October 9th is RRWSS Octoberfest for new and returning members. This year I’m rejoining as a lifetime member. The works they have done with in schools is great and only the beginning.
A june RRWSS newsletter was supposed to come out but because of scheduling and busyness it didn’t come out until this week, making my article (as strangely as I write) kinda obsolete. So here it is:
If only they hadn't taken out all the willows...
The Russian River In All Her Glory
Fishing almost every afternoon on the Russian River I look out to Her and I see this ever changing Being. She, like any of us, has Her mood swings. And I sometimes feel I have to reintroduce myself, as if courting Her, just so She pays attention to me. She deserves appreciation and respect so She might nurture the things we cherish like the osprey, bald eagle, migrating and local birds, otter, fox, mink, bass, shad, maybe most importantly Steelhead and Salmon. And us as well.
With voyeuristic greed we want to watch Her. And to do so many undress Her by stripping the land around Her so they may look into Her waters trying to catch reflections. Not only, in some cases, is this illegal but extreme actions can cause problems:
Tearing down willows and other brush on the banks takes away shade and warms up waters. Rock, sand and gravel fill in pools (ie. Villa Grande’s Hole filled in two feet from last year). Grasses used in lawns take fertilizer to keep green. All these things cause unnecessary erosion.
This spring I saw many properties lose all of their last year’s summer yard work. One property owner did what I thought was a beautiful shoring up of their bank with grapefruit sized boulders; ninety percent of the rocks are gone now. Another year round resident extended their grass lawn and trimmed up the willows in an almost Bonsai motif, the grass washed away. And yet another owner ripped out most of the plants along the bank of their property, putting in steps down to the water, they have lost ten feet of their land. All this erosion was done without flood.
We all want to see the Russian River. Why else do we choose to live here? But we need to be smart on how we undress Her or add to Her beauty. Trim already established plant life to shoulder level. Where needed plant local river plants to shore up Her banks and use properly sized boulders that will stand up to flood. If nothing else, question ourselves on what might be good for Her because in the long run it will be good for all of us.
Lastly, what a strange Shad Season: I caught my first shad (2lbs 9oz) April 30th on a Woofish Shad Spoon and yet the big schools were being caught in June. Pound for pound they are still my favorite freshwater fighting fish. There are speculations that the shad runs might have had the same relevance as Salmon runs to the East Coast Native Americans. The thrills, the theories and the opinions (some I don’t agree with) on Shad and fishing in general can be found in the book “The Founding Fish” by John McPhee. McPhee captures the exhilaration of the American Shad with a true angler’s heart. If you are a reader or want to learn more about this fish introduced to California in the 1870’s this is a great book.
