River Tails

I see it as using turn signals in the city, all you’re really doing is giving information to the enemy…

Picture that rarified hour before dark, the lake is a sheet of glass, the fish are feeding in earnest, and tippet looks like winch cable on the surface. It’s “perfect” time, in 60 minutes either your execution is perfect, or you’re perfectly frustrated, it’s the only possible outcomes.

I’m focused on willing my 6X to be 9X, and someone to my right starts speaking:

“Yea, and remember my idiot sister with the cleft palate, well she married that loser dude you met. Yep, the short guy with the nose ring, that’s the one.”

Incredulous would be the operative word, some fellow 300 yards distant appears to have a two way radio glued to his ear, chatting with a buddy in a float tube. Conversational tones carry at least a half mile, and he’s emptying the family closet for the entire lake to hear.

“%$#*, I missed one.”

At this point, assorted Mom’s are hustling kids away from the shoreline, and I’m wondering whether my destiny will be, “%$#@, the fat guy next to me caught another ^%$# fish.”

Technology is a wonderful thing … at times. It holds much promise, but like the Atom Bomb, not everyone that can afford it should own one.

The running diatribe pauses long enough for me restore “last hour’s bliss” and I managed to fool a nice rainbow with a Pheasant tail. Sliding the fish back into the water the silence is punctuated with more blathering:

“Naw, I’m using a dry, I’ve never caught %$#& with Pheasant Tails, that what you’re using? &%@#, I missed another one.”

Well that confirms everything they’ve said about distracted drivers talking on cell phones, my discomfort is fading a bit with each announced muff - it’s irritating, but Loudmouth has his pants around his ankles for the amusement of all within earshot.

“OBAMA? %@*& him, I can’t believe you buy into that liberal &^%#*, Jesus.”

I can’t help you pal, once religion and politics dominate the conversation, you’re on your own.

… Hell, I can’t see my tippet anyways, time to call it a night.

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What’s really needed is some clever technical name like “Pre-emergent Taut drifting” or “Kinetic Nymphing” - something with enough action verbiage to engage the print media into reams of “how to” literature.

I figured it was trolling mostly, what with the wind blowing you in one direction and frantic paddling to counter wind drift, hoping to preserve your orientation to the bank and fly.

Kelvin used it to great effect and converted us skeptical types after only a couple hours on the water, more importantly, it produced fish during midafternoon when everyone else was thinking sandwich. 

The above picture shows the bottom of Manzanita Lake and its stunning water clarity. Them monstrous feet are submerged - and the vertical weeds are about 6 feet below me. Getting a fly into the weed was a bad thing - and fish head for those tough stalks the moment they’re hooked.  A third of the fish hooked were lost on the initial burst of flight.

The trick is to use a mixture of tackle that keeps the fly about midway between weed and surface. This is the exclusive turf of the intermediate sink line - one of the slowest sinking lines available - or adding 5 feet of tippet and a beaded nymph on a floating line.

Sink tip lines would work as well, but the key is to keep mindful of the depth to the weeds, if you stray outside the limitations of your tackle the fly is toast, or the fish are too deep and the fly passes above their visual range.

If the fly is at the right depth, the cruising fish will oblige you. We landed about ¾ of the fish using a simple “fling and retrieve” and the balance from dry flies and nymphs stripped through the rising fish. 

Pre-emergent Taut drifting flies start with the J.Fair Wiggletail nymph (in brown above), Olive was the preferred color - which matched my most productive, the Algae CarpKiller. I had these in the box from the Little Stinking and equipped with a 4mm bead were heavy enough to drag 5 feet of 5X down to the appropriate depth.

My deteriorating eyesight has a new wrinkle for me to overcome with each trip - and the larger tippets and bigger hooks of Kinetic Nymphing  gives me a chance at threading a tippet come dusk.

Tradition is useful as long as it doesn’t interfere with the fishing, and delicate sensibilities we trod on with gusto, it’s all part of the obsession. Unfortunately there’s more hours between bugs than with bugs and with us weekend warriors, every hour is precious.

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Along the same note of my last whitewater rafting park in KY post, I ran across another article recently, supporting the concept that many of the adventure sports will find counterparts in an indoor/manmade arena.

Jeff Coy on Hospitality.net brought in some interesting point regarding the growing trend of man-made adventure sports. Rafting parks, surf pools and hotel water parks are all the examples he brought to the table. I agree with the emerging trend, and to a degree I personally would like to try the surf pools and surfing wave walls.

However, Coy also says that “sporting enthusiasts say it is hard to get away from work at the right time. It is difficult and expensive to travel to the coast when the perfect ocean wave is breaking or reach the backwoods when the whitewater river is cresting…”

I see these indoor arenas and play areas as a complimentary service within the same industry, and not really a competative force with the true outdoor sport. You will never be able to compare a man-made rafting course with a Grand Canyon rafting trip, or the rush of huge whitewater on the Gauley River. And I don’t think any of these “enthusiasts” are looking to replace the real experience with these indoor ones.

The trend of shorter vacations is real. So people looking for a real outdoor rafting trip will look for a 2 or 3 day trip, not a 6 or 7 day trip. The same hold true for skiing. An indoor ski slope acts as a great bunny hill. Man-made ski material in Europe allows skiier to practice even during the summer. But don’t think for a second that they will fore-go the mountain slope for a dinky indoor arena.

So it becomes more a matter of vacation time, and less about indoor versus outdoor. Outdoor adventure providers should shift some of their inventory to reflect that of the short-vacation trends, but also support the introduction of the indoor arena, as that may be exactly what the outdoor industry needs; a good introduction to the real deal.

WKYT 27 reported recently that officials are considering a whitewater park at the Kentucky-Virginia lines in hopes to boost tourism in the state. Right now, Kentucky is basically void of any decent “river rafting” option (as is the case with most of the Midwest), so this may provide an opportunity for not only the Kentucky residents, but neighboring states as well.

I assume that would be the main focus when officials say “tourism”, because I doubt visitors would make a special trip to Kentucky just for a whitewater rafting park. Plus, you have the US national whitewater center down in NC, and a few others across the East.

I would venture to say the most business would still be the local market (at least for the near future). When I was talking to one of the Marketing Directors at the USNWC a couple years ago when they first opened, he told us that their visitors and target market were Charlotte and Atlanta, both legitimate population centers nearest the center.

So a tourism boost? Possible, but the more realistic expectation would be to give the locals of KY and VA something to do.

USA Today ran a good article about white water rafting and the snow levels across the country. Laura Bly did a great job at talking to the right people and getting the facts on what is really happening across the nation.

The article was along the same tune as my last post, talking about how winter snow and water has various affects on outfitters across the nation. Overall, you find mixed reviews. Why? Not just the reasons I pointed out in my winter snowpack post, but also because many rivers now are dam controlled.

So even drought conditions and water concerns has no immediate impact on some rafting regions (Southeast, Northeast, limited west coast). The problem is getting the conception that river rafting is directly correlated with water levels.

But overall, the rivers and reservoirs across the nation are looking good for the season. It will be interesting to see if gas prices have a negative affect on the season. So far I have gotten mixed reviews, some good, some o.k., some dont know. YTBD!

The talk this season is of course the snowpack and water levels across the country. Global warming is obviously in full effect Most areas across the nation have experienced a good winter, which usually means that a good summer is to follow.

Good snow does not mean good river levels. Let me explain. We basically have two types of river-dependent factors to consider in the situation. Dam controlled rivers and natural flow rivers.

Earlier posts have talked about rivers across the nation changing over to dam controlled levels, in which certain river flows are guaranteed throughout the summer months. In general, good snow-pack and snow run-off are a good thing for dam controlled rivers. It means more water in the reservoir, and will continue to leave plenty of water flow throughout the coming years.

Natural flow rivers are a different story. Lets take a look at the Western U.S. as an example. The image here shows the current snow-pack levels across the various regions in the West. These numbers are a “percentage of normal”, meaning that anything close to 100 is a very good thing, and anythin over 100 means higher-than-normal levels. Many locations that feed large rivers have over 100% snowpack for the season (still). But the weather still plays an important factor as to whether the snow will produce high, constant water levels or not.

Even with a good winter, if the weather heats up too fast, you run into flooding and fast run-off. So essentially, you would have a nice spring rafting season, followed by normal (or even below normal) water levels for the rest of the season. So it really still depends on mother nature and the transitional temperature from winter to spring to summer.

So remember that when the news reports a good winter, we still need to hold-on and see how the spring rolls out to accurately predict a good rafting season or not.

Most of the rafting industry has heard about the mergers happening in West Virginia as of late. Two notable mergers have come about recently, due to business development and competitive strategy. Here are the two big changes:

1. Class VI, Adventures Mountain River, Riverman- This merger was quite interesting die to the fact that all three companies were/are good companies with steady business (comparatively). Numbers all across the board have been slumping, but each of these companies still kept their heads above water. So I would assume that this merger was in fact a business/competitive play in effort to try and take the lead for the rafting business in the area (notably from their direct competitor ACE Adventure Center).

The new company, Class Vi Mountain River, will now work to use the expertise and market niche of each individual company as a collective good to dominate the West Virginia rafting market. The three companies originally targeted different market segments to begin with, so the crossover in marketing would be fairly minimal and it seems like a good move for these three to get together.

2. ACE Adventure Resort, Wildwater Expeditions, Songer Whitewater and New River Gorge Adventures- Kind of a merger power move by the current West Virginia rafting market-share leader, ACE scooped up the partnership with a few other companies. Songer whitewater was well established and was decent sized. The other two companies were smaller and would make sense to move together with a larger organization to stay competative.

It will be interesting to see how these mergers play out. Often times you would think that there are too many outfitters in any given region/river, and West Virginia was one of those places. Nowhere near as crazy as Colorado on the Arkansas, but still too many from a consumer standpoint.

I think many areas and outfitters could possibly benefit from merging with strategic partners in their same region, if the numbers make sense. Most rivers will have multiple rafting outfitters, and only certain places restrict the number of outfitters that can operate on that portion of the river (Grand Canyon rafting trips are limited in space and with the number of outfitters that can operate)

Ran across a decent blog today. The american rivers blog has a good staff of constant bloggers talking mostly about river preservation and their efforts to clean up and protect rivers around the world.

I have not personally contacted them yet, but I think it is a good cause. Many organizations such as this sometimes view commercial outfitters and travel companies as “the foe” in their efforts to promote river. In fact, outfitters are (should) be some of the largest promoters of river preservations and conservation. I know that one of our partners, Western River Expeditions, is very involved in trying to find a way to make commercial trips have less of a “footprint” on the environment, one of which is the possibility of using electric power motors instead of gas or deisel.

In any matter, rafting is just another way to help people become aware of our environment and hopefully treat it well.

Kudos to american rivers.

Depending on which region of the country you look at, 2007 gave mixed results as far as the rafting industry as a whole. However, Maine claims a great year for all the whitewater rafting outfitters in the region.

According to Raft Maine association and a press release put out a few months ago, an increase of 4% on the Kennebec, 10% on the Penobscot and 16% on trips on the Dead River were reported by operating outfitters. “Raft Maine president Jim Murton credits the good season to a renewed commitment by Raft Maine member outfitters to joint marketing and co-operative efforts with the Maine Office of Tourism, Kennebec Valley Tourism Council, Maine Tourism Association and Maine’s hospitality businesses and trade associations.”

Good for them. The office of tourism and other government related organizations can provide a great boost for rafting outfitters across the country. From the sounds of things, it was a joint effort by all the businesses involved- from hotels to restaraunts. Good job of everyone working together to promote local tourism.

A new IMAX film called “Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk” will be debuting on March 14, 2008. The film takes a look at freash water preservation issues through a whitewater rafting trip down the Grand Canyon with O.A.R.S. rafting company. The file is presented by Teva, and has been year in the making.

They wanted to get the film out before World Water Day on March 22, 2008. MacGillivray Freeman Films picked up the production of the rafting and water video. They are one of the most experienced producers of special venue films in the world.

Should be interesting to see the whole movie. Not quite sure if it is a film focused more on the “whitewater rafting” adventure or throw in a political slant to the whole thing. Probably the latter of the two, since I sense some sort of green agenda (i have no problem in protection the river systems of the world, by the way.)

Interesting to see either way.