These Are Hallowed Waters

The Drama of Winter

These are hallowed waters. Rivers carved by the relentless power of glaciers. Born of the rawness of continental uplift, earthquakes, vulcanism, and the force of water, gravity and erosion. Where mountains tower over like Greek Titans, guarding the river that serves as their artery, their connection to the vast productivity of the North Pacific feeding grounds.

Over the last tenthousand years, as glaciers receeded, valleys formed and rivers became stable in their sinuous channels, salmon and other species have colonized, adapted and filled every niche of these watersheds. The deep bodied, prehistoric looking summer chinooks, abundant pinks, lacustrine and riverine sockeye, hooknosed coho and ferocious, striped chum salmon all call these hallowed waters home. Returning annually or in some cases biannually to seed their next generation in the waters of their fore bearers and deposit their offspring and bodies back into the lifeblood of the river.

A fine specimen from an unsurpassed race of fish

Steelhead, however are the species which draw the most committed following of fly anglers to the banks of these mighty rivers. From the bright and cheerful steelhead who call the canyon waters home to the deep, silvery fish of February and March. Steelhead, which have for more than 80 years defined the tradition of angling for anadromous fish in these waters. This is a special race of steelhead. Large, bright, and aggressive the steelhead of the large rivers of Puget Sound are unsurpassed among the many races of winter steelhead. On rivers named for the long forgotten Native bands, pioneering anglers have in many ways defined steelhead fishing in our state on these hallowed waters. The likes of Ralph Wahl, Roderick Haig Brown, Wes Drain, Enos Bradner and many more were some of the first to fly fish for steelhead on these legendary streams.

Today however the rivers of the greater Puget Sound area, the cradles that gave birth to many of our modern steelhead traditions have fallen on hard times. Urbanization, development, forestry, agriculture, hatcheries, and harvest have all withered once mighty runs of steelhead to only a few thousand per year. As recently as the 1950s as many as 30,000 wild winter steelhead returned annually to the Skagit system, last year only 2500. This year the Skagit closed February 16th to protect our few remaining wild fish, while the other rivers of the Puget Sound area closed February 18th. These Rivers, with their magnificent wild steelhead, unsurpassed beauty and raw, hydrologic might have come to a cross roads. As anglers who devote our lives to understanding and enjoying these systems we must stand up for our beloved wild steelhead. The status quo has and will continue to fail in Puget Sound and swift action is needed to restore the once mighty steelhead to their proper place. It is time to prioritize that which has nourished our sporting traditions, and our souls as anglers: wild steelhead, wild country, home waters and wild fish. These are hallowed grounds.

Early Morning Haze at a Favorite Run

I Cant Believe

Nootka Lice Problems from Twyla Roscovich on Vimeo.

Just watched a video on Alex Mortons website about the spread of drug resistant sea lice in the Nootka Sound.

http://www.callingfromthecoast.com/

This is a goddamned tragedy and I'm ashamed of the Canadian authorities for allowing this to go on unchecked. Call me a hippiedippie idealist, but I've never seen how our societies can wage such obviously harmful impacts on wild ecosystems for short term financial gain. Our worship of of short term profit, corporate growth is nauseating and all but ensures a continued erosion of our quality of life here on earth.

The manifest destiny, imperial notion of conquering nature has failed us mightily and in spreading our market economy ideals around the world we've managed to make thoughless consumers our of most of the planets human occupants. All enslaved by our fixation on economic growth and spinning the cogs of this system of commerce which we made up. Meanwhile we are raping the planets ecosystems at record breaking pace, outstripping the ability of our planet to support life as we know it, and there is literally ZERO political will to do a damn thing about it.

We literally invented money, markets, societies, etc. Meanwhile the incredible natural gifts, the legacy of millions of years of evolution, is wiped out in single foul swoops of industrial expansion. The future of wild salmon hangs in a fragile balance and is literally in our hands and too many of us are simply resigned to their decline.

Back to Life

Still shaking the crust off myself after fishing 9 of the last 12 days. Weather was cooperative, fishing was solid and life is good. All year I dream about these opportunities for fishing marathon, and generally they dont disappoint. That said, when you're out there, sleeping in your truck with the wet dog, waking at o'dark thirty to get first water, then fishing all day with no breaks, it can get pretty physically exhausting. At the end of these trips I'm always sore, haggard and completely glazed with the soulful satisfaction that only a long steelhead trip can provide. Besides that, things have been more than a little chaotic on the homefront lately so the trip provided some a much needed escape from the routine.

Rainsoaked hinterlands are just as I remembered them, although the conditions, and duration of the trip didnt afford me the opportunity to fish all the water I'd been looking forward to revisiting from last year. A pulse of midweek water this week definitely put the fishing down substantially, but prior to that things were all fishing pretty good. Crowds were minimal the first two days but Friday was a Zoo.

Every year, as everyother river in the state of WA closes the crowding problems in the hinterlands seem to grow. This problem is further compounded by an explosion in guide pressure, promoting and internet bragging about "lip ripping huge numbers of massive chomers". More and more I think we need to move towards widespread implementation of a nofishing from boats regulation. It has worked on many of the more crowded Oregon Rivers and frankly the pressure on some of our coastal systems is getting to the breaking point. Depending on the year it seems likely that almost every fish in those rivers is caught at least once and territorial males, which tend to hold for long periods waiting for spawning opportunities may be caught dozens of times. 10 trailers at most launches is now routine, even on a Wednesday.

Even the lonely, fly swinging hermit occasionally finds a fish. got this one out of a nice boulder garden. Even sweeter, picked it out of a gear boats pocket.

Rivers Invitation

I spoke to the river
And the river spoke back to me
It said man you look so lonely
You look full of misery
And if you can't find your baby
Come and make your home with me

Well, I don't want to leave her
Because I know she's still alive
And someday I'm going to find her
And I'll take her for a ride
And we'll spend our days forever
In our home beneath the tide


-Percy Mayfield

The Ongoing Mismanagement of Washington's Wild Steelhead

The more time I spend learning about the management and intricacies of wild fish management in Washington state, the more it becomes apparent that WDFW and some of the tribes are knowingly managing wild steelhead into extinction. WDFW, like any government agency is complex, bureaucratic and glacially slow to change its management paradigms. That's not to say the agency is all bad, indeed good local biologists, and researchers are the saving grace of the agency. Sadly the leadership of WDFW and their agenda worships at the alter of industrialized supplementation and harvest and is intent to ignore problems with wild steelhead until they are all gone. I'll bet if you asked steelheaders around Washington State fewer than 1 in 10 are satisfied with the current state of affairs. It almost goes without saying, without wild fish, our sport and passion is lost. A short season of fishing for inferior hatchery fish can never replace the opportunity afforded by robust runs of wild steelhead. Washington was once the heart of the steelhead's range, a place with an immense diversity of productive steelhead rivers, unique and locally adapted stocks and the finest steelhead fishing on the planet. Today, 3-5 rivers remain open and fished throughout the season, the rest have passed into lore.

There is no one cause of these declines and many factors including forestry practices, hydroelectric dams, overharvest and hatcheries have contributed around the state. Each river has its own set of unique circumstances and threats, however a major overarching threat to the future of wild steelhead in our state is WDFWs unwillingness to change from the status quo and the insistence of some tribes on harvesting wild steelhead into oblivion.

WDFW recently developed a wild steelhead management plan, in which it details the new, science based management of steelhead which will guide recovery of these magnificent wild fish. Unfortunately, since the plan was adopted almost none of the changes it outlines have been implemented. Cheif among the disappointments is the fact that the state has remained inactive in developing Wild Salmonid Management Zones as outlined in the recovery plan. Since the middle of the last century when industrial scale hatchery supplementation exploded it has been the norm for multiple species of hatchery origin salmonids to be released into nearly every river system in the state. These releases often occur without any means of collecting unharvested returning adults and without proper monitoring of the effects on wild populations. For more than 40 years this practice has led to decreased productivity in wild stocks of salmon and steelhead through genetic introgression, competition with hatchery smolts and a wide range of ecological effects from residualization to disease. By creating Wild Salmonid Management Zones, the department promised to protect a number of high quality river systems from the damaging effects of hatchery supplementation and the attendant harvest pressures, but has yet to take any action to do so. Now almost two years after the development of the plan, we are waiting and growing impatient.

The second problem is that WDFW continues to fold under pressure from certain tribes in allowing egregiously exploitive harvest practices to go unchecked. Particularly bad are the actions of the Quinault Tribe who have continually failed to act responsibly as co-managers, and net thousands of fish annually from declining populations on the Chehalis system, and mine wild steelhead redds to support a harvest motivated wild broodstock program on the Quinault. The tribe is also insistent that the escapement goal for the Queets wild winter steelhead stock should be just over 2000 fish despite the fact that as recently as the 1980s the Queets supported runsizes well in excess of 10,000 fish. The icing on the cake for these abominable fisheries practices was last year when the tribe knowingly released thousands of IHN infected steelhead smolts into the Quinault system, illustrating their complete lack of interest in protecting wild salmonids within their UNAs. A good state management agency would stand up to these sorts of practices and represent the interests of the citizens of the state of Washington. Instead WDFW is complicit in this abuse of our wild salmon and steelhead and the tribes actions go unchecked.

How long will it be until we have a fish management agency that is accountable to the people of Washington? How long will it be until WDFW begins to make management decisions motvated by science and facts on the ground rather than politics and wishful thinking? The agency has thusfar failed spectacularly in its charge to protect and restore wild salmon and steelhead in our state and time is ticking. It is time these issues came to the forefront of our dialogue, these issues transcend just fisherman's concerns and need much broader exposure in the mainstream media. Until the political motives for mismangement of wild salmon and steelhead are exposed fully, these practices will continue unchecked.

The Hound

The Hound Likes our chances

One for the Road

Got a sweet new reel in the mail today. Couldnt be more jazzed. 80$ worth of sweet, clickpawl screaming, English made metal. The Pfluegle has had the wobbles for a while now and for less than one hundred dollars I'm happy to replace it with an antique. Looking forward to the sweet sound of hot steelhead. In the meantime check out some recent photos.