Creating New Trout Streams, with Chris Wood of Trout Unlimited
Podcast Transcript:
Tom: Hi, and welcome to the "Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast." You know, there's an old cliche that we're not making any new trout streams, but actually, we are creating some new trout streams where there haven't been trout historically in a very long time. And that's cleaning up abandoned [00:00:30.580] mine damage, polluted outflow of toxic metals and acids from abandoned mines. Some of these mines are over 100, 150 years old.
And there's some great news about these abandoned mines. Trout Unlimited as well as other conservation groups and some good players in the mining industry have been working up a plan to do some pilot [00:01:00.541] projects where they can go in and clean up these abandoned mines and clean up the water that's flowing out of them. And they've actually created some trout water and some game fish water where there hasn't historically, at least in our lifetimes, been any trout or other fish.
And my guest this week is Chris Wood. Chris is president and CEO of Trout Unlimited. [00:01:30.626] It's always great to get Chris on the podcast because not only is he knowledgeable, but he's always positive and fun to talk to and is great at explaining some of these relatively complicated issues that we deal with in the environment. So Chris is going to talk about the Samaritan Act regarding cleaning up abandoned mines. And I think you'll find it fascinating. I learned quite a bit on this podcast. And [00:02:00.591] it's a real positive, feel-good podcast where both industry and conservation groups are getting together to clean up these abandoned mines.
And before we do the fly box, a few things I want to talk about. One is that I get podcast questions all the time. Going on a road trip and I'm going through such and such a state or province, and I want to go fishing along the way. And where do I go? [00:02:30.509] And I really can't answer these questions, but I can give you a great place to go and look.
If you go to the Orvis Adventures page, and that's orvis.com/adventures, there is an interactive map that shows you North America, and then it shows you all the Orvis-endorsed operations, guides, lodges, outfitters, and adventures. And you can plan your road trip using these. [00:03:00.502] These are operations that we have vetted. We've been to them. We monitor them regularly. It's where the Orvis fish heads go fishing when they're on their own vacations. And so we have a vested interest in identifying the best places throughout North America and the world for that matter.
So if you're looking to go to a particular place, I would highly advise that you [00:03:30.644] check out the Orvis-endorsed operations first. These are the ones that have been vetted. These are the ones where you're guaranteed that the guides are going to be great. If it's a lodge, the food's going to be terrific. The lodging is going to be comfortable, and the guides are going to be well-versed in safety on the water and in all the technical aspects of fishing, as well as teaching you.
And each week I'm going to [00:04:00.346] give you an idea of three of the endorsed operations so that you can get an idea for what you have available. And the three this week are all on the West Coast. So if you're on the West Coast or you're planning to go to the West Coast to do some fishing, these are definitely worth looking into.
The first one is Alaska Sportsman Lodge. And it's Alaska, and it's remote. And of course, the fishing is going to be awesome. There's a lot of places in Alaska where there's [00:04:30.586] awesome fishing. However, at Alaska Sportsman Lodge, you get some special stuff. One is that it's owned and operated by Brian Kraft. Brian is one of the most knowledgeable operators in the Alaskan wilderness. And he's also one of the most ardent conservationists and one of the strongest voices in protecting that resource. Brian is always on the forefront of environmental issues in Alaska. So [00:05:00.437] not only going to go fish with a guy that owns a great lodge, but you're going to fish with somebody who really cares about the resource and puts his money where his mouth is.
This lodge has 366 five-star reviews and 1 four-star, 0 three-star, 0 two-star, and 0 one-star reviews on the Orvis website. And in 23 years, they have never lost a single guide to [00:05:30.510] another fishing operation. And that is amazing. They got highly experienced guides, up to 17 years of experience, and they're located in a very remote, pristine area with no roads, but they have incredibly luxurious accommodations and five-star food. So if you want the best in Alaska lodges, I would look into Alaska Sportsman Lodge.
The outfitter this week is Chrome Chasers. Chrome Chasers is [00:06:00.592] located on the Olympic Peninsula. And that's somewhere I've never been. I keep looking at a map and seeing this vast area, vast wilderness area, and I've often wondered what it looks like. I've never even been there, and I'd love to see it. It's one of the places on my list. We all have these lists that we want to go to. And we'll never get to them all. We'll never get to half of them probably. But this is one that I've got to see someday. [00:06:30.260]
Chrome Chasers is run by owner and guide Keith Allison. And he's been fishing and guiding on the Peninsula for over 30 years. They've got summer steelhead, fall Chinook, and coho salmon, and winter steelhead. They've also got some sea-run cutthroat.
And Olympic National Park has over 4,000 miles of trout, steelhead, and salmon rivers. So if you're going to go there, you better go with somebody that knows the area. And Keith [00:07:00.837] is the guy to talk to.
And finally, another West Coast operation. This is independent guide, Chuck Storey. Chuck guides in the fabulous Klamath Basin. And I have fished this area. It's an amazing...scenic, it's incredibly beautiful area. And the reason I like it is they have these rivers that are like really large spring creeks. Large and small. But some of the rivers are [00:07:30.497] just giant spring creeks, and they hold large trout, obviously. And it's an area that doesn't get a lot of fishing pressure. So you could fish all day and hardly see anybody. So yeah, the Klamath Basin is an interesting place to visit. Certainly should be on your list. And Chuck Storey is a good one to look up for a guided trip in this area.
All right. One more [00:08:00.240] announcement. It's going to be a whole bunch of us from Orvis at the Edison Fly Fishing Show in New Jersey, January 24th, 25th, and 26th. Orvis is going to have a big booth there. And I'm going to be doing presentations every day. I'm going to be doing book signings. If you want to bring your own books that you already bought, you can bring those too, but there will be books for sale at the show.
And we're going to be doing a live fly box Q&A at the Orvis booth at 1:30 [00:08:30.481] on January 24th, Friday, and January 25th, Saturday. We're going to have the fishing product developers there. Going to have myself, George Daniel will be there, and Pete Kutzer will be there doing casting demonstrations. So if you want to come and ask some questions live and do a little back-and-forth conversation rather than just a fly box question that I answer on the air, come and [00:09:00.452] hang out in the Orvis booth and ask us questions. While you're there, you can also cast some of the new rods. And maybe you can get Pete to take out in the casting pond and give you a little private demo.
All right. Now let's do the fly box. The fly box is where you ask me questions or you pass along a tip that you think other listeners might enjoy, and I try to answer your questions. I don't answer them all, but I do read them all. And I think it's what [00:09:30.365] makes this podcast special, the fact that you get to ask questions and I get to know what you're interested in. I plan and schedule guests on this podcast based on the kind of questions that I get from you.
So your questions are really helpful to me in helping to bring you more knowledge and bring guests on the air. And so if you have a [00:10:00.213] question, you can send it to me by email at
"I am sitting at my fly-tying desk listening to this week's podcast and working on my Blue Wing Olive size 22, which I'm tying 100 of for charity. Oh, boy, [00:10:30.466] 22 are really small. I have a question for you. Or do you have a recommendation on a good chair for tying? When I'm tying for a couple of hours, my back is killing me. Please help."
Second question. Have you ever considered putting your books on audio? Third question. I don't know if you can do podcasts on how to set up a fly-tying desk, but what kind of lighting do you use? What tools do you use? How do you lay out your desk? Or do you have a YouTube video already on this? If you do, how can I find this?
This past fall, [00:11:00.409] my wife, Patty, and our neighbors went on a three-week camping trip. I had been fly fishing for about two and a half years and tying flies for less than a year. We were at Algonquin National Park in Canada. I talked to the park ranger, this was early October, and about a week before the trout season ended. The ranger suggested to use a dark green streamer. Luckily, I had your Olive Wooly Bugger that you taught me to tie on Orvis YouTube. It was so exciting to catch my first Canadian brown trout on a fly that I tied. I caught a couple and released [00:11:30.663] before I waded into a deep hole and flooded my bibs. I learned a valuable lesson about keeping a better eye on the water. Do you have any good suggestions for me on how to navigate a stream so I don't flood myself again?
To finish our trip, we ended our trip in Manchester at the Orvis flagship store for the big fall sale. It would be great if I could convince Patty to buy me a new Helios rod or a new reel. I could use your help on trying to convince her. Haha."
Well, first of all, Tom, I'm not [00:12:00.662] going to help you with your wife. That's going to be your issue. Sorry. I don't get involved in those, but I will try to answer your other questions. You know, I don't have a suggestion for a good chair for tying. I think it depends on your own posture and the height of your fly-tying desk. And I'm sure there are some ergonomic suggestions, but if you're sitting for a couple of hours tying and your back is killing you, I don't doubt it because I don't think you should sit [00:12:30.159] for a couple of hours and tie. I can't. I use just a straight-back chair, figuring that's probably better to support my back, but I don't really know.
But I do know that I can't tie for more than 45 minutes to an hour, and I get up and walk around, do a little exercise, or you could do a little yoga or take the dog for a walk or something. But sitting at a fly-tying desk hunched over a fly-tying vise, [00:13:00.360] you're going to get a sore back and a sore neck. There's no question about it. Try to stay upright if you can. Try to adjust your table and your vise so that you don't have to hunch over. Other than that, just get up and walk around more.
Regarding putting my books on audio, my books are kind of visually oriented, and I spend as much time on the photographs and diagrams as I do on the text. And I don't know if they would be a really [00:13:30.627] good audiobook, but I have had an idea for years of taking some of my older story essays and magazine articles and putting them in an audiobook, but I just haven't had the time to do it. But maybe someday I'll get around to it.
I have not done a podcast on how to set up a fly-tying desk. Again, it's so varied depending on the space you have and what you're going to tie. But that [00:14:00.903] would maybe make a good video, and I may think about doing a video on that.
As far as lighting is concerned, I use a couple of flat disc-shaped LEDs that are made for blogging or vlogging, I guess. They're made by Lume Cube, and they're soft but bright and shadowless, and you can adjust the color temperature so that you can get the temperature [00:14:30.292] closer to daylight so you can see what your flies will look in daylight. They are not inexpensive, but I've been really happy with them. And I think whatever you do, you need two lights, one over the top and one off to the side or one to each side.
I've never had any luck finding just one light that was enough to properly illuminate a fly because I find I always get shadows and I can't see when my fingers get in the way. [00:15:00.157] So I think you need two lights, and I recommend those Lume Cube lights, but again, they're quite expensive.
Regarding wading over your head, here's a couple of tips. Never wade deeper than your knees where you can't see bottom. That's one. And the other one is move slowly, and if you can see in the water, just look for the darker [00:15:30.508] water. The darker water is going to be deeper, and stay away from that. Usually, if the water is relatively clear, you can usually see edges where the water goes from lighter to darker. But yeah, just a little experience and a little care is all you need to know about not filling your waders.
Jared: Hi, Tom. This is Jared from Missoula, Montana. I've got a couple of questions to ask you about [00:16:00.052] reels and fishing line. I don't think anybody's asked a question like this about reels lately, so hopefully, it's good enough for everyone.
I am looking at getting a reel for a three-way small stream rod, and I'm looking between the Battenkill Disc Drag and just the Battenkill Click-and-Pawl. So I'm just wondering, generally, if you could give your thoughts on the pros and cons of Click-and-Pawl reels [00:16:30.425] versus Disc Drag, and whether you think that the Click-and-Pawl would be the better reel for a small stream rod with 10 to 12-inch fish at best kind of situation.
The second question I've got is regarding line. And particularly, I'm curious what you would think for a line that would match this small 7.5-foot 3-weight, [00:17:00.365] slower action rod for these small streams where you're really only casting, on average, 15, maybe 20 feet of fly line or something like that. So I'm curious if you've got a line suggestion of Scientific Angler or Orvis that would be good for a small stream setup like that.
But also, just more generally, I hear a lot of people talking about how important it is to match the line to different rods for their action, but it's obviously very difficult to try out [00:17:30.766] different lines at a shop. It's not like you can kind of just try whatever line you want. They've just kind of got their reels spooled up with whatever, and that's what you get.
So I'm curious if you've got suggestions of how to test out what line might be the best for your given rod. So those are my questions. Thanks a lot, and I hope you have a good, prosperous 2025.
Tom: Well, Jared, based on the way you described your fishing, [00:18:00.374] I don't think you need a Disc Drag reel. You know, Disc Drags are great if you're in a bigger river and the fish is going to make long runs and you've got a fairly heavy tippet on and you may want to crank down your drag a little bit to slow down a fish. But if you're fishing for a small stream trout where they're probably hardly ever going to take any line, they might occasionally, but a Click-and-Pawl is just fine.
The advantage of a Click-and Pawl are they're lighter, they're simpler, they don't have [00:18:30.404] as many moving parts, and they're a little more traditional. And I think they sound better when a fish does take a little bit of line. And if you need a little extra drag, you can always palm it or put the flat of your hand around the outside of the spool. So I think I would go with just a Click-and-Pawl reel for small stream trout. I think that will suit you just fine.
Regarding lines, typically on a 7.5-foot 3-weight, I like the Superfine line, [00:19:00.364] but it's got a longer front taper. And if you're making a lot of really short casts, you know, you may want to overline that rod. You didn't say what brand it was, whether it was an Orvis or not, but a lot of rods perform better at 25 feet and under with 1 line size heavier. They'll bend more, you'll be able to roll cast better.
And so what I would do is probably overline that [00:19:30.744] 7.5-foot 3 with a 4-weight line if all your casts are going to be under 25 feet. And then you go with either a Superfine line, but better yet, probably the PRO Trout line, either in smooth or textured. That's going to be a personal preference for you. Probably smooth would be nicer on a small trout stream because it's less noisy. But yeah, that's what I would do. I would overline that rod for those shorter casts.
Here's an email from Tanner. "My question is [00:20:00.572] about lines for streamers. What setup would help me cast streamers accurately with limited backcast space? Trees line both banks and my 5-weight line struggles to pick up the line and roll cast. Would a heavier line, 7-weight, a sink tip, or a micro Spey setup, either a micro Spey rod and line or even a size 3 or 4 Spey line on my standard 5-weight rod be any more effective at picking up my fly up? Most of my casts are within 25 feet but need to be very accurate, given the relatively [00:20:30.584] small and technical water. Maybe this is a question of cast. Are there any specific casts for tight quarters that would improve accuracy and control with moderately weighted flies?"
Well, Tanner, it sounds like you are using a sinking line or a poly leader or something, a sinking poly leader, on these small streams. And honestly, what I would do on a small stream with a streamer where it's tight and the [00:21:00.761] water is narrow is to use a floating line and a heavily weighted streamer. You know, the sinking lines are tough. They're tough on short casts and small streams, and sink tips or sinking tips or whatever. And if you can, I would use a little bit longer leader, maybe a 9-foot leader, and use a heavily weighted streamer like a conehead or even stick a split shot [00:21:30.509] ahead of your streamer fly. That's going to allow you to pick things up a lot easier and it's going to allow you to cast better, much better.
A couple of things you can do to cast those streamers if you've got limited backcast room is you can water-load them. So in other words, you let the line hang downstream of you until you get some tension on it, and then you just use that as your backcast and you just flip your line upstream or across, and [00:22:00.687] you don't need a backcast. Your streamer will generally go pretty close to where you want it.
And then if that doesn't work well for you, you can use the Spey casts on your standard rod, generally a Snap-T or a double Spey if you learn how to do those. Those will get that streamer out there without a backcast. So I don't really think you need any special fly line [00:22:30.594] for this kind of fishing. I think you need to stick with a floating line and a weighted streamer. And I think you're going to be better off and probably more effective.
One other way to fish here would be to use a tight line rig with a jig streamer. And that's basically using monofilament instead of fly line. And again, you're just water-loading or lobbing it, but this will allow you to make some casts without a backcast. And [00:23:00.391] if you're interested in tight-lining with a streamer, there are lots of videos on YouTube about this. Particularly Dom from Troutbitten has some really good videos and articles on tight-lining with a streamer.
Here's an email from Ben from Colorado Springs. "I have a fly-tying question for you. A couple of months ago, I opened a fly-tying desk to begin a tying session and I noticed [00:23:30.280] that the jaws on my vise had sustained some damage. Specifically, where the jaws come to a point on one side of the jaws there was a pretty substantial nick where the metal was rounded over. I discovered pretty quickly that the jaws would no longer hold hooks very well. Sometimes I would finally get the hook secured in the vise only to begin tying and have the hook pop out of the jaws minutes later.
I have since replaced the jaws, but I'm curious what your thoughts are on how this could have happened. I always try to adjust the tension based on the hook size, but is it possible I [00:24:00.451] made the tension too tight and damaged my vise? I'm using a mid-level vise, not entry-level, but not the most expensive either. I've been using it for many years with great success but would like to avoid any further mistakes. Are there certain dos and don'ts when going to clamp a hook in the vise?
It was a pleasure to meet you briefly during your Colorado tour last year at Angler's Covey in Colorado Springs. It was delightful to see that your experience and teaching skill comes out in person just as much, if not more, as in your podcast." [00:24:30.590] Well, thank you. "Please keep up the excellent work with Orvis, and I appreciate you taking the time to read my question."
Well, thank you, Ben. It was great to meet you in Colorado Springs as well, and thank you for those nice comments. I think what happened here is that you probably used a larger hook and didn't insert it fully into the jaws. There's an inclination to just [00:25:00.369] barely catch the hook in the jaws so that you have more working room, but unfortunately, if you put the hook too close to the end or the edge of the jaws, you're going to be putting too much pressure on that, and you need to really get that hook more in the center and inside the jaws. I did that once too, where I put a hook on the outside of the vise and it chipped a piece out of the vise because I [00:25:30.177] put too much pressure on it.
So it's a combination of too much pressure and not inserting the hook far enough into the jaws. You don't want it way into the jaws, but you want it to be, I don't know, two-thirds of the way into the jaws when you clamp it in.
Here's an email from Nick. "I first have a shout-out plea for your crack team of product designers. For some time now, I've needed to alternate between my polarized sunglasses and various clear magnifiers from Drugstore [00:26:00.652] Cheaters that are very likely collecting algae and caddis on some stream bed to magnetic magnifiers whose retention system always seems to tangle with my sunglasses lanyard. I haven't found a great solution. Why not a pair of quality polarized sunglasses with integrated clear bifocal magnifiers below? Bifocal sunglasses with tinted magnifiers just aren't ideal for low-light conditions. I know Orvis can answer this need for anglers of a certain age.
Second and third, I [00:26:30.274] want to share an experience and a suggestion. I was reminded of finishing up my 2024 stream journal. Late in the season last fall, still fishless, and with an hour of arriving on stream one brisk morning, I tripped and was thoroughly baptized in the chilly waters of a Sand County stream that was new to me. After a few choice words, I wondered, A, could this new spot possibly be rewarding enough to justify sticking it out for four or five more hours of soggy shivers, and B, [00:27:00.370] why, oh, why, didn't I pack a change of clothes that morning?
The fishing gods and the eager and plentiful brookies answered my first question with a decisive yes. I answered the second question myself by packing and permanently leaving in my SUV a dunk kit of dry clothes for when, not if, I fall in again."
So, Nick, that is a great suggestion. It's something that I often think of doing before I go fishing and then don't, and I should [00:27:30.362] because sooner or later I'm going to be sorry. But yeah, just having a go bag with some warm dry clothes in your car is a great idea if you're off on your own and wade fishing, or even if you're in a drift boat, you know, you can fall out of a drift boat too. So it's a good idea. It's a good idea to take some dry clothes with you, and I'm going to try to remember to do that myself.
Regarding your first question, I know a bit about how sunglasses are made. Orvis doesn't manufacture any sunglasses, but [00:28:00.533] we work with people like BAJÍO and Smith to sell high-quality sunglasses to our customers. And the technical difficulties of putting a clear lens within a regular polarized lens would make these really, really expensive. Believe me. I don't think you'd want to pay for them.
I remember years ago, [00:28:30.491] there were some cheap sunglasses that were made like this, and they had clear magnifiers and then regular sunglasses. And I saw a guy that had been wearing them and when he took them off, he had these two red burn spots on his cheek. The magnifiers, when he was facing the sun, actually worked like magnifying glasses and burned his cheeks. So I'm not so sure of the practicality of that, [00:29:00.597] both from a usability standpoint and from a safety standpoint.
I sympathize with you because I have the same problem. I got cataract surgery this past year and I have 20/20 distance vision now, which is awesome, but I need readers now. And so I've been struggling with it myself. And here's what I've been doing because I've been struggling with two pairs of glasses around my neck too. [00:29:30.273] So for my magnifiers for tying on flies, I have a pair of 3x or 3-diopter CliC readers. These are those magnetic sunglasses.
And the cool thing about CliC readers is they hang short because you've attached them to your neck and they stay nice and out of the way. And then when you need them, you just pull them over your head and you click them together. And you probably want 3x [00:30:00.495] because 2x and 1.5x is all right for reading, but for tying on flies I would get a pair of 3x CliC readers.
And then when I take my sunglasses off to tie on a fly, what I do is I put my sunglasses on a lanyard. I have them on a lanyard or a Croakie. I put my sunglasses on my hat. So I lift up my sunglasses, put them on my hat, pull up my CliC readers, tie on a fly, put the [00:30:30.041] CliC readers back around my neck, and bring the sunglasses down.
But you're absolutely right. When you have magnifying sunglasses, you're losing a lot of resolution in those magnifying sections. So in low light, it's going to be tough to tie on a fly. So yeah, it's a problem, but I don't think you're going to see quality polarized sunglasses with clear magnifiers anytime soon.
Here's an email from Scott from [00:31:00.045] Littleton, Colorado. "One of my confidence flies for western streams and still waters is a size 16 or 18 Rainbow Warrior. This nymph is versatile addition to any dry dropper or nymphing rig. Additionally, it is an easy tie but tends to lack longevity. Usually after a few fish, the tinsel breaks or the tailing fibers disappear. Once a fly is down to a hook and a bead, I clip it off and place it in my drying patch. When I get home, I cut the loose thread off with a straight blade, sharpen the hook, and retie the fly.
How often do you do this with [00:31:30.300] your fly? Should I worry about the integrity of these small hooks, or as long as they aren't bent, is recycling a good option? Thanks, Tom."
So, Scott, I don't do that, but I get hooks a lot cheaper than you do. So if a fly is down to the bead and very little else, I just toss it. But I don't think it's a bad idea to recycle them. Taking that hook home and cutting the [00:32:00.580] dressing off and then retying it is no worse for the hook than the hook that you've used and put back in your fly box. So I think it's a good idea.
The one thing you might think about is that when you scrape the materials off the hook, most hooks have a lacquer on them that keeps the hook from rusting. And so what you might want to do is after you cut that remaining [00:32:30.974] thread and body material off with a razor blade, you might want to just put a thin coat of head cement or clear nail polish or epoxy on the hook shank to protect that hook so that it doesn't rust later on. But I think it's a fine idea. And I think, you know, beads are expensive and so are hooks. So I think it's a good idea to recycle them.
Here's an email from Joe. "First of all, I want to thank you for answering my question about casting my Orvis switch rod a few months [00:33:00.146] back. I wanted to use my 11-foot 8-weight as a big game rod and after emailing you I found myself hooked into a 15 to 20-pound hybrid striped bass. Unfortunately, at that moment, my switch rod was leaning against the side of my pickup truck and I was fighting what may have been the biggest fish I've ever caught on a fly with a Clearwater 5-weight. Luckily, I had recently listened to your podcast about fighting big fish with Conway Bowman, and with the help of my recently acquired fish fighting know-how, I managed to land a nice hybrid. So I want to thank you [00:33:30.367] again for your help.
Now for my question. I'm considering buying a new single-handed Clearwater rod for freshwater big game like pike and muskies, but I am having difficulty deciding between the 10 and 11-weights. The 10-weight appears to be similar to most single-handed rods with a small fighting butt, but the 11-weight has a longer 4-inch butt with a few extra inches of length.
Does the long butt on the 11-weight make a difference, or is the main difference in the size of fly's grain weight the rods can handle? I'm planning to pair the rod [00:34:00.310] with a Hydros V for everything from top water to deeper lake fishing for pike and muskies with the possibility of taking it with me if I visit the coast for a bit of saltwater fishing."
Okay. So Joe, great catch on that hybrid, by the way. The reason that there's the longer butt on the 11-weight is so that you can do a Figure-8. It makes it a lot easier to do a Figure-8, which some people use for pike but most of the time for muskies. So when you get the fly close to the boat, [00:34:30.271] that long butt section enables you to use both hands and do a Figure-8 with the rod. So that's why that butt is longer.
Now the 11-weight is going to cast bigger flies, but, you know, I guess it depends on how much pike fishing you're going to do versus how much muskie fishing you're going to do. If it's going to be mostly muskies I'd go with the 11-weight. The flies are bigger, you're going to have that 4-inch butt to help you Figure-8. And if it's mostly pike [00:35:00.664] I'd go with a 10-weight.
Here's an email from Jake. "I've been doing something odd lately. I've been using my own leaders using scrap lines. I found 100 feet of roughly 5-pound line from a spin fisher's snag. Then I'll take various pieces from old leaders and use their new tippets to make my own leaders.
Here's my question. One, is this dumb? Like, am I overlooking some issue like using line from spinning setups that might be mono or fluoride or something else I'm not thinking about? Two, [00:35:30.600] is it bad to stretch the leader? Some of the pieces of line are curled. They have memory of being wrapped and don't sit straight. So I've pinched the bottom with my forceps and hung it up in the garage to stretch out. Is that damaging or weakening my line? Thanks for the help, and sorry for my rambling writing style."
Well, Jake, your writing wasn't rambling at all. Believe me, I can ramble a lot more than you can. Is it a dumb idea? I don't want to say anything is a dumb [00:36:00.025] idea, but using scrap lines that you've found, you don't know where they've been. You don't know how long they've been out there because monofilament and nylon can break down if it's in sunlight. And it's great that you're trying to recycle that old spin line that somebody had in a snag, but you know what? I would use new leader material if I were you.
If you find a bunch of [00:36:30.441] line that was from a spin fisher snag or from anybody's snag, it's a good idea to pull it out and roll it up and put it in your pocket and take it home, and then throw it in the garbage so it goes in a landfill. It's better than being out there on the river, but I wouldn't make any leaders with it. Monofilament is not that expensive. And you're taking the chance that you're going to have some really lousy line.
As far as [00:37:00.603] stretching the leader, most of the time you can just pull on a leader between your hands and it will take nearly all the kinks out of it. And a little curl in a leader isn't necessarily bad. Sometimes you want a little bit of slack in a leader. Anyway, so you can mostly stretch it with your hand. If you do want to hang it up, yeah, you can do that. It's not going to hurt it. Just make sure that it's not in the sun or not near any fluorescent light where it's going to get some [00:37:30.459] UV damage. But yeah, if you want to hang a pair of forceps on it to straighten it out, I don't think you're going to damage or weaken your line, but I would stop using that scrap line you find on the river.
Cay: Hey, Tom, Cay from West Virginia calling in. I had a couple of questions I was hoping you could help me with. The first question is I'm tying up some Golden Stone flies, and some of the patterns are calling for a bullet head style with the elk hair folded back over the fly, [00:38:00.331] and some are calling for the standard dry fly dubbing. So I don't know the benefit of the bullet head on the elk hair if it makes it more buoyant or has a better profile. I just want any advice on that.
And then the second question is I'm doing a float trip in May and this will be my first float trip I've done with a guide and wondering what the best casting style would be for when I'm casting on my off-side, as in not with my dominant hand. [00:38:30.560] Should I practice casting with my left hand or practice casting across my body with my right hand?
Looking forward to 2025. I actually purchased a Helios Travel Limited Lifetime Membership package, so looking forward to it.
Tom: Well, Caleb, you know, there's advantages to both ways of putting a head on a Stone fly. A deer hair bullet head or elk hair bullet head looks pretty cool and it floats better. It's going to [00:39:00.091] hold more air, so it's going to help the fly float. But it's more difficult to tie. It's a pain in the butt, whereas just putting dubbing on the head is a lot easier. So they both give you a decent profile, but I think that it depends on how well you want that fly to float and how much time you want to spend tying it because bullet heads are not that easy to tie. But either way, it'll work.
Regarding casting for your offhand, and I really, really [00:39:30.723] admire you for planning for this trip and actually learning how to cast with your offhand before you go on a trip. That's something that more of us should do. And boy, it's going to be a huge advantage if you're almost as adept on one side of the boat as you are on the other. Your guide's going to love you. And I think that that's great.
Regarding whether you cast [00:40:00.508] off your left side with your right hand or whether you cast left-handed is going to depend on how ambidextrous you are, to what degree of ambidexterity you have. If you can learn to cast and fish and manipulate line left-handed, in other words, if you can cast left-handed and learn to manipulate line with your right hand and practice it, that's going to be awesome. Try it [00:40:30.178] and see how it works.
And if you can do it, great. I can't. I wish I could. I can cast okay with my left hand, but I have trouble manipulating line with my other hand. But if you do cast over your left shoulder or dump your backcast or however you want to call it, casting on your off-side, again, practice it. You said you're going to practice, so practice it.
And one of the biggest errors that most people make when [00:41:00.355] casting on their off-side that I learned from Pete Kutzer is that we tend to, at the end of the cast, instead of putting our tip in a straight line, we tend to kind of curl the rod tip around our body and, of course, that gives you a terrible loop when you're casting. So just make sure that if you're casting on your off-side that your rod tip goes in a straight line on your cast.
All right. That is the fly box this week. Let's go talk to [00:41:30.221] Chris Wood about abandoned mines. So my guest today is the great Chris Wood. And Chris is, in my opinion, one of the most important conservation figures of our time. Chris, you've been CEO and president of Trout Unlimited for how many years now?
Chris: Fourteen.
Tom: Fourteen.
Chris: Fifteen this February.
Tom: Fifteen years. And you have accomplished so much. You and Trout Unlimited have accomplished so much good work [00:42:00.212] over the years as a science-based organization that also knows how to deal in the halls of D.C. Better you than me, for sure. But you guys have done such great work, and we have an exciting thing that just happened recently that I couldn't wait to talk about on the podcast. And I'm sure it's not news to some people but there was recently, is it a law that was passed?
Chris: Yes, yeah, a law, [00:42:30.234] and was signed by the President two weeks ago.
Tom: Yeah, so describe it and describe how it's going to really help us.
Chris: So this law makes it... Tom, first of all, thank you for that overly gracious introduction. I do think TU is the most effective organization working for trout and salmon, and it's because of our incredible people, both our staff, our 350 staff spread all around the country, but then our [00:43:00.370] incredible cadre of volunteers, of which I know you are one. But yes, so the backstory on this is kind of personally interesting.
Tom: First of all, describe the... We haven't even said what's the name of the law.
Chris: It's called the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Mines Act.
Tom: Okay, good.
Chris: And what it does is it makes it easier for would-be good Samaritans, literally going back to the [00:43:30.387] Bible, those people who had nothing to do with the commission of the crime. In this case, it's creating abandoned mine waste from mines that were developed 100 years ago and there's no corporate entity to go after, there's no private entity to go after. And so these literally tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of these abandoned mines, they sit on the landscape leaching this toxic brew of cadmium and zinc and arsenic [00:44:00.598] into our waterways.
And if you're a native trout freak like I am, it's particularly bad because the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 40% of all Western headwater streams, the sources of our coldest, cleanest water, the refugia for all of our native trout species like Gila and Rio Grande and other cutthroat varieties, they all depend on those headwater systems. [00:44:30.231]
Tom: Forty percent?
Chris: Forty percent.
Tom: Oh, my God. Wow.
Chris: It's a crazy big number. And so I was blessed to work at the U.S. Forest Service under a guy named Mike Dombeck. He was the chief, and I left in 2001. And we had just developed this thing called the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, where we protected 58.5 million acres of these pristine backcountry areas, which remains in effect today, by the way.
And [00:45:00.180] when I had the privilege of coming to work at TU, I was looking for the next big thing. And I thought, "This is it, cleaning up abandoned mines." I mean, there's no constituency for acid mine drainage, right? There's no lobby group in D.C. that's organized to advocate on behalf of orange or yellow rivers. This should be easy. There's no opposition to the bill.
And it took us 23 years, and we finally got [00:45:30.354] this legislation across the finish line. What happened is, for years and years, for 15, 16 years, we were trying to pass this as a standalone piece of authorizing legislation which would create a permitting program that would allow groups like Trout Unlimited or local communities or other nonprofits or state agencies that had nothing to do with the creation of this mine [00:46:00.383] pollution to go in and make things better.
But we were too ambitious. And so a couple of years ago, we scaled back our sites and we said, "Look, let's just advocate for a pilot project, a law that will enable 15 discrete restoration projects to move forward around the United States over a 7-year period. And let's [00:46:30.255] take what we learn from those 15 projects over a 7-year period and then come back again to Congress and say, 'All right, we've demonstrated that this works. We've proved the concept. Now let's authorize nationwide permitting legislation that allows these would-be good Samaritans to go out and make our waters cleaner.'"
And I should probably...because this is a bit abstruse, this topic. The challenge is that [00:47:00.048] two of our most important environmental laws, the Clean Water Act and the Superfund law, provide these profound disincentives for organizations like TU or for state agencies or local communities to go in and clean up these abandoned mines. Because once you touch it, once you do anything in these areas where there are these toxins leaching into [00:47:30.548] our waterways, you become part of the so-called "chain of custody."
And that means that you are legally liable to clean up those mines. And so what I mean by that is you can spend $100 grand and maybe you've got a whole bunch of tailings, which are literally piles of rocks that have been excavated from the earth in the interest of mining 100 years ago and they've all been exposed to oxygen [00:48:00.400] and rain and so they oxidize. And when that happens, they often leach acid mine drainage in the form of those toxins I mentioned earlier.
You can go in there with these tailings. You can go in with a bulldozer. You can dig a ditch, line it with an impermeable barrier, bulldoze those tailings, those so-called tailings into that hole that you've created, line it with another impermeable barrier, put parent material across the top, dig a French drain, reseed it with [00:48:30.721] native vegetation, and you can walk away. Problem solved.
But it might cost $100 grand to get back to 90%, to go from 30% of state water quality standards to 90%. And it might be that it's going to cost an additional increment of like $2 million or $3 million bucks to get to 100% because there might be an opening to the old mine that's draining liquid, which would require a wastewater treatment plant.
Tom: And so you're now liable [00:49:00.675] for that, right? You're now legally responsible for that. Yeah.
Chris: Yes. That's it. You become part of the chain of custody, and it's highly unlikely that the government would come after you for that, right? I mean, that would be farcical, but it's not unlikely. And in fact, it has happened that adjacent landowners might say, "Hey, thanks for getting it to 90%, but you know what? I'd like you to get it to 100%. So I'm going to file a citizen suit under [00:49:30.464] the Superfund law or the Clean Water Act, and they can then compel us to spend that additional increment of $5 million bucks to get to 100%, the Clean Water Act standards.
And so what this law does is it says you can go to the EPA, you show up with a plan of operations, how you're going to do this work. You tell them, "Look, we're going to take it all the way up to 90%, and we're going to spend $100,000 bucks to do it." But EPA will look at that and they'll say, "Okay, well, the perfect's not going to be the enemy of the good here. [00:50:00.493] We're really psyched to get to 90%. That could be a municipal water supply. It could be a headwater system for native trout. It could be a place where downstream kids are swimming. So we're going to let you do that work, and as long as you do what you say and you do make things better, you don't make them worse, you get to walk away after that and nobody can come after you."
Tom: Wow.
Chris: Yeah. Pretty common sense.
Tom: Yeah. And your idea of [00:50:30.182] taking seven test sites and proving the concept was brilliant. Instead of going for it all, you did it in increments and you proved it. Do you want to talk about some of these sites and what you did and what you saw?
Chris: Well, they're all perspectives. What the bill does is it authorizes 15 pilot projects and they have to be completed over a [00:51:00.202] 7-year period. And so we'll have another show where we talk about what happened with these pilots. But we have actually done about 40 abandoned mine cleanups around the United States, but we can only do them, Tom, on public land because we get the... Usually, it's the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management. We get them to agree to hold the liability.
So it's one thing if [00:51:30.202] John Smith, the downstream neighbor to the Forest Service says, "All right, I'm going to sue a $6 billion agency, the Forest Service, to get them to get this thing to 100%," but a little old TU, $5 million shot in the back, that leaves a mark.
So we've been able to do these cleanups in places like Montana, in the upper Clark Fork system, you know, where they took out the [00:52:00.311] Milltown Dam downstream years ago. All those headwater, the Mettawee Creek and Nine Mile Creek, other historically important spawning and rearing habitat for cutthroat trout, those areas, they did placer mining in one area, which is the 1890s version of mountaintop mining today. It's about as destructive a practice as you can imagine, where they basically reroute these streams [00:52:30.406] and turn them into ditches. They reroute them to the hillside, turn them into ditches, and then pull all the rocks and such out of them and run them through sluice gates to pull out the ore.
And we went back in and we reconstructed streams and we got rid of tailings and the fish response has been unbelievable. The fish, they come back almost immediately. And we were able to do those projects, and we did others in Colorado. [00:53:00.434] Believe it or not, we've worked well with some mining companies who...they have a vested interest in not having their industry besmirched because of all these abandoned mines. And they want to invest in cleanup but they don't dare do it themselves because some of these are multinational mining companies. They have really deep pockets and there's a lot of people who would go after them.
And so [00:53:30.432] they have supported us in places like Colorado, companies like Freeport-McMoRan, companies like Kinross out of Canada, other mining companies, Barrick Gold in Nevada. It's a relatively new partnership, but they're willing to invest in our ability to go secure all the relative irrelevant permits and clean up these sites.
But we've been relegated to doing this work, even though it's important work. I mean, 200 miles of stream is nothing to turn your nose [00:54:00.513] up at, but we've been relegated to working on public lands where we can get one of those agencies to hold the liability. And now this allows us to move that work onto private lands.
So it's really... I mean, and, you know, for the past 10 or 15 years, I don't have to tell you or your listeners this, you know, Congress has kind of put the fun in dysfunction.
Tom: That must be a D.C. expression, right?
Chris: Yeah. There's [00:54:30.814] not a lot of authorizing legislation getting... I mean, hell, they're not even passing appropriations bills anymore. So, you know, to get...which, you know, fund the government, to get a piece of standalone authorizing legislation through is just a hugely significant win. And it was only made possible because of the work of people like Martin Heinrich, a Democratic Senator from New Mexico, a friend of mine, another friend of mine, Jim Risch, a [00:55:00.277] Conservative Republican from Idaho. Those guys managed to get 40 co-sponsors in the Senate, 20 Democrats, 20 Republicans. It passed 100 to 0 in the Senate.
And then it went over to the House and we managed to get it through there on, you know, this is sort of a technicality, they call it the suspension calendar, where the speaker is able to introduce non-controversial topics [00:55:30.310] that unless someone speaks out against them and demands a vote, they pass through what's called unanimous consent. And we managed to navigate that process. And then like I say, 10 days ago, right before Christmas, 2 weeks ago, the President signed the bill into law.
Tom: So I'm not sure I completely understand the law. So you're saying that this is going to allow 15 [00:56:00.187] test sites? It's not going to open it up countrywide to anyone going into...
Chris: That's right. You got it.
Tom: Okay.
Chris: So it's a pilot project.
Tom: This is still a pilot project. Okay.
Chris: Yeah. So for like, I don't know, 18 years, we tried to get a piece of standalone authorizing legislation that would permit this kind of work just on a routine basis. So if Orvis wanted to go...if they had [00:56:30.649] some old iron mines up on the Mettawee and Orvis as a company said, "We want to go in there and do work to clean up these old iron ore mines," and I'm not sure they do, but they may, you know, you guys would be able to apply for a permit, demonstrate to the state and regulatory agencies that you have the expertise to do the work, maybe contract it out with a group like TU, and you could go out and do it. That was our vision. That is still our vision. It's kind of like... Remember President, going back [00:57:00.789] here, but President H.W. Bush, "Let a thousand flowers bloom?"
Tom: Yep.
Chris: That was our whole thing. Like, let's let a thousand flowers bloom. If a local community is paying an extra $250,000 a year to put additional water filtration on their drinking water supply because upstream there's these abandoned mines, well, let's incent them to go clean up the source of the problem and reduce [00:57:30.421] people's taxes by $250,000. But for whatever reason, we just really struggled to get that through Congress over that 16, 17, 18-year period.
And so a couple of years ago, we settled on, all right, let's... So we negotiated with the environmental community and we negotiated with the mining industry. And we basically got both on board for this pilot program, which is 15 discrete projects over a 7-year period, at which point the [00:58:00.239] legislation expires after 7 years. And then the intent would be to go back to Congress and say, "Okay, look. Look what we did. Look at all the good we did. We saved those people $250,000 a year in property taxes. We made the situation 95% better. In other places, we recovered fisheries. In other places, we made it safe for kids to swim in rivers again. Let's make this a permitting program across the country." So that will be the next step after we get these [00:58:30.212] projects done.
Tom: Okay, now I understand. Okay. So can you...? I know in the past, you've talked a little bit about some small places in Pennsylvania where you saw some really positive results from doing this.
Chris: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's places like Kettle Creek. It's one of the first places I ever went when I got to Trout Unlimited. I went out there and toured this site with the great Amy [00:59:00.274] Wolfe of TU. She leads our programs in the Mid-Atlantic region. In fact, I believe that she is the only Trout Unlimited employee who has been here longer than I, which tells you two things. Number one, they should get rid of me soon.
Tom: No, don't say that.
Chris: And number two, how good she is. I have always threatened to call her the grandmother of Trout Unlimited, but I would never do that.
Tom: She might be listening, Chris. [00:59:30.373]
Chris: So anyway, Amy did this amazing work in this place called Kettle Creek. So Kettle Creek is this little watershed that drains about 8% to 10% of the West Branch of the Susquehanna, which is a giant watershed, which was heavily impacted by abandoned, in this case, coal mines, which are different than hard rock mines. And we can talk about that in a second. And the headwaters of Kettle Creek were chock-full of [01:00:00.568] brook trout but the mainstem and some of its tributaries were severely degraded by acid mine waste and drainage coming out of these old coal mines.
And so Amy and her team, they came up with these incredibly innovative approaches where they would...you know, so the opening of a mine, they call that an adit, A-D-I-T, they'll take these draining adits where literally, she showed [01:00:30.413] me, that's like orange water flowing out of the hillside. And it's all acid mine waste. And what they do is they divert that into these, they call them constructed wetlands. They're basically settling ponds.
So the water comes through a series of these wetlands, these ponds, which are limed, they have a base material at the bottom of the wetland, and then they come out the other end sweet. The base neutralizes the acid. And by the way, we're rapidly [01:01:00.442] getting over my skis when it comes to chemistry, but the base will neutralize the acid and then it flows back into the stream, sweet water again, clean water. And they've recovered over 6 miles there of native brook trout habitat that had been lost for a century through these techniques.
And Amy and her team have expanded that approach to the entire West Branch of the Susquehanna, where I don't have [01:01:30.155] the exact number, I wished I did, but they've recovered something like 80 miles of fishable streams. So not all trout water, but 80 miles of streams that were otherwise lifeless that are now fishable again.
And one of the reasons that's possible, and I think this is important, and my mining industry friends always get mad at me when I say this, but when a ton of coal is produced in the United States, there's a tax [01:02:00.625] on the production of that coal that the mining company has to pay. And that tax goes into an Abandoned Mine Land Fund, which since 1977 has raised about $11 billion, $12 billion to clean up abandoned coal mines.
There is no analog to that. There's nothing like that when it comes to hard rock minerals. So in many ways, the United States still acts like a third-world country when it comes [01:02:30.499] to foreign companies coming in or even national companies, native companies, American companies, they're able to mine gold, silver, copper, rare earth minerals that are really important for the clean energy economy of the future. They mine them without any tax or any royalty. And as a consequence, there's no fund that's used to clean up abandoned mines, hard rock mines, gold, silver, [01:03:00.396] copper, rare earth minerals.
And that's the next step in this puzzle. So we've solved the problem of incenting people, good Samaritans, people who had nothing to do with the creation of these abandoned mines. We've incented them now to go out and clean them up.
And the next part of the puzzle is to sit down in a collaborative conversation with the industry and with conservation groups and come up with a reasonable royalty that we can use to [01:03:30.408] fund the cleanup of these sites across the country.
Tom: Now, how was Amy able to do this on these coal mines? Wasn't she triggering a liability by building those settling ponds?
Chris: So it's a great question, Tom. And make sure that none of my board members listen to this call because there was some risk of that. So Pennsylvania passed the...and there still is.
Tom: I love that approach. [01:04:00.564]
Chris: Pennsylvania... Well, I've been here this long. It's probably time to get some new blood anyway. But Pennsylvania passed its own state-based Good Samaritan legislation, which was focused only on coal. But Tom, your point is really prescient, because there are legal experts who say that, "Okay, sure, you've got the cover of that state law, but federal law [01:04:30.678] takes primacy." And it doesn't mean that someone could come in and sue us or someone else for one of these ponds. I mean, I think it would be an interesting case. But there has been some risk that we've taken in doing these projects, but the outcomes speak for themselves.
I mean, I met with a couple of old-timers who talked about how their fathers would fish Kettle Creek and how... [01:05:00.648] And Kettle Creek is one of these areas that actually looked pretty good. Like you'd say, there's got to be fish in there, but it was just completely lifeless. And they talk now about the joy that they have from knowing that there's fish in there again, that their grandkids go out there and they wade in the water and they fish. And whether they catch anything or not, the fact that they can access the river again and feel like it's part of the community, I mean, it's super encouraging.
Tom: Well, I remember fishing Kettle Creek [01:05:30.260] 40 years ago with a guy who had fished it a long time before that. And he said, "Oh, it's a great river." And I looked at it and it looked really good. And I don't think I caught a fish in it. So yeah, I can sympathize with that issue on Kettle Creek for sure, personally.
Chris: And it's all over. I mean, it's in West Virginia, it's in Pennsylvania. They've done incredible work. On the hard rock [01:06:00.419] side, the gold, silver, copper, and the rare earth and other minerals like that, that's mostly a Western issue. But these abandoned mines, they're all around the country. I mean, as you know, and we've joked about in the past, I grew up in New Jersey, which is not a trout-fishing Mecca. There's hundreds of abandoned mines in New Jersey. In fact...
Tom: No kidding.
Chris: Yeah. I just read the other day that a sinkhole opened on, I think it was Route 80, a major interstate [01:06:30.493] that goes east to west that people from New Jersey will know in New Jersey. And it was an old abandoned mine that just opened up. I mean, those iron ore mines from the Mid-Atlantic States and New England, I mean, they won us the Revolutionary War. They won the Civil War. And a lot of the coal mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and to a lesser extent, Colorado and Wyoming, they won World War II.
So [01:07:00.934] I mean, mining has a really important legacy in this country, and mining is vitally important to the future, especially when it comes to mining things like cobalt and lithium and other rare earth minerals that are going to be just vital to building more windmills and making electric batteries, charges hold longer, and building more solar panels. But we have to figure out how to modernize the laws that govern [01:07:30.241] mining in this country so that we can allow industry the certainty they need to access those materials in a business-efficient manner, right, so they're not waiting for 20 years for a permit.
But we also have to ask industry to give back and say that, "You know what, there are some places you shouldn't mine, right? Bristol Bay, that's a bad place to mine. And we're going to say that we accept that there are some places we shouldn't mine, and we're also going to accept that we probably ought to [01:08:00.256] pay a royalty or a fee that allows us to go out and clean up the legacy problems associated with mining from the past." And anyway, I think that's, like, the big next frontier I think for us, helping to negotiate that deal.
Tom: Yeah. When I'm down in Chile, I drive by these exposed rock faces [01:08:30.512] on these dirt roads, and I see these big green slabs of copper ore, and I think, "Oh, I wish that didn't show up so well."
Chris: Yeah, that's not good. That's not good. No, no, look, I'm really pleased. Look, I mean, this is... I mean, I'm jumping topics for just half a second. I mean, I've been at TU for, let's see, 23 years now. And I think this is the most [01:09:00.369] important year we've ever had as an organization. And I was thinking about copper. It started with President Trump, frankly, denying the key permit for Bristol Bay back in 2020. But then it took a couple of years, but finally, at the beginning of this year, the Biden administration basically finalized the protections for Bristol Bay and stopped the Pebble Mine in its tracks. [01:09:30.410]
We have done hundreds of miles of stream restoration tied to that Bipartisan Infrastructure Law where 17 Republicans in the Senate voted for it, and even Inflation Reduction Act funding, which I know is more controversial now, but we've done hundreds of miles of stream restoration because of the availability of those funds. We were integral [01:10:00.637] in delisting the Apache trout, which is a Southwestern trout species found in Arizona. It's the first time we've ever taken a trout or a salmon species off of the endangered species list, not because it went extinct, but because we recovered it, we restored it.
And that was us and the Forest Service and Arizona Department of Fish and Game. Of course, most of the credit goes to the White Mountain [01:10:30.506] Band of the Apache Tribe. I mean, there's a friend of mine named Jim Furnish who I worked with at the Forest Service. He was kind of a mentor of mine. And in the most recent "Trout Magazine," he emailed me and he said, "Hey, I started my career in the Forest Service in Colorado right when they were talking about building this dam in the headwaters of the Colorado. We knew that was a bad idea."
And what [01:11:00.639] made him so happy was, here it is 30, 40 years later, this year we successfully completed a mile bypass, creating a mile of natural stream around that dam, which provides important water to people in the Front Range. And it will still continue to do that. But now we've created a mile of what will ultimately be gold medal fishery quality trout water and improved 30 miles of habitat downstream. That happened this year. We took out the four Klamath dams this year. [01:11:30.666] I mean, it makes my head spin to think of the scope and the scale of the work this year.
Tom: Yeah, it's been an incredible year. And there's the old cliche that we're not making any new trout streams, but with this restoration, with these mine restorations, we are making new trout streams, at least ones in recent history weren't trout streams and they are now.
Chris: Yeah, we're recreating [01:12:00.665] them is what we're doing. I remember Barry Lopez, who I love, I'm not going to get the full quote right, but he talked about how restoration is the work of repairing and re-knitting these connections to the land. And that's the beautiful thing. It's like... You know, you think about Jacob Fetterman up in Vermont working on the Battenkill. He's engaged [01:12:30.227] hundreds of school kids in planting trees along that river. That means that those kids are going to go home and they're going to tell their parents about how cool the Battenkill is and how we need to take care of it. And maybe their parents then decide to financially support efforts that make the Battenkill better.
I mean, it's just... I don't know. I just think there's... I cut my teeth doing land protection, you know, 58.5 million acres is a big number when you're [01:13:00.324] 30 years old. But more and more, as I mellow, I realized that the most lasting impact we can do is by recovering and repairing and re-knitting our connection to these lands so that... It's not the integrity of a rulemaking that you worked on with a group of people at the Forest Service that matters. It's the reconnecting a whole series of communities to these lands and waters [01:13:30.608] that sustain them that matters.
Tom: And Chris, don't mellow too much because you need to keep up the fight, okay? I don't want you to mellow. I don't want you to sit back and mellow too much.
Chris: No, nobody who knows me would ever call me mellow. There's probably never been an adjective described to me.
Tom: Well, that's good. That's good because we need people like you. All right, Chris. Well, [01:14:00.467] that was great. And I want to thank you so much for the update. It's always a pleasure having you on the podcast. They're always popular podcasts because people are really looking for this kind of information. It's been in the newspapers but people miss it. And I don't think they realize the significance of it until they hear it from a couple of trout anglers that see what potential this could have.
Chris: Yeah. [01:14:30.349] Well, listen, can I tell my favorite story? And I know you may edit this out, but if you do it, I'll be really angry.
Tom: We never edit anything, Chris. Go ahead. Tell your favorite story. Shawn Combs told a story about me this week on the podcast.
Chris: I'll have to listen for that one, okay? But I want to just give some kudos back to you and Orvis. Orvis has been such a longstanding supporter of efforts like Crystal Bay and [01:15:00.476] the Mettawee and, dear God, I'm dropping the name of the river I mentioned earlier.
Tom: Oh, the Battenkill, you know, just a little local river.
Chris: The Battenkill, yeah, I know. All those rivers. But my favorite story is this. I remember the first time you invited me to come up to the headquarters up there on Conservation Way in Vermont. And I drove up there and I thought, "Oh, my God, I'm going to meet..." I should say, "Oh, my gosh," forgive me, "I'm going to meet Tom [01:15:30.289] Rosenbauer. So in my family...
Tom: Yeah, big deal, huh?
Chris: So in my world, there's, like, three people. There's the Pope, there's Bruce, and there's Tom Rosenbauer.
Tom: Oh, Chris.
Chris: Because I sat as a freshman in college, maybe I was a sophomore, with the "Orvis 101 Guide to Fly Fishing" by Tom Rosenbauer. And I read that book from cover to cover. It was dog-eared. And every time I read it, I thought, "You know what, [01:16:00.454] this can't be that hard. I'm going to go out tomorrow." And every time I went out, I would end up leaving the river frustrated because I broke flies on errant casts. I would get these snags, not just snags in my leader, but snags with my fly line and rocks. And I was falling over and I never caught any fish. And then...
Tom: You think I don't do that stuff, Chris?
Chris: One day, I had a Zug Bug on and I got this giant [01:16:30.447] Gordian knot in my fly line, not in the leader. It was a giant, giant knot. And I thought, "Screw Tom Rosenbauer. I hate fly fishing." And I was on the New Haven River in Vermont, right, where the old Dog Team Tavern used to be, which burnt down tragically. And I caught my first trout with that Zug Bug hanging behind me as I untied that knot. And as I walked off the river and I drove [01:17:00.648] back, I thought, "You know what, maybe Rosenbauer isn't so badass." Anyway, it's always a pleasure, Tom.
Tom: Well, thank you, Chris. It's always great to have you on the podcast. And hopefully, we'll have lots of good news in the coming year. We'll get you on again.
Chris: Amen, brother. Happy New Year.
Tom: Okay, Happy New Year. Thanks, Chris.
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