SpoonDog

I think it's regional, too. Out west folks may shoot up signage, rut up access roads...but I don't remember seeing garbage at fishing accesses and trailheads. Most places in the Wisconsin driftless you can park at a bridge and fish, and you don't see litter, beer cans, fire rings. Unless it was posted, you could hike or hunt or fish basically anywhere you wanted in Vermont. I think private landowners got some sort of tax break for keeping their land accessible to the public, but I could be wrong on that. But here, people will cut off their nose to spite their face. They'll trespass, they'll vandalize, they'll litter- just because you told 'em not to. I don't know why that is, I don't know how to fix it.

I've seen it both ways. A private landowner may not dump their beer cans on the gravel bar. They put them in a trash bag, throw the trash bag in the sinkhole, and let gravity do the work. End result is the same, though. A lot of what I see isn't litter, it's negligence. If a landowner were as proactive about fencing out cows as they are fencing out people, it wouldn't bug me so much. If landowners were as worried about bare banks and no canopy cover as they were about trash, it'd be a real improvement. If a landowner's taking care of the stream through their property then my fishing benefits, even if the land's posted. If they only see its value as a cow latrine or a gravel source, my fishing suffers- even on stretches of stream they don't own.

Usually if someone asks I'll point them to a book, a map, a website where they can look up landowner parcels and get contact information. I'll give them the tools to find the answer. If they're not willing to spend a couple hours doing the legwork, that's on them. I think it's a sort of feedback loop- the folks who want to be given the answer also think there's an unlimited number of great spots. If great spots were a dime a dozen, no one would ever need to ask. I wish folks were as careful naming streams online as they are handing out their bank information. I like most of the streamside landowners I've met, and I think they're genuinely interested in protecting their resources, but I often get a kick out of the way they view things. We'll let the cattle poop in the stream all summer, let the kids tear up bed and banks with ATVs, we'll hay within inches of the eroding cutbank, and we'll give the county road department a high five for hauling ten tons of gravel out of the creek. But if too many kids are down there, having fun...I think if folks took better care of the resource, we wouldn't have to guard a few spots so jealously. I'm not interested in dumping on a kid who's excited about the sport. I watched a couple videos, I winced a couple times, but that's alright- fish porn's never really been my bag. I'd love to see a little more attention to conservation/stewardship, but that's me, and I know it isn't what sells. If he's enjoying what he's doing, I hope he keeps doing it. I hope he keeps learning, and developing those skills. I also think it's okay to do something just for fun, without having to monetize it.

I'm in a similar situation- could make more elsewhere, but I'd be working 60+ hours a week. More money, but less time to do the things I enjoy. I value my time more than the pay.

I hope it's a two-way street. I hope she's able to add her own thoughts, and question yours. It sounds like a great opportunity to learn from your daughter, too. I hope you're making space for that. I hope you're taking advantage of the opportunity.

The point remains. If representation really wasn't important, you wouldn't have noticed and you wouldn't have thought anything of it.

I don't know much about Webster beyond it was founded as a women's college, and didn't begin admitting men until the 60's. Current student body is nearly 60% female, I'd wager that number was higher in the past. If you're doling out alumni awards, and nearly all your alumni are female, nearly all alumni award recipients will be female. Men are the minority at Webster. It bothered you to see the diversity and talents the minority bring to the table weren't acknowledged or celebrated by the majority. It may not be intentional. It may not even be bias. But when most students are women, and most alumni are women, and most Awards Committee members are women, and they only give awards out to women...it sure creates the perception of bias, especially if you're in the minority. It's natural to feel you weren't given a fair shake. It's natural to feel overlooked. If there were better representation of the entire student body, you would feel differently. Your experience is precisely why diversity and inclusion initiatives are important.

When I graduated high school, everyone thought journalism was a reliable career. Geology wasn't on anyone's radar. But by the time I graduated college print journalism was dead and geologists were getting $50-$70K starting salary to go frack gas in North Dakota. Some fields are reliably lucrative, some fields are reliably unprofitable. But things can happen fast, and you don't always know what a job market will look like two or three years down the road. No one has a crystal ball.

I don't think that's an inherently bad thing, though. When these universities were established they taught Greek and Latin, biology and mathematics. My grandmother was translating Antigone in grade school, and the idea a student could graduate without fluency in classical languages was as ridiculous to them as never reading Shakespeare is to you. Things change. What's "useful" changes. Universities have to be willing to change, too. I dunno how the UC system is funded, but CA's 40% Latino and 15% Asian. Maybe hey fund diversity programs because they're more diverse. I can't think of a reason why a state-funded institution shouldn't reflect the people funding it, whether it's through tax revenue or tuition.

So don’t go to USC! There’s five hundred universities out there offering English degrees, public and private, probably some which REQUIRE reading Shakespeare. Heck, go to a school that allows you to craft your own major, and you can study Shakespeare exclusively. I had to red Shakespeare in high school. Lots of folks did. Maybe universities don’t require it because it’s already been covered. Regardless, theres a thousand years of written language and I don’t think it’s a tragedy to have college English departments dig a lil deeper.

If better funded resources do stop some harassment and self harm, would that be so bad? Students can violate university policy without breaking laws, campus police aren’t trained in handling mental health cases. Saddling campus PD with those duties may be the cheapest option, doesn’t mean it’s the best. maybe it’s a failure of imagination on my part, but I don’t believe every single college student is on their best behavior at all times because of what their parents, hours away, taught them. wasn’t my experience. And a lot of mental health issues don’t manifest until late teens or 20s- schizophrenia, bipolar, depression. But hey, let’s blame bad parenting. It’s certainly cheaper. When I was in school, students services provided support groups for Iraq vets going back to school, as well. Should those “feel good” services be cut, too? If not, then it isn’t an issue of the services being provided. You have a problem with who’s using them.

Cuts helped create the current system, Mitch. As long as colleges are so reliant on tuition, they’re gonna have to offer all the bells and whistles needed to get butts in the seats. Don’t like it? Want cheaper tuition? Vote for folks that make funding secondary education a priority. Everyone wants cheap college, no one wants to pay for it. Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it, too.

Once upon a time, the state legislature funded higher education. Voters decided they want to stick it to those ivory tower nerds, and chose legislators who felt the same way. The legislature reduced their allocations to higher ed, and the difference was made up through tuition and fees. I don't think cutting staff, departments, and services is necessarily in the student's best interest. I think allocations through the legislature would make it easier for students to pay for college. I don't think further cuts benefit students, or teaching, or campuses. We're not talking about cutting football and ROTC, just diversity initiatives and LGBTQ programs- because it isn't about economics or efficiency. Cutting money is just another way of sticking it to ivory tower nerds. It's ideological.

And football coaches! I get frustrated, too- all this technology to streamline bureaucracy, and it seems like they're the only one's hiring. Too often universities see students as a cash cow, but at least the programs Mitch highlights are directed toward student support. I don't think university staff needs to spend any time manufacturing problems. Women get harassed and assaulted on campus- maybe none of you had to walk a girl back to her car in the dark because some rando waits for her to get off her shift in the bookstore. I think that qualifies as a problem. Students drink themselves to death in dorm rooms, take nosedives off parking garages- to me, those are problems. If universities want to spend my hard-earned dollars hiring staff and developing programs to address these problems, I think it's a better investment than repainting the football field, or decorative brickwork on the quad. Working with a diverse group of folks is part of being competitive in today's job market, whether Mitch likes it or not. Especially for positions requiring degrees. It's easy to hire someone who gets along with everyone over someone who treats female colleagues like garbage. You don't have to like it, or agree with it, or approve of their "lifestyle choice." If you can't act professionally toward your coworkers, there's someone else who can.

Her priorities were elsewhere.

I think it'd be an uphill battle, at best. The trout park model is driven by exploitation- you can't exhaust the resource, another stocking truck's coming tomorrow. You don't have to be a steward of the fishery, another stocking truck's coming tomorrow. I think leaves trout park anglers in a weird place. These fish are too precious to dump in an urban pond, but not so precious we can't gut them a couple hours after leaving the raceway. Not so precious we should take a few less, let them get a little bigger. If trout park anglers valued big fish over little fish length limits may make a difference, but I don't think that's the case. Seems like they value the fish they can't catch- the ones that wind up in KC or Springfield or St. Louis- more than the ones stocked locally. The grass is always greener. Any fish stocked in an urban lake isn't stocked at a trout park- and if the trout park paradigm is based on harvesting everything you can, that's a problem. If that's closer to how trout park anglers feel, I don't think changing length or bag limits will make a difference.

Two or three years ago. 23 year old coed and I did the short loop around the spring branch and the far bank. Athletic- biked, yoga, running. I'm not that into pixie cuts or Blackhawks fans, but she had a great butt and I'm not pretty enough to be picky. Old enough to know if a woman shows interest, don't overthink it. We walked around, I showed her some pawpaws. Hatchery improvements never came up- the hatchery could've been burning to the ground for all I knew. I was interested in a different sort of recreation. Does that answer your question?

There's another reason folks aren't going back. Couple folks I know had employers cut their benefits during the pandemic, when they dipped under 40 hrs/week due to stay at home orders, office closures, etc. Employers weren't willing to work with them on it, and they're basically back at square one. At that point, why not look elsewhere?

I don't doubt that. It isn't unheard of for agents to bust folks at trout parks 5, 10, 50 fish over the limit, either. I haven't been in a trout park in a while, but I've watched folks drop a limit off at their campsite and come back to continue fishing. I've watched folks put fish on kid's/girlfriend's/grandpa's stringer, so they can keep fishing. I've watched folks cast before the buzzer, use trebles in single-point areas. I've watched folks snag fish, watch folks creel foul-hooked fish, I had a big white treble -the kind you use to grab suckers- go through my knee as I released a fish at Montauk years back. Wonder how that got there. I've watched folks use bait in fly/lure areas, use trout guts as bait, dip flies in bacon grease. I'm certain if you floated the Current, 11 Point, or Meramec this time of year you could find someone soaking nightcrawlers and salmon eggs where it's prohibited, fishing without a license, or keeping fish without a trout stamp. To my knowledge the urban lakes are stocked once. If 500 fish are planted and they're all harvested the next week, that's it. Someone pulls 20 fish out of Bennett and they'll be replaced the next day, 20 more for them to take. Cheating's ubiquitous, it's rampant in the trout parks too, and despite that, they're stocked every dang day. But we can't stock an urban lake once because cheating? Since we're able to put up with cheating on a daily basis in the parks, March through October- surely we can put up with it in urban lakes November through February.

I think Mitch is more right than he realizes. I think part of the pushback to the urban fishing program has more to do with the people fishing there than the fish being stocked.

Because you're mad about the number of 12-15 inch fish they're stocking. A 2" fingerling ain't a 12-15 inch fish, and being distributed to other coldwater hatcheries ain't getting dumped in Bennett Spring Branch. If fingerlings are being shipped to RR because it's down, or Maramec because of parasites, you may not see a change at Bennett. What looks like a decrease may just be those fish were shipped elsewhere. If few fish are being harvested at Bennett, I don't see the problem. Urban anglers are supposed to give up their fishery so anglers at Bennett have more fish to look at? Could be a low-bid gov't contract and shoddy work has already undone some of the progress. Could be putting 21st century technology in a 50 (?) year old building didn't go as well as planned. Could be MDC was overpromised on the equipment. Could be an issue training employees on new equipment. Could be repeated floods, could be disease, could be inbreeding issues, could be knock-on effects of COVID on global supply chains, could be water quality. Could be all sorts of things, not all of them the result of gov't malfeasance. I'm willing to entertain all possibilities, not just the ones I already agree with.

A 12 inch fish dumped into the park and harvested an hour later is still gonna be 12 inches. A 12 inch fish dumped into a pond in November and harvested in February is gonna be bigger. Folks keep coolers of 10 inchers and wonder why there's no 12 inchers and I just don't think it's that mysterious. MDC stocks 2.5 fish (?) per tag sold, right? Regardless of the number harvested? If 1200 fish/day are stocked and 1200 fish/day are removed, net zero. If 1200 fish go in and 1000 come out, 200 fish get to live and grow another day. Do that every day of the summer, you may see positive changes in abundance and size. It isn't rocket science. I don't think whinging about urban anglers and hatchery management accomplishes much. If you want more 12 inchers, keep fewer 10 inchers. If you want more 15 inchers, keep fewer 12 inchers. If there aren't enough lunkers, don't throw 'em in the truck bed, haul them to the scale, and hang them on the wall. Stocking is only part of management, and trout part anglers already decide the quality of those fisheries. If they want something different, do something different.

"Raceway renovations include paved concrete bottoms, new raceway cleaning and drainage system, repair of leaking raceway walls, construction of a new outlet flume, and concrete paving of service roads. Raceway renovations and improvements will facilitate improved drainage for water management and fish waste management, improve fish health and production, and improved efficiency and safety for hatchery workers." https://www.fws.gov/fieldnotes/regmap.cfm?arskey=30575

And producing more fish may not have been the point. I replaced a 20 year old A/C a couple years back- new one produces the same volume of cold air, using a fraction of the energy. Replacing a septic system isn't sexy, either, but things break. Things wear out. Hatchery renovations could've focused on making operations cleaner and more efficient. If the only thing we're measuring is numbers of fish produced, we may not see the difference. I don't know if Bennett's had the same water quality issues as Taney, or the same parasite issues as Maramec, but there could be legitimate animal health reasons why they're not putting higher fish densities in the raceways or the spring branches. Heck, with the global pandemic, they may not be able to purchase the antibiotics and medications they need to raise more fish. It could be any number of things limiting production. Who knows.

The urban fishing program isn't my bag either, but why should it be a slap in the face? I get that a city park pond isn't natural, neither's a raceway. Neither's a spring branch loaded with stocked trout in the middle of the country. The fish goes from a raceway to a trout park and is harvested in an hour, or goes into an urban pond and is harvested a couple months later- the outcome's the same. Folks participating in the winter trout program are purchasing licenses, those license fees help fund trout production. If using the resource you're paying for is a negative, we're all in trouble. Like I said, urban trout isn't my bag. But I don't see a criticism of the program that wouldn't apply to the trout parks, too.