RETURN OF THE HALL-OF-FAMER
Published in the February 8, 2025 edition.
You know they’re serious when they bring a Hall of Famer out of retirement.
But if that’s what it takes to kickstart some momentum for the Crowley Fish Foundation (CFF), Tim Alpers is all for it.
The Sheet caught up last week with Alpers, a name synonymous with trophy trout for nearly a half century.
Alpers, a two-term Mono County Supervisor before his retirement in 2016, now lives near Verdi outside Reno, Nevada.
And he was recently recruited as an advisor to the CFF in an effort to raise funds and awareness for the local fishery.
*He sounds great, by the way. Maybe that’s what happens when you get a little rest!
As Alpers said, “regulatory compliance drove me out of the fish business … I killed myself for fifty years on the ranch … the problem with aquaculture these days is that the farms are so expensive to operate. There are probably only two or three left.”
And expensive to operate means expensive to purchase.
As Joe Contaldi, CFF President, says, “$3,000 only buys you 400 pounds of fish … $20,000 is a minimum for a decent fish stocking … the Bridgeport Fish Enhancement Foundation (BFEF) easily spends twice that.”
And the Crowley Lake fishery, which has been so good and so iconic for so long, does need a bit of love and attention.
Not that the state doesn’t do its part – in 2023, it stocked 350,000 fish in Crowley.
But as Alpers observes, “Studies show manmade reservoirs [like Crowley] lose their vitality after 60-70 years. No one quite knows why … and no two reservoirs are the same – there are geologic differences, chemical differences, management differences.”
So right now, it’s CFF, working with California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), trying to figure out ways to keep Crowley vibrant.
Nick Buckmaster is the Inland Desert Fisheries Supervisor for CDFW. In regard to Alpers observation, he said yes, studies show that there’s a nutrient boom when you flood a new habitat, and it “supercharges” the ecosystem for awhile. It’s a boom-and-bust phenomenon.
In other states, Buckmaster said they’ve launched “lake renewal” projects as a result.
What’s that mean? They kill everything in the lake and start over. It’s like lake chemo. They poison it to save it.
But in California, we don’t do that. It’s a little more measured.
And Crowley isn’t a typical reservoir. The Crowley food web, says Buckmaster, is turbocharged by geothermal activity, “It’s still productive,” he said.
The bigger issues are disease, climate variables, reservoir logistics et. al
One example he gave was the demise in the Kamloops trout – a species which stuck close to the shoreline, so it was great for shore fishermen.
But then drought sharply reduced and then eliminated Kamloops as a stocking option.
It was replaced by increased plantings of Eagle lake as well as other types of rainbow trout which tend to spend more time off-shore. If you’re trolling behind a boat, you wouldn’t notice an overall difference. But the shore fishermen notice, because they’re getting skunked.
It’s that balance, figuring out what you’ve stocked and what’s getting caught – that Buckmaster is keenly interested in.
“It’s about more monitoring, more data,” said Buckmaster. “I need information on what people are catching. This is where CFF can really help.”
While Rainbows have not reproduced very successfully at Crowley, Buckmaster said CDFW has been stocking a whirling disease-resistant strain the past few years in the hopes of returning some of that shoreline fishing component.
They’ll also stock more Lahontan Cutthroat (which is what is stocked in Pyramid Lake). These are 5-10 lb. trophy fish.
The CDFW is certainly committed, said Alpers. The challenge is that we have a huge visiting population which puts a lot of pressure on the fishery.
“The timing on the non-profit is really good,” he said. “The community has demonstrated that it cares … I know what people like and to keep the dreams going, we need a good product for people to open their wallets.”
Board secretary Chris Leonard notes that CFF members range in experience and fishing background in everything from fish entrepreneurship (like Alpers) to recreational anglers. And the goal is tandem. Help the lake and grow the sport. “We are currently teamed up with the Bishop Paiute Tribe taking kids fishing and teaching fly tying. We have fished with various veteran groups, and will continue to do so. And we keep building relationships with people in the fishing world.”
You can learn more at www.crowleyfishfoundation.org.
Now onto a few thoughts – the first regarding Fisher’s story on page one regarding Mammoth Council limiting public comment time.
There was this great little piece in the Journal the other day on a new expression called “boomerasking.”
“Like the looping arc of a boomerang, boomeraskers ask a question, let their counterpart answer and then immediately bring the focus of the conversation back to themselves. They try to achieve two conflicting goals at once: to show interest in their partner and to disclose something about themselves. But they fall short of achieving either goal … among all the subtle and obvious ways we attempt to mask our self-centeredness, boomerasking might be the worst.”
I bring this up because we currently find ourselves in a high-volume boomerask environment. There have been many occasions of late where I’ll meet up with a Councilmember or Staffer and they’ll boomerask a question about housing – not to have a discussion, but so they can pretend to solicit feedback before launching into monologues about why they have to do it the way they do it, and why there’s no other way to do it.
And then give themselves credit afterward for “outreach.”
It’s this ‘there there child, you just don’t understand how government works’ type of boomerasking which has destroyed public interest and enthusiasm.
You want to know why people drone on and on at the podium. For the same reason that people will drone on and on to their spouses, repeating the same points again and again.
They drone on because they are not being heard.
“Failing to follow up on your partner’s answer, and answering the question yourself instead, makes others feel like you don’t care about them – and probably didn’t care about them when you asked the question to begin with.”
And yes, the majority of Mammoth’s Town Council are boomeraskers par excellence.
Speaking of tone deaf government, check out this Inyo National Forest press release, under the heading “Reds Meadow Road reconstruction update.”
Mammoth Lakes, Calif., January 31, 2025 —Inyo National Forest, partner agencies and contractors responsible for the reconstruction of Reds Meadow Road, which leads to Devils Postpile National Monument, are ready to share the projected schedule for the summer 2025 season.
Significant changes include the road now being open on Thursdays with 1-hour delayed traffic control during the peak summer season.
“We are happy to announce that we will now be able to open the road for the public via bus shuttles for a fourth day of the week this summer instead of three,” said Mammoth District Ranger Fred Wong. “However, there will still be construction occurring on Thursdays with alternating one-way traffic each hour.” Fred Wong also added, “Unfortunately, we will also need to close the road one month earlier than normal on October 6 because construction will make the road impassable to all traffic.”
Currently, Red’s Meadow Road is closed to wheeled vehicles for the regular winter season with an anticipated seasonal opening date of July 3, 2025 …
Talk about putting lipstick on a pig.
1. We’re having a drought winter and you can’t get Red’s Meadow open until July 3. Pathetic.
2. Do not insult the public’s intelligence by offering ten Thursdays but then closing the road a month early. We can all do the math. 10 minus 30 is not a positive.
3. If you’ll recall, road usage was limited last year with the idea that it would speed the reconstruction project to more timely completion. Instead, there’s limited usage in 2025 and whispers about more of the same in 2026.
Exactly what the late Bobby Tanner predicted.
In short, the contractor (Herback Engineering) woefully underbid the project and the Forest Service has instituted road closure concessions to bail Herback out.
Never mind it’s less work for the Inyo National Forest and Devil’s Postpile National Monument – which are run by Team Wong. Fred Wong is the Inyo National Forest District Ranger while Rebecca Carr Wong, his spouse, is Site manager at Devil’s Postpile.
The Sheet called Claudia Moya Tanner to ask how the road restrictions would affect Red’s Meadow Resort operations.
“The schedule is better than last year,” she acknowledged, “but only because it couldn’t get worse … they ask for input, but the result is the same.”
Boomeraskers all.
She vows the Resort will operate and that she’s “trying to book as much as I can.”
Pontificator-In-Chief
I loved this story which I saw this week in the Associated Press. Dovetails nicely with this week’s all talk/no listen theme.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House stenographers have a problem. Donald Trump is talking so much, the people responsible for transcribing his public remarks are struggling to keep up with all the words.
There were more than 22,000 on Inauguration Day, then another 17,000 when Trump visited disaster sites in North Carolina and California. It’s enough to strain the ears and fingers of even the most dedicated stenographer, especially after four years of Joe Biden’s relative quiet.
Now there are discussions about hiring additional staff to keep up with the workload.
The flood of words is one of the most visible — or audible — shifts from Biden to Trump, who craves the spotlight and understands better than most politicians that attention is a form of power. He’s been speaking nearly nonstop since starting his second term, drowning out dissenting voices and leaving his opponents struggling to be heard.
Take Wednesday, for example. During a signing ceremony for legislation to accelerate deportations, Trump talked up his accomplishments, claimed Hamas was using U.S.-funded condoms to make bombs in Gaza, defended his administration’s efforts to freeze federal spending and reduce the government workforce, veered through descriptions of migrant violence and made the surprise announcement that Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, would be used as a detention center for people who are in the U.S. illegally.
“He’s dictating the news on his terms,” said Michael LaRosa, who worked as a television producer before serving as a spokesperson for former first lady Jill Biden. “He’s become America’s assignment editor.”
Most presidents try to start their terms with a bang, seizing the moment when their influence could be at its peak. However, Trump is in a different league.
Biden spent 2 hours and 36 minutes talking on camera and used 24,259 words in his first week in office four years ago, according to numbers generated by Factbase.
Trump’s comparable stats: nearly 7 hours and 44 minutes and 81,235 words last week. That’s longer than watching the original “Star Wars” trilogy back-to-back-to-back, and more words than “Macbeth,” “Hamlet” and “Richard III” combined.
It’s also much more than when Trump took office for his first term eight years ago. Back then, he was only on camera talking for 3 hours and 41 minutes and spoke 33,571 words.
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”
-Plato
“It was impossible to get a conversation going. Everybody was talking too much.”
-Yogi BerraB LJ
