Avid Angler.. and first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court

Justice O'Connor pauses while fly fishing on Idaho's St. Joe River on July 19, 2005 (Rich Landers, The Spokesman-Review)

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (1930-2023) was a trailblazer in America’s legal field and she was an passionate fly fisher.  

Spokane reporter Rich Landers spent a day fishing with the Supreme Court justice in 2005 and year’s later wrote the following remembrance (published in The Spokesman-Review, on October. 24, 2018).

 A newspaper writer is more likely to get a hug from President Trump than a day on a trout stream with an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

I cherish that day – July 19, 2005 – more than ever this week as Sandra Day O’Connor, 88, has announced she is retreating from public life.

While St. Joe River cutthroats turned their spotted backs on us, she taught me lessons in law, leadership and grace during one of the most memorable days of work in my 40-year career as outdoors editor for The Spokesman-Review. 

O’Connor was in Spokane to deliver the keynote for the 9th Circuit Judicial Conference. Organizers asked me if I would help satisfy her passion for fly-fishing in the morning and afternoon before she spoke. I was vetted by U.S. Marshals a month in advance. I even broke the angler’s code and gave them directions to my favorite fishing holes. 

A week before arriving, O’Connor called from Washington, D.C., to work out details. In that conversation, the justice famous for being the court’s swing vote confirmed her definitive position on “Row” v. Wade. 

“I don’t want to be confined in some little boat when you can have a whole river around you,” she said. “I sit on my butt enough. I want to wade.” 

I loaded her into my minivan by the Davenport Hotel at 7 a.m. She was perfectly equipped for the court of piscatorial opinion – felt wading shoes, quick-dry wet-wading pants, a 5-weight travel rod and a Hardy Princess reel. 

“I love to golf,” she said. “But you can golf almost anywhere. It’s not everyplace that you can go fly fishing for trout.” 

She also brought her husband, John, who was in the advancing stages of Alzheimer’s. Caring for him was the main factor in her decision to announce that she would retire 24 years after then-President Ronald Reagan had appointed her to be the first woman on the Supreme Court. 

I was her host for a day of fishing, and out of respect I never took out a recorder or notebook to copy down a quote. But in preparation for “my Sandra day,” I had read her books and numerous stories about her. 

I’m no stranger to strong women. My wife is among the female physicians who broke trail through male-dominated institutions for the legions of women who have followed their footsteps. 

O’Connor was in a league of her own – laser sharp, politically masterful, yet as down-to-earth as the Arizona ranch girl who used to plink jackrabbits with her .22. 

At the age of 20, she graduated from Stanford University and then completed Stanford Law School just two years later, ranking third in her class, behind valedictorian William Rehnquist, who would later become chief justice of the Supreme Court. 

Yet more than 40 law firms rejected her requests for interviews to work as an attorney – because she was a woman, better suited to be, say, an office administrator. She bucked the flow to peak out as one of the most respected jurists in the world. 

Federal court Judge Robert Whaley of Spokane was in the minivan with us that day and the conversations traveling to and from the river covered a number of her toughest decisions, such as when to give up on a dry fly and resort to a beadhead nymph. 

She enjoyed seeing Lake Coeur d’Alene and being reminded of her role in a Supreme Court decision involving tribal jurisdiction. 

Then she asked me to stop on the side of the road near St. Maries so she could jump out and snap a photo of a flock of wild turkeys. 

She was vigorous in her defense of an independent judiciary, galled by Congress’ attempt to override states’ rights in the Terry Schiavo case and saddened by the trend in Congress – even then – to define judges as “activists” for decisions based on the law. 

How did she recommend dealing with these adversaries?

“I try to be friendly with them,” she said. “We all learn more that way.” 

With knowledge of history and vision of the future – sealing her reputation as a jurist rather than an ideologue – she made a point in one conversation to emphasize that Supreme Court decisions should interpret the Constitution in tiny ticks. 

The court routinely makes narrow rulings that disappoint people seeking sweeping changes in the law, she said. “It’s not our role to swing with the pendulum of political climate,” she said. “That would be a path to anarchy.” 

She also confirmed that a judge from the highest court in the land could fish a river named “St. Joe” without compromising her position on the separation of church and state. 

And she didn’t need her U.S. Marshal escorts. She gave them the day off so she and her husband could enjoy the outdoors much as normal people would. She had me stop in St. Maries so she could buy a bag of beef jerky. 

The North Idaho forest was gleaming green that day, the skies blue and cloudless and she loved the cool water on her legs as the daytime temperature soared toward the 90s. 

The river’s cutthroat trout, famous for being agreeable to virtually any offering, refused almost every fly pattern O’Connor, Whaley and I drifted down the stream. 

“We’re doing everything we can, but it would help if the fish were a little more cooperative,” I said.

“Yes, it’s like the Congress,” she answered with a grin. 

For the record, she caught no fish that day. She graciously noted that she also got skunked while fishing in Montana on Tom Brokaw’s private stretch of the West Boulder River. 

Had we not had to leave the St. Joe at 4 p.m. to be back in Spokane for her talk, O’Connor likely would have caught and released dozens of trout. 

“Look, the bugs are hatching as the sun gets lower and cutthroats are coming to the surface,” I said pointing to the rise rings in the water as we retreated. 

“Duty rules again,” she said. “It’s the story of my life.” 

During the return drive, the discussion drifted from fishing stories back to the Supreme Court and women in high places, or the lack thereof. O’Connor pointed out that more than 50% of the students in U.S. law schools were female, yet by 2005 there was only one other woman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had ever served on the Supreme Court. 

“That’s not acceptable,” she said – that was about 15 minutes before my mobile phone rang with a call from The Spokesman-Review office. 

While we’d been fishing, President George Bush had announced his nomination of John Roberts to be her replacement on the court. 

The editor on the phone asked me to give the news to O’Connor. 

Her first words were unequivocal: “That’s fabulous!” she said. She immediately described Roberts as a “brilliant legal mind, a straight shooter, articulate, and he should not have trouble being confirmed by October. He’s good in every way, except he’s not a woman.” 

The Spokesman-Review was the only media outlet with access to a Supreme Court justice in that important moment. We published that reaction, and the quote was picked up around the world. 

My phone rang incessantly the next day, mostly with calls from media as I drove with my wife for a hiking trip at Mount Rainier. 

I didn’t tell reporters and talk show hosts all that I’ve told you in this column 13 years later. That morning the paper published my story about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that had eluded the Washington press corps. Beyond what I’d written, my fishing buddies and I left everything else on the river. 

O’Connor showed her mettle that day, climbing several slick, steep riverbanks without so much as a dissenting opinion. 

I most fondly remember and cherish her holding my hand as we waded waist deep in the flowing St. Joe to cast her fly. 

“I’m used to bucking the stream,” she said.

Fish for Thanksgiving?

A 1925 painting depicts an idealized version of an early Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth. (Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

Thanksgiving dates back to November 1621, when the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians gathered at Plymouth for a harvest feast, an event regarded as America’s “first Thanksgiving.” For the Wampanoag, the feast would have been part of their annual tradition of giving thanks for the natural bounty they received from the land.

The Pilgrims had much to be thankful for as they approached their second winter. Their first had been a harsh one. Seventy-eight percent of the women who had traveled on the Mayflower had perished that winter, leaving only around 50 colonists to attend the first Thanksgiving--22 men, just four women and over 25 children and teenagers.

So what was really on the menu?

Wild turkey was indeed plentiful in the region and a common food source for both English settlers and Indigenous tribes. But it is just as likely that that the fowl served were ducks, geese and swans. Instead of bread-based stuffing, herbs, onions, or nuts might have been added to the birds for extra flavor.

Fruits indigenous to the region included blueberries, plums, grapes, gooseberries, raspberries and, of course cranberries. The Pilgrims might have been familiar with cranberries by the first Thanksgiving, but they wouldn’t have made sauces and relishes with the tart orbs. That’s because the sacks of sugar that traveled across the Atlantic on the Mayflower were nearly or fully depleted by November 1621. Cooks didn’t begin boiling cranberries with sugar and using the mixture as an accompaniment for meats until about 50 years later.

Culinary historians believe that much of the Thanksgiving meal consisted of seafood, which is often absent from today’s menus. Mussels in particular were abundant in New England and could be easily harvested because they clung to rocks along the shoreline. The colonists occasionally served mussels with curds, a dairy product with a similar consistency to cottage cheese. Lobster, bass, clams and oysters might also have been part of the feast. Colonist Edward Winslow describes the bounty of seafood near Plymouth:

“Our bay is full of lobsters all the summer and affordeth variety of other fish; in September we can take a hogshead of eels in a night with small labor, and can dig them out of their beds all the winter. We have mussels... at our doors. Oysters we have none near, but we can have them brought by the Indians when we will.” Edward Wilson

Adapted from “First Thanksgiving Meal,” Read the full story and more at History.com

The Clean Water Act at 50

Steve Meserve (second from right) is a fourth-generation shad fisherman who operates the Lewis Fishery, the last commercial shad operation on the Delaware. Photo by Author

Sparked by the 1970s environmental movement, the Clean Water Act — which marks its 50th anniversary this month — transformed America’s polluted rivers. The Delaware, once an industrial cesspool, is one of the success stories, but its urban stretches remain a work in progress.

Andrew S. Lewis, Yale Environmental 360, October, 2022

When Steve Meserve’s great-grandfather, Bill Lewis, started the Lewis Fishery in 1888, it was one of dozens of commercial outfits scattered up and down the Delaware River that seined for American shad during the spring spawn. At the time, the Delaware’s shad fishery hauled 3 to 4 million of the hard-fighting fish from the river and its tributaries every year. But, soon enough, Lewis discovered that he had gotten into the business just as the river — along with the species it supported — was entering a period of catastrophic decline.

For two centuries, factories and cities on both sides of the Delaware had been indiscriminately dumping trash, raw sewage, and industrial chemicals into the waterway. “My grandfather, Fred, would joke that we would catch a car a year with all the parts that turned up in the nets,” said Meserve, who took over the family fishery in 1996. “And in my youth, in the 60s, there were more jokes about getting sick by swimming in the river and drinking the water”…

But, just as Meserve was learning how to set and haul shad nets as a boy in the 1960s, a historic intervention was in the making. Sparked by the burgeoning environmental movement, the federal government began passing a series of laws that would help bring the Delaware back from the brink, as well as the estimated two-thirds of U.S. rivers, lakes, and coastal waters that had also become so toxic they were unsafe for fishing and swimming. Chief among this string of key environmental legislation was the landmark Clean Water Act of 1972, which was enacted 50 years ago this month. The act provided the federal government, for the first time, with the legal framework to regulate pollution and the funding to help states build wastewater infrastructure that would lead to the rapid improvement of water quality in the Delaware and in the scores of other water bodies that had become the waste receptacles of the Industrial Revolution.

Dorado catfish and the World's Other Freshwater Fishes

Dorado Catfish. Photo by Michael Goulding. Learn More

Asked to name the fish with the longest migration... salmon and steelhead, European eel and paddlefish might come to mind, but the current recognized freshwater champion is the Amazon’s dorado catfish (Brachyplatystoma rousseauxii). The species has been documented to travel almost 7,200 miles up and down the Amazon River—an epic, exclusively freshwater, life-cycle journey stretching nearly the entire width of the South America continent.

The dorado catfish is just one species of the more than 35,000 known species of fishes. And like the Dorado Catfish, the majority of species (51 percent) are found in freshwater, the subject of World Wildlife Fund’s The World’s Forgotten Fishes.

Rivers, lakes and wetlands are among the most biodiverse places on earth. They cover less than one per cent of the planet’s total surface, yet they’re home to almost a quarter of all vertebrate species – including over half of all the world’s fish species. And more are being discovered all the time.

But few people have any idea of the unimaginable diversity that swims below the surface of the world’s freshwater ecosystems or how critical these undervalued and overlooked freshwater fishes are to the health of people and nature around the world. 

WWF and the 15 NGOs and alliances that signed up to this report are championing an Emergency Recovery Plan for freshwater biodiversity and taking action to reverse decades of decline. Developed by scientists and freshwater experts from across the world, this practical six-pillared plan is based on sound science and real experience – each pillar has been implemented in different parts of the world:

 1. Let rivers flow more naturally;

2.Improve water quality in freshwater ecosystems;

3. Protect and restore critical habitats;

4. End overfishing and unsustainable sand mining in rivers and lakes;

5. Prevent and control invasions by non-native species, and;

6. Protect free-flowing rivers and remove obsolete dams.

Alaska Salmon Wave

Normally the fly angler takes great care to stalk the fish, to not alarm the fish, and to make a precise presentation. Sometimes you don’t even see a fish.

Not so when we get to witness an Alaska Salmon Wave.

Watch the video, courtesy of the Royal Coachman Lodge, Bristol Bay, Alaska.



Fishing with ‘Cat’ Guts

As a youngster, my grandparents introduced me to fly fishing on Salmon Kill Creek in northwestern Connecticut. Since memories began, I recall the bamboo fly rods sitting on their pegs outside the fishing shack with the silk lines stripped out and drying in the sun between outings to the creek.  

When preparing to go out on the water, the lines were re-coated with Mucilin and “cat gut” leaders were tied on. When I suspiciously asked if the leaders really were made from cat guts, my grandfather only smiled, but in a manner that suggested I could chew on one to find out.  

Turns out that “cat” was short for “caterpillar,” but guts were involved.

Whitney Tilt, Editor

Adult domestic silk moth (Bombyx mori), photo courtesy of Nikita, Flickr.

Fishing with Guts, by Paul Schullery, Midcurrent

IN THE EARLY 1700s, after anglers had been using horsehair lines for more than a thousand years, they finally discovered that nature had a better idea. It was a natural leader material that, by comparison with horsehair, was so remarkable for translucence, flexibility, and strength that it would eventually dominate the sport. It was silkworm gut. Gut was the raw material from which the larvae of Bombyx mori, a species of Asian moth, spun silk. When this larva ( commonly called the silkworm) reached the growth stage at which it would start spinning its cocoon, it contained two long, thin sacs or “envelopes” running longitudinally nearly the length of its body. Each sac held a tightly bundled mass that when unwound, stretched, and properly treated would make a single strand about twelve to fifteen inches in length — just right for a tippet, or, if several were knotted together, a whole leader. 

Adult moth with eggs (left); larva (center), which contained two gut sacs (right)

Got an Itch? Rub a Shark

As reported by Richard Kemeny in Science, If you’re a fish with an itch, a shark would seemingly be the last thing you’d turn to for a scratch. Yet scientists now report spotting several species of fish swimming up to sharks and intentionally rubbing them. The prey appear to be using the predators’ rough skin to rid themselves of parasites.

For their part, the sharks don’t seem entirely thrilled by the attention. In 38% of the study’s observations, they tried to dodge the itchy fish by turning abruptly, swimming up and down, or diving in a corkscrew fashion. What’s unclear is whether the sharks were trying to avoid the irksome chafing itself—or the fishes’ parasites.

Snuffbox and Logperch

Logperch Darter (photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Snuffbox and Logperch sound like characters in a fantasy game, or perhaps a variation of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But they are actually a native fish and mussel species that have developed a complex interspecific relationship.

The Logperch darter (Percina caprodes) dwells on bottoms of streams and lakes, particularly those with beds consisting of sand and gravel. The logperch can be identified by its characteristic conical snout and tiger striping along the body. They prey upon aquatic invertebrates, using their snout to flip cobble and gravel to forage for food. This species ranges across much of the St. Lawrence-Great Lakes, Hudson Bay, and Mississippi River basins.

Snuffbox mussel (photo: G. Thomas Watters, Ohio State University)

 The snuffbox (Epioblasma triquetra) is a small- to medium-sized freshwater mussel with a yellow, green or brown shell interrupted with green rays, blotches or chevron-shaped lines. Historically the snuffbox was widespread across 18 central U.S. states and Ontario. Today its distribution has been greatly reduced and it is currently listed as Endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

 The life cycle of the snuffbox, like most freshwater mussels, is unusual and intricate. Males release sperm into the water column that is then siphoned by females to fertilize their eggs. Fertilized eggs develop into microscopic larvae, called glochidia, within special gill chambers. After brooding for up to 7 months, females expel mature glochidia, which then must attach to the gills or fins of specific host fish species to complete development into juvenile mussels. If successfully attached to a host fish, glochidia mature within a few weeks. Juvenile mussels then drop off and, if they fall onto appropriate substrate, continue to grow. Using host fish allows the snuffbox to move upstream and populate habitats it could not otherwise reach.

Snuffbox’s host is the Logperch. Foraging for food near the bottom of streams and lakes, Logperch can become entrapped by Snuffbox Mussels. The Snuffbox Mussel clamps the snout or head of the Logperch. What a first glance appears to be a defensive or predatory action is in fact the mussel’s way to release its glochidia and attach them to the gills of the Logperch for development. Once the glochidia is released, the Snuffbox mussel releases the Logperch. Demonstration of this phenomenon can be seen in the following video:

The Snuffbox mussel is sensitive to river impoundment, siltation and disturbance, due to its requirement for clean, swift current and relative immobility as an adult. In order to maintain the current populations, rivers need to be protected to reduce silt loading and run-off. Maintaining or establishing vegetated riparian buffers can aid in controlling many of the threats to mussels. Control of zebra mussels is critical to preserving native mussels. And as with all mussels, protection of their hosts habitat is also crucial. Because the life cycle of the snuffbox is inherently linked with that of the Logperch, conservation and management of this fish species is needed to insure that of the Snuffbox.

Sources: USFWS Snuffbox Mussel fact sheet; Michigan Natural Features Inventory

Saved by a Bucket

Owens pupfish (Cyprinodon radiosus), Fish Slough Ecological Reserve. Photo by Joe Ferreira, California Dept. of Fish and Wildlife (Wikipedia).

By Sabrina Imbler, New York Times, Aug. 16, 2021

 The Owens pupfish, a small blue fish native to the springs in the California desert, was spared from extinction on an August afternoon in 1969 by Phil Pister and his two buckets. 

That day Mr. Pister, a state wildlife biologist, had heard that a marsh called Fish Slough, one of the few natural oases in the arid Owens Valley, was on the verge of drying up. The marsh, he knew, held the world’s last population of Owens pupfish. So he grabbed the buckets, jumped in his pickup truck and sped through ranch land toward water. The drive from his office in Bishop normally took 15 minutes; he did it in 10. 

He parked in a cloud of dust, then he and a small crew hurriedly corralled 800 or so pupfish into mesh cages in the dregs of the pond. Afterward, he shooed his colleagues into town for dinner; he would finish up. But when he returned to the edge of the pool, he saw that the caged pupfish were dying, some already belly-up. By accident, he had placed the cages away from the oxygenated current, leaving the last Owens pupfish in the world to choke to death on air.

Montana’s Legacy of River Protection

Picture it underwater. Yellowstone River in the Paradise Valley of Montana (photo by Whitney Tilt)

Picture Montana’s Paradise Valley from Livingston to Pray under water and the Yellowstone River dammed. That was the proposed Allenspur Dam. Imagine a reservoir alongside Glacier National Park, six times bigger than Lake MacDonald, inundating Polebridge and everything else almost south to Apgar. That was the proposed Glacier View Dam.

Six Dams That Were Never Built. American Rivers, February 2021, is a a project of dams dodged, reservoirs that weren’t, and the reason why not. The project is a small window into the history of six of those dams—North Fork Flathead River, Clark Fork River, Middle Fork Flathead River, Upper Missouri River, Big Hole River, Yellowstone River — and the stories of people who fought to preserve the rivers and landscapes they love. These stories are compiled in a online “story map” produced by American Rivers.