According to Trout Unlimited's Alaskan Director Tim Bristol, the Pebble Limited Partnership's (PLP) response to the EPA's recent announcement that it would initiate further investigative action under Clean Water Act section 404(c) was "predictable" and "desperate." The response was issued in the form of a document circulated to PLP investors and also published on the group's website.

The PLP, which has long been seeking to build the much-maligned Pebble Mine in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska, has suffered numerous setbacks recently as two of the group's largest investors -- mining giants Rio Tinto (NYSE:RIO) and Anglo American (LON:AAL) -- have walked alway from the project, dissolving their investments in the partnership, citing the project's grim future. Northern Dynasty Minerals (NYSE:NAK), the project's only significant remaining stakeholder, has elected to stay the course, hoping to move the project forward in spite of steadily mounting opposition.

Many will consider Bristol's harsh critique of the PLP response to be spot on. The document circulated by the partnership reads more like a childish rant than an informative, carefully worded letter to investors. In it, the PLP accuses EPA employees of "secretly plott[ing] with environmental activists," scheming to sabotage US financial markets and puts forth other such unsubstantiated, unethical and inaccurate claims.

In a day when all the fly fishing rage seems to be centered on salty critters that induce screaming reels and stylish expletive “bleeps” in one of the hundreds of new-era videos sucking up bandwidth these days, the essence of the craft seems to have gone south. Literally and figuratively.

Oh, I’m part of the problem. Believe me. I dig the flats and the fish that swim them. But it’s spring up here where we can actually tell a difference between the seasons, and my thoughts are shifting from bones and permit to chasing lighter fare in places where, when summer finally does arrive, it’s damn near over.

Places like the Alaskan interior, where the sun is shining now and pushing snowmelt into the region’s many rivers. And in those rivers, under brown, rushing waters lined by birch and alder, one of the most game of fly fishing targets is busy pair up, ensuring anglers yet another generation of wonderment.

Arctic grayling might be the perfect dry fly target, and while our nation’s creative fisheries managers have done their level best to bring grayling to the masses in the Lower 48, the most reliable American destination to catch this gorgeous cousin of the trout remains Alaska. And perhaps no other river in the Last Frontier is more identified with grayling than the Chena.