Top Fishing Tips - Get Expert Fishing Tips Here Jacob Montgomery fishes with his dog at a camp near Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath River. PHOTO BY TESS TOWNSEND It is assumed that fishing is not as easy as dipping a hook in the water and taking out a fish. I have been told that it is an exercise in patience and that you will often go home empty-handed. But those ideas do not describe my experience on a recent camping trip near the Oregon border. There, in a reservoir on the Klamath River, yellow perch, a species that is not native to California, thrives artificially in the water even by the Iron Gate Dam. And the fish are very anxious to break with the silicone lures at the ends of the fishing line. The trip is an annual pilgrimage made by my partner and his friends, a group of outdoor activities, many of them research biologists. Teejay O & # 39; Rear, the ram of 40 and something that started the tradition, said he collects a large part of the fish he will eat at home next year when he goes. (He could not do it this year). Try only to eat meat that he has hunted himself. Others on the trip follow a similar rule throughout the year. "Probably by proxy, many of my vacations are sustainable," says O'Rear. That's partly because of their lifestyle in general, and partly because their idea of a vacation is "getting rid of the greatest possible civilization." During what some experts call not only climate change but a climate crisis, there is something very attractive about vacationing in a way that does not feed the projections of the day of the final judgment. Since last summer, the United Nations published a report that says one million species of plants and animals are currently at risk of extinction and another says that humans must drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade to avoid the worst projections of global warming. The trip to Iron Gate was presumably as green as a vacation one could take. We slept in tents, we left the showers, we fished a source of sustainable food and we did it all a few hours in a shared car from home. Compared to flying to a hotel or resort with electricity and running water, we spent this long weekend of camping consuming a fraction of the energy and resources. But I had the annoying feeling that it would be irresponsible to keep the trip as an ecological model. To begin with, to make a measurable difference in its impact on the environment, you have to make sustainable decisions throughout the year, not just during vacations. This is not the norm in an economy that rewards bad choices for the planet by making them faster, more accessible, and often cheaper. In addition to that, industry practices and public policies also determine how human beings impact the environment. Many parts of the trip reflected the eco-unfriendly system in which we live. We store our fish fillets in plastic bags, a product derived from petroleum. We brought food packed in plastic. We use plastic refrigerators. We cook with portable kerosene stoves. Some of us knock down lead fishing lines. We drove to the camp in fossil fuel cars. And we camped in a man-made reservoir that dramatically altered the ecosystem of its natural state, making the entire trip possible. An artificial environment A common sight in our tent camp was that campers filleted dead fish, a process that left the wooden picnic table full of fish guts while a container of corpses was constantly being filled in each session. What made that image so frequent was the abundance of yellow perch, a fish native to the Northeast and the Midwest that has thrived in the artificial reservoir. The Iron Gate Dam interrupts the flow of the Klamath River, creating a 944-acre reservoir that is "lake-like" and warmer than if the river were allowed to flow unimpeded, says fishing biologist Peter Moyle, a distinguished professor emeritus at UC Davis. How exactly the yellow perch that entered the Klamath river is not clear. Moyle said the now defunct US Fish Commission. UU Introduced the fish in the Central Valley near the 20th century. "He disappeared from the Central Valley and then mysteriously appeared at Copco Reservoir," he said north of the Iron Gate in Klamath in 1946. This would have happened after the predecessor of the utility company PacifiCorp began building dams on the river in 1903, but before it completed Iron Gate in 1962. PacifiCorp owns seven dams in Klamath, which according to the company's website they provide "enough energy to supply the energy". needs of approximately 70,000 homes. " That's about 15 percent of all the hydropower produced by the company, according to spokesman Bob Gravely. PacifiCorp also generates energy from coal, natural gas and wind. Dams are often controversial. On the one hand, reservoirs help to irrigate the land and store water for human needs. Hydroelectric dams produce a source of renewable energy when the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is essential. However, dams damage fluvial ecosystems and the aging of infrastructure poses a risk of flooding. The dams on the Klamath River interrupt the migration of the native Coho and Chinook salmon. The Coho are classified as threatened under the federal endangered species law on the Klamath River in California, and there is a petition to list Chinook administered in the spring as threatened or endangered in a part of the river. The relatively calm and warm water in the reservoir makes the river more prone to toxic algae that, according to Moyle, can kill small fish, as well as the invertebrates that fish eat. "The dams are ruining the river and basically they are making the river sick. And because the river is sick, everything that depends on the river is also sick, "says Amy Cordalis, general counsel for the Yurok tribe. The lower Klamath traverses the Yurok reservation and is intricately woven into the history and culture of the tribe. However, Cordalis says that when toxic algae occur, no one can touch the river. That means there's no swimming for humans or pets, no fishing. The type of toxic algae that grows in Klamath is known to kill dogs. Brian Williamson tools the yellow perch at a campsite next to the Iron Gate Dam on the Klamath River. PHOTO BY TESS TOWNSEND The removal of four dams in Klamath, including the Iron Gate, is planned in 2021, after a great effort on the part of the Yurok and Karuk tribes, non-profit environmental organizations and government agencies, and the cooperation of PacifiCorp. Plans for disposal still require federal approval, and the Board of Supervisors in Siskiyou County, where three of the four dams are located, opposes the elimination. In letters to the California Water Resources Control Board, the county says the removal could have a negative impact on the environment and cause flooding, "in addition to the socio-economic impacts on the local community." The panorama Compared to the typical options of supermarkets (food produced with intensive energy and often transported over long distances), yellow perch is more sustainable. "In fact, it's great to harvest them," and makes little difference to the general population of yellow perch in the reservoir, says Moyle. O & # 39; Rear says that when it goes to the Iron Gate, it usually returns between 150 and 200 fish. "That's at least six months of dinner meat," he says. But Moyle also says: "You're only taking advantage of an unnatural situation." Fish can only thrive in Iron Gate because a dam creates an artificially favorable environment. Remove the prey and the yellow perch will disappear from the Iron Gate deposit, although they will still remain in other parts of the river. Camping is best with happy dogs that enjoy playing with the bark of the surrounding trees. PHOTO BY TESS TOWNSEND However, the elimination of the dams will not yet result in a perfect restoration of the original environment. The Klamath River will still heat up due to climate change, although the increase will be smaller and slower than if the dams remain in place, according to a 2011 report by the United States Geological Survey. This paradox of yellow perch as a sustainable food source that depends on a damaged natural ecosystem reflects how any individual choice made with sustainability in mind is still balanced on a highly engineered extractive system. A clearer example is choosing between different transport options when traveling. "We're choosing between carbon-intensive options because that's what we have," says Lisa Aultman-Hall, an engineering professor at the University of Vermont who studies long-distance travel. An "average" car with five passengers is more energy efficient than a Boeing 737 with approximately 160 passengers, and a full bus or train is more efficient than both, she says. But you continue to contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Electric vehicles are generally better for the environment, but even so, how much better depends on where the electricity comes from. "I think it is up to the policymakers to create a system and create a price structure for that system so that we, as individuals, collectively make better choices," says Aultman-Hall. While the search for a sustainable lifestyle is worthwhile, isolated individual actions will not determine the future of fossil fuel consumption and other activities that affect the planet. What will determine that the future is policies and regulations and collective action, similar to the collective action that is leading to the elimination of the planned dam for the Klamath. On the last morning of the camping trip, my partner and I took out their canoe in the reservoir to fish. Our boat floated on the still water towards a small cove. I submerged a luminescent white lure in a group of seaweeds, quickly catching fish after fish. Later I told Moyle how surprised I had been for how easy it was to hook the yellow perch. According to historical records, he said, it was once so easy to catch native salmon. Source:
