Fishing's correlation to Relaxing

For my second academic post, I want to look at the article that I referred to earlier in my "Research" post. I used the article to support my paper that was an elaborated version of my Credo. The article, "Physician connects 'relaxation response' to mind-body health" by K. Kersting  in Monitor on Psychology.

The main idea that Kersting attempts to get across is that relaxation techniques can improve people's health. He states, "Stress hormones, produced when the body's "fight or flight" response is triggered, play a role in a host of ailments including hypertension, anxiety, depression, infertility, hot flashes in menopause and insomnia". Relaxing helps relieve these hormones and reduces the negative affects they can have on a person's body. Kersting refers to the "three-legged stool" a couple times in his article. He believes this stool is made up of drugs, surgery, and relaxation techniques to develop the ideal health-care model.

Although it is a short article, it efficiently covers the essential points. In everyday life we are all bombarded with stress. Stress has a negative affect on the human body and it is important to de-stress in effect ways. Relaxation techniques were defined by Kersting as meditation or prayer, but I think it can go much further than that. The song I mention in a previous post "The River Just Knows" by Rodney Atkins depicts how the river can be used as a form of meditation to help deal with stress. I think, whether it is fishing or some other activity, everyone should take part of relaxing to help improve their health and well-being. Honestly, I think if stress is effectively managed by relaxation techniques, then the concept of the "three-legged stool" is not necessary. People should not be intimidated by the term "relaxation techniques". It doesn't have to be anything fancy. It can be something as simple as going for a walk or fishing, or anything that enables one to empty the mind of thoughts, or concentrate the mind on one thing, in order to aid development, contemplation, or relaxation.

Picture above is from one of my fishing adventures on Hwy 34, I stumbled across a waterfall and had to capture a few pictures of it!

Continued: "Estimating the Economic Value of Improved Trout Fishing on Wyoming Streams"

As promised previously, I am finally going to summarize and review the article “Estimating the Economic Value of Improved Trout Fishing on Wyoming Streams”.

Robert S. Dalton, Chris T. Bastian, James J. Jacobs and Thomas A. Wesche all collaborated to develop this article for the North American Journal of Fisheries Management.  It was in the November 1998 issue, pages 786-797.  Dalton et al. states in the opening paragraph “Although the demands placed on natural resources and the agencies that manage them are constantly increasing, the budgets necessary to meet these demands are often inadequate” (786).  This relates directly to my purpose of increasing fishing within the state of Wyoming in order to boost the revenue from fishing licenses to more sufficiently support the agencies. They quickly explain the difficulties of estimating the associated benefit of a fisheries improvement project and the related economic profit associated with such a program. This leads to the necessity of conducting surveys to estimate the benefit consumers gain from consuming a good or service, in this case fishing. Dalton et al. then go on to describe different methods that have been used to estimate the net willingness to pay for fishing by consumers. It is then concluded that CVM is the most adaptable non market assessment technique developed thus far. The CVM, Contingent Valuation Method, “uses survey questions to determine people’s preferences by finding out what they would be willing to pay for specified goods or services” (787). This technique has been used in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, on various streams and rivers, to estimate the economic value of fishing. They go on to define their research objective, their data collection methods (CVM), the economic model, analytical approach and their results. It was found that for the tourist anglers there was a much higher value added on the chance of catching a large trout than in comparison to resident anglers. In the end they conclude that their research can aid “fisheries management agencies to better compare different proposed improvement projects by using economic information” (796).

First of all I must state that I was completely engulfed in the article. It combined my knowledge of business, economics, and consumer behavior, and my limited understanding of biology with my love of fishing! It was awesome! Although this is something I want to pursue, until now I had never come across a true example of the merger of business and fishing.  As I may have mentioned before, I’m in my senior year of pursuing my degree in marketing. I’ve been striving to develop a way to combine my passion of fishing with my interest in marketing, and this article has shown me it is possible! I have not taken an economics class since freshman year, so some of the terminology and equations were a bit over my head at times, but once they defined the variables and I reviewed the concepts again it made more sense. They also included the scientific names of fish, which I found very interesting to find out that a rainbow trout is actually an Oncorhynchus mykiss. Although I can see how to the average reader it may be a bit overwhelming with how much in detail they dive into at times. They do use multiple references to support their surveying techniques which provide credibility to show they didn’t just create some random way to try to estimate an angler’s interpreted value of fishing. I have learned much about surveys and interpreting consumer value in my Consumer Behavior class so I thought it was really intriguing to see it applied to anglers and trout fishing.

Overall I found it a very interesting article and think it will support my argument for promoting fishing within the state of Wyoming.

P.S. The picture is from one of my fishing trips back in May near my grandfather's ranch.

The River Just Knows

If you have not heard the song "The River Just Knows" by Rodney Atkins, I highly suggest it. The chorus describes perfectly why going fishing is so relaxing at times.
Check it out at YouTube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYYgnIGiE5E

The person who put the video together included their own pictures of fishing and of the river. It looks like somewhere out east to me. But it is still gorgeous and I encourage you to watch and listen!

Research

For the paper we have to write for my English class I'm depicting the relationship between fishing and relaxation. I found this article through the American Psychological Association, and think it relates perfectly! Although it talks about prayer and meditation, I think fishing is a form of meditation, in a way. With fly fishing or even just casting and reeling with a standard spinning reel you repeat the same motions over and over again which is similar to some forms of meditation. Let me know what ya'll think. http://www.apa.org/monitor/may05/physician.aspx

My Fishing CREDO

One of our assignments for English involved writing a Credo. It was based off the "This I believe..." series. This credo will be the base of the paper we will be writing. I just thought I would share my ideas with you.

I believe in hooks.

            A hook can mean many things. It can refer to the catch line of a song, or the underlying message in a business proposal. These hooks refer to something that draws people in, or lures them to the bait you are tossing out. To me however, the most important hook is the simple, yet very important, fishing hook.

            A fishing hook enables people to fish, not only to survive, but also as a pastime. Fishing, to many, seems like a novel idea, but they never make the time to go wet a line. It’s a time to escape from the hustle and bustle of everyday life and find solitude. It’s important to get a little R&R every once in a while. People can’t keep chugging along at 1,000 beats per minute for long before they wear themselves out. Relaxing should be a key element in everyone’s’ lives. It helps lower stress levels; it increases happiness and enables people to have a positive outlook on life. I believe that hooks represent relaxation. 

Fishing is my sanctuary, its time I take just for me to recollect on things and think. That is until that first fish bites, and then I’m caught up in the excitement of reeling in the unseen and unknown. How big is the fish on the end of my line? What kind of fish is it? How big of a fight is it going to put up? Is it going to slip off the hook right before I pull it ashore? There are so many unknowns that create the thrill and rush of hooking a fish and reeling it in.  Getting that caught up in something allows me to escape from the stresses of everyday life. Not a thought in my mind pertains to work or homework or classes or family problems when I’m out on that lake. My mind is on hooks.

What economic effects would improved trout fishing have within the state of Wyoming?

As I had mentioned previously, I thought it would benefit the economy of the state to promote their fishing. Well improving trout fishing instead of increasing demand for fishing is another aspect that could be looked into. There is an article in the Journal of Fisheries Management called "Estimating the Economic Value of Improved Trout Fishing on Wyoming Streams". Four different faculty members from the University of Wyoming, three from the Dept of Agriculture and Applied Science and one from the Dept of Renewable Resources collaborated to write the article back in 1995. I was unable to get a hold of the full article because the University Library didn't have it on hand, so I have requested and with further evaluate it later. As for now, based on the abstract it appears that a survey was given and was analyzed on two different levels. One was the preferences of anglers that fish the waters within Wyoming, the other was comparing resident fishers to tourists. Evidently anglers who bought out-of-state licenses spent more more days per trip fishing, as well has had higher incomes than those that bought in-state licenses. This seems logical to me. If you would like to read the abstract please visit :
http://afsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1577/1548-8675%281998%29018%3C0786%3AETEVOI%3E2.0.CO%3B2?journalCode=fima
They go into more detail about the dollar amounts per day of changing certain aspects of increased trout populations for residents and tourist anglers. This didn't make much sense to me yet since I have been unable to read the full article yet! You will all get a full review once I do though! I'm curious to see if the amounts have changed much since 1995 when they submitted the article to now in 2010. I will update y'all with what I find out.
On a side note I discovered an awesome picture of a fly fisherman on the Snake River. Check it out!

Why do I care about fishing?

The reasoning behind my topic choice is I absolutely love to fish. My dream job would probably be to work for the Game and Fish Dept or for BLM or anything where I could be involved with fishing. I really think that Wyoming could do a lot more to promote fishing within the state, especially to those who are from out of state. They could make a killing on the profits from selling out-of-state fishing licenses. Not to mention, I'm sure we have all seen the commercials promoting tourism within the state, they very rarely depict water or fishing. If you ask people from across the country what they think of when they think of Wyoming they will tell you "the Wild West", prairies, mountains, and tumble weeds. None of that pertains to lakes, rivers, or fishing at all. I would like to change that! WY has some gorgeous locations to fish at! Below is a picture I took this past summer, I caught 12 rainbow trout that day!

First Attempt

Good Afternoon Ya'll!

Hope you are enjoying this Sunday afternoon of a three-day weekend! This is my first attempt at blogging. I have absolutely no idea what I am doing, but since it is required for my Writing for the Web English course at the University of Wyoming I figured I better get on it. This post doesn't relate much to what this blog is going to be about, its just a test run. Let's see how this turns out!