On October 12th I headed over to the Methow River to meet my brother and his colleagues from Paws Up Ranch in Montana. Dragging my boat behind me a weaved my way through herds of deer on highway 20 and made it to Lightning Pines RV campground just before 8am. A good solid 4 hours on the road, but needless to say, who needs sleep when your going fishing.
Lightning Pines RV park, which is located on Burma Rd. in Methow, WA is a great place to stay. It is river front, with bathroom facilities, but very low key. All of the guides have made this their home and if you have the right combination "valuables", you might be able to befriend a couple of them.
The first day we didn't touch a fish besides the couple of taps at the end of a swing. We knew that we might have to get down and dirty to really catch some of these steelhead. Late in the afternoon, while floating along, we fished the stonefly omelet combination. My brother hooked into a fiesty but very small hatchery steelhead. It notched out at 20 inches but being mandatory catch and keep on hatchery fish, we brought it home. The float from Carlton to Gold Creek Loop Rd. was nice, easy going water for swinging. Certainly though, we were not alone out there.
Day two we floated from Gold Creek Loop Rd. to Upper Burma.
A long float with some amazing water, incredible structure, and some seriously bony rapids. Don't float this section unless you have your game face on! We fished the Orchard Hole hard. I was the third one through swinging a black mole leech with a chartreuse tail. Unfortunately, I had made a lazy, poor leader choice, putting on an old leader I had tied, a classic error that I would only do to myself....arrrgh! We had been told by the guides to go deep with big stuff so we were swing sink tips and leeches. Right at the meat of the run, I was in that spey fishing karmic zone when BAM! Less than a second, my whole leader broke at the upper loop. Whoops! That was my one shot for the week.The guides told us they were mostly bead fishing but several were picking up 3-4 fish a day, half on the swing and some even on dry lines! It sure is frustrating and addicting. Why can't I have a piece of the pie? When you are on a river every day, you can learn where those fish hold and focus your efforts. When you visit for a few days, you look for the good water and hope you encounter a grabby fish. Wouldn't you just kill to have a year off just to steelhead fish?
We ended up catching some rainbows and bull trout on beads and stoneflies, and Jim caught his first steelhead in the final hour, a 25" hatchery buck. Great trip, great river and there is nothing better than fishing with your brother and his dog Caddis.
What have you been up to this summer? Bull kelp wrapped around my fins looking for coho is where I have been. 
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)
March 20, 2008 4:40 PM
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.
March 20, 2008 11:12 PM