Invasion

Back from an LA fishing trip on Piru Creek. I was shocked by the amount of trash left behind and in progress by Mexican families out on a picnic over the weekend. Diapers, beer bottles, cans, and even more astounding, toilet paper and turd piles up and down the creek flood plain, when dumpsters and port-o-johns are plentiful. Graffiti tags plastered on all the rocks, and the official "john" was trashed beyond belief and tagged as well. Down on the creek a large semi-permanent encampment of tents, screened rooms and and the population of a small city appeared to be living there. Noisily I might add. Up and down the creek small troops of young Mexican males stalked the road with pellet guns. I was glad to get by them without getting shot.

After spending the afternoon at the falls, which is the start of the catch and release blue ribbon fishing section where no fish can be kept, I made my way back to the parking lot. The section is wild and self-reproducing i.e. no stocking. I saw suckers, bullfrogs, turtles and two small trout, but nothing representative of the 6,000 trout per mile estimate by the fish and game dept. Despite the continuing people pollution life went on.

A creel census taker interviewed me on exit for fishing catch per unit effort data and his take on the conservation situation had a strange pro-republican stance due to a gas pipeline in Santa Barbara County that Gov. Davis and President Clinton exempted for the permit and the company wiped out some archeological sites.

"Both parties do it," he said. "Not like this current one," I said as I related example after example of Bush unzipping Clinton macro-policy that I worked on. Facts are stubborn things and folks shouldn't allow a small example of something that slipped through the cracks after a political payment to cloud the picture. You can't catch them all with that many companies buying favor.