Outside Bend

It's my understanding this is a group of citizens (Center for Biological Diversity) petitioning the government (EPA) for action. That is how a democracy works, right?

See, THAT makes sense to me. You're not irrational, just looking out for your own interests. WAIT... You would seriously rather strap 30 lbs of animal guts (not just heart and liver and that, but the intestines, skin, bones, stomach contents, feces, bladder, etc) on your back and carry it 5 miles out of the field than carry a pound or so of non-toxic bullets INTO the field?! You and I have very different ideas of common sense

Sounds like an excellent day on the water, good on you

Common loons, and brown pelicans, and double-crested cormorants, and yellow-crowned night herons, and Canada geese, and canvasback ducks, and great blue herons, and redhead ducks (read Ann's paper). My guess is, when you map out those ranges, it covers a pretty broad swath of the US. Not to mention many of those birds migrate, so banning lead tackle in New York will do no good if lead stays legal in Florida.

Appreciable is subjective. Birds ingest rocks as grit. Fish frequently ingest non-food items- sticks, plastic, coins, gum, PowerBait, and yes, even stones. Personally I don't see how a fish mistakes a chartreuse spinnerbait for food, but that doesn't matter. They do. Again- if you'd bother looking it up, you would see that people are concerned about pharmaceuticals in the water, and people are working to improve sewage treatment plants. More importantly, the two issues aren't mutually exclusive- you can be worried about pharmaceuticals and be worried about lead. Personally I'm worried about water pollution- be it pharmaceuticals, PCBs, organic waste from CAFO's, or heavy metals-including lead. I don't draw the line at some arbitrary point. If you want to simply ignore facts that's fine, but there's no point in continuing the discussion, then. Go buy a goldfish and feed it lead. Let me know what happens.

No kidding. A JEOPARDY match between Sean Penn and Sarah Palin...that would be tv worth watching!

I like those, I especially dig the merc shot.

Sounds like a good trip, nice striped shiner, too.

You guys are right, I stand corrected- China does produce the most tungsten. But China also produces the most lead, so I think it's a moot point. Pure tungsten is considered non-toxic, some tungsten compounds (tungsten oxides, tungsten sulfides, etc) are toxic- that's what the Army was having trouble with. The report I cited specifically states more than 20% of the loons died due to ingesting lead fishing tackle. Even if that weren't true, again, what's the difference between a piece of lead gunshot and a similarly-sized lead split shot? Is a loon, or any other bird, somehow capable of ingesting one but not the other? Thanks Quillback, for at least tangentially answering my question. I'm guessing no one else has an answer, hence the deflecting about lightbulbs, bureaucrats, nasty liberals, environmental fascists, and all the rest. Guys- have a great holiday weekend. Seriously.

Good thing you can make unleaded bullets, hey. Anyone want to venture a guess as to the world's largest lead producer? HINT: it rhymes with "China." As for tungsten...well, there's nothing I can think of that rhymes with Australia. There's one I'd rather buy from than the other, can you guess which one? Because lead is a poison. UH GAIN...if poison is bad, and lead is a poison, wouldn't it be logical to conclude that lead is bad, and that perhaps dumping tons of it into the nation's streams isn't a wise thing to do, even if we really, really enjoy doing it? Why is lead a special case? My previous question is still hanging out there, waiting to be answered...

Tricos ought to be going pretty strong, but terrestrials should still catch a pile of fish. Drop a zebra midge or something similar (small) underneath your dry for the shy ones... Like OTF says, unless there's a big storm, or a few days of wet weather, you ought to be fine for fishing. The Current's a fairly narrow valley, and unless storms hit it directly, you aren't likely to find dirty water. Good luck!

Darwin would never rule on this; evolution has no direction IMO, the best reality show was "Surviving Ted Nugent," particularly when he very nearly chainsawed his leg off. The buxom Jersey Girl gutting chickens and waxing whitetails didn't hurt, either.

x2, although I personally think it would be awesome to have a guy sporting a blue-and-red mohawk cradling a big Current River brown on the front page of the Conservationist At some point, I'm going to have to take a peek into your flybox

I only fish dry flies, preferably upstream I usually use brass beads anyway, occasionally tungsten. They make lead-free wire and I have some, I guess I'll be investing more in that direction. I guess I figure there's no easy solution, and there are probably more pressing issues facing our aquatic resources than sinkers and split shot. But it is something within our realm of control, so maybe we ought to head in that direction.

I'm not trying to insult anyone's intelligence- you really should've been taught about food chains in fourth grade science. I did. I guess that's public school education for you And I'm not surprised that I've "come up with nothing." The first part of the discussion was "There's no evidence lead tackle harms wildlife." That's false. It moved to "lead split shot may be harmful, but not other lead products." Now it's "well lead may impact wildlife, but there's no evidence it's of concern in fish tissue." Of course there's no way for me to give a satisfactory answer when you keep changing the question! No, lead doesn't accumulate in fish flesh like mercury does. Lead typically winds up in organs- specifically the liver and the gonads. People don't typically eat fish gonads or livers, so there's little issue of people getting lead poisoning from eating fish. But since fish generally propagate themselves through reproduction, having your gonads poisoned by lead could be an issue. While writing an earlier post I started thinking about sucker populations, and how curious it is that one of the fish taxa most susceptible to lead poisoning seems to be undergoing a steady decline in many parts of the Ozarks. Maybe lead poisoning could account for some of that decline, I don't know...but it'd be interesting to tease that out. It's not a question of how you feel about using lead or whether or not you see the proof. The question is whether using lead fishing tackle negatively impacts wildlife. When more than 20% of sampled birds died from lead poisoning via fishing tackle, I think that's an issue. Think about it in human terms- if 20% of the US death rate was attributable to lead poisoning, wouldn't you think that's an issue? I admit, someone dropping a split shot or two seems inconsequential. But according to USFWS, anglers cumulatively spent 517 million days fishing in 2006. Assuming you lose an average of a half-ounce of lead each trip, by the end of the year more than 8000 tons of lead have been deposited in our waterways. If it were discovered Dow or Monsanto was releasing 8000 tons of heavy metals into streams each year, we'd be outraged. Since it's you and me doing it though, it's inconsequential? I call BS. The sub-lethal effects of lead are well understood- again all you'd have to do is look it up. What that quote says is that the relationship between human health and overall environmental well being aren't completely understood. Ok. "Annual average Pb concentrations in sucker fillets ranged up to 0.67 μg/g (wet weight basis) and exceeded the World Health Organization guidelines of 0.3 μg/g (wet weight basis) at many of the sample sites." Granted that's a study from the Old Lead Belt, but I doubt there's a way to establish whether fish are lead-poisoned via tailings or lead-poisoned via fishing tackle. It's all lead. I'm not trying to make enemies here, guys. I just can't wrap my mind around why it's immoral for someone to poison a stream with fertilizer or cadmium or oil or chickens, but it's alright for us to poison a stream with lead. Can anyone answer that for me? I guess I'm done with this for now, there's better things to do on a Saturday evening EDIT: I didn't think much about using lead either, until I started seeing these ban announcements online. When I started researching it, I did realize that it some of the data is a little alarming (to me), and I won't be purchasing the product for fishing any more.

No problem Cricket, it can get awfully Looney in here from time to time

How many of those birds would've died of ingesting lead fishing tackle if lead fishing tackle wasn't in use? And if those 105 birds are representative of the population as a whole, and 1/5th of the birds are dying as a result of lead poisoning...isn't that a significant issue? What exactly is the difference between a piece of lead gunshot and a similarly sized piece of lead split shot? A cut? They're both made of lead, right? Is one somehow less toxic than the other? If you've fished, you've likely broken off a jighead or spinner. It's my understanding most hooks will rust, dissolve, or otherwise degrade in water with time. If you're using a hook with a gob of lead on the end, and the hook rusts out, what do you have left? Basically, a hunk of lead shot. I guess I just can't seem to find a compelling reason to keep using lead. In my opinion it's only virtue is that it's cheap, and the cheapest solution isn't always the best. Don't get me wrong- I love fishing as much as the next guy. But needlessly poisoning the environment because lead is more convenient and cheaper than tungsten or other alternatives just ain't my style.

Here, let me Google that for you Lead in Mute Swans "We also conducted a survey of blood lead levels in 921 swans over the same period and 74% were found to have elevated blood lead levels over 1.21 μmol/l. " More Mr. Swan "Of 94 swan corpses examined at post-mortem 57% died from lead poisoning due to ingestion of anglers' weights. Birds dying from lead poisoning had significantly higher liver and kidney lead levels." /42/3/651"'>Seals "An adult female harbor seal (Phoca vitulina richardsi) stranded in northern California on 25 June 2004, exhibited progressive weakness, disorientation, and seizures, and despite therapy, died within 4 days. On pathologic examination, a lead fishing sinker was in the stomach, and changes in the brain, heart, kidney, liver, lymph nodes, and spleen were supportive of acute lead toxicosis" More swans Loons "Diagnostic and analytical findings are presented for 105 common loons (Gavia immer) found dead or debilitated in New York (USA) from 1972-99. Aspergillosis (23% of cases) and ingestion of lead fishing weights (21%) were the most common pathologies encountered" Even penguins. "Miscellaneous causes of death included entanglement in discarded fishing tackle and/or plastic debris, the toxic effects of oil in birds contaminated by marine spills and chronic lead poisoning (due to ingestion of part of a lead fishing sinker)." Pacific Loons "ead poisoning, associated with ingestion of spent lead shot, was diagnosed in an adult female Pacific loon (Gavia pacifica) observed with partial paralysis on 13 June 2002 and found dead on 16 June 2002 on Kigigak Island, Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, western Alaska, USA" Then I got lazy. This thread is plumb idiotic. If you'd like to go ahead and track down all the citations, be my guest. But here's something I found interesting: "The situation seems to be similar in fish. Adult fish of some species appear to be relatively insensitive to acute toxicity, but their eggs and larvae can show dramatic effects at low levels of exposure, sometimes resulting in population level effects and ecosystem alteration (Carpenter 1924a, b, Dilling et al. 1926, Jones 1964, Srivastava and Mishra 1979, Birge et al. 1979, Johansson-Sjöbeck and Larsson 1979, Newsome and Piron 1982, Hodson et al. 1984, Coughlan et al. 1986, Dallinger et al. 1987, Tewari et al. 1987, Eisler 1988, Tulasi et al. 1989, Sorensen 1991, Weber et al. 1997, Kasthuri and Chandran 1997, Chaurasia et al. 1996, Chaurasia and Kar 1999, Shafiq-ur-Rehman 2003, Martinez et al. 2004, Shah 2006). It seems clear that as more studies explore the sub-lethal effects of lead exposure in non-human species, there will be increased emphasis on integrating our thinking so that threats to human health are understood in the context of an over all environmental well-being." So yeah, the assertion that there's no evidence of lead negatively impacting wildlife is complete and utter BS I couldn't find info regarding lead's mobility through aquatic ecosystems, but I did find an example which makes the point: "The Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) may be a prime illustration of our need for a more comprehensive understanding of lead exposure sources in wildlife. Recently, one of these rodents was brought to the Tufts Wildlife Clinic and found to have a markedly elevated blood lead level of over 65μg/dL. Anecdotal stories of squirrels chewing on lead chimney flashing have been reported by homeowners for years, and recently a New Hampshire Fish and Game biologist confirmed that she regularly receives calls about “problem” squirrels that continually gnaw on chimney flashing. Analogous to children eating flecks of lead-based paint, this may be evidence of pica in squirrels. It may also be one explanation for the lead-poisoned predators like Red-tailed Hawks and Barred Owls that are periodically submitted to Tufts’ Wildlife Clinic. Because millions of homes nationwide have lead flashing around chimneys, doors, and other openings, this appears to represents an overlooked source of plumbism in wildlife." I guess I figure if lead can move from squirrels to hawks and owls, it can likely move from aquatic invertebrates to fish.

I had to tackle this separately. By far one of the saddest, most entertaining posts I've seen on OA- It reminded me a lot of the Billy Madison quiz bowl God may have created lead, but He wasn't stupid enough to leave it lying around as a pure metal, in high concentrations, in most places. It typically occurs naturally as a less reactive ore, mixed with other elements like sulphur and oxygen. Lead tackle, though, is basically refined, 100% lead, something very rare in nature. If you want to take the bible literally, fine, but I can't seem to recall any passages stating "Thou Shalt Use Lead." I do recall Numbers 35 though, which states something to the effect of: "You shall not pollute the land in which you live, you shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell." I'd consider introducing hazardous materials into the environment pollution/defilement of the land, so yeah, the Bible tells us not to use lead, or at least not pollute the planet with it. Seems pretty cut and dry to me. The last part (re: the anthropocene epoch), is, to put it bluntly, completely ignorant and backward- you could start a whole other topic debunking what you wrote. Suffice it to say no one's making it up- animals really are going extinct at an incredible rate, and human activity seems to be the main cause. As for migrations you have it precisely correct- when you put an oil field in the midst of an antelope migration corridor the animals will go around it, problem is that migration corridor is there for a reason- it's the best habitat for them to migrate through. They're pushed off prime habitat and into poorer areas, and their populations suffer. When you really think about it, these things aren't all that difficult to grasp.

Wow. I was out of town, and it looks like I missed a lot. Here are my thoughts, in a nutshell (Part I) 1.) The "alternatives are too expensive," argument is utterly bogus. It's cheaper for me to litter than to pay the garbageman, that doesn't give me an excuse to litter. 2.) Since when did we have the right to use lead sinkers? 3.) You’re right, lead is naturally occurring. However, I’ve never heard of anyone mining for lead sinkers. Most lead is sequestered in ores such as galena, which is less reactive than the purified metal. Mistaking processed lead and lead ore is like mistaking table sugar and a sugar beet. They ain’t the same. 4.) Water birds use water (duh). There isn’t much difference between lead gun-shot and lead split-shot, and when you put either in the water, it becomes available to birds for use as grit. This leads to lead poisoning. And although a fish may not eat the shot, the inverts the fish prey on will be scraping algae and detritus off the shot, ingesting lead, and it works its way up the food chain from there. C’mon guys, this is fourth grade science… Suffice it to say lead is nasty stuff for pretty much all living organisms, not just people, ducks, geese and doves. 5.) I’m amazed that you guys are 100% positive there’s no negative effects of lead in the environment even though I’d be willing to bet none of you have actually done the research. If you guys are clairvoyant, there’s a lot more pressing needs for that gift. Moreover, I don’t understand how you can say “there’s no evidence lead harms wildlife,” when in fact there’s reams of data indicating lead (including lead fishing tackle) has negative impacts on wildlife. If you don‘t want to believe something that‘s fine, as they say, ignorance is bliss. But don’t be dishonest. Plus, it would be a lot harder to discredit what you guys say if you took the time to look things up, and figure out what you’re about to write is even remotely accurate

Woah woah woah wait...I guess I hadn't read Al's initial post... You guys have your panties in a wrinkle over what works out to a little over ten fish per mile? That's not exactly fishing in a barrel... God forbid you ever see what happens when 500 volts of DC are pulsed through an Ozark smallmouth stream.

That'd explain the productivity Everyone out here just calls every river the Notellum.

This late in the game, I'd echo Gavin's advice and stay at Sunburst. Excellent folks, and more than accomodating. Though if you're looking for an authentic Ozark cultural experience, Patrick's Bridge on Labor Day weekend probably isn't a bad place to be

That really is a shame. I like to think one of the components of this sport is that it can be anything to anyone- I fish with folks who only target monsters, who shake off anything under 15". I have friends who love catching fish regardless of size. I fish with folks (like me) who can become completely engrossed with catching a single fish, regardless of whether it's ten or twenty inches. I fish with folks who fish to escape the so-called "real world." I fish with folks for whom fishing is an excuse to get out on a river, float a stream, and catch a buzz. I fish with folks who may make a dozen casts all day, spending the rest of their time snorkeling after darters and minnows and hellbenders and crayfish, digging up freshwater mussels or lamprey larvae, or poking at snakes or turtles in the streamside vegetation. Personally, I fish out of a curiosity for water and the organisms which inhabit that medium; I'm constantly delighted by the prospect of momentarily capturing an organism I'll never fully understand. It's all a matter of personal expression- any attempt at ranking or holding one facet above the sport above another is completely arbitrary. What I'm getting at is, simply, that no matter why you do it, it's all good. You don't have to embrace it, it doesn't have to be "your thing." Just understand it's the beauty someone else sees in the sport. Rant over.

No kidding. After seeing how some folks handle trivial differences of editorial opinion, I'd be nervous to see how they tackle actual, substantive issues...