Thinking in watersheds
Understanding watersheds, and the different types of rivers we're going to encounter when fly-fishing
Inside this entry:
What is a watershed?
What makes up a watershed?
Types of rivers in watersheds
Freestone rivers
Tailwaters
Spring creeks
Spotlight on the Clackamas watershed
Summing up
On fly-fishing environments
Zooming in from the macro to understand how different kinds of rivers support different populations of fish an types of fishing, and how everything's connected together.
On our journey to understand where fish—specifically trout—live, our first major concepts are watersheds and river types.
We're approaching these elements from the macro to the micro, which always calls to mind an old film called Powers of 10. It's a film created by the office of two famous designers—Ray and Charles Eames—for IBM, to illustrate understanding at various scales.
If you've never seen it, it's worth watching:
Powers of 10, fly-fishing edition
If we were to remake the film for our own purposes, we'd maybe start with the hungry trout. Zooming out, we'd see its picnic blanket, the lie where it stalks its lunch.
One step further, we'd see the river features, the neighborhood it frequents. Zooming back more, we'd see the type of river it lives in. And, one further step out, the watershed.
When we zoom in past the trout, we might see other river creatures, aquatic insects, microorganisms, and the composition of the water in any given stream or river.
So, there's a lot to see. Let's get on with it:
