Catalytic converter stolen under Hwy 20 Bridge on Lower Yuba

[Ralph]

...

With all respect.

Beautiful post Bob. For all of its warts, I love California.

I've been very lucky to have travelled and fished around the world (gotten paid many times to do it!), but I have yet to find anywhere else that comes close to everything California has to offer. I live in the NE part of the state and have a total disconnect from LA, the Bay Area and even Sacramento. California is NOT just homeless, drug addicts, criminals, or the Kardashians.This morning, on PUBLIC water I caught a 7 pound brown and a 4 pound rainbow before breakfast (NOPE! location will not be disclosed on social media or even a private PM). We have our mountains, high prairie, the Central Valley and the desert. What other state can claim that? Get OVER the social issues and dig even a tiny bit into why California has the world's 5th largest economy and the 4th highest ranking of places people, from around the world, would want to live.

Any time someone suggests it's time to leave California, it's probably a good idea. For them. I am 5th generation and looking at 6th and 7th gen with our kids and grandkids. We're here to stay.

[Jcolin]

I also really enjoyed your post Bob. Being born and raised here i’d have a hard time ever leaving despite plenty of BS for sure. Im all for folks leaving the state! Was tickled reading about the tech folks leaving the bay area to work remotely in cheaper states during the pandemic. Ralph i remember reading, i believe in my dads old copy of sierra trout guide or somewhere else, that your great grandparents (or great great etc) transplanted trout in milk pails in the sierras to remote lakes? Unless i got the wrong Ralph, ive assumed that you’re R Cutter. Alwyas very appreciative when im backpacking the sierras and find various lakes that somebody, usually, brought the trout there a long time ago.

[Ed Wahl]

Bob that post is a real gem. Thank you.
Ed

[Mr T]

I tried, for a short while, to not respond to this but it is just sticking a little too much...

Ah yes, the 50s in California, the decade of my youth as well, where:

Logging companies essentially destroyed tens of millions of salmon and trout with siltation and total disregard for wildlife.

When there was no care at all about vehicles spoiling the air.

A time when interracial marriage was actually outlawed!

When one could not buy a house because of one's color or nationality.

Litter covered the roadways and toxic waste was spewed into waterways.

Bill, I absolutely respect what you have done and what you keep doing to keep this sport we all love alive and healthy and growing and I even "get" what you mean by the words you wrote above...the lack of common decency that seemed to be the norm 60 years ago...everywhere, not just California.
But playing the "good old days" card across the board does a lot of injustice to both the evils of the past and the hard work that has been done to bring about positive change. (My daughter and granddaughter could not have attended college in most of the colleges in CA during the 1950s. Now they can.)
I too miss that sense we had of life being kinder...people being kinder and more helpful, but the reality was we were mostly blind to the bad things happening to the Earth in the name of progress. We tried out best (unwittingly) to not take a closer look at how things were being done just as long as there was a promise of profit. We lost so much.

Just as much as turning a blind eye to all that was "bad" or ill-conceived and believing everything was rosy it would be just as bad of me to propound that the entire era was evil. It was not simply "one or the other". We started paying attention to how to do things better and we started changing things with an eye to future generations (human and animal) surviving.

Human history is...complicated. Always has been and always will be.

I do not want to go back to being able to kill 20 or more trout in a day. I do not want to willy-nilly take abalone off the rocks of my home coast. I want limits! I want people and companies to be held accountable for disregarding the Earth and for disregarding each other.

It is an absolute shame that the crime of stealing somebody else's stuff...of breaking into their cars...of being impoverished by drugs (or any other reason) has become the norm but it happened in the 50s as well! I do not have any answers but I do know the ills of the world cannot all be blamed of political situations, such as people coming here to make abetter life (Both my mother and father did just that! One in 1912 and one in 1926), police being held accountable (They should be..as everyone should be...and, I have five people on my family that have had careers in law enforcement).

I will offer this: World population in 1955 was just under 2,800,000,000. Population today: 7,900,000,000! We cannot continue to pretend this is not happening without making sure everyone os cared for and part of that is changing the out of balance levels of health care, jobs and food distribution. Without that...with just making overt threats to people on drugs that steal things...there are going to be a lot more thefts before things change.

Yes, it pisses me off too and I hate worrying about where I park and I am sorry for everyone who is violated in this way...I hate that the beautiful foothills of California seem to be the beehive of meth addiction....I hate it and it makes me sad, but I do not want to go back to the evils (hidden and otherwise) we have crawled and clawed out of from the days of my youth.

With all respect.

Beautiful post Bob. For all of its warts, I love California.

I've been very lucky to have travelled and fished around the world (gotten paid many times to do it!), but I have yet to find anywhere else that comes close to everything California has to offer. I live in the NE part of the state and have a total disconnect from LA, the Bay Area and even Sacramento. California is NOT just homeless, drug addicts, criminals, or the Kardashians.This morning, on PUBLIC water I caught a 7 pound brown and a 4 pound rainbow before breakfast (NOPE! location will not be disclosed on social media or even a private PM). We have our mountains, high prairie, the Central Valley and the desert. What other state can claim that? Get OVER the social issues and dig even a tiny bit into why California has the world's 5th largest economy and the 4th highest ranking of places people, from around the world, would want to live.

Any time someone suggests it's time to leave California, it's probably a good idea. For them. I am 5th generation and looking at 6th and 7th gen with our kids and grandkids. We're here to stay.

Good points on both sides here.

Bob, you are correct that we have made a lot of good steps in many directions, but unfortunately the political powers have bowed to pressure and are allowing behavior that is flat out wrong to pass unchecked or contested. I don't think anyone would disagree with me when I say this is not the way to run a society. How we can fix it (if that is really an option now), I do not have the answer to that.

Ralph, I'm 3rd gen, and love the state as well. But the politics are so far to one side that its hard to stomach living here. I've often considered leaving and have not ruled it out yet. You are fortunate (Note that I am not saying this in a perjorative manner here- more out of respect that you made the decisions that allow it) in that you enjoy a total disconnect from the LA, the Bay Area and and even Sacramento. Moving to a remote region of the state appears to my eye to be a similar response not much unlike leaving the state.

I live in Sacramento, and work in the biotech industries, so I am working daily in those areas. For me to make my living, I have to make this deal with the devil, as the 5th largest economy in the world generates the majority of the revenue in a few concentrated regions. Telling someone to get over the social issues is not a simple thing to do when my downtown is boarded up like a war zone since the last round of protests, and I see street after street covered in litter, waste and debris. It's shoved down my throat daily.

Is California a great state? yes, compared to most anywhere else in country or most of the world, so its not a surprise people want to live here. But it has lost much of the appeal if you have to live or work in the urban areas.

Do I want to leave California? Not really- I loved growing up here and wish I could offer the same to my kids and grandkids.

[Ralph]

I also really enjoyed your post Bob. Being born and raised here i’d have a hard time ever leaving despite plenty of BS for sure. Im all for folks leaving the state! Was tickled reading about the tech folks leaving the bay area to work remotely in cheaper states during the pandemic. Ralph i remember reading, i believe in my dads old copy of sierra trout guide or somewhere else, that your great grandparents (or great great etc) transplanted trout in milk pails in the sierras to remote lakes? Unless i got the wrong Ralph, ive assumed that you’re R Cutter. Alwyas very appreciative when im backpacking the sierras and find various lakes that somebody, usually, brought the trout there a long time ago.

Yeah, R Cutter! My great and great great grand fathers were very instrumental in some of the original southern high Sierra stocking (sometimes for better and sometimes not so much). My great great grandfather Kennedy was a shepherd and mapped much of the high country - his name still sticks to some of the geographic place names. I'm glad those guys have provided you pleasure so many generations later.

[Bob Loblaw]

Bob that post is a real gem. Thank you.
Ed

I echo every single sentiment in that post. I emigrated to California from Ireland in 1994 with $400 in my pocket and a half promise of a below minimum wage job. Today I own my own home in the Bay Area (thats worth far too much), I'm married to a great woman, have a great daughter who can cast better than most men twice her age, a career I love and more money than I every thought I'd have in three lifetimes. I live in the best place in the world and get to enjoy great mountain biking on my doorstep and great skiiing and fly fishing just a few hours away, and the beach an hour to the west. For all its faults and the challenges we face, California and in particular Northern California, is as good as it gets.

[David Lee]

We left CA. last July , single best thing I have ever done .

I traded the homeless crapping in the streets for dead silence at Night . I traded the druggies smoking meth at the local park for a ridge top full of Wildlife . I traded civil unrest for isolation on the outskirts of a town of 20,000 . I traded the lawlessness for a 20 minute drive to the closest grocery store . Leaving my birth State to go off into the unknown was a gamble , and we won it .

My Daughter will never grow up thinking any of that nonsense is normal , or acceptable .

D.~

[Rossflyguy]

California is great, once you leave the major cities. But the problem is the major cities control the politics in this state. Which is a huge issue. On top of that we are taxed the most and seem to not know where our money is being spent. All the horrible roads, poor public school education, high homeless population, and yet we don’t have the money to fix these problems? The issue number one issue is the people voting these snakes back into office where they’ll keep doing less and taking more. That’s the problem. People are dedicated to a specific party regardless how bad the state is being handled. If we leave the state nothing is gonna change. If you pretend there’s nothing wrong nothing is gonna change. We need to remove these career politicians and vote in people that want this state to be #1 where it counts. Not #1 at making mathematics a racial issue. It’s gone too far.

[mogaru]

Leaving or staying in California is a personal choice, however Bill wisely brought some of the issues that are dragging the state in the mud. When I retired a few years ago I thought about leaving the sate, but after 36 years and a serious thinking I decided to stay. I picked a great location close to rivers and not too far away from major metropolitan areas and I'm really happy with my decision, at least for right now. Are there any other great places to live in this great country of ours? You bet there are. At the end is what you make out of life. Go fishing before is too late !!!!!!

[grnwtrs]

I'm sorry, but I must challenge the fact that we have "career politicians" at this point in our state government.

Contrary, we have CAREER LOBBYISTS (SP) who take control of the newly elected "pol"and explain to him/her how things work.
Then when our new elected "pol" is termed out, we elect someone else, NEW. to the job. And so it goes.

How else are we to build up expertise, and I mean expertise in government if we keep turning out our local state office holders. We don't do this "term out" after so many years on the Federal level of offices , and I am unclear how prevalent that policy is on the local school board ,city, county level.

That is just my observation from the local level. I am just a pathetic fisher person for trout, steelhead and salmon, and anything else that comes along. When I say fisher person, I mean that I fish and hope to catch. Lots of fishing, little catching. I love every minute of fishing, and have never regretted those hours doing the "last cast"

Regards, Gene