The Insidious Lies of Feminism

When any goal-oriented organization begins to near achievement of their goal, no matter how loosely organized they are, there is a tendency for that organization to shift the goalposts to keep from ever “achieving” their goal, because in doing so, the organization becomes obsolete. 

This is sort of an offshoot of the “Iron Law of Bureaucracy” where most participants in an organization eventually begin to act in a manner that serves to expand and perpetuate the organization, as opposed to actually meeting the organization’s goal. 

I can think of a couple of examples in modern times.  Some of the labor unions that exist today are good examples – they served a great purpose at first, but as they met their goals, the goals became increasingly trivial and increasingly damaging to the businesses with whom they are affiliated.

The topic of this posting, however, is feminism. 

Flame suit on…

In my opinion, feminism in its current permutation, and given its current goals, is doing massive amounts of harm to society, and to young, impressionable girls who buy into their insidious lies, hook, line, and sinker.  There are several reasons that I believe this to be true:

1.      Feminism’s goals have shifted:

There was a time when women were faced with a distinct lack of choice in their own self-determination.  Their option essentially was: find a husband, get married, have his kids, and rely on him to support you until you die. 

There were a few other options, to be completely honest, but they were fewer and much more far between than most of us would care to admit, and many of them were pretty undesirable.

Enter the feminist movement.  Their goal was to give women choice, and through most of the early to middle 20^th century, this is exactly what they did – it became much more common for women to work outside of the home during these times, and as a result, women were given a much broader range of choices in their lives.

Feminism wasn’t satisfied, however, and pushed further, and this is where the feminist movement and I part ways, because they are now causing untold misery and unhappiness with their poison, starting with:

2.      Their goals are Now Contrary to a Woman’s Biological Imperatives:

Feminist’s have moved the goalposts now that the primary objective – more freedom of choice for women – has been met.  They are now pushing for equality between men and women, when no such equality can ever exist, because men and women are not equals. 

If you feel your face reddening and your collar heating up with that last statement, then I urge you to calm down and hear me out, because you actually agree with me here, even if you don’t realize it yet. 

If women and men are equals, why is there a WNBA and an NBA?  Why is there men’s and women’s figure skating?  If they are truly equal, why the separation between them in professional sports?

Can a man give birth to children?  Can a woman sire a baby?  Are men generally larger, stronger, and more aggressive than women?  Are you trying to tell me that before we had conquered speech and reason, and “society” was hardly even a thing, that the reason that women generally did not go mammoth hunting with the men is because the differences between men and women were socialized, and not actual hard, concrete differences? 

Is it so hard to believe that the differences between men and women are more than skin deep?  More than simply physical differences in size and capability?  Is it so hard to believe that men and women are also different from each other on a psychological scale, wired totally differently by biology because each sex has different biological imperatives?  That men and women were made differently by biology, evolution, or God (whichever you prefer) so that they could complement each other, rather than be equals? 

This is where feminism goes off the track, because they want equality when natural law dictates thatno such thing can possibly exist – nor should it!  They say that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, all the while ignoring the fact that the path to true happiness for most men and most women is to find a partner to fulfill their biological imperatives through and with.  Feminism has shifted from attempting to create more choice for women, to a new, strange situation where they are actually trying to remove certain, “undesirable” choices. 

A woman’s biological imperative is different than a man’s.  Feminism argues that this is simply socialized in us by society, but they are wrong.  A woman’s biological imperative is to care for, nurture, and raise children.  A man’s biological imperative is to provide for a family, and defend them from the slings and arrows that life throws their way.  If this weren’t the case, as Aretae so aptly points out in the previously linked posting, the human race could not exist.

I’m not saying that we should pigeonhole every woman into child-rearing any more than we need to pigeon-hole every man into fatherhood and corporate slavery.  There needs to be choice to do whatever you want in life.  What I’m suggesting is that there is a hard-wiring in our heads pushing us in the direction of those things, and true fulfillment of our psychologically needed, biological imperatives should not be hand-waived away as being part of some imposed patriarchal societal force. 

Women need choice just as much as men, but feminism has attempted to remove and belittle one of those choices as being invalid, and the choice that they are belittling is the choice that carries the strongest urges towards happiness and fulfillment – to raise a family and be a wife. 

Don’t believe me?  Then why did the staunchest feminists of all spend most of their middle-aged years desperately throwing money at IVF clinics in the hopes of fulfilling their imperative (and mostly, unfortunately for them, in vain?)  Why do older feminists tend to be bitter, writing screeds on the internet about how society won’t let them be happy unless they’ve had children, while completely ignoring the fact that society is not the cause of their unhappiness at all? 

It’s because they haven’t done what they were biologically hard-wired to do, and they are regretting it, even if on a subconscious level.  That was their choice, and while I’m sorry that many of them are unhappy with their choices, where I get crossed up with them is that they are clamoring as loudly as they can to drag as many impressionable, young women along with them on their path to unhappiness and destruction as possible. 

My wife, for instance, has seen the uselessness in the current feminist ideology, and realizes that she only just barely, at my urging, managed to avoid falling into their trap.  She was against having children, because she bought into the feminist line that they would be an anchor around her neck, keeping her from fulfilling her true life and career goals.  Once she gave birth to our daughter, she constantly remarks on how stupid it was for her to put her career over her family, because she realized that:

3.      Feminism Simply Traded Working for your Family and a Man that you love, for Working for “The Man.”:

Any smart person can tell you that if you’re looking for life fulfillment and happiness only through your career, you’re generally headed down the road to unhappiness.  Most happy men have stricken a balance between family life and their career, and do so simply because a career is a heartless, empty thing; full of personal accomplishment, but devoid of any love or care for you, and the person that you are. 

The corporate grind will chew you up and spit you out, and when it does, the only thing you have is your family.  Your job isn’t going to mourn you at your funeral, nor remember you after your death.  Careers are important, but they are a means to an end, and that end is the raising of a family, and the fulfillment of your biological imperative. 

In true “grass is greener on the other side” form, feminism failed to understand this.  They thought that they were freeing a woman from the chains of mother- and wife-hood, so that they could soar into a life of fulfillment through their careers, no longer fettered by their families.

All they succeeded in doing is to shift the obligation from husband and family, to boss and job.  One set of “chains” for another.  They failed to realize that while they saw men as being “free” because they had the option to work outside the home, that men actually weren’t any more free, because they still had to work, often times in soul- and body-crushing, horrible jobs that they hated, simply to make ends meet back home.

Feminists traded “a man” for “the man” and didn’t even see it coming. 

So what difference does it make if a woman labors for the betterment of her family, or if she labors for the betterment of her career (and a paycheck)? 

A big difference, but one opposite of the difference that feminists would see, for the reasons listed above.  A career is an empty, uncaring thing.  A family is not.  A career fulfills no biological imperative.  A family does.  Women looked at a man’s career and envied his ability to have one, without realizing that most happy men don’t gather their happiness from their career, but through their family, for which their career is merely a means to an end.  Those that only find happiness through their careers are generally not nearly as happy as those who have stricken a balance in life, and their families suffer, too.  Cave men weren’t only happy that they killed a mammoth, they were also (and perhaps mostly) happy that they were able to feed their family with the meat from that mammoth.

The problem with feminism is that they look to the mammoth kill in their quest for equality, but fail to consider the fact that there needs to be a reason for the kill, in order for it to be satisfying on a biological level.  Feminism has become a selfish, “me first” way of looking at life, that leaves women’s every superficial desire met, while completely ignoring that there is more to life than superficial desires, and that the most fulfilling life that any of us can lead is one in service to our loved ones, as opposed to one lived in service to ourselves. 

4.      The ideal feminist lifestyle will almost inevitably lead to unhappiness:

Maybe not right away.  Maybe right now, it feels good to be in service to yourself, and to fulfill your own superficial desires.  I’ll concede that it may even be a good thing for everyone to live like this for a while (both women and men), if for no other reason than to get it out of their system, and to realize that while a life lived this way can be fun, and less stressful, and temporarily more rewarding than a life lived in service to your loved ones, that fun and reward dries up eventually because you are hard wired not to live this way. 

Our species would never have made it if we were all so selfish and self-centered as to live our lives in service to ourselves and no other.  We are hard wired to devote ourselves to a family.  Even if you don’t feel it now, you eventually will, and hopefully it happens to you long before it happened to the likes of Gloria Steinem and her ilk, who spent massive amounts of money desperately trying to fulfill their biological imperatives through IVF cinics and finally find happiness, far after it was too late for them to do so. 

My wife is a perfect example.  She fell for the feminist line early in life, and truly believed that a family, and specifically children, would ruin her life.  We spent all of our twenties playing and traveling and enjoying ourselves, and we had a blast; but we were living selfishly, and eventually that started to wear on me, and I wanted more.  I didn’t force anything on my wife, but I did state my case, trying to convince her that it was time to devote our lives to our family instead of to ourselves.  I think she knew that I was right, because it didn’t take much suggestion from my part before we had our daughter.  My wife looks back at how she used to look at motherhood and having a family, and realizes now what a fool we both were.  We still travel.  We still run all over the place having fun, but now we do it both for ourselves and for our daughter.  She hasn’t slowed us down, she has just given all of the fun things we do more meaning, because now we are doing it for her as well as for ourselves.  I am so much more happy, and so is my wife, now that we have our family. 

Do not fall into the feminist trap, ladies, because the feminist ideal, as it currently sits, is a recipe for misery and unhappiness.

One more thing, and this is important, so don’t forget that:

5.      You can have both a family and a career if you’re willing to sacrifice a little on both fronts:

Life is about sacrifice.  Men have known that all along, but it seems that the feminist movement has forgotten about that.  They want a life without sacrifice, and don’t seem to understand that no such thing can possibly exist.  There seems to be a popular belief by the feminist movement that if a woman has to sacrifice anything in getting whatever she wants out of life, that it is unfair and a result of the patriarchy influencing their decisions.  They don’t get that every choice in life leads to sacrifice.  If you have the hamburger for dinner, you sacrifice your chances at having the steak.  Men have been sacrificing for years, and it never  even occurs to us to whine about that.

I sacrificed my desire to be a forestry major, and became a Construction Management major because I decided that it was more important to have a paycheck than it was to be searching for a job that I love to do, but doesn’t exist.  We all sacrifice every single day, and another thing feminism seems to be missing is that very few sacrifices are the “either/or” choice that they seem to be foisting on young women.  There are varying levels to every choice.  You don’t have to choose between being a stay at home Mom, or having a career.  You just have to sacrifice one for the other in varying degrees.

I have two strong women in my life, both of whom flipped the bird to feminism and proved that you can have it all, and career vs. motherhood and marriage is not an “either/or” choice. 

The first woman is my mother, who had my older brother when she was 21 years old, fresh out of college, and who was a stay-at-home mother until he was 13 and I was 11.  Her dream was to be a teacher.  She fulfilled her dream to become a teacher, once she had fulfilled her dream of being a mother and raising a family.  She just put off her career for 13 years.  She is now ready to retire this year, after 26 years of teaching.  This was a long and satisfying career for her, and yet she still got to stay at home and raise her family.  She didn’t sacrifice one for the other, she just balanced them so that she could have it all.  She did a wonderful job at both, and I can’t even begin to explain to you how much her being home with us in our formative years meant to my brother and I. 

The second woman is my wife.  She works at her career, full-time, while we work together to raise our child, with the help of her mother.  Our daughter spends maybe 10 hours a week in daycare, and the rest of the time she’s either with her mother, her father, or her grandma.  Mrs. Goober hasn’t given up anything, and is still working to provide for her daughter in the way that she knows best.   

The insidious lies that feminism tells you is that you should deny your path to happiness, in fulfilling your biological imperatives, in exchange for a selfish life lived in service to your superficial desires, and this will lead to destruction and unhappiness in the end.  Just ask Gloria Steinem.  

XKCD What if?

By now I’ll assume that most (if not all) of you are familiar with the webcomic xkcd.  It is a comic about all sorts of things, and it is pretty funny and enjoyable, and I highly recommend it. 

But this posting isn’t about the comic, itself.  It is about the “what if” section of the xkcd website.  You see, Randall, the guy who writes the comic, is a person of certified galactic intellect and knows a thing or two about physics (you’ll understand why that is a massive understatement if you ever get hooked on “what if?” like I have).

Every Tuesday, he takes a question from the internet and answers it to best of his ability, and then “Mythbusters” it in awesome form, by taking the question and ramping it up to theoretical levels. 

For instance, when asked “what is the worst thing that can happen when using a pressure cooker?”Randall gives the standard answer:

Pressure cookers are dangerous.They can explode, in a sense, but not as violently as you might fear (or hope). The pressure inside a consumer cooker doesn’t go above about two atmospheres—about the pressure inside a can of soda. Those levels can be dangerous, but they’re generally not high enough to cause the metal to violently rupture.
So what makes a pressure cooker dangerous?Imagine a world where Pepsi is scalding hot. Now imagine that someone shakes up a can of Pepsi and sets it in front of you. That’s the real threat from a pressure cooker: If the seal fails (or the lid is opened too early), it can spray scalding stew in all directions.
But it’s not really an explosion.

Then he gives the “Randall” version:

Of course, the question wasn’t about whether a pressure cooker is likely to explode. It was about what the worst thing that could happen was… …for my money, one of the most horrifying things you could do is this:
(Note: Never try this, for reasons which will become obvious in a moment.)Fill the cooker with oxygen up to 5 PSI, then pump in fluorine until it starts escaping through the safety valve. Put the vessel over an open flame until it reaches 700°C (That’s °C, not °F. Yes, this will probably set off the smoke alarm.) Now, pump the hot gas over a liquid-oxygen-cooled stainless steel surface.The procedure here is a little tricky, but if you do things right, the gas will condense into dioxygen difluoride (O2F2).And that stuff is awful.
Ray Bradbury taught us that paper burns when exposed to oxygen at temperatures above 451°F. Dioxygen difluoride is so volatile that it makes almost any organic substance ignite and explode at any temperature hotter than 300°F below zero. It can literally make ice catch fire.
In an article about O2F2, Chemistry blogger Derek Lowe (of the excellent In The Pipeline) used phrases like “violently hideous”, “deeply alarming”, and “chemicals that I never hope to encounter”.

Imagine: a colorless, odorless gas that will make any organic substance spontaneously combust and explode.  Is it necessary to point out, dear reader, that we are all made up of 100% certifiable, bonafide organic substances?  Shall I further elaborate on the horrors of such a compound? 

There is another article in there about ending the world via an 1.8terawatt hairdryer enclosed in a metal box.  I shit you not.

The stuff he comes up with is both fascinating and funny as hell all in one, and I highly recommend that you pop over and check it out.  Xkcd “what if?” FTW!  

Gun Control Legislation Fails...

...and we are treated to yet another example of Barack Obama going before a nation that told him “no,” and having him explain to us why we really wanted what he was proposing, and how it was just because we couldn’t understand him that we didn’t line up to punch the card for his idea. 

I’m getting so sick of being preached to by this pseudo-intellectual lightweight about how I’m so stupid and he’s so smart, and the only reason that I disagree with him is because he is too smart to be able to speak in terms stupid enough for me to understand him. 

This wasn’t a failure of communication, Barack – I read you just fine. It’s just that – and I know that this is going to come as a shock to you, so stick with me here – I think what you were pushing for was stupid, poorly-thought-out, rights stripping, reactionary nonsense. Amazingly enough, so did the Senate.

Sickening Blood Dancing, Proven Wrong Once Again

I can’t help but be sickened at how absolutely gleeful so many people were at the prospect that the Boston Bombers would be tea-party “extremists.”  I won’t link to them, because Borepatch took care of it already, and I’m lazy as fuck.  So go over there, click through some of the links he offers up.  It will piss you off.  Here’s a snippet:

- Just hours after the bombing, Michael Moore blamed the Tea Party for the tragedy, tweeting “2+2 =” followed by “Tax Day. Patriots Day.”
 - A Salon.com opinion piece published last night entitled, “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American,” expressed the desire that the “bomber ends up being a white anti-government extremist.”
 - Former Bill Clinton advisor David Axelrod also hinted yesterday on MSNBC that the attack could have been a form of tax protest.
 - A US Forest Service PR rep also took to Twitter to blame the bombing on the Tea Party, writing, “I fear nutty logic goes like this … Patriots Day. April 15. Tax Day. Bad government. Boston. Tea Party. Let’s show ‘em.”
 - Actor and comedian Jay Mohr blamed the bombings on the Second Amendment, tweeting, “What bothers me most about today is that we’re getting used 2 it. ENOUGH. 2nd amendment must go. Violence has 2 stop. Culture MUST change.”
 

And these people are once again, like Contessa Brewer the last time, going to be absolutely despondent that the offenders once again turned out to be Islamist extremists.  Not upset that people were killed and injured, but that reality once again proved their political worldview to be wrong.

How fucking sickening are these people?  They remind me of the blood-dancers after Newtown, waving the bloody t-shirts of those dead kids to forward their political views before they had even removed the bodies from them. 

Fuck you, people.  If your political worldview is so important to you that you immediately start spinning tragedy for political gain before they’ve even finished cleaning up the scene of the crime, then you seriously need to look at yourself in the mirror and try to figure out what the hell went wrong – because something is wrong with you…

Seriously, profoundly wrong.  

Censorious Thuggery in Ohio - Popehat...

The Popehat Signal is UP!!!

This time it’s about a lady who posted a negative review of a company that she did business with on Ebay, who is getting run through the wringer by that company’s lawyer for her negative feedback. 

On February 12, lOB, Nicholls paid for the item and shipping via Pay Pal. Promptly after receiving Nicholls' payment, Med Express took the equipment to the Valley City post office. where it was weighed and shipped to Nicholls. Med Express paid the full amount of the shipping cost, but for some reason unknown to Med Express, the equipment was received by Nichols with $1.44 postage due.
7. When notified of the problem, Med Express immediately offered to reimburse Nicholls for the postage due amount. Despite this offer, and before giving Med Express a chance to reimburse her, Nicholls on February 26, 2013, apparently as a result of the $1.44 postage due, posted negative feedback and comments for the transaction on Ebay's website and gave Med Express low ratings in the Detailed Seller Ratings section of Ebay's Feedback Forum, resulting in an unfavorable feedback profile for Med Express. In so doing, Nicholls falsely and deliberately slandered the good name and reputation of Med Express

I would like to point out that regardless of whether she was reimbursed for the postage due, she was still inconvenienced by that, and had every right to post about that on Ebay.  The lawyer for this company admits that she didn’t do anything illegal, and even goes so far as to hint that she will win if the thing goes to court.  However, he snidely reminds the woman that the lawsuit is filed in Ohio – far from her home – and that the lawyer fees and cost of travel will be far more of a burden to her than to just remove her negative feedback from Ebay.

I contacted James Amodio, Med Express’s lawyer, to explain to him the many ways in which his lawsuit is untenable. He readily admitted that, as the complaint admits, everything that the customer had posted in her feedback was true; he did not deny that a statement has to be false to be actionable as defamation; but he just plain didn’t care. To the contrary, he told me that I could come up to Medina, Ohio, and argue whatever I might like, but that the case was going to continue unless the feedback was taken down or changed to positive. And he explained why his client was insisting on this change — he said that it sells exclusively over eBay, where a sufficient level of negative feedback can increase the cost of such sales as well as possibly driving away customers

This is absolutely unforgivable, and I think that this company, Med Express Sales, needs to be introduced to the Streisand Effect, post haste.  You want to talk about driving away customers, pal?  How about filing bumptious lawsuits against your dissatisfied customers?  If you do business with them, the decision is yours whether you choose to continue to do so now that you know the way that they will comport themselves if you ever find yourself dissatisfied with their services.  The decision is yours, but I know what I would do. 

Go to the Popehat link.  Retweet, repost, and link to it in any way you can.  Let’s make sure that Med Express Sales is made to realize that we won’t tolerate censorious thuggery.  

Stop Hurting Innocent People!

I don’t care what “noble” cause you think you’re fighting for; when you take your fight to innocent 78 year old men and 8 year old boys out trying to enjoy a civic event, you are doing it wrong.  There isn't a hell hot enough for people like whomever set off those bombs, and I don’t care what his cause is.

I could speculate that since it was tax day and Patriot’s Day, that it was some domestic terrorist in a “patriot” movement.  If that is the case, you don’t forward your cause of freedom and a return to a Constitutionalist government by killing an 8 year old boy.  In fact, all you do is give the government another reason to tighten the screws every time you do these things, and in the process, you killed an 8 year old boy, you scum.

I could speculate that it was Islamic terrorism.  If that is the case, you don’t glorify your god by killing 8 year old boys.  You merely taint him with your actions, and if he is truly good and just, he despises you for what you did yesterday. 

You see, it doesn't matter what the cause is.  Your beef is with someone other than the people that you killed, and that means that you are doing it wrong.  

Fishing for Landlocked Chinook Salmon on Lake Coeur d'Alene

Outdoor update flash!  Went fishing on Lake Coeur d’Alene yesterday for landlocked Chinook Salmon.  There is an interesting back-story behind this fish population.  I thought I’d share.

Historically, it is believed that Lake Coeur d’Alene would not have had salmon runs in it (but no one knows for sure).  The salmon would have run from the Pacific Ocean into the Columbia River, then up the Spokane River to spawn, but they were blocked from entering Lake Coeur d’Alene by Post Falls, about 6 miles below the lake on the lake’s outlet: the Spokane River.  The construction of Grand Coulee dam on the Columbia River in the 1930s blocked passage to all salmon upstream, and so the salmon runs in the Spokane River near Lake Coeur d’Alene were extirpated. 

Some salmon, however, lived on. 

Life…  finds a… way…

There were sockeye salmon that made the long runs from the lake to the ocean and back prior to the dam being constructed.  Sockeye salmon are different from other salmon, in that they spawn in lakes, and spend a good portion of their juvenile lives in the lakes before they run downstream into rivers and head for the ocean.  Most salmon spawn in rivers, and more or less start their trek to the ocean on day one of their lives, as the river washes them downstream. 

The thing about sockeye is that some of them never leave the lake, even back in the days when they still could head for the ocean.  No one really knows why they adapted to do this, but they’ve been doing it for millennia, and it gave them a unique advantage over the other salmon species when we humans came along and built the dams. 

The sockeye that hang back and never go anadramous are called “kokanee” and the lakes around here, including Coeur d’Alene, are all full of them.  They don’t typically get as big as the ocean-run sockeye did.  The average ocean run sockeye in this system would be in the 3 to 5 pound range.  The average kokanee is less than a pound. 

The thing is that like their ocean-run brethren, the kokanee are delicious.  Anglers highly prize kokanee, not for their size or their fight, but because they are excellent table fare.  But their size is a concern, because, hell, if you’re going to go catch them, why not try to make them bigger and better fighters? 

Some lakes, like Lake Roosevelt (a lake actually created by Grand Coulee dam, and isolated from the ocean-run salmon at the same time as its creation) boast very large kokanee; they approach their size of the ocean run brethren in that lake.  The speculation for this is that there are also landlocked Chinook (also known as King) Salmon in Roosevelt.  The landlocked Chinook in Lake Roosevelt are 100% natural – no one put them there.  Lake Roosevelt is a reservoir created by Grand Coulee Dam, and is part of the Columbia River, meaning that the river that used to run through where the lake is now used to have some of the most epic salmon runs the world had ever seen, prior to the construction of Grand Coulee Dam.  In the Lake Coeur d’Alene and Spokane River system, none of the Chinook survived the damming.  In the Lake Roosevelt system, some did; and those that did adapted to life in a huge freshwater lake, as opposed to a huge saltwater ocean.

Dude, seriously.  I’m telling you that life… finds… a way…

The presence of the land-locked Chinook Salmon in Lake Roosevelt had a curious effect on the land-locked Sockeye Salmon (kokanee) in Lake Roosevelt: they got BIG.  The theory is that the Chinook, being very voracious, predatory fish, fed on the smaller, plankton-feeding kokanee (that’s another interesting thing about the Sockeye – they are the only salmon species that isn’t primarily a predator, and instead eat zooplankton).  The kokanee that survived were typically the ones that had grown large enough to avoid being eaten, meaning the genetic strain in the lake was modified to favor larger fish.  Also, the culling resulted in there being more food for the larger kokanee that were left, meaning that they grew larger. 

Idaho Department of Fish and Game did not miss this observation, and so decided that if it worked in Lake Roosevelt, it would surely work in Lake Coeur d’Alene, which had a population of kokanee in it, also (presumably a remnant from a time before Post Falls blocked the salmon from getting into Lake Coeur d’Alene – or maybe they were introduced.  I’m not sure).  So, back in the 70s, they decided to release Chinook Salmon into Lake Coeur d’Alene to see if they could help make the kokanee fishery better, like they did in Lake Roosevelt. 

When they released them, the IDFG made two assumptions:

1.      That the existence of Chinook Salmon in Lake Coeur d’Alene would only be temporary, since it was assumed that they would be unable to reproduce and create a self-sustaining population. 

2.      That the Chinook population would necessarily result in larger kokanee. 

They were wrong on both counts, at least so far. 

The kokanee population crashed.  There was some speculation as to why this might have been, but many people thought that this was actually part of the process of culling the kokanee and allowing them to grow larger.  No one knew what had happened to the kokanee in Roosevelt after the dam was built – maybe their population crashed, too? 

Also, the Chinook started swimming up the Coeur d’Alene and St. Joe rivers and spawning.  Coeur d’Alene lake became their new ocean, and they became a self-sustaining, viable population. 

I’m not going to say it again…

IDFG panicked.  They started flying helicopter sorties up the rivers to spot Chinook spawning reds and destroy them, to no avail.  Throughout most of the 1980’s, the IDFG was on a mission to try and get the Chinook out off the lake and save the kokanee.  In the 90’s however, they had a realization:

The kokanee were coming back.  They weren’t any bigger, but they were coming back in good enough numbers to say that they had returned, and their populations are still in good enough numbers that IDFG isn’t worried about them anymore. 

They also realized one other thing:

Anglers absolutely loved the Chinook Salmon fishery, and the presence of Chinook in that lake was bringing in lots and lots of money to the local economy. 

So they built a hatchery and started putting Chinook in the lake again.  Everything seems to have found a nice balance, and it appears as though maybe the kokanee are getting bigger, slowly. 

But the Chinook…  oh, man, the Chinook.  They are getting BIG.  There is a reason that they call them King Salmon, and it’s because on a size basis, none of the other salmon species even get close.  Last year during the Chinook derby on the lake, a lady caught a 27.7 pound Chinook Salmon out of Lake Coeur d’Alene.  That is the size of a three year old child.  That is a big fish, ladies and gentlemen. 

And so, whenever the remaining anadramous rivers around here aren’t currently experiencing a run of salmon or steelhead, I augment my fishing habit by heading for Lake Coeur d’Alene and fishing for land-locked Chinook Salmon.  Yesterday, after work, I did just that.  I fished from 5 pm until after dark.  We hooked 4, and boated two.  They weren’t very big, but the big ones are out there, and the intoxicating possibility that I might catch one of them draws me back, day after day, to face the often rough and white-capped waters of this amazing, beautiful lake.