It’s always been a pet-peeve not having access to any realtime (or otherwise) water temperature data on the Oregon coast. Sure, one can deduce from air temperature, but that only goes so far.
Well, watching the Wilson hitting floodstage today (it’s risen 7’ in the past 24 hours), I noticed that the gauge has been upgraded and now includes temperature, which is a balmy 47F right now.
Pretty handy, and a good barometer for the rest of the coast.
There are a select few places in this world where all the right ingredients come together to grow truly giant lifeforms - The Redwoods of Northern California, Sequoias of the Southern Sierra, and Humans of Houston, TX, to name a few. The Kispiox River in Northern BC is another such place, and grows a super-race of steelhead unlike any other in the world.
At first glance, the Kispiox doesn’t look particularly out of the ordinary, a medium sized stream with beautiful swinging runs, somewhat similar to that of the lower Trask. But as you dig a little deeper, you quickly come to realize that the Kispiox is no ordinary river, and its fish are, simply put, extraordinary.
We began our first day on the Kispiox like every other day in BC, in the wee hours of 11:30am. Within ten minutes, we were floating by Harry Lemire and watching him release a fish that he’d just taken on a single hand rod and a dry line. The Kispiox is that kind of magical place.
We’d planned on fishing Tungsten tips, as that had been the ticket the previous days on the Bulkley, but Mr. Lemire’s feat told us otherwise. Fast forward seven hours of dry lines, Type-3s, and no fish… Ken and I are swinging through upper Potato Patch on opposite sides of the river, Ken with the bright idea to go back to T-11 and myself still stuck on my “Fish will move for the Type-3!!!” mentality.
Within minutes, Ken is into a fish. I put on a Type-6, and keep swinging. Ken loses the fish, and a few minutes later is into another. Same flies, same run, different tips, and I’m getting hosed. I stubbornly continue to swing my Type-6 until Ken hooks his THIRD fish in less than 20 minutes. I rig up 10’ of T-14, go back up to the top of the run where I’d already fished, and about 10 casts later you can guess what happens.
So it went on the Kispiox for three days. Big flies, heavy tips, and the most jawdroppingly large and beautiful sea-run rainbows I’ve ever seen.
Four days later, leaving Smithers on our way back to the US of A, Ken looks at us and says “We’re in the middle of making a huge mistake.”
“What, eating at Dairy Queen?”
“No, leaving this place!!!”
We both get a glimmer of madness in our eyes, bust out the iPhone calendar, and decide to head back up in 4 weeks. See you soon, BC.
39.5”. On a 6126. Good Times.
More pics after the jump…
The Bonneville Power Administration is planning for a massive increase in hatchery production on Washington’s Klickitat River. This would include the construction of a new hatchery at Wachkiacus (river mile 16) and an acclimation facility at RM 70.
This is deplorable.
The Klickitat is one of few undammed rivers in the Columbia Basin, and still supports decent runs of wild fish. Doubling the hatchery production on this river is the exact wrong approach, and will impose serious harm to the ESA listed steelhead and chinook.
The BPA is hosting a meeting in Lyle (65 miles from Portland) on Wednesday, August 10th from 5:30pm to 8:30pm. Myself and some others from the NFS will be attending and voicing our concerns. If you can, please show up, and voice your support for the wild fish in this amazing river. I plan to be leaving Portland at 4:45 pm if you’d like to hitch a ride, just leave a comment and I’ll get in touch.
If you can’t attend, at least write the BPA in opposition to this horrible plan. COMMENT! You can learn more at the Osprey.
Doing nothing will ensure that this new hatchery is built, and that the Klick as we know it will be placed in great danger.
Bill Bakke and I will be giving a presentation at the Tigard, OR Orvis store this Saturday, April 30th, and 10am. Bakke will be discussing dry line steelhead techniques, why he can hook 63 summer fish in a day and you can’t, and his theory of using wee flies for summers. We’ll also be raffling off a couple of his favorite summer patterns that he’s developed over the years.
We will also be discussing steelhead fish conservation issues and hatchery implications, particularly as they relate to the Sandy River.
Bill Bakke is one of the finest dry line steelhead fisherman in the PNW, and is one of the godfathers of the fish conservation movement. He founded both Oregon Trout and the Native Fish Society, and has a wealth of information to share. You don’t want to miss this.
Mark your calendars - hope to see you there!
When and Where:
Saturday, April 30th at 10am
Orvis, Bridgeport Village
7495 SW Bridgeport Rd
Tigard, OR 97224
Winter just isn’t long enough.
Having grown up in Tillamook - rain capital of the world - I never thought I’d utter those words. But here we are two days into spring and I’m wishing we could turn the clocks back a month. The coastal tributaries will be closed in a week, and the mainstems will be winding down over the following weeks. It’s been a phenomenal winter and I can’t believe it’s already over.
I ended the winter the same way I started it - on a small, wild river on the Oregon coast. This river hasn’t faced the burdens of a hatchery programs since the early 90s, and the runs of wild fish are extraordinary.
Photo by Nick Erler.
On Saturday we ran into a father and son drifting eggs along a deep slot on the far bank. The man mentioned that he’d been fishing the river since he was in college (when the river was still planted with hatchery salmon and steelhead), and was trying to help his son find his first steelhead. Nick asked how he’s seen the river change over the years, sensing an opportunity for an interesting exchange. The man thought for a moment, and answered in a way I wasn’t quite expecting.
“Well, the fish are a lot more spread out now,” he replied. ”It used to be that the fishing was only good for a short amount of time, but now the fish enter the river earlier in the year and hang around for longer than they used to.”
The joys of genetic diversity, and what we could experience on all of our salmon, steelhead, and trout rivers if we’d just give the fish a chance to flourish without interference from tank raised genetic misfits.
There’s a reason I keep coming back to this river, and there’s no reason that there shouldn’t be more rivers where the fish run wild as they do here.
Say hello to my little friend.
I’ve previously seen references to the 1997 Sandy Basin Plan, which established an Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) to recover wild winter steelhead on the Upper Sandy to 4,900 fish. I’ve never been able to find the original plan, however, and since that plan, this goal has been reduced to 1,730 fish in 2001, and then down to 1,515 fish this past year.
This morning, I was able to find the 1997 Sandy Basin Plan using a service call The Wayback Machine, which indexes changing versions of the majority of webpages on the internet.
This plan was written prior to the threatened listing of Sandy River steelhead under the Endangered Species Act, which occured in 1998. In this plan, which was implemented into OAR, you’ll find the following (emphasis added):
(2) Objectives:
(a) Rebuild the native wild winter steelhead run in the Sandy River basin by achieving an average annual spawning escapement of 4,900 adult winter steelhead at Marmot Dam: the short-term goal is to achieve an escapement of 4,900 wild adults during the months November to June and the long-term goal is to achieve an average annual spawning escapement of 4,900 that conforms to the historical run time of March to June;
(e) Modify or discontinue hatchery steelhead releases in the Sandy River basin if:
(A) It is determined that hatchery steelhead releases are principal causes of significant decline in wild winter steelhead abundance; or
(B) If Sandy River basin winter steelhead are listed as Threatened or Endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.
Just a year after the Sandy Basin Plan was written into law, these steelhead were listed as Threatened under the ESA. According the Oregon law, this hatchery program should have been discontinued or modified. But apparently the ODFW decided to take a more disingenuous approach. They changed the law.
Dig up the 2001 amendments to these OARs, and you’ll notice that section (e) has been removed in it’s entirety. Additionally, the escapement goal was reduced from 4,900 fish in the upper basin to just 1,730 fish for the entire basin.
(2) Objectives:
(a) Rebuild the wild winter steelhead runs in the Sandy River basin by achieving an average annual spawning escapement of 1,730 wild winter steelhead. Establish an increasing trend in the population of Sandy River wild winter steelhead
Our optimism was ebbing and flowing with the water level predictions, but when Friday finally arrived, the Holy Water was dropping right into shape. Niall and Philippe, two longtime buddies from UofO had flown into town, and we headed out to the coast with one thing on the mind: winter steelhead.
We arrived just after daybreak to a river that still had a ways to drop, but this particular stream comes into shape quickly so I wasn’t worried. With minimal rain in the forecast it would be fishing well by the afternoon, and amazing by the next day.
And just six hours and no grabs later, she was blown out, courtesy of a few inches of rain that snuck in under the meteorologist’s watch. The stream rose over a foot in a few short hours, leaving us huddled under the tarp around a propane heater praying that somehow all would be well by the next morning. Of course things were far from fine the next morning, and we packed up camp and set out in search of new water.
With the Tillamook Bay streams spiking 1,000 cfs overnight, our Plan B went out the window, and we drove around for hours looking for a swingable piece of water.
By mid afternoon, we found it, and before long Niall had picked my pocket into the first steelhead of the trip. This fish declined requests for a photo interview, but reluctantly agreed to a few long distance shots.
On Sunday, we headed back to the Holy Water hoping that it had come back into shape. As on Friday morning, it was still a bit high, but by the afternoon had dropped into great shape. But bright sunlight didn’t help our cause, and even the bait guys were getting skunked. Philippe did get his first ever steelhead grab, and the fish erupted on the surface the through the hook. Apart from that, we only managed to find some cuts.
On Monday, however, the fishing kicked into high gear (or as high as things seem to get when swinging for winter fish). First run of the day, I missed one, and 15 feet later, hooked a bright fish that through the hook about 5 seconds later. After three days of not touching a steelhead, this was exactly what I needed.
A few hours later while fishing behind Niall and Philippe on a beautiful run, I decided to bust out the fall box and tie on a #2 green butt skunk to show the fish something different. This is not a fly I normally fish in the winter, and for good measure, I slid on a little worm weight and let her rip. Within a few minutes, I was into a nice fish, one which I managed to land this time around.
After lunch, we headed out to the camp water, and Niall was promptly into a fish, a super fresh and beautiful hen that took him well into his backing.
After that, we each had a few more solid grabs, and I learned that hard way that having your running line wrapped around your reel seat does not help with hooking a steelhead.
It’s funning thinking back to just a few years ago, gung-ho on trout, when the prospect of just a few fish for four days of fishing would’ve seemed like a terrible outcome. Now, I feel nothing short of blessed to live so close to so many tremendous winter steelhead streams and having the opportunity to touch these fish. March is quickly becoming my favorite month of the year, and it’s not nearly long enough.
Nothing beats swinging a fly for a wild winter steelhead amidst an old growth coastal rainforest. I can’t get enough of it.
The flows on the big river looked too high. The other rivers a bit low. I drew the wildcard, and set out on my least favorite drive to one of my favorite coastal streams. Daybreak was just rearing her face when I set off into the mountains. Within minutes, the roadside snow was showing up, and within a few more miles I was driving through 6-8” deep snow ruts, a rare sight on the coast.
I’d never fished the stream with water this low and I knew it wouldn’t be optimal, but I hoped that I could still find some runs with steelhead that would chase a swung fly. Arriving streamside, the prospect of swinging up a fish looked bleak. For about two hours, I gave it my best, and found a few heart stopping moments in the form of feisty cutthroats.
No steelhead though, and it was clear that they were holed up in the deep pools - areas where my swung fly just hung still. I decided to break out the nuclear option, and rigged up a bobber and egg pattern to see if my theory held true.
First cast into a deep slot against a big boulder, and just as the fly gets into the zone, the indicator starts sinking. I assume I’ve got too much split shot (keeping it classy) but set just in case. It’s a fish, and before I know it my poor little 9’ rod is bent in half and a fish is bolting out of the pool, porpoising through the skinny tailout, around the corner and into the next run! I try putting on the breaks to keep him in my run, and the fly pops off.
It’s a good thing that all steelhead don’t have the mind to always leave their current run.
I fished a few more pools with the bobber, but just couldn’t take it. Repeatedly setting on rocks and mending, mending, mending, mending, just doesn’t do it for me anymore.
In hopes of finding that fish on the swing, I hopped in the car and headed North to another river that turned out even colder than the last.
Bright hatchery fish
Unable to name a single player on the Packers or Steelers (I’m impressed I even knew who was playing), I decided to get on the water yesterday afternoon. In theory, pressure should be light on Super Bowl Sunday, but it always seems to turn out that every other fisherman has the same theory.
After fishing through some crowded water at a County Park and never quite feeling like I was fishing, I decided to head upstream in search of new some water. No cars at the pullout, and after a 10 minute hike I came upon the river. Beautiful, looking more like a remote BC stream than something a few minutes from Portland. The water looked perfect, just the right color and speed and surely holding some fish.
The fish hit like a freight train smolt, a dull tap, a few clicks from the reel, and another tap. It felt like 10 seconds went by before I really felt some weight and set the hook. Makes me realize that some of those unknown grabs that I attribute to cutthroat could actually be steelhead.
A nice and tasty 8lb hatchery fish.
You’ve probably heard by now that all the rivers of Puget Sound are closing to angling again this year on Feb 1. Rivers like the Stillaguamish that once hosted 80,000 winter steelhead are now down to the triple digits. The Osprey has a good writeup of the situation that is well worth reading.
All this is a painful reminder that without healthy wild runs there is no possibility of even catch and release angling opportunity. WDFW has been extremely aggressive in closing rivers which are failing to meet escapement goals. Their concern over catch and release on these fragile returns may be valid however the fact remains, Puget Sound steelhead are not in peril because of catch and release angling. In fact catch and release is likely at the bottom of the list of factors that may be contributing to declining steelhead returns and it is unfortunate that WDFW does not place equal emphasis on curtailing other impacts such as the ecological and evolutionary threat posed by hatchery programs or the long term effects of habitat degradation. Each year 58 million dollars are spent on hatchery programs around the state, why not divert some of that money to expanded monitoring and research on Puget Sound systems? Because, until wild fish recover all of the iconic rivers of the Puget Sound will remain closed.
