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Clearwater Daze
A pair of Great Lakes spey anglers share their love for Idaho’s Clearwater River, its big steelhead, and their support for breaching the Lower Snake River Dams Idaho steelhead are just built differently. They have a special kind of folk hero status in my brain, partly driven by their “Mariners and Mountaineers” reputation. Even the…
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Love and Connection
Ask north Idaho Spey anglers to describe what wild steelhead mean to them and you will get 100 rambling, mostly incoherent responses. But you will hear common themes: love and connection, unadulterated, unconditional, tough, infinite love and a longing for connection with the gamest fish in freshwater, not to mention the rivers and wild places…
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It’s time to step up for the Snake
Editor’s note: This article by Rob Masonis, Walt Pollack, and Bryan Jones was originally published in the Idaho Statesman. The Snake River Basin should be the largest wild salmon and steelhead stronghold in the continental United States, with its cold, clean water fed by high-mountain snow and its thousands of miles of high-quality habitat—much of…
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Solution seekers vs. the ‘Refuse to Try’ camp
It’s time for the powers that be to work together to do something big on the Snake River Editor’s note: This article by Rob Masonis, Walt Pollack, and Bryan Jones was originally published in the Spokesman-Review. What do we – a former energy executive, an Eastern Washington wheat farmer, and a long-time salmon advocate and…
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Fresh support for Snake salmon recovery
Long-awaited report shows that replacing the dams’ benefits is possible. Change in the Snake basin is inevitable. Since the completion of the four lower Snake dams in 1975, the river’s salmon and steelhead populations have declined by more than 90 percent—to the detriment of tribes, anglers, businesses, and communities across the Northwest. Throwing new momentum…
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Bridging differences on the Snake
Working to change minds and save wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest Last week, I visited Lewiston, Idaho, where visitors are greeted with a sign proclaiming, “Thank you for visiting Idaho’s only seaport.” Lewiston is some 345 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. What makes it a “seaport” are the reservoirs formed by a series…
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Returning rapids
Dams will forever change a river. Sometimes I sit and wonder what certain rivers must have been like prior to a dam’s construction. That typically brings about more questions than answers. What was the river like years before? Were there bigger rapids? What was the fishing like? What did the native cultures lose when we…
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