Gary Loomis and Lewis River Salmon

This fine piece about Gary Loomis’s Fish First organization — which since 1995 has been trying to improve the salmon population in Washington state’s Lewis River — includes a biography of the rod-making pioneer that describes his start as a machinist (“Everybody has something they’re gifted at,” he said. “When it comes to machinery, I could envision it.”) and his progression toward environmental organizer: understanding the properties of graphit in tubular structures, getting fired by Lamiglas, and selling his very popular rod line to Shimano. Erik Robinson in The Columbian.