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Tom Chandler
Post 13 Feb 2009, 19:21 • #1 
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Joined: 01/26/08
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Location: US-IA
Just watched the latest TU show with Frank traveling in his trailer to the McCloud River in CA, and who is on camera at the end of the show? Tom Chandler, MountainsAllAround. Nice mention of the Trout Underground site in the show. Fighting the good fight against Nestle bottled water soaking up (like that turn of phrase influenced by scotch whiskey?) water resources of the McCloud. Well done. Watch the episode this weekend if you get the chance. What a beautiful river in the shadow of Mount Shasta. Hope I got all this right. I am dead beat tired, and have been testing the level of the scotch bottle. I need to go fishing!

TGIF come on spring!

wacokid54


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Tom Chandler
Post 14 Feb 2009, 00:11 • #2 
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Joined: 02/19/08
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Location: US-AK
Well, I started watching it, but I fell asleep on the couch!

It will come on again at noon here, so I'll try to watch it again.

They are showing many good streams in this series.


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Tom Chandler
Post 14 Feb 2009, 00:24 • #3 
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Joined: 07/17/06
Posts: 5599
Location: South Carolina
Neat to see TWO of our members are stars of the small screen with Tom Chandler and Ron McAlpin both doing the On The Rise show this season. How cool! Congrats to both ... and the DVR is set.


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Tom Chandler
Post 15 Feb 2009, 05:04 • #4 
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Joined: 03/27/07
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I watched the show yesterday, nice job Tom. Too bad the river was flowing like a banshee when Frank was there filming the show.


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Tom Chandler
Post 15 Feb 2009, 08:47 • #5 
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Watched it as well. Thought it was very good. Also read Tom's blog on the Trout Underground about the Nestle plant and his comments on the show. Again job well done.


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Tom Chandler
Post 21 Feb 2009, 17:29 • #6 
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Joined: 03/20/07
Posts: 2544
Location: Wofford Heights, Calif. Kern River
Hi Waco, the Shasta, Trinity and Wiskytown lakes are some of the crown jewels of Northern California, along with a hand full of Rivers and the three designated Wilderness Areas. I fished, hunted and walked the 200 square mile Trinity Alps Wilderness from the late 60s until the late 90s every year for 10 days to two weeks. There are 38 prestine snow fed lakes in that wilderness, more than a hundred streams, and creeks feeding the Trinity River far below. Pure native trout up there and have been for more than 60 years. Bear bigger than you want to bump into and some very nice Blacktail coastal deer. There are some really big Elk that make their way down from Orageon in fall to the lower elevations, but not huntable. Lots of mountain lions and every mannor of birdlife. The Mountain Qual season used to track the Salmon Steelhead and deer bear season, so you carried some snakeshot in your revolver for dinner pickup along the trail. I think Ive walked (backpacked) almost all of that 200 square miles in my youth.
Why was it so good. You had to get a wilderness permit, be responsible for your camp sites, be prepaired for the weather and be able to actually go beyond a turist with a camera and a sweater, also no motorized anything allowed, on foot or horseback only. Soon as you got beyond 8 or 10 miles in you were in a part of california thats been closed to all mannor of transpertation for almost a century. Ive slept in the walls of burned down cabins, with stone arrowheads still in some of the timber (big indian uprising in the 1870s against the gold mining camps). Its an awful pretty country, you can climb a mountain (wilderness starts at around 3500 feet and goes to over 10,000 on the peaks) and do a Rocky pose with nobody to see you, its that remote and that much fun. Fishing and hunting are a blast. For the first 10 years after my return from Vietnam I hunted it with close friends in the American Mountain Man Association with muzzle loading rifles. Try that up close and personal with a 400 pound bear. Alot of fun camping and fishing primative, flint and steel, no matches, wool blankets, no sleeping bags, a handline for Steelhead, it helped me coop with the return from a place I really didnt enjoy.
Anyway that area of Northern California is still today little settled with some of the finest hunting and fishing anywhere. Like alot of Oregon if you shoot a deer on the edge of a drop, bring your knife and fork, you might just need to eat him where he fell. My best friend made a classic one shot kill at 40ft on a nice little buck deer. he fell immediately, hit the coastal ferns and slide right over a cliff 15 feet away, tumbling over 200 feed down to a big stream below. We had two 50ft repelling ropes with us and it took us the whole day and until dark to make our way down that cliff big bush to big bush on the side, then to tag team that buck and his antlers back up that devils drop to get it back to the car. We butchered it out after dark exhuasted, went to bed cold and hungry. Guess thats how some of lifes memories are made. Finest snap shot Ive seen, worst lay Ive ever experenced.
Fishing was something them, we had ocean run Steelhead returning up some of those big streams and creeks, try a three foot steelhead on a handline some time primative style. Back then even some of the big King Salmon (natives now long gone) made it up that far inland to spawn. That was a sight to see in the late 60s. Water was way cold, snow fed, one of the guys was half breed indian, so legal to gig fish, he opened a bottle of Jim Bean, threw the cork away, stripped the his skivvies and walked into that ice cold water with a lodgepole spear and that bottle of JB, managed to gig two nice King Salmon for our dinner though. Big guys, or girls, easily went 25 pounds. We eat them all night and smoked the rest till morning to carry with us.
That one trip was quite interesting. We slept in a place called bear wallow and found out after midnight how it got its name. A great place to go though, if your young, heathy and know how to live in a wilderness. I get a kick out of the tv series servivor, they cant even build a fire. Guess nobody has heard of shoe laces or eye glasses on the program. Two of the early methods were making a bow (indian) and using a glass (white man) to build a fire with tinder. Far easier than flint and steel. Im my possibles even today is a flint and steel, a copper tinder box with a magifying glass in the cover, and a long length of leather lacing, for a bow.
Oh well, I regress and expand. The area that was picked is one of the very best in the state of California, glad to here its getting some recognition.
Richard


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Tom Chandler
Post 22 Feb 2009, 03:18 • #7 
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Joined: 08/12/07
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Location: US-TX
I lived in California until 1968. Every summer my Dad and I would load up back packs and take a week trip into the Sierras. Never the Shasta area (although we did fish the McCloud and the upper Sac), mostly the John Muir trail. In those days we would rarely see another person during the week. We fished as we moved up the trail. Ate a lot of small trout, but I don't really remember much else about the menu except Dad's favorite ... Rice a Roni. No high tech backpacking gear ... and the packs were really heavy. The sixties were great years to be a West coast hunter and fisherman. The Shad runs in the Yuba and Feather rivers were amazing. Fifty and sixty fish days common. The Klamath River steelhead run was consistently good as were most of the Northern California rivers. Your absolutely right Richard, that area was and I guess still is the best the state has to offer ...


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Tom Chandler
Post 22 Feb 2009, 07:47 • #8 
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Joined: 07/17/06
Posts: 5599
Location: South Carolina
Damn ... I just realized this weekend that I don't get OLN to catch the shows. I wonder if they are available online?


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Tom Chandler
Post 22 Feb 2009, 12:56 • #9 
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Joined: 03/20/07
Posts: 2544
Location: Wofford Heights, Calif. Kern River
Hi Bud, Yea, too old for that rough stuff these days, last time I was in for a week we used a packer and went in by horseback. Great fun, but being in a saddle for 14 hours a day in broken ground and working in between the trees on deer trails is for a younger man than me these days.
The vastness of the forests up there and the fact that alot of the land is owned by lumber companies and fensed, part of a national forest system or like the Wilderness areas, isolated, makes it still premium for an outdoor experence. I once looked through the Ranger Stations message book, while getting out Wilderness permit, looking for a better destination for trout fishing to go along with our deer hunt. Found three little lakes all grouped together about 25 miles in that hadnt had a permit issued in over 3 years. That became our destination that year and was a fantastic experence. Only heart stopper was a waterfall that was part of the trail in, we had to cross, it was slimy with moss and a steep drop if you slipped, but well worth the effort.
When you up in that country its hard to believe your still in California. The lack of people just seems unreal.
Richard


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Tom Chandler
Post 22 Feb 2009, 14:41 • #10 
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Joined: 08/12/07
Posts: 809
Location: US-TX
When we moved to Oregon in 1968 there were barely 2 million people in the entire state. We lived up near the summit of the Cascades, right on the Santiam River and about an hour and 20 minutes from the Metolius ... my friends and I fished for brook trout in the little beaver ponds along the logging roads near town ... and for reasons that I don't understand used to hike into a gem of a little lake known as Tumble lake. The name pretty well describes the trail in. The lake was overrun with stunted brook trout ... big toothy heads with little bitty bodies..they would hit any bright fly almost as soon as it hit the water. But after a day of fishing ... you had to crawl out of the hole where that little lake was located. And I mean crawl ... fly rod in your teeth holding on with your fingernails crawl ... I understand why we went the first time ... but why in the hell would anyone go back ... LMAO. Then one year (I guess I was about 16) I shot a bear down there in the berry thickets that lined the shoreline. Unbelievably stupid ... Packing that bear out was one of those life altering experiences you hear about ... Ahhhh nostalgia. The fishing during those years I lived there was fantastic ... and so accessible ...


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