Thanks to all my supporters
Dear Friends and Anglers,
I have officially shut down all aspects of my fly fishing business. This blog will remain up as an archive and for when I feel inspired to discuss fishing and fishing related issues. I want to thank everyone who has supported me through this adventure. My clients are incredible people that I really enjoyed spending time with over the years, dating all the way back to 1994 in Colorado. I hope to see many of you out on the river. Feel free to email or drop me a line anytime!
Jason Cross
For local guiding and lessons, please contact my good friend Ed Megill @ cascadesfly.com.
I have officially shut down all aspects of my fly fishing business. This blog will remain up as an archive and for when I feel inspired to discuss fishing and fishing related issues. I want to thank everyone who has supported me through this adventure. My clients are incredible people that I really enjoyed spending time with over the years, dating all the way back to 1994 in Colorado. I hope to see many of you out on the river. Feel free to email or drop me a line anytime!
Jason Cross
For local guiding and lessons, please contact my good friend Ed Megill @ cascadesfly.com.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Local Information
Nooksack River
The Nooksack is our most Northern Puget Sound river. From the flanks of beautiful Mt. Baker and the Mt. Baker Wilderness the Nooksack River travels 75 miles to Bellingham Bay through diverse terrain. Three forks make up the main stem that locals say starts in the town of Deming. The North Fork provides most of the water in the drainage right off the northern side of Mt. Baker and parallels the Mt. Baker Highway often unseen. The Middle Fork is smaller and faster tributary with a steeper gradient and deep plunge pools. The South Fork, although some 50 miles long that stretches into Skagit County, is only fishable for 14 river miles before it closes to protect endangered Chinook spawning grounds.
The North Fork Kendall Creek hatchery provides a decent fishery for winter steelhead and October salmon fishing. Chinook and coho hatchery returns are mainly from the Native hatchery on the South Fork at Skookum Creek. Salmon fishing opens on the Main Stem in early September and stays good through a healthy chum run well into December. Both forks open in October for salmon but can be fished for sea-run cutthroat trout in September. Thanksgiving brings about hatchery steelhead season which carries through into January. Wild steelhead start trickling into the system in December and really show up in good numbers in January and February. Sadly for the fishermen the river closes in the end of February.
The main stem is a true spey rod river with some beautiful classic steelhead runs that will remind you of other nice places you have fished. The forks are smaller and lend themselves more to the single handed rod or a switch rod. The North Fork Nooksack is a wild and scenic river and boasts an incredible population of bald eagles. The river shifts quite frequently throughout the vast channel as the waters rise and fall with rain. Tree roots and log jams make up much of the excellent fish habitat on this fork. The south and middle forks are more defined channels and runs and holes remain more consistent. Wherever you are on this river the backdrop is spectacular. Around one bend you will look back and see The Sisters and the next bend will offer a pristine view of towering Mt. Baker.
Resident trout and anadromous dolly varden are found throughout the system in small numbers with the latter being off limits to target. The North Fork Nooksack above the 100 foot Nooksack Falls can be fun summer trout fishing with light weight rods and surface flies. Some open tributaries such as Canyon Creek can be great fun on the dry fly in July through September for small to medium sized trout. These tributaries of crystal clear cascading water sooth the sole and bring you smiling back to the roots of fly fishing.
Puget Sound Beaches are fun relief from the river and Stillwater settings. Sea-run cutthroat are available for the catching along several nice cobblestone reaches. The shelter of bull kelp beds provide a great feeding grounds for this fun anadramous salmonid. Late summer sees the arrival of solid hatchery coho fishery easily within reach of shore.
Come on up and get away from the crowds. You wont believe how beautiful it is and you won’t regret it. And, oh yeah, you might catch some nice fish!
The Nooksack is our most Northern Puget Sound river. From the flanks of beautiful Mt. Baker and the Mt. Baker Wilderness the Nooksack River travels 75 miles to Bellingham Bay through diverse terrain. Three forks make up the main stem that locals say starts in the town of Deming. The North Fork provides most of the water in the drainage right off the northern side of Mt. Baker and parallels the Mt. Baker Highway often unseen. The Middle Fork is smaller and faster tributary with a steeper gradient and deep plunge pools. The South Fork, although some 50 miles long that stretches into Skagit County, is only fishable for 14 river miles before it closes to protect endangered Chinook spawning grounds.
The North Fork Kendall Creek hatchery provides a decent fishery for winter steelhead and October salmon fishing. Chinook and coho hatchery returns are mainly from the Native hatchery on the South Fork at Skookum Creek. Salmon fishing opens on the Main Stem in early September and stays good through a healthy chum run well into December. Both forks open in October for salmon but can be fished for sea-run cutthroat trout in September. Thanksgiving brings about hatchery steelhead season which carries through into January. Wild steelhead start trickling into the system in December and really show up in good numbers in January and February. Sadly for the fishermen the river closes in the end of February.
The main stem is a true spey rod river with some beautiful classic steelhead runs that will remind you of other nice places you have fished. The forks are smaller and lend themselves more to the single handed rod or a switch rod. The North Fork Nooksack is a wild and scenic river and boasts an incredible population of bald eagles. The river shifts quite frequently throughout the vast channel as the waters rise and fall with rain. Tree roots and log jams make up much of the excellent fish habitat on this fork. The south and middle forks are more defined channels and runs and holes remain more consistent. Wherever you are on this river the backdrop is spectacular. Around one bend you will look back and see The Sisters and the next bend will offer a pristine view of towering Mt. Baker.
Resident trout and anadromous dolly varden are found throughout the system in small numbers with the latter being off limits to target. The North Fork Nooksack above the 100 foot Nooksack Falls can be fun summer trout fishing with light weight rods and surface flies. Some open tributaries such as Canyon Creek can be great fun on the dry fly in July through September for small to medium sized trout. These tributaries of crystal clear cascading water sooth the sole and bring you smiling back to the roots of fly fishing.
Puget Sound Beaches are fun relief from the river and Stillwater settings. Sea-run cutthroat are available for the catching along several nice cobblestone reaches. The shelter of bull kelp beds provide a great feeding grounds for this fun anadramous salmonid. Late summer sees the arrival of solid hatchery coho fishery easily within reach of shore.
Come on up and get away from the crowds. You wont believe how beautiful it is and you won’t regret it. And, oh yeah, you might catch some nice fish!
2 comments:
Jason,
I just wanted to let you know that I'm enjoying your blogs, particularly your reports from the river. Like many others, I enjoyed an up and down year on the Nooksack. You've noted some of the more interesting aspects of the season up there although I'd be curious to hear you expand on a couple of topics:
1) The color/silt in the SF. It sounds like you'll be doing some investigating on this. That fork seemed all kinds of f'ed up this year.
2) Your take on the NF hatchery steelhead.
In regards to the second topic, I found it "interesting" that the river was restricted at one point due to a lack of fish at the hatchery. I thought the closure was premature strictly based on run timing. I'm not sure why they didn't try to wait another couple of weeks to really know if the fish weren't going to show up? You seemed to indicate that it turned out to be a good year for the hatchery fish. Does this just mean the fish were late?
On a related subject, if the hatchery fish are inferior (which I think is clear even if broodstock is used,) their only stated purpose is to be bonked by fishermen. If that is the case, why EVER close a hatchery run? If they DO have to limit fishing, isn't it incredibly difficult to justify the continued money thrown at the hatchery especially when the results are so varied and the run timing isn't what they think it is (I caught 2 hatchery fish in the lower river the last week of Feb)?
I suppose this leaded into the CCA topic. I have mixed feelings about them and will not be joining until they can better state their positions. I know that many say I should get involved now to help direct the group's priorities but I have a hard time believe they will EVER come out against hatcheries because it would upset too many of their existing members. Unfortunately, this is a major problem that has and will continue to divide sportsmen. In the mean time, I certainly wish the CCA well with their efforts to reform commercial practices. Maybe, at some point, that will be enough for me to join them.
Again, thanks for the effort with the blogs and with the positive work you've been doing to help the Nooksack.
-Aaron (said "hi" to you once out of a blue 2-man pontoon boat)
Hi Aaron,
Thanks for your post and contribution to the topics. I will try to answer each item that you have brought up.
1) I called Skookum Hatchery today and had to leave a message. I called for two reasons. The first being that I am involved in the Liam Wood fly fishing course for high school age students this summer and I thought it would be interesting for the kids to get a Native biologist's or hatchery worker's perspective on the fisheries in the Nooksack and learn of their efforts towards fisheries conservation. Second, I am thinking that they must be concerned about the silt load being carried in that river, especially with their pointed efforts at restoring native chinook runs. This will be the third time I have left a message there in the last year. I hope for a call back.
A friend of mine, Josh, mentioned an interesting possibility. He heard that logging operations in that basin had built a new bridge over a tributary and that this may be causing the discoloration. This is a distinct possibility because the clarity didn't completely deteriorate until February. We did start seeing warmer temperatures which could have caused some clay bank cave-ins or a big mud slide. I definitely going to go check it out in April.
2) The closure on the North Fork was a complete cop out for the WDFW. It seemes to me that with their lack of proper funding for enforcement they couldn't close a shorter portion of the river. I talked to one field biologist that was complaining how people get right up close below the hatchery and snag or floss the steelhead out. I said, "why don't you close this small braid section that is mostly Kendall Creek?" He told me it was too hard to enforce and that if it is completely closed then nobody has a reason to be there.
I completely agree with you that hatchery fish are for the taking. In fact, I hope you harvested those two hatchery fish you caught in late February. However, I can see arguments for both sides. I will get to this later.
The bulk of the hatchery run seemed to come from just before Christmas through the first two weeks of January. Now, hatchery fish are known to just move upriver pretty fast and WDFW might have been tipped off as to there presence in the system. Some fish might sit below the hatchery for quite a while before going in so it is hard for us to know when they were actually in the North Fork from Mosquito Lake down. By looking at the numbers and the fish we hooked on my trips I would say the bulk of the fish were there for us to hook on the North Fork below Mosquito Lake Rd.from December 23-Jan 7. If you fished the lower river more, that was smart.
Here are the numbers. You may have them already.
Dec 12 3 fish returned
Dec 19 no report (oops, were they to busy getting the first of the fish?)
Dec 26 73 fish
Jan 2 102 fish
Jan 9 127 fish
Jan 16 151 fish
Jan 30 159 fish
Feb 6 159 fish
And that's it. They quit. What happens to those stragglers like you caught? Left to spawn with the native runs? Did you know that some of the biggest runs of wild steelhead were in the fall, November and December? We wiped them out!
159 fish isn't a lot. 2006-2007 saw an escapement of only 66 fish and 87,000 egg take. These numbers do not give me a good outlook on next years return numbers. The smolt release numbers for 2006-2007 are not available yet on line. I will have to call.This is what the WDFW said in the end of December when they had 70 fish, "We need 250,000 eggs, which translates into roughly 83 females .
Returns so far include only 31 females." Here is the contact if anyone wants to ask more questions.
Brett Barkdull
P.O.Box 1100
LaConner, Wa. 98257
(360) 466-4345 x 270
barkdbcb@dfw.wa.gov
They most likely got there quota. maybe I talked about this earlier in one of my blogs. Hatcheries had to reform slightly this season to show that they are viable. It took the WDFW until 2007 to realize that "best science" tells us that we need to need to have hatcheries be self-sustainable and that the Nooksack should no longer use eggs from the Hoquiam because these fish need to genetically adapt to conditions on there own river system. Duh! So, in order to continue getting state funding, which comes from the license purchases of sportsmen, the Kendall Creek Hatchery needed to show that it was a viable hatchery. End of story. maybe we will see an increase in hatchery numbers over the next ten years with this new plan. Is that good? If you like to eat steelhead it is.
hatchery vs. Wild. We have ourselves in a pickle now. I think I can try to answer a few of your questions at once here. I support the protection of wild fish. If WDFW could be convinced to do away with hatcheries on many rivers that would be great. We would not be able to fish, but I would be willing to make that sacrifice and go to BC along with everyone and their cousins. My question is where are the wild fish counts for our rivers. What do we have left to protect on what river system and how when are they all there. We can only theorize the effect hatchery fish have on wild stocks because we have no proof or do we? I believe there are some dead river systems. These should be put and take, such as the Cowlitz. I asked Matt Kayser, the Executive Director of CCAPNW, what CCA's position was on hatchery and wild fish. He said that if it were 20 years ago and we still had many strong stocks of wild fish throughout the Northwest, get rid of the hatcheries. But, we don't have those stocks on all rivers. CCA needs to take one battle at a time. If CCA comes out and against hatcheries, they are going to have lots of enemies right away. There are a lot of sportsmen that think fishing is solely for food and the fun comes with it. I am member of the Wild Steelhead Coalition and I like what they are doing. They have been here since 2000 and have less than 500 members. CCA already has 10,000 members in the Northwest. Strength to win fights in the political arena comes in numbers. CCA needs everyone and everyone, especially sportsmen, need CCA. Don't you think that if CCA wins the battle of changing non-selective commercial netting regulations (1st in the Columbia River basin, which sets a precedent) that this is aimed at protecting and preserving wild fish runs? First we get the fish back and then we fix the habitat. I don't think we will ever get rid of hatcheries completely, especially tribal hatcheries. The best we can hope for is hatchery reform and better methods of selectively harvesting the fish runs in the rivers. I would love to see the hatcheries disappear on the Nooksack, but it isn't happening anytime soon. I understand where you are coming from but I don't think we can sit back and wait. It would be kind of like saying i am not going to vote because the candidate doesn't have exactly the right platform I want. It is time for action and it all has to be done, one bite at a time. I will keep trying to convince people to help make change. Are there any other groups that have a track record like CCA in fisheries? Shrapnel and feater tossers unit, bonkers and conservationists unit. We get to decide what CCA fights for. Our chapter has a voice especially if it is big. We decide what CCA goes after. I know that CCA has habitat on their agenda. Think of all who that benefits and all the existing entities it will take to win that fight (logging, forestry, pollution, auto industry, state, federal, county and city, etc, etc.).
Aaron, thanks for the conversation. I enjoy hearing others perspectives and I see the huge battle we have ahead of us. I hope that an organization like CCA can join hands with other non-profits like the Native Fish Society, American Rivers, Wild Steelhead Coalition and more.
Post a Comment