Laegreid Outdoors

Since moving out to Washington from Nebraska, I have had many new fishing experiences, from steelheading in the S rivers to salmon fishing from Puget Sound beaches.  The most unique experience yet, however, is squidding. Squid fishing is far different from the bass fishing in Nebraska, which we did under the sun on warm mornings, stalking along the edges of sand-pits and casting plastic worms to fish we saw cruising along the bank. The season starts to heat up in October, as the first large schools of squid start to make their way south into Puget Sound. Those brave and/or stupid enough (i.e, me) to pursue the wee cephalopods in the cold and damp must wait until after the sun sets to head out.  The anglers go and stand on a dock or a pier that has lights; squid like to hang around the fringes of the light, darting in to grab shrimp and small fish feeding on the plankton drawn to the illuminated water.  The anglers use long, whippy rods to lob their multi-p...

So, rhinos are cool, and also pretty crazy endangered.  Poachers hunt them for their horn, which is sold on the black market for its medicinal and/or magical properties (Pro-tip: those 'properties'? You could get the same effect from chewing your fingernails; they're basically the same stuff).  So what does South Africa want to do to save the rhino? They want to legalize the rhino horn trade. If that doesn't raise some red flags, it should.  The focus should be on eliminating the demand base, thereby driving the price down to nothing and ending the poaching, not feeding the market.  It's not worth getting shot by anti-poaching rangers if you're only going to get five bucks for a rhino horn. I feel that an educational campaign might do more good than legalizing the trade of horn. If the consumers knew that they're paying top dollar for the same stuff that's in horse hooves, perhaps they might think twice.  Or the price of horse hoof would skyrocket. Who...

It's not often we get to hear of a massive societal change for the better, especially not when the environment or conservation is involved.   Occasionally, however, we get a win. The short version of the article is that demand for shark-fin soup in China is down due to a large public-awareness campaign (most didn't know what is in the soup and/or how it is harvested) and, more surprisingly, government action forbidding extravagant food, such as shark-fin soup, from being served at its banquets. Demand for the soup is down 50-70%. For those of you that don't know, the main ingredient in shark-fin soup is, you guessed it, shark fins.  The problem with that is, because only the fins of the sharks garner high prices from Asian markets, fishermen catch sharks, hack off their fins, and return the maimed, but still living, animals back to the sea. This is a wickedly cruel thing to do, not to mention a waste of perfectly good shark meat. The steps taken by shark supporters to...

Life is full of firsts.  Some are important; first car, first house, first steelhead, first fish on a fly, first day of hunting season, and so on.  This is the first post of the Laegreid Outdoors blog, which is a big first for me. I am Peter Laegreid, an avid angler and semi-competent artist; I pose as a marketer during the work week. That last name, by the way, is Norwegian in origin, and I pronounce it lay-Grade. Others pronounce it la-Greed, lag-reed, I've even heard it pronounced LaGreen. You can call me Peter. Now that we're on a first-name basis, I should probably tell you that this blog is going to be just chock-full of outdoorsy stuff. I'm based in the Greater Seattle area, so if you don't like hearing about anadromous fish, you may want to check out some other blog.  If you are looking for a place to hear about salmon and trout and steelhead fishing, weird bottom-fish I accidentally hook, squidding, hiking, environmental issues, and maybe even some hunti...