This is starting to annoy me.

T
Tinker
I take the labs up to the Edson Creek Campground to run in the off-season (I met the district manager last year and he gave us permission "as long as we pick up their 'presents'"). We usually walk the length of the campground then cross the road to the Sixes River boat launch site.

Yesterday, standng on the bank of the Sixes, I picked up seventeen (17!) Camel filters butts, two piles of dog poo, about 60 PowerBait eggs, plus a leader, bobber and trout hook someone tried to burn in a campfire ring. T'ain't no fishng in that river until today, May 25th, and the trash I picked-up wasn't there last week, so WTF?

Stopped at mid-drift on the Sixes as we were heading home and found more fresh crap, but this time it was human crap. Someone had built a fire, cooked some baked beans (and left the empty cans), left half-a-dozen piles of well-used toilet paper on the bank, and walked away from about 50-yards of line, their bobber and a #2 hook - thankfully the dogs didn't snag themselves. This wasn't there ten days ago, so again, WTF?

From asking around, it seems that this is becoming more-and-more common down here in the SW. Whenever we walk or fish the beaches, we carry out a shopping bag full of trash someone just left behind - Gatorade and soda bottles and dog poo mostly; rarely we find something that washed-up in the tide. And this seems new. We are on the beaches almost every day, rain or shine, and we haven't seen anything like this in the past year.

I spent twenty years in Arizona counting the days until we would come back to Oregon. I picked up at least ten tons of trash back there - and if you want to have a fun day, join a group of volunteers cleaning up the washes in the National Monuments down there from all the soiled diapers, used condoms and tampons, stacks and piles of water bottles and you name whatever human flotsam you can think of and we picked it up. All of it discarded as people snuck across the borders. You got used to seeing a trashed landscape down there.

But here? To see blatant attempts at poaching and the general disregard for the beaches and these spectacular little rivers, here, in Oregon, too? To find the same kind of trash in the same kinds of places was like a flashback.

Do I keep any fish from the Sixes - if I should ever catch one :D - or should I play it safe and always release them because there's a good chance they've had some contact with human fecal material?

It ain't right, it's a damn shame.

Carry a bag with you. I never doubt that everyone in the OFF community is scrupulous about carrying out whatever we carry in, but it's not enough. Carry a bag to carry out some of what others are leaving behind. Please?

It's enough to make a Sicilian shed a tear.
 
Raincatcher
Raincatcher
It's disheartening to, say the least, to get out in our beautiful northwest woods and fisheries only to find some nincompoop has used them for their personal "dumping" ground. I have seen places that would take a dozen large garbage bags to haul out the mess left behind. I always take at least one bagful of trash and nastiness out with me. In the past OFF members have organized clean-up get together's at various sites. Might be time for a bunch of these again.
 
W
wozniasm
I know your pain! In the past I had to pick up butts that were everywhere. I'm a smoker and ALWAYS carry some kind of container to pack out my garbage.
AND have taken partially burnt soiled diapers out of fire pits.
Another reason that I hate 3-day weekends - where all the degenerates get out and trash places that they come out to enjoy...
Thank you for picking up after the "children"!
 
T
Tinker
wozniasm said:
I know your pain! In the past I had to pick up butts that were everywhere. I'm a smoker and ALWAYS carry some kind of container to pack out my garbage.
AND have taken partially burnt soiled diapers out of fire pits.
Another reason that I hate 3-day weekends - where all the degenerates get out and trash places that they come out to enjoy...
Thank you for picking up after the "children"!

Carrying a butt-can ain't helping! You're screwing up my air! :D

Nothing worse than a reformed smoker, is there? Spreadin' the Word.

I'm not sure that the trash had anything to do with the holiday weekend. It's been getting progressively worse throughout the past few months. I hope it's the weekenders - at least it would eventually get better.
 
Last edited:
W
wozniasm
Tinker said:
Carrying a butt-can ain't helping! You're screwing up my air! :D

I'm in no way associated with any of the manufacturers: The Boss smoked for forty-odd years and swore she'd never quit because she liked smoking... then she tried one of those electronic cigarettes, never touched tobacco again, converted a dozen other smokers, and is smoke free today. They aren't made to help you quit, but they are a zillion times better for you, and they seem to work for the most hard-core smokers. I'm just saying...

Just saying, I'm not charging you for the second hand smoke!:lol:
Have one of those and working my way towards quitting but until then, I won't charge you for the second hand smoke thank you very much!:)
 
C_Run
C_Run
As you know I used to live down there. I recall someone making the comment once that it was a good thing those rivers flood every winter to flush all that stuff out of there. Not much has changed. The truth is that all of Oregon is like that.

As far as fecal material goes, I also recall that one time the kids at the Langlois School (when there used to be a school in Langlois) took water samples from Floras Creek throughout the year and measured the coliform bacteria. Their conclusion was that there is one big surge of bacteria during the first big flood of the year and then it drops way off. That would have been from pastures, though. I thought that was interesting.
 
18406ej
18406ej
If people don't litter then how am I to know the best spots for banking it on a waterway? All I need to do is stroll along the bank until I find a motherlode of cigarette butts, beer cans and styrofoam bait containers. I never have had any luck at these locations though- probably because idiots that leave this trash don't know what the **** they are doing any way.
 
O
OnTheFly
It's ignorance, laziness, or just plain blatant disregard for anyone else that try to enjoy the outdoors. As a backpacker, and I've done lots of it, the cardinal rule is to leave only your bootprints behind. This should be practiced everytime and everywhere you go. It's a damn shame that a great deal of people have the 'out of sight out of mind' mentality.
 
O
OnTheFly
18406ej said:
If people don't litter then how am I to know the best spots for banking it on a waterway? All I need to do is stroll along the bank until I find a motherlode of cigarette butts, beer cans and styrofoam bait containers. I never have had any luck at these locations though- probably because idiots that leave this trash don't know what the **** they are doing any way.
Ej, you need to do more fly fishing. Grab a fly rod, stroll the bank, and when you don't see anymore garbage, throw a line in. I guarantee you'll catch fish.
 
F
fredaevans
Bless you for the clean up's! You find these 'places' of impromptu camping bring them to the attention of the local Oregon State Patrol office and the County Sheriff. Most of these folks are 'out door men/women' and they take a very dim view of this sort of thing. If they know where to look, they will.

Fred
 
L
lilsalmon
I always carry out trash.....it is very sad to see the trash people leave behind. One place really bad is the Little North Fork of the Santiam. People use the day use areas and leave all their garbage on the rocks....once I carried out 3 18 pack boxes of trash from one spot. They did manage to lug out their empty cans so they could collect their nickles.

BTW...what is a reformed smoker?....I am a smoker (NEVER leave my butts) and feel that I am quite formed, probably a bit too much :D....JK and just say'n
 
T
Tinker
C_Run said:
As you know I used to live down there. I recall someone making the comment once that it was a good thing those rivers flood every winter to flush all that stuff out of there. Not much has changed. The truth is that all of Oregon is like that.

All of the State? All of it? I wouldn't accept it, but I could understand this kind of a mess around the drug fields - at least I'd know why it was trashed - but the rivers and the beaches? It's cleaner down here when the transient kids are around. They pick up the cans and bottles for the deposits.
 
T
Tinker
OnTheFly said:
Ej, you need to do more fly fishing. Grab a fly rod, stroll the bank, and when you don't see anymore garbage, throw a line in. I guarantee you'll catch fish.

See! That's the kind of fishing tip I hoped I'd find in the OFF! Thanks!
 
T
Tinker
Think of a "reformed smoker" as someone who's like a sinner who found the Lord and has been born again.

So yesterday I'm down on the beach north of Cape Blanco with my niece, teaching her how to fish the surf. About an hour into it, some guy comes along, parks his a$$ 50 feet away and starts throwing his line across our lines and smoking like a coal-fired boiler. It's surf perch, for pity's sake, not salmon.

The perch weren't there and after about an hour he left, and we got to pick up his cigarette butts and the empty Marlboro pack he left on the beach.

It's just something one does, I guess. I don't normally let my Fruit of the Looms get all wadded-up over it, but sometimes they do. I can't decide if it's comforting to know y'all pick up trash when you find it, or discouraging to hear that we all find trash to pick up.

<SIGH>
 
C_Run
C_Run
Tinker said:
All of the State? All of it? I wouldn't accept it, but I could understand this kind of a mess around the drug fields - at least I'd know why it was trashed - but the rivers and the beaches? It's cleaner down here when the transient kids are around. They pick up the cans and bottles for the deposits.

The reason I said all of the state is based on my observations. A few summers ago we took a couple of in-state trips that ranged from the Chetco down your way to Wallowa lake and points between. I can tell you that there isn't a place in Oregon where, wherever there is a wide pull-off along the road, you will not find a bunch of garbage tossed over the bank. All of our lush roadside vegetation conceals a lot of junk. I headed up an adopt-a-road group here for nine years. We could fill half a pickup truck with trash twice per year, no problem. People are slobs.
 
W
wozniasm
Tinker said:
Think of a "reformed smoker" as someone who's like a sinner who found the Lord and has been born again.
QUOTE]

Well, I've quit many times but still working on it so I consider myself "third trimester" born again!
 
O
OnTheFly
wozniasm;278393QUOTE said:
Well, I've quit many times but still working on it so I consider myself "third trimester" born again!
Mark Twain once said 'Quitting smoking is easy....I've done it a hundred times.'

Raincatcher said:
wozniasm said:
At my age, any day I wake up I consider myself born again...:D
NFOMCL = Nearly Fell Off My Chair Laughing.
 
T
Tinker
OnTheFly said:
NFOMCL = Nearly Fell Off My Chair Laughing.

Good one! Nearly choked on my prune juice.

C_Run said:
... I can tell you that there isn't a place in Oregon where, wherever there is a wide pull-off along the road, you will not find a bunch of garbage tossed over the bank. All of our lush roadside vegetation conceals a lot of junk.

C, I can almost understand trash over the bank. Don't know about the entire state, but down here, it's expensive to take a load to the trash collection sites: $9.00 for each 32-gallon bag. Not excusing it, but times are tough for some. People can be slobs, but sometime there are other factors, too. Back in Arizona, you could use the dumps if you brought in recycle materials. They ended that policy and the "wildcat" dumping started right up again.
 
D
Denduran87
One thing that has been bestowed upon me and i intend to bestow on my kids as well is to always leave a spot looking better than you found it. Nice job picking up the trash just wish those who left it would have done it right the first time round.
 

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