytical budgeted) FY 2018 MOU [anticipated cost: $8,000]. results for those samples are expected by July 11. Based on Three of the ten fish analyzed had PFOS concentrathe pending water results, more of the fish already collected tions above the 0.25 ppb reporting limit. The maximum may be analyzed. observed PFOS concentration was 1.1 ppb and the 95% Additional fish collections are underway at Lake UCL on the mean concentration in the (9) legal size fish Margrethe, another area waterbody that could be impacted was 0.7 ppb, below the 16 meal per month screening value by the PFC contaminated groundwater.
34
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