WinstonConfluentus

Yikes!!! No one’s ever hung me up like that; it looks like it hurts – a lot! I hope my friend had a chance to spawn before that happened. Here’s what we like: cradle us with one hand under our pectoral fins and one by our bums staying away from our eyes, gills and bellies. This is especially important when we get bigger. When you take us out of the water, it feels like we weigh a million pounds and we can’t breath – at all! Unlike you guys with lungs and air, we can’t hold a bunch of water in our mouths to get by for a minute or two so please don’t do that one!

Hello again gang. Well I found me a gal and I even managed to find some clean water for us to hang out in (it’s not just one slump wrecking Hidden; it seems to be coming in from everywhere). You know, I thought it was true love; we built the most beautiful redd ever, I chased off a couple of teenagers who were hangin’ around checking her out and we had some great moments under the moonlight chatting ‘till the sun came up, but now, I haven’t seen her in days. I’m not the first fellow to be left sitting on the redd I guess. I was worried something might have happen to her, (there’s some scary looking folks hanging around lately), but then I hear my buddy saw her down past the Livingstone hanging out with her girlfriends. You know, the only thing I understand less than humans is girl-trouts. Oh well, maybe I’ll take a swim down there and see if she wants to hang-out this weekend; we could (wink wink), watch the Whitefish go by.

Hello again gang, I’ve been off courting the ladies in hope of maybe getting a date later this month. There’s some real lookers out there, but I’m still having trouble finding a good spot for a date. Hidden is still a mess and much worse when it rains, so I’m worried any gal I take there would just turn up her snout and head back downstream. I didn’t get all dressed up for this! Wow, I was sure surprised at the last post from Taco; why anyone who fancies themselves an angler would seek to minimise the damage happening to our watershed is beyond me. I don’t get humans sometimes? If you want to know the truth, ask someone who knows something about watersheds not some fellow working for a logging company. Someone was having their coffee and reading the paper by the river yesterday and I noticed the article was about my place: you folks might find this interesting: http://lethbridgeherald.com/2013/08/commentary/opinions/shameful-legacy-of-hidden-creek/ I think this fellow might know a little something.

Thanks Dave, we know what you meant about the other stuff, but we do like 'em barbless. Here's a Cutty Buddy of mine who can't close his mouth anymore even with such a tasty morsel nearby. He's going to slowly starve to death, when he gets weak one of us will help him out. Kinda sad though eh?

Oh ya, here's the third quad in my bedroom I was talking about on page one. Some of them seem to be pretty carefull about it, not this bunch. They seemed to think it was fun to wreck my neighbourhood?!

I was up Hidden Creek and the Oldman above it yesterday and ran into one of my kiddos, he wasn't looking so good.

Hi again, thanks gang for your concern. It’s nice to know some of you really care about what’s going in my neighbourhood, but it’s not so nice to see how mean some of you get with each other. It’s not somebody’s fault, it’s everybody’s fault! Please don’t spend all your time worrying about who said what to whom, where the pictures are, or how did this happen? Right now we need you to stop all this dirt from coming in every time it rains!

I rubbed my nose raw trying to find my way home this year, but this weekend was the worst! You know, I haven’t seen some of my buddies since the flood and at this rate I don’t know if I ever will again. We got the stuffing knocked out of us in the flood and we really need your help now if we’re gonna make it through this. I finally made it up above Hidden Creek the other day and what do I find when I get there? Quads in the River!!! This is the second one spinning its wheels in my bedroom! See the dirt trail from the first one? I came up here hoping there may be a spot where we could spawn and, some of the water looks pretty good, but these guys have got to get out of the river! Our eggs are so delicate that we really need the water to stay clean all fall and winter to give our babies any chance at all. It takes so little sediment to suffocate an egg and if one of these guys actually hits a redd, gasp! I don’t even want to think about it. Come on gang, please help! I know the rain wasn’t your fault, but the rest of it… It didn’t have to be this bad.

Thanks for the honest, heartfelt post. The upper Oldman (my spiritual and often literal home), is in similar condition. The headwaters of both the Highwood and Oldman zig-zag between the peaks and this was the area that received the greatest amount of rain. The devastation is utter and complete in some areas. If you really want a bad day check out the area on Google Earth; its not too hard to correlate the ferocity of the event with the clear cuts. Pasque, Cataract, Dry, Savanna, Wilkinson they are all nothing but gravel, silt and logs now. Hidden Creek, my natal stream, is in big trouble too. Between the clear cuts last fall and the flood this spring we still dont know if there will be anywhere to spawn. I dont know if anyone has noticed, but the Oldman continues to run dirty; its all coming from Hidden Creek as every other trib has cleared. If fish could cry