The Science of Steelheading

Back in the day it was easy. You loaded your gear in the car and drove up the lake praying like an Alter Boy that the river would be in shape when you arrived. Funny thing is... I really don't recall being shut down that much by dirty blown rivers but then again I didn't fish as much as I do now. Fast forward to today and I cannot live without my real time radar site, long range forecast and the ever so important Hydrological Data site. As of recent I have struggled with accepting the fact that this site has become somewhat unreliable with it's reporting. So much so that I had done the leg work to get in contact with the people who own and maintain the stations and express my disappointment and dissatisfaction with their performance. I have become somewhat of a thorn in the Field Technicians side that maintains the station to the point that she put me in contact with her boss. Don't get me wrong...I was never rude but let's say more of a constant reminder that "the public" do in fact use these tools in their everyday lives. Struggling to understand why in this day and age we cannot simply fix something as simple as a automatic dialer I made the phone call to the manager in charge. During our conversation i learned that the unit will make several attempts at contacting the station via the public phone system. If there is any reason that the signal conditions are not met the call will be aborted and bypassed until the next slot comes available in the rotation. There are so many stations that the rotation is very large. This explains why the station only updated every 8 hrs or so when it worked properly. He also informed me that a new software system has been purchased but is in the beta testing phase. The earliest we could expect to see it put in use would be a year to a year and a half's time frame. So for now the Steelheading public will have to rely on country phone lines and manual data collection. I don't know if I can live with that! LOL!! But I'm gonna have to learn. By the way Norland has informed me that I am now on the Goverment's list and to expect great complication in my life. LOL!!! He is a POS...I may just call his Boss!