Pacific salmon

What do the Columbia River and and Great Lakes have in common?

Fishing for salmon.

Just back from a National Geographic cruise on the Columbia and Snake Rivers.  The Columbia River has been dammed for electric power and the Pacific salmon that used to crowd the Columbia River are not found above the locks and dams in any good numbers.

I took the video below the locks and dams.  I also took a trip up the wild Snake River where white sturgeon are found and the steelhead run.  The steelhead were not running yet.  The water was too warm I was told. But they were expected in spite of invasive species of fish in these waters.

We went through Hell's Canyon and I could see how it got that name.  My imagination went wild there seeing all sorts of figures in the convoluted rocks.  We came to the confluence of the wild Salmon River (The River of No Return).

I am pleased that Pacific salmon are living in the upper Great Lakes.  This was an idea that has worked. To learn more about how Pacific salmon happened to be planted in the Great Lakes read my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes.  This critcally acclaimed book is widely available on the www and in many bookstores.

Fishing for Trout and Salmon in the Great Lakes

The fishing boats are out today.  Read about how the Great Lakes became a mecca for trout and salmon fishing in The Dynamic Great Lakes, a critically acclaimed non-fiction book.

The book is widely available in bookstores and on the net.  Barnes & Noble offers a good price.

Steelhead Fishing in a Great Lakes' Tributary

One of the steelheads has the scar left by a lampry eel on its side.  Pictured is Norm Spring holding the fish that were caught on the Grand River in downtown Grand Rapids Michigan.  Their guide, Greg Knapp said he really enjoyed the day.  They all caught their limits by 11 a.m. yesterday, not April Fools Day.  So Norm and I had a fish dinner last night.  Steelhead prepared with olive oil and broiled.

Norm is a founder of the Steelheaders organization.

Read more about Great Lakes fish and lots of facts about the Great Lakes in my book, The Dynamic Great Lakes. 

                  


I have always loved this sonnet:

                 Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—


For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
                               --Gerard Manley Hopkins