Latest Blog Posts

Northern Dynasty Stock Plummets After Pebble Mine News, Fight Not Over

by Colin K. Breck - Wednesday, Sep 18th, 2013

A brown bear carries off its catch, a sockeye salmon, in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska.

Northern Dynasty Minerals (NAK) is soon to be the sole owner and force behind the Pebble Limited Partnership (PLP) -- the joint venture formed to blueprint and eventually develop a mine at the site of the Pebble deposit in Bristol Bay, Alaska -- has seen its stock shed over a whopping 35 percent since former partner Anglo American announced earlier this week that it would be pulling out the Pebble Mine project at an expected cost of over $300 million dollars.

The announcement obviously has investors worried, evidenced by the big sell-off of stock. According to a report filed by Mining.com, this sell-off may be a result of investor concern regarding whether or not Northern Dynasty has the financial chops required to develop the Pebble site on its own.

In regards to Anglo American's withdraw from the project, the reported noted, "with those funds off the table it is difficult to see how Northern Dynasty – now worth $140 million in Toronto – could come up with estimated $80 million a year needed to advance the project to its earliest possible construction start date of end-2017."

Enjoy Yourself, It's Later Than You Think

by Chad Shmukler - Friday, Sep 13th, 2013

Spending time here will make you a better husband. Chaperoning your wife to Target won't.

I very rarely, if ever, write about topics that aren’t specifically fishing related. It isn’t that I rarely care to. I often do. It is that I know I am mouthy and am likely to come off like an asshole. In this case, I’m entirely certain I’m going to come off like an asshole, but have decided the importance of writing about this topic outweighs whatever harm can come from me sounding like a prick.

This is a piece about relationships. Bad ones. I’ve reached the end of an unreasonably long rope, watching both friends and family, acquaintances and individuals I don’t know -- but have observed -- struggle with the fruits of the lousy, interminable relationship they’ve fixed themselves in.

Don’t misunderstand, I have friends and family members that are in strong, healthy relationships. These are relationships characterized by two partners that honestly love and support each other, a fact which is wholly evident to the other people they share their lives with.

Much of this is written from the male point of view, since that’s my lens on the situation. It is the perspective I have. I would no more presume to write about fishing from the fish's perspective than I would presume to write about relationships from a woman's perspective. As a result, much of this is about men who made the mistake of co-mingling their lives with a woman that doesn’t respect them, one who chronically and cavalierly puts their own petty needs before the important duty of loving and caring for their partner.

Cooperation from Ranchers is Helping Montana's Last Native Grayling Survive

by Colin K. Breck - Wednesday, Sep 11th, 2013

The arctic grayling.

In an article we published a few weeks ago, entitled How Clean is Your Stream? Ask the Grayling, we detailed a bit of the unfortunate history of the fluvial arctic grayling. This history is that has seen such grayling wiped out from their entire former range in the U.S. lower 48, save for one watershed: Montana's Big Hole River. That article also covered, in brief, the efforts of the state of Montana to encourage ranch owners in a 338,000 acre area of the Big Hole watershed to voluntarily take steps that would improve water quality, such as reducing irrigation withdraws and improving riparian habitat. Those efforts and the accompanying cooperation by ranch owners in the target area appears to be paying off, helping the Big Hole's remaining grayling population make it through some very low water conditions in recent years, according to a recent article in the Montana Standard.

Montana state fishery biologists have described the cooperation of ranchers as incredible, noting how reduced water withdraws by the program participants have kept more water in the river and resulted in more areas for grayling and other fish to seek thermal refuge during these years of extremely low water conditions. Ranchers have sought alternative water sources in their area, such as other small creeks and rivers, and in general are trying to do more with less in order to keep as much water as possible in the Big Hole. Also of note is the overwhelming rate of cooperation by ranch owners, with over 90 percent of the ranches whose water usage would affect the Upper Big Hole participating in the project.

Tenkara USA in Japan

by Chad Shmukler - Tuesday, Sep 10th, 2013

A beautiful Amago caught on a tenkara rod (photo: Tenkara USA).

As I noted last week in another post, I finally tried tenkara earlier this summer -- quite unexpectedly to fish for Alaskan salmon -- after years of interest. There's a satisfying simplicity and unparalleled portability to Tenkara, but perhaps its most notable feature is the removal of the cast as a possible focal point for the angler. With the cast out of the way, there's inherently a much more intent focus placed on the other, equally important, parts of the fly fishing equation such as fly selection, fly placement, angler behavior and approach, and so on.

Tenkara's roots are in Japan -- where Tenkara USA founder Daniel Galhardo first discovered tenkara in his travels there years ago -- has recently returned to Japan to reconnect with his tenkara teachers, share and innovate new rod designs, but most importantly to maintain Tenkara USA's connection to Japan. According to Daniel, maintaining that connection helps maintain a connection to the philosophy behind tenkara, which shows us how "to keep fly-fishing simple and how to maintain its effectiveness without relying so much on equipment."

3 Good Reads on Conservation

by Chad Shmukler - Friday, Sep 6th, 2013

The Gardiner River in Yellowstone National Park (photo: Tom Estilow).

Delivering the conservation message is one of the most important tasks for anyone that considers themselves a steward of our natural environments. Unfortunately, that message sometimes is delivered in a way that seems to be asking the reader to add another task to the already long list of responsibilities that life brings their way, without reminding us in a compelling way why conservation remains such an important charge in our rapidly changing world, but incredibly rewarding.

Day After Tomorrow

In yet another piece of beautiful writing, Hal Herring poses a rarely asked question: is teaching our children and others to have a passion and love of wild places a pointless task, as those places continue to be overtaken by the unstoppable growth of human population? In answering this question, Hal takes us through his childhood in backwoods Alabama, years on a pre-tourist boom Outer Banks of North Carolina and his last few decades making a life and raising children in the wilderness of Montana's Bitterroot Valley.