I was at an all day meeting meant for irrigation ditch companies to talk them into building fish passages around their diversion structures: like a dam with a headgate next to it that can be opened to pull water from a rivers. This is a prime opportunity because many of these structures were destroyed in the recent floods and will have to be re-built.

The organizers didn't get the word out to the right people, so there were only a few ditch company members in the audience of 90 people. The rest of them were from government agencies, consultants, engineers, and people like me interested in the fish themselves.

I learned that fish must migrate to live a good life. Ideally, they would be able to move from our mountainous area down to the plains in the winter, and then back up here in the spring to reproduce. A fish's normal range can be up to 10 miles. The speaker acknowledged that we might think we see the same fish from one year to the next, and maybe we do, but maybe that's an entirely different fish.

One of the ways to track one is to plant a microchip in the fish, just like we do in our pets. In order to do this, they electrocute them. As one speaker described it: "a lot of highly educated people get out in the water with electricity: how is this intuitive?"

I learned a lot about how rivers should be configured in order to prevent the sort of damage we experienced. The biggest part of it is what happens to the sediment - sand and rocks - that gets moved around and deposited in awkward places.

The man next to me was an expert on fish passages, so I was able to get some clarifications from him, and then another speaker showed photographs of what they look like when completed, and that was very interesting.



None of that applies to my situation, but I did get explanations for things I'd seen on the internet about what is required to have a healthy river that can better withstand flooding. Sometimes you just need to have a live person explain it.

It was an all day meeting, and the box lunch was really good. It was paid for by Trout Unlimited, which is a very powerful group, looking out for fisheries everywhere.

Then, I rushed home and stuck a casserole in the oven for a potluck meeting of our Canyon Association.

I'm glad to be home.