In the latest episode of Zac Efron’s “Off the Grid” Youtube Series, he is joined by Matus Sobolic of @CaliCarpin, and his brother Dylan Efron. The trio then hit the famous LA River on the hunt for urban carp on the fly. The LA River offers an amazing escape from the urban spread of Los Angeles. Follow along as the group fly fishes, skates and explores this unique fishery. (From Flylords Magazine)
From California Trout: Rindge Dam, located three miles upstream from Malibu coastline, is listed as one of the Top 5 California dams to remove in our latest report.
Built in 1926, it once provided water for irrigation and household use in Malibu. However, after just 30 years, the 100-foot dam became obsolete after the reservoir filled entirely with sediment. Today it is part of Malibu Creek State Park and remains a total barrier to southern steelhead migration.
Removing Rindge Dam will reconnect access to over 18 miles of high-quality spawning and rearing habitat for the federally threatened southern steelhead.
Reopening the upper reaches could restore the fishery and establish it as a nursery for this particular strain of steelhead so that the population can recover and become abundant once again.
It’s been a decades-long battle but CalTrout remains committed to removing Rindge Dam and reconnecting habitat for endangered southern steelhead.
See you on the river, Jim Burns
Trout Unlimited’s Bob Blankenship sent in this amazing photo he took. Here’s what he said: I was at the lower LA in South Gate a couple weeks ago, around Hollydale Park. I walked down into the river channel – the dystopian part where there’s nothing expect a hundred-yard-wide concrete slab. I wanted to check out the low flow channel there and as I walked upstream I came upon a fish – about 18 inches of carp that was headed who-knows-where? There’s about two miles downstream of concrete channel and probably eight miles upstream. Life finds a way, right?
See you on the river, Jim Burns
Thirty years of cleaning up our river, more than 70,000 volunteers and 500 tons of hauled out trash, make this April event that just ended yesterday the biggest urban waters clean up in the country, according to Friends of the LA River, creator of the event.
Over the years, oddities pulled out of its water include:
— a Volkswagen Beetle — a phone booth
— one entire dumpster — a portable toilet
And recently, as fisher folk know, lots of carp, bass, tilapia and an occasional former aquarium dweller.
As FoLAR’s Lewis MacAdams told me once, “When the steelhead return to the river, we’ll know our job is done.” The motto on his statute in the park named after him says it all.
See you on the river, Jim Burns
The good: The first phase of an ordinance which bans restaurants in the city of Los Angeles from automatically offering their customers disposable plastic straws unless they specifically request them takes effect today. (CBS-LA)
The bad: The prospect of extinction may seem unduly pessimistic to some, but the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach announced recently that it had acquired 1,200 delta smelt from a UC Davis research hatchery. (Los Angeles Times)
The ugly: Hawaii’s Waikiki Beach could soon be underwater, as rising sea levels caused by climate change overtake its white sand beaches and bustling streets, AP reports:
See you on the river, Jim Burns
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