That's okay: you haven't hurt my feelings with your personal abuse.

What IS laughable is your preposterous statement on this board from 2/24:

"One thing I can say is this. There has never been a single documented case of a dredge killing a fish, directly or indirectly...not one."

What about fish EGGS? Since you say you've been dredging for thirty years (as if that's supposed to assure us of your competence and expertise on the biological effects of dredging!), I'd think that you've personally destroyed many, many thousands of fish eggs. (Please assure me that's only a figment of my soft-headed liberal imagination.) But by your logic, I suppose, those eggs wouldn't count as fish since they haven't hatched.

One more thing. A few minutes ago you replied to me as follows:

"You attempt to discredit the reports by two PhD scientists because they are also gold dredgers....but you want us to believe your pro-fishing reports and you are a fisherman...shouldn't you be discredited for the same reason?"

I am referring to independent peer-reviewed studies of the adverse effects of dredging on fish by scientists (not by ME -- can't you read?). I didn't write those studies! SCIENTISTS with expertise in the biology of fish wrote them. Those studies are not my personal opinion. Your ex-EPA dredgers were experts in toxicology and physical chemistry, NOT the biology of fish. Their political ranting about evil Al Gore and his "brainwashing" campaign as well as the global warming "conspiracy" (by golly, the greatest conspiracy in all history!) shows that they are kooks as well. Incidentally, I've got a PhD too, but that doesn't automatically make me competent to do a valid scientific study of an issue involving the biology of fish. That's why I read (and respect) what fisheries biologists who have actually studied dredging have said in reports reviewed by other fisheries biologists before publication. Your gold prospector-toxicoligist-chemist duo have never had a paper on suction dredging reviewed by fisheries biologists and published in a professional journal. That's because their field is not fisheries science. In that field, they are simply hacks with an agenda. That agenda (to find dredging not just harmless but, yes indeed, actually helpful to fish!) means their writings are just exercises in smoke-blowing. That's why their pro-dredging propaganda appears only in friendly miner forums. (For those interested in a detailed exposure of their bogus claims and supposed expertise, read a few pages of http://www.cascwild.org/western-mining-alliance-and-brain-surgery-by-dentists/

As for banning you and other dredging fanatics from the Fish Not Gold Facebook page: why would we want your pro-dredging crap trashing up the page, which presents the science behind our position? I might add that I've been banned from the Facebook page of the Washington Mining Prospectors Association. Put up your own Facebook page to rebut us with your anecdotes and your thirty years of invaluable personal experience as a dredger, which obviously trumps all the fisheries scientists who've actually studied dredging.

Lastly, Dan, would you care to comment on why Idaho, Oregon, and California have restricted or banned suction dredging? Maybe those states have been taken over by tree-hugging liberals (or communists)? Or have the fisheries managers there been duped by a grand anti-dredging conspiracy that your gang is unmasking?