Fishing With Bears: An Interview With Larry Quilling

Here is the last post in the four part series that started with my investigation into the difference between anadromous and catadromous fish (a difference which you can learn about HERE).  My investigation resulted with me contacting Dr. Joe Richardson, Wallace Westfeldt, and Larry Quilling, three people with an enormous quantity of knowledge when it comes to the different fish that fit under both categories.  We've already heard from Dr. Joe and Wallace with a post featuring each of them (Dr Joe's post HERE and Wallace's post HERE), and now it's time to hear from Larry Quilling!  The youth director for Boulder Flycasters and a member of the Board of Directors of Trout Unlimited, whose mission is to conserve, protect, and restore cold water fisheries.  Larry is another one of the expert fisherman that came into my Outdoor Ed class last year to teach us how to fish.  He took us down to Viele Lake, the lake right next to my high school, and we did our best to reel in some dinner!  (Except you would probably not want to eat the fish in Viele Lake, the lake is pretty stagnant and foul.)  I remembered that Larry had mentioned that he had fished for salmon alongside grizzly bears, and so I knew he would be a good person to contact in regards to salmon fishing!  I've reproduced the interview here for everyone to read: there are some pretty awesome pictures within!

Larry Quilling holding a spring Chinook salmon in the Trask River in Oregon!

The Natural World:  In the last few blog posts, we've been talking about anadromous fish, and focusing specifically on the mass migrations of salmon.  What experience do you have when it comes to these mass migrations?

Larry Quilling: I have a good friend whom I visit in Oregon every summer and winter when possible to fish for steelhead trout and salmon.  Here are a few pictures of Tom and I fishing the Oregon coast. Tom has a cabin on the Trask River near Tillamook where I love to fish for spring Chinook. We regularly head to the Columbia River in the late summer where we fish for them as well. The fish I catch in the Trask in late summer are spring spawn fish still held over from the spring run. You will notice their colors morph from the bright silver to dark green and beyond once in the rivers.

Fall Chinook(Kings) from the 2013 Columbia River Trip.

Trask Spring Chinook, 2013

Tom's daughter Margie with a steelhead.

TNW:  I remember you mentioned fishing in Alaska last year.  Do you have any pictures from that?

LQ:  Tom and I went to King Salmon, Alaska two summers ago. The pictures below are from the NakNak River and Katmai National Park.

Fishing with the bears in Katmai. We were fishing just 60-70 yards upstream of these guys. They are all fishing for the sockeye run.

Tom's King from the NakNak.

Me with a a NakNak sockeye.

Patricia and I with a sockeye.

TNW: Tell me more about fishing with the bears! Were they good about maintaining their distance, or did you have any encounters which were a little too close for comfort?

LQ:  Fishing just downstream of the floating bridge at Brooks lodge, I hooked a sockeye.  The commotion and splash alerted another interested party on the other side of the bridge who swam underneath to come see what was going on.

This young griz came to investigate. He is standing right where I was in the previous picture! We took this picture after I landed my fish and got the hell out of there. Rangers were yelling at me the whole time but no one told me the break off my fish.

A picture of my catch....

....and a pose with my fishing partner.

What an incredible opportunity to go fishing so close to wild grizzly bears!  Thanks again for taking the time to talk with me Larry, and we hope to hear from you again soon!  To learn a little bit more about Larry, you can check out his profile on the Boulder Flycasters website HERE!


Unless otherwise noted, the photo credit for all of the photos in the post goes to Larry Quilling.

Fishing for Salmon on Land and Sea: An Interview With Wallace Westfeldt

As I have mentioned several times now, my investigation into the difference between anadromous and catadromous fish (a difference which you can learn about HERE) resulted in me contacting Dr. Joe Richardson, Wallace Westfeldt, and Larry Quilling with different questions about different fish that fit under both categories. Wallace Westfeldt is the Head Guide at Front Range Anglers (book a trip with him HERE), and last year he came into my Outdoor Ed class to teach us about stream ecology. We also went on a field trip with him to scrounge up some aquatic insects and insect larvae, and I've shared these pictures below the interview.  Wallace had some interesting things to share about fishing for salmon as well, and I decided to make this another post in the anadromous/catadromous series!

Wallace Westfeldt holding a Steelhead in Idaho.  By this point, these incredible fish have already swum 850 miles!

The Natural World: We've been talking about salmon migrations here on the blog for the last few days.  Have you ever had the opportunity to fish and/or see one of these mass migrations?

Wallace Westfeldt: Yes, I have been to Alaska for the Coho (Silver) Salmon migration; in 2012 and 2013. My trips were a little different than the norm. Most people go to the rivers, I was fishing in ocean at Yakutat. Here the Salmon feast on bait fish (mainly herring) to fatten up before going up river. We also spent some time inland at various river inlets where the fish would crowd and compete for going upriver. My fly was called a Seeker. When wet, it looks more like a herring than a herring does. However, I don't think fly choice is an issue. You need to get your hooks in front of a fish and they will eat. They are kind of crazy. In the ocean you are searching for baitballs and/or schools of Silvers. Baitballs are exactly what you would expect: massive spheres (10-30 in diameter) of bait fish swirling and the Salmon attack it.

A female Silver at sea.

Getting solid hook-ups can be challenging. The mouth of a male Silver has an enormous overbite and is cavernous. It is important to get the fly deep in the mouth. When you seem them strike, you can see how aggressive they are for food. Their tiny little eyes can't see the end of their strike, so the mouth opens wide and goes from side to side to get its prey. I don't think they feel the pain of the hook, because when they would pop off at the skiff they would sometimes hit the next hook. However, when they feel the tug of the line they panic and put up an extraordinary battle to get away.

Another female. 

A male: check out the overbite!

TNW:  Where else have you been to catch anadromous fish?

WW: I have also been to Idaho to catch Steelhead trout.  They swam 850 miles. We drove 900. They were in better shape than we were. Bitterly cold fishing, but excellent. When we hook up the fish would weave back and forth in the current, as if irritated, then they would take off. You weren't always sure who caught who.  In truth the pictures I have don't represent how big they can get. Those were the ones I caught.

A steelhead.

TNW:  When you were in Idaho, 850 miles into the salmon journey, how much further did the Steelhead have to swim?

WW: We were near the end of their run by about 50 miles. Because Idaho is so far away from the ocean, they only get one run. Closer locations in Washington and Oregon get several.


TNW: I've noticed the overbite before, what purpose does it serve? It seemed to me that it came about only in the males, and after they were undergoing their pre-spawn transformation, is that correct? Does it play a role in attracting a mate?

WW:  For Cohos, it's an overbite, for Browns, Bows, and Steelhead, it is an underbite, called a kype or kype jaw. As the male gets older there is always some evidence of the kype. However, you are correct that when in spawning mode, it gets more pronounced, as do the colors of Bows, Browns, and Chromers (steelhead nickname). You may also see other changes ... for example I caught a very large Brown once and it was particularly slimy.  Trout have more slime than most fish because their scales are small and soft and don't offer any protection. So the slime is protective.

That's a Brown Trout caught in Mother Lake just west of Loveland. His name is Big Mike, slimy guy in pure spawn mode.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Wallace for taking the time to answer my questions!  It was very informative, and really interesting!  Thanks again, and make sure you check out his website by clicking HERE!  Before we go though, here are some of the pictures that I took while we were on the field trip with Wallace.

Unless otherwise noted, the photo credit for all of the photos in the post goes to Wallace Westfeldt.

Goldilocks and the Three HOLY CRAP THAT IS A BIG BEAR

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This was the birthday post of Mark Neher! Happy birthday, father! If you have a birthday coming up, just email me the date at cuyvaldar123946@gmail.com with the date and your favorite animals, and I will do my best to get a post in! And if you like what you are reading, please feel free to follow us here or via Facebook!

Credit for the photos used throughout this post goes to:
-Grace Albers
-www.facebook.com
-drawception.com
-animalstown.com
-www.pbase.com
-www.collegehumor.com
-www.zimbio.com
-connect.ncircle.com
-passfail.squarespace.com
-www.suprmchaos.com
-andrewsmoving.wordpress.com
-www.stvinc.com
-commons.wikimedia.org
-www.nightmare-fuel.com
-www.themillions.com
-houseofgeekery.com
-www.buddytv.com
-www.travelalaska.com

Georg Wilhelm Steller

As of tomorrow, a man named Georg Wilhelm Steller passed away 266 years ago.  Steller, as we talked about a few weeks ago, discovered a few very interesting animals, and was the first non-native (at least that we know of) to set foot in Alaska, in 1741.  He was therefore the first European naturalist to discover, as well as describe, a number of animals in the area.

Many of the members of the crew of the boat that he was on were coming down with scurvy, and Steller attempted to cull the growing epidemic by feeding berries and leaves to the crew.  No one really heeded his advice, which was why, on the returning journey, they all became shipwrecked, as only 12 crew members were actually able to physically move.  During the voyage almost half of the crew had died due to scurvy, and many, including the captain, died following the shipwreck.  With very little food and water, the survivors created a camp, suffering frequent raids by the arctic fox, which only served to increase their peril.

Nevertheless, Steller, apparently the stoic type, continued to learn more about the natural world of Alaska.  He recorded a good deal of information in regards to the Steller's sea cow (a relative of the manatee), which, as a species, only survived about 25 years after Steller first discovered them.  Other animals that he discovered, described, or both include the Steller's eider (a type of duck), the spectacled cormorant (like the sea cow, now extinct), the sea otter, Steller's sea lion, and the northern fur seal.

In 1742, the survivors were eventually able to build a new boat from the salvage, and returned to Avacha Bay in Russia.  Steller continued to explore the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia for the next two years, but died in 1746 in transit to St. Petersburg.

One final thing that I find interesting about Steller has to do with the post-mortem publication of his journals.  They were published by the German zoologist and biologist Peter Simon Pallas who, you guessed it, is the namesake of the Pallas cat, or Pallas's cat, who was the first person to describe the animal in 1776.  These journals proved to be useful to other explorers of the same region such as Captain Cook.

An excellent picture that I took of the Pallas cat (if I do say so myself) from the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo

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A Skunky Surprise and the Mimicry of the Steller's Jay

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night on Primos we didn't get any stupid little kids trying to steal the camera, and we also unfortunately didn't get any foxes, but we did get not one, not three, but TWO visits from a skunk last night!  I have absolutely no idea if the skunks were the same, or whether they were two completely different skunks.  Another, but slightly less alternative, is that there was a whole band of the little, sometimes stinky creatures, and they were all taking turns on jumping into the camera every 13 or so seconds.  (The camera takes 5 pictures in about two or three seconds for every activation of the motion sensor, and then waits another ten seconds before it will again activate).  Again, this hypothesis is slightly less likely, but not impossible.  So enjoy these pictures of the skunk/two skunks/band of skunks!  I also nabbed a picture of the "Least Concern" Steller's jay, a very attractive type of jay (hey, what Jay isn't?) native to the coniferous forests in and west of the Rocky Mountains in North America.

The Steller's jay is quite an interesting little creature, for many different reasons, so let's take a little look-see, shall we?  Let's start off with what I believe to easily be the most interesting tidbit of Steller's jay facts: it will mimic hawks!  The Steller's jay is omnivorous, eating about two-thirds plants, and the other third meat.  So when other birds are at an area where the Steller's jay wishes to feed, it will imitate the cry of the red-tailed hawk, or the red-shouldered hawk.  This, of course, would startle the other animals and cause them to flee, leaving the area devoid of competition from most other animals.  According to my bird book, the blue jay also "imitates hawks expertly."  Another excellent example of avian mimicry! 

The Steller's jay is also the provincial bird of British Columbia, in Canada, and is named for the Georg Wilhelm Steller, the German naturalist who first discovered the bird in 1741.  I wonder whether anyone ever told him that he spelled "George" wrong....

Steller has had numerous animals named after him, including: the Steller's sea cow (an extinct relative of the manatee), the Steller's sea lion, the Steller's sea eagle, and the Steller's eider (which is a type of duck).  He did much of his work in Russia, but is also considered to be a "pioneer of Alaskan natural history."  What a bro!

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23 Fact Tuesdays: Ceratosaurus, Octopi, Aye-aye, and More!

Introducing:  23 Fact Tuesdays!  I'm thinking that (possibly) each week, we can look at twenty-three different groups of....things....and we can learn a fun fact about them each week!  Many of these topics feature North America, as that is where both I and most of my readers reside, but other topics include penguins, fossil horses, fossil mammals, early humans, various fish and birds, dinosaurs, and many more!
Here they are!

Don't want to read all twenty-three!  Well, in my opinion, the best ones are 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, and 19!  Enjoy!

1.  Alaskan Mammals:  The Sitka black-tailed deer will graze on beach plants like dune grass and kelp during the lean season.

2.  Alaskan Fish:  The whitefish may fast for eight or nine months during the lean season, surviving off of their stored fat.

3.  Dinosaurs:  In 1883, Ceratosaurus was the first large meat eating, or Theropod, dinosaur skeleton that was discovered more than half complete.  The first skeleton was discovered in Colorado.

4.  Dinosaurian Contemporaries:  Lagosuchus was either the direct ancestor, or a close relative of the ancestor, of the dinosaurs.

5.  North American Birds of Prey:  The robin-sized American Kestrel is not only the smallest hawk in North America, but it is also the most common.

6.  Tideland Treasures of South Carolina:  The palmetto, which is the state tree of South Carolina, can live for 75 years, and grow to a height of 60 feet, with a 1 or 2 foot diameter.

7.  North American Mammals:  The least chipmunk, besides eating the usual rodent foods like nuts, will also dine on insects, and occasionally small vertebrates.

8.  North American Hoofed and Marine Mammals:  The sperm whale is the largest of the toothed whales.

9.  North American Birds:  The common goldeneye will often take over abandoned woodpecker nests.

10.  Fossil Mammals:  Despite the fact that primates no longer live in North America, many paleontologists think that they either evolved there or in Asia.

11.  Penguins:  Despite the fact that most people think of penguins living in cold, snowy climates, the king penguin typically forms colonies in the shelter of dense tussock grass.

12.  Fossil Horses:  One species of Hypohippus, H. osborni, had weak and infrequently used side toes.  Although not very exciting sounding, this is an important step from multi-toed horse ancestors to the one-toed horses that we know today. 

13.  Dinosaurs....Again!:  Ornithomimus, one of the "ostrich-dinosaurs," lived both in the states of Colorado and Montana, but also in the country of Tibet.

14.  Extreme Abilities:  In order to protect itself from various predators and to hunt its various prey, the amazing Indo-Malayan octopus can mimic an enormous variety of different animals, including flounder, sea snakes, crinoids, jellyfish, lionfish, hermit crabs, stingrays, brittlestars, stomatopods, and sea anemones, amongst many others.

15.  Extreme Movement:  Although this dude looks like a worm or something, the caecilian is actually a close relative of newts and salamanders.  It lives strictly underground, and is rarely seen, despite the fact that they can grow up to five feet long.

16.  Extreme Growth:  The ostrich is a serious record breaker amongst birds.  Not only does it when the tallest bird and heaviest bird awards, but it also is the fastest runner, has the biggest egg, and has the largest eyes.  In fact, the smallest bird on the planet, the tiny little bee hummingbird, could easily fit inside the eye of the ostrich!

 17.  Extreme Families:  The "Biggest Nest of Any Bird" Award goes to the orange-footed megapode, or the scrubfowl.  Although these nests are just on the ground (the biggest nests in trees are built by bald eagles), they are still very, very impressive.  On average, these nests can be 11.5 feet wide and 39 feet tall!  The biggest ever recorded, however, was a whopping 164 feet wide!

18.   Remarkable Mammals:  The aye-aye, possibly one of the creepiest looking animals in the natural world, is a type of lemur whose large incisor teeth grow continuously.

19.  Remarkable Birds:  Once thought to be the missing link between reptiles and birds, the South American Hoatzin hatches out of its egg with claws on its wing greatly resembling those of the ancient Late Jurassic bird Archaeopteryx.  These wing claws are not often, and maybe even never, found on birds today, with the obvious exception of the baby Hoatzin.  As the Hoatzin grows, its wing claws disappear.  

20.  Remarkable Fish:  The electric eel can discharge fifty volts from its body.

21.  Remarkable Reptiles and Amphibians:  The Cuban tree boa will position itself in small apertures in caves, striking with deadly accuracy at bats that fly out of the cave.  Remarkably, the snake will do this in complete darkness, somehow sensing where the bats are.

22.  Prehistoric Animals:  Like Lagosuchus, Effigia is another possible relative of the dinosaurs.

23.  The Evolution of Humans:  Homo heidelbergensis is thought to have been the last common ancestor between the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) and us humans, Homo sapiens. 

Fun Fact, A Look Ahead 8/18/2012

First off, I have to apologize for getting behind a bit, I have been a bit busy!  I have pushed back (or is it forward?) the promised posts from the last couple of days, so here is today's "A Look Ahead," with what I think is the most interesting "Fun Fact" yet!

Sunday:  Perfume-Loving Lions and Record-Breaking Cheetahs - Lions from the Denver Zoo fawn over the men's perfume "Obsession," while Sarah the cheetah become the world's fastest animal!

Monday:   The Sounds of Star Wars - Chewbacca may look like a bear, but was he voiced by one, too?

Tuesday:  The Salton Sea - Learn about how just a few people in southern California were able to severely alter their natural surroundings.

Wednesday: Learning Latin Roots - Common roots in scientific names in animals, as well as a few interesting and humorous ones!

Thursday:  Fossil Penguins:  Aptenodytes ridgeni and Pygoscelis tyreei - Finding out about more fossil penguins, these closely related to some alive today!

Friday: Animal Spotlight:  The Aye-aye - One of my favorite animals, the aye-aye, is featured in this "Animal Spotlight."

Saturday: The Loch Ness Monster....Fact or Fiction? - Spoiler Alert:  It's Fiction

Fun Fact:  If America didn't attack Japan with atomic bombs in World War II, the Japanese might have come under siege by bat.

Although I originally thought this to be a hoax, it certainly appears as if this is real.  I have found information on it on multiple sources.  And it is actually a brilliant plan too!  Here is what happened:

 On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, bringing the United States into World War II.  When Pennsylvanian dentist Lytle S. Adams heard the news on the radio, he thought back to his trip to New Mexico's Carlsbad Caverns, and their extensive bat population.  He then thought up his idea for the "bat bomb:" strapping small, incendiary devices to thousands, perhaps millions, of bats, and releasing them over a strategic city in Japan.  The bats, as they would anywhere else in the world, would try to find cover in buildings, trees, and whatever nooks and crannies they could find before daybreak.  Then they would ignite the incendiary devices.  "Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter for every bomb dropped," he said.  Luckily for Adams, he knew Eleanor Roosevelt, and contacted her with his idea.  The White House actually liked it.  Said a Presidential memorandum: "This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into."  

Now, animal rights activists, beware.  Obviously, this plan is not very kind to the animals, and involves all sorts of animal cruelty.  To get the bats shipped, they forced them into a hibernation by sticking them into ice cube trays.  Next, the bats would be loaded into what essentially looked like a bomb-shell, consisting of 26 trays, with each of the trays containing compartments that would hold 40 bats.  Dropped from 5,000 feet, parachutes would deploy at 1,000 feet, all while the bats were awakening from their hibernation.  They would then fly off and roost, and then set the city on fire when the time was right.
Bats were the ideal creatures for this project, too.  They are nocturnal, so the Japanese would be hard-pressed to figure out what was going on.  They occur in simply massive numbers, so obtaining a great deal of them would not be super problematic.  In many caves, bats occur in the millions.  Furthermore, when bats are hibernating, they require no food, and therefore need little care when it comes to cleaning up little messes.  And finally, and perhaps most importantly, bats can carry more than what they weigh in flight, making them the perfect candidates for carrying bombs.  

The plan was to send 10 B-24 bombers, each with around 100 shells chock-full of bats, would fly from Alaska, and release around 1,040,000 bats over the cities of Osaka Bay, such as Osaka, Amagasaki, Hannan, Kobe, Sakai, and Nishinomiya.  However, the weapon experienced a few changes of hand, most notably to the hands of the Navy in August 1943, following an incident near Carlsbad, New Mexico, where bats were accidentally released.  They roosted under a fuel tank, and set fire to Carlsbad Army Airfield Auxiliary Air Base.

The project was ultimately canned in 1944, when it was learned that the bat-bomb project would likely not be operational until about halfway through 1945.  It seems likely that the atomic bomb is what caused the projects termination, even after an estimated $2 million was spent on it.  But who knows?  Perhaps this is REALLY what is going on at Area 51.

The Fauna of South Carolina: Cetaceans, Foxes and Otters

Here is the second in the "Fauna of South Carolina series."  Today, we are going to take a brief look at some of the cetaceans, foxes and otters that we saw while we were down there, either in the wild or in zoos.  Let's start with the otters.

River Otters ("Least Concern" by the IUCN) at Brookgreen Gardens

We saw both the otters and the foxes at Brookgreen Gardens, at their Lowcountry Zoo.  Not quite as cool as the foxes in my opinion were the river otters.  They were definitely really cool, as they were running around and playing a great deal, and we had a great view of them.  I'm not sure if I have ever seen otters playing so much, and seen it so well.  It was definitely quite a treat!  The range of the river otter is slightly weird; encompassing Oregon, Washington, and parts of California,and then extending throughout most of Alaska and Canada, and then coming down along the east coast of the United States, down to Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.

Gray Fox in tree

Prior to that, we had visited the fox exhibit.  We were looking for red fox and gray fox.  If I recall correctly (which I often don't), we were having trouble seeing the gray foxes, when I noticed something moving in one of the trees.  It was the gray fox!  I had no idea that foxes climb trees!  In fact, other than the raccoon dog found in Asia, I believe not many other canids in fact do climb. 

Gray fox in tree

Gray fox in tree

Gray fox in tree

 The gray fox, like the river otter, is labeled "Least Concern" by the IUCN.  Its range stretches from most of North America, down through Mexico, Central America, and into bits of South America.  The Channel Island Fox (a very interesting animal that we will by all means talk about at some point soon) is almost certainly descended from gray fox on the mainland. 

Instead of doing the cetaceans like we previously planned today, I think we should do them some other time.  See you later!

This post is part of "The Fauna of South Carolina" series.  For the rest of the posts in this series, click HERE.

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