T
Tinker
0
I take the labs up to the Edson Creek Campground to run in the off-season (I met the district manager last year and he gave us permission "as long as we pick up their 'presents'"). We usually walk the length of the campground then cross the road to the Sixes River boat launch site.
Yesterday, standng on the bank of the Sixes, I picked up seventeen (17!) Camel filters butts, two piles of dog poo, about 60 PowerBait eggs, plus a leader, bobber and trout hook someone tried to burn in a campfire ring. T'ain't no fishng in that river until today, May 25th, and the trash I picked-up wasn't there last week, so WTF?
Stopped at mid-drift on the Sixes as we were heading home and found more fresh crap, but this time it was human crap. Someone had built a fire, cooked some baked beans (and left the empty cans), left half-a-dozen piles of well-used toilet paper on the bank, and walked away from about 50-yards of line, their bobber and a #2 hook - thankfully the dogs didn't snag themselves. This wasn't there ten days ago, so again, WTF?
From asking around, it seems that this is becoming more-and-more common down here in the SW. Whenever we walk or fish the beaches, we carry out a shopping bag full of trash someone just left behind - Gatorade and soda bottles and dog poo mostly; rarely we find something that washed-up in the tide. And this seems new. We are on the beaches almost every day, rain or shine, and we haven't seen anything like this in the past year.
I spent twenty years in Arizona counting the days until we would come back to Oregon. I picked up at least ten tons of trash back there - and if you want to have a fun day, join a group of volunteers cleaning up the washes in the National Monuments down there from all the soiled diapers, used condoms and tampons, stacks and piles of water bottles and you name whatever human flotsam you can think of and we picked it up. All of it discarded as people snuck across the borders. You got used to seeing a trashed landscape down there.
But here? To see blatant attempts at poaching and the general disregard for the beaches and these spectacular little rivers, here, in Oregon, too? To find the same kind of trash in the same kinds of places was like a flashback.
Do I keep any fish from the Sixes - if I should ever catch one
- or should I play it safe and always release them because there's a good chance they've had some contact with human fecal material?
It ain't right, it's a damn shame.
Carry a bag with you. I never doubt that everyone in the OFF community is scrupulous about carrying out whatever we carry in, but it's not enough. Carry a bag to carry out some of what others are leaving behind. Please?
It's enough to make a Sicilian shed a tear.
Yesterday, standng on the bank of the Sixes, I picked up seventeen (17!) Camel filters butts, two piles of dog poo, about 60 PowerBait eggs, plus a leader, bobber and trout hook someone tried to burn in a campfire ring. T'ain't no fishng in that river until today, May 25th, and the trash I picked-up wasn't there last week, so WTF?
Stopped at mid-drift on the Sixes as we were heading home and found more fresh crap, but this time it was human crap. Someone had built a fire, cooked some baked beans (and left the empty cans), left half-a-dozen piles of well-used toilet paper on the bank, and walked away from about 50-yards of line, their bobber and a #2 hook - thankfully the dogs didn't snag themselves. This wasn't there ten days ago, so again, WTF?
From asking around, it seems that this is becoming more-and-more common down here in the SW. Whenever we walk or fish the beaches, we carry out a shopping bag full of trash someone just left behind - Gatorade and soda bottles and dog poo mostly; rarely we find something that washed-up in the tide. And this seems new. We are on the beaches almost every day, rain or shine, and we haven't seen anything like this in the past year.
I spent twenty years in Arizona counting the days until we would come back to Oregon. I picked up at least ten tons of trash back there - and if you want to have a fun day, join a group of volunteers cleaning up the washes in the National Monuments down there from all the soiled diapers, used condoms and tampons, stacks and piles of water bottles and you name whatever human flotsam you can think of and we picked it up. All of it discarded as people snuck across the borders. You got used to seeing a trashed landscape down there.
But here? To see blatant attempts at poaching and the general disregard for the beaches and these spectacular little rivers, here, in Oregon, too? To find the same kind of trash in the same kinds of places was like a flashback.
Do I keep any fish from the Sixes - if I should ever catch one
- or should I play it safe and always release them because there's a good chance they've had some contact with human fecal material?It ain't right, it's a damn shame.
Carry a bag with you. I never doubt that everyone in the OFF community is scrupulous about carrying out whatever we carry in, but it's not enough. Carry a bag to carry out some of what others are leaving behind. Please?
It's enough to make a Sicilian shed a tear.
