The Middle River Group, LLC

fly fishing, conservation and politics.

Patagonia

Vote!

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A lot is at stake on November 6th.

If you don’t vote then you miss the chance to 1) change the make up of our government if you are unhappy or 2) ratify the status quo if you are happy.

But not voting is a shameful, selfish act. You don’t deserve to enjoy of the benefits of citizenship if you are not willing to participate in this most basic civic responsibility.

You can learn more about what at stake by reading US Midterm Elections 2018 – Vote on November 6  from Patagonia.

Want some recommendations on who not to vote for? Look no further than Hatch Magazine’s Dirty dozens: Who to vote out this November (full disclosure I write now and then for Hatch.)

Here are couple people you should vote for: incumbent Sen. Jon Tester in Montana, and Rep. Jacky Rosen, running againt Sen. Dean Heller (R) in Nevada > Patagonia Makes Another Bold Move to Protect Public Lands

Photo Credit: Patagonia

Now get out there and Vote!

Darkness Falls Upon Our Land

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This is an evolving story. Links to relevant stories are in the Postscript section at the bottom.

Source: https://twitter.com/NatResources/status/939236821971734530

Think long and hard about the implications of that tweet from the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee.

You may not agree with Patagonia or the language they used (see Outside Online article in the postscript), but this is a branch of our government attacking a U.S. company, disparaging their motive for speaking out and condescendingly ridiculing your fellow citizens.

Hijacking the debate my ass.

The hypocrisy of suit wearing, highly compensated and mostly wealthy, elected officials continues to astound me. I am not an elitist, wealthy, urban dweller and neither are many of my friends who wear Patagonia clothes and use their gear. I wear Patagonia products for my work as a guide in rural Virginia and for much of my regular attire. I choose their products because of the quality, suitability for my work and my admiration for who they are as a company.

Patagonia is not hijacking the debate for sales. Patagonia has fully engaged in the public lands and environmental debates for quite some time, a quick look at their website or the Axios story in the postscript below will show that. Conversations with friends and colleagues make me think their website page call to action could be a mixed bag for sales. The Axios story points out that they prepared for the adverse consequences back in 2012.

Source: http://www.patagonia.com/protect-public-lands.html

The shadow of repression grows longer.

There is a place for responsible rebuttals. The House Natural Resources Committee tweet, however, crosses a line by sending an intimidating message to those who dare to voice their opinion.

If you care about public lands and the freedom to speak out on their behalf, this should infuriate you. We have entered dark times for our public lands. It is time to raise our voices and call bullshit once again.

“Wildlife and its habitat cannot speak, so we must and we will.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

I stand with Patagonia.

Postscript (most recent at the bottom):
Axios: 8. Patagonia v. Trump
Outside Online: Patagonia and the Federal Government Go Head to Head
Huffington Post: Your Tax Dollars Are Being Used To Attack Patagonia
GQ: Now the Government Is Going After Patagonia for Criticizing Trump
Outside Online: Is the GOP Congress Calling for a Patagonia Boycott?
Walter Shaub Twitter thread:“When a federal government official publicly calls you a liar on an official social media account…”
Washington Post: Zinke, House GOP escalate feud with Patagonia over monuments
Washington Post, The Energy 202: Ryan Zinke rebuffed for retweet
U.S. House Natural Resources Committee: Chairman Bishop Invites Patagonia CEO to Testify Before the Committee
Chairman Bishop’s invitation letter. Credit were credit is due, the letter is well written, respectful and a much more appropriate response than the one on Twitter.
Outside Online: The GOP Wants Chouinard to Testify? He Should Accept.
Columbia Journalism Review: Outside reporter: ‘I wasn’t banned—at least, not as far as I can prove’
Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard in The Cleanest Line: Response to the House Committee on Natural Resources. If you are going to say “no thanks” he could not have done it better and for the right reasons.

Microfiber Pollution

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As I find other interesting articles and videos on this subject I will put links at the bottom of this post.

As a part-time fishing guide, water is an essential element of my life. What happens to and in the water has a direct impact on the quality of the experience for my clients. As a board member of the American Fly Fishing Trade Association (AFFTA), I have a keen interest in how the industry looks at and addresses water issues, whether they are access or quality. As the deputy director of the Marine Fish Conservation Network where my focus is on marine issues, so I am tuned into the challenges we face with our oceans.

One subject that gets my attention in all three areas of my professional life is the issue of plastic pollution. The shop I guide for, Mossy Creek Fly Fishing, found an innovative solution to the use of disposable plastic containers for fishing flies. AFFTA quickly embraced this solution and now promotes it as an industry best practice. Packaging is the biggest part of the plastic pollution problem but not the only one. It was the small stuff that recently caught my attention.

One company that is at the forefront of environmental issues is Patagonia. They have been educating people about plastic pollution in our oceans for years. In June 2016, they turned their attention to microplastics in the waste stream. According to the post, What Do We Know About Tiny Plastic Fibers in the Ocean? in Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles, the microfibers in synthetic clothes like fleece are shed during washing and are not captured by filter systems in treatment plants. The microfibers wind up in the ocean, on beaches, and in rivers and lakes. According to Patagonia:

“We know a single synthetic garment can shed thousands of synthetic microfibers in a single wash. We also know synthetic microfibers, as opposed to microplastic beads, have an irregular shape that can pose a threat to smaller organisms—and may enter the food chain and work their way up to humans. We also know we sell a lot of fleece; what we produce, combined with all the polyester and nylon products made and sold by other outdoor and apparel brands (and other industries), may constitute a significant problem.”

While knowing there is a problem is a key first step, the important question is what each of us can do about it. Somedays the challenges we face seem daunting especially when seen through the twin lens of policy and politics. Daunting they may be, but there are things we as individuals can do to make a difference.

Last month in a follow-up post, An Update on Microfiber Pollution, Patagonia
shared what they have learned and where they are headed. “Over the past two years, the shedding of microfibers from Patagonia’s synthetic garments has taken on heightened urgency in how we consider our priorities moving forward. We’ve been working on several fronts…”

Here are the steps Patagonia suggests individuals can take.

  • Keep Using It: Keeping our gear in use longer is something we can all do to reduce our personal impact on the planet. Buy only what you need, buy high quality and make it last. In Patagonia’s recent study with researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, a low-quality, generic-brand fleece shed significantly more over its life span than Patagonia’s high-quality products (brenmicroplastics.weebly.com).
  • Wash Less Often & Invest in a Front-load Washer: Microfibers shed in the wash—so wash your gear only when it’s absolutely necessary (you’ll conserve water in the process). Even your most-used outerwear should only need a full wash occasionally. If it’s caked with dirt (and we hope it will be), consider using a rag or sponge to spot clean rather than putting it through a machine cycle. And consider your washing machine: Studies show synthetic jackets laundered in top-load washing machines shed more than five times as many microfibers as the same jacket in front-load washers.
  • Fiber Filters Help: Putting your synthetic clothing into a filter bag before washing by hand or machine can significantly reduce the flow of microfibers into your drain. Starting in the coming weeks, you can buy (at cost) the easy-to-use Guppy Friend (guppyfriend.com) at Patagonia.com throughout the United States and Europe. Or install a permanent washing machine filter (requires some plumbing expertise), like Wexco’s Filtrol 160 (septicsafe.com/washing-machine-filter).

I admire the leadership Patagonia shows with their corporate ethic and willingness to recognize the impacts their products have, do the research on that impact and look for solutions not only in their manufacturing process but providing ways the end users can mitigate that impact. The least we can do as consumers is educate ourselves and act responsibly. The oceans and their inhabitants will thank us.

Author’s note: this post originally appeared in On the Waterfront the Marine Fish Conservation Network‘s blog.

Articles of interest:

CBS News: How microfibers in clothes are polluting our oceans

BBC: Video captures moment plastic enters food chain

We can clean the ocean: Rachael Miller at TEDxLowell

Hatch Magazine: Patagonia used 10,000,000 plastic bottles to make its new Black Hole bags

Buffalo Tenkara

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I recalled what Yvon had said first thing that morning. “If we can just get them to catch a darned fish. Feel life on the end of that line.” He laughed like a kid himself. “Something they never imagined. Bang. Whole new world.”

Worth a read, the nexus of good in this story, Teach Something, Learn Something by Dan O’Brien is outstanding. O’Brien is a buffalo rancher, Chouinard is an entrepreneur, both are characters I greatly admire. Put them together with some kids from the Crow indian reservation and the tenkara magic happens.

Check it out.

Good Food: Patagonia Provisions has partnered with Wild Idea Buffalo for their Buffalo Jerky

Good People: You can help this watershed by supporting the Bighorn River Alliance.

Source: http://wildideabuffalo.com/blogs/blog/teach-something-learn-something

Casting a Tenkara Rod

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TS-Demo-02062016
Jason Sparks photo

Casting demonstrations are a great way to introduce tenkara. For the last couple of years, I have had the good fortune to do tenkara casting demos at The Fly Fishing Shows in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the Virginia Fly Fishing Festival.

Among the myriad benefits of fishing with a tenkara rod is how easy the rod is to cast. While the fundamental casting principles still apply, the simplicity of the outfit; just a rod and a line, make casting a very simple and intuitive process.

A fly rod and reel outfit uses a rod that is designed to cast a weighted line. As my friend Dusty Wissmath likes to say; it is a flexible lever designed to cast a flexible weight. Each rod is designed to cast a specific line weight. There needs to be a certain amount of that weighted line out beyond the rod tip to make the rod cast the line to the target. The weighted line is essential to the system. It is what allows the rod to load and make the cast.

The caster loads the rod using the force of physical energy to build potential energy (bend or “load” the rod) that when released (the rod straightens) becomes kinetic energy transferred to the line, delivering the fly to the target. The weighted line is essential to building the amount of potential energy or load in the rod.

A tenkara rod is a very flexible lever designed to cast a variety of very light lines. The line weight is not the essential element to loading the rod. Just moving your arm or flicking your wrist will load the rod. My rod of choice is a Patagonia 10′ 6″ tenkara rod.

Let’s look at the steps for casting a conventional fly rod.

  • Start with the rod tip on or near the surface of the water with two or three-rod lengths of line out in front of you.
  • Raise and accelerate the rod backward to an abrupt stop just past vertical.
  • Let the line extend straight out behind you.
  • Accelerate the rod forward to an abrupt stop with the rod tip at about head level.
  • Follow the line down to the water.

Now let’s look at the steps for casting a tenkara rod.

  • Start with the rod tip in front of you with about a rod length of line hanging from the tip of the rod.
  • Accelerate the rod backward to an abrupt stop just before or at vertical.
  • Let the line extend straight out behind you.
  • Accelerate the rod forward to an abrupt stop with the rod tip at about head level.
  • Don’t follow the line down to the water especially if you are fishing a dry fly or dry dropper.

The elements of timing, so important in the weighted line system, are not as critical with the tenkara cast because your physical energy controls the loading of the rod. The line plays a much smaller role in making the cast work. This is one of the reasons people enjoy using a tenkara rod. The casting execution is very very simple.

In addition to the above, there are other differences in casting a tenkara rod that contribute to making it easier.

  • You can use your wrist to make a cast; a big “no no” with conventional fly casting.
  • You don’t “shoot” line eliminating the need to master the “pat your head while rubbing your stomach” element of conventional fly casting.
  • You don’t need to mend the line as often or in most cases at all.
  • The cast requires less energy and is slower.
  • You tend to cast more “open” loops making casting two fly rigs less prone to tangling.

THE TAKEAWAY

Casting a tenkara rod is not a whole lot different from casting a conventional fly rod. Someone who has mastered casting a conventional rod will understand it in seconds. Most beginners will quickly get the hang of it and spend more time concentrating on fishing rather than casting, and isn’t that the whole point anyway?

Author’s note: A version of this article first appeared in Hatch Magazine.

Disclosure.