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Wildlife through Patreon. Help fuel the next adventure. Okay enjoy the

episode guys. Joe Blodgett learned how to fish from his father. He mastered the

technique of dip netting a fish out of the Yakima River, the traditional kind of

fishing for the Yakima nation. And it was a great way of coming up in life.

You know growing up on the reservation we would travel a lot with my dad and

when we drove by Salilo Falls he would tell me stories of what it was like to

fish down there on Salilo before it was flooded and has gone forever now. Salilo

Falls was a meaningful fishing spot for the Yakima peoples and other native

communities for generations. The 20-foot falls were located on the Columbia River

not far from where Joe learned to fish on the Yakima but in 1957 a dam was

constructed and it caused the river levels to rise and completely flood out the

falls. Joe's father remembers visiting the falls as a child before the dam. You

would explain the roar of the river and how loud it was down there and the spray

that was going on. In one local native language Salilo means sound of water

upon the rocks. At times more than a million cubic feet of water could pass

over the falls every second. The Yakima people used the falls as a place to

fish and exchange goods. They had wooden platforms to stand over the falls and

...