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Tailwaters

In two weeks we’re driving to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, 328 miles and 5 1/2 hours, to fish with Chris Schatte at Beavers Bend Fly Fishing Guide Service on the Lower Mountain Fork River.  I don’t know Chris, though my friend Mark Morgan says he’s from our home town. There are few enough people from my home town that it surprises me that I don’t know one who fly fishes, but there you are.  Maybe he was Church of Christ or Baptist. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t Methodist.

The Lower Mountain Fork River is a tailwater, which means it’s the waterway below a dam. There are all sorts of peculiarities about tailwaters. Flow can be dangerous or at least weird, particularly where electrical generation’s involved, and river temperatures below the dam can be substantially lower than above the dam. Our Guadalupe River changes from a nice warmwater fishery above the dam to a trout river below the dam, at least for a few miles. Water released from the bottom of a deep lake does that, and on rivers like the San Juan and the Green it turns an ignored high desert river supporting a population of catfish into a trout angler’s amusement park.

My father grew up Church of Christ, and they practice a rigorous kind of orthodoxy about the strangest things. They don’t allow, for instance, musical instruments as part of the service, just like the Greek Orthodox. While my Dad became an apostate Methodist and took his family along, I figure I inherited that orthodoxy gene, and it comes to the fore about tailwaters.  There’s just something about them that seems artificial.

Now mind, fishing 50 states is an excuse: visiting all 50 states is something I’ve wanted to do that I haven’t made time for yet, like playing Layla on the guitar and reading Ulysses. But when you reach my age, time isn’t a limitless commodity. If I’m going to see the country, I need to get a move on. We like to fish. We like to travel. Fishing gives the travel a purpose, an excuse, a prod, and not a gentle one either.

So this whole enterprise is a bit artificial. Even the geography of it is arbitrary. The difference between the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and the Gulf Coast of Alabama or between a trout stream in New Hampshire and a trout stream in Vermont is some miles, and not very many either. So why, since this whole business is a bit made up, do I resent the stocking of Southern and Southwestern tailwaters with trout? Why is it that tailwaters in particular bother me?

Because I’m a hypocrite of course, because all winter long I drive up to the Canyon Lake/Lower Guadalupe tailwater and fish for stocked trout. Am I dubious about stocked trout? Yeah. Do I fish for them? Yeah. And I’m happy as can be when I catch a tailwater fish.  From time to time I’ve gone out of my way to fish tailwaters: the White and the Little Red in Arkansas, the San Juan in New Mexico, the Gunpowder in Maryland.

Come to think of it, there’s only one natural lake in Texas (which I’ve never fished), and every time I drive out to Damon’s and spend a couple of hours catching bass I’m participating in the fly fishing equivalent of an amusement park, or at least a golf course. Nearly every time I fish, most places I fish, there’s some unnaturalness going on, some dam upstream or downstream, some introduced species not native to the place, some native population supplemented by stocking. I ought to recognize my scruples for what they are: my tendency for misplaced orthodoxy.

Meantime when we go to Broken Bow we’ll come back through Texarkana and have breakfast with my cousins. I haven’t seen them in years, and we were close when we were younger. The elder, six years older than me, seems bent in her FaceBook posts on forcing President Obama from office.  Can’t wait to see them.

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The Native Fish Society

When I was reading about Oregon I didn’t find a conservation organization to donate to. There was nothing like the Tarpon and Bonefish Trust that reached out and gave me a good shake and said we’re doing good work. A week or so later I got one of the usual fishing emails,  this time from The Venturing Angler, announcing the Native Fish Society Native Trout-A-Thon in Oregon.

I looked at the Native Fish Society website, and they were what I had been looking for: a Pacific Northwest conservation organization for the protection of salmon, steelhead, and trout. They need to work on how easy they are to find on search engines, at least by random folk like me.  I sent them some money, and they promised to send me a ball cap. I am now a member of the Adipossessed Society of the Native Fish Society, clipping of the adipose fin being the marker for hatchery fish. Adipossessed. Cute.

If I had been willing to donate $5,000, the Society would have sent me a C.F. Burkheimer custom spey rod inscribed with “Native Fish Society Lifetime Member.” That seems like a pretty reasonable price for a Burkheimer Spey rod, but alas, I have no current need.

I can always use another ball cap. 

From the 2016 Native Fish Society Annual Report. 

Meanwhile in Houston it’s the prettiest time of year, which could only be better if the Astros were in the World Series. This morning I went out early to hand out push cards for a neighbor who’s running for Congress–his mother had called and asked if I’d work the polls for early voting, and how can you turn down someone’s mother? It was in the mid-50s, and clear and bright and excellent people watching. By the afternoon it was in the 80s and I went out and fished for largemouth at Damon’s. Lately I’ve started each bass trip with whatever fly was successful the last time (unless it was lost in the trees) and then moving on if that’s not working.  Today I moved on to a dark blue and black Clouser, which never works. Today it worked, I think because the water was clear with the cooler weather and in the bright sun the dark color was the thing, maybe. In any case, what’s more fun than casting to a particular fish then watching it take, whatever the fish?

  

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White Bass

The state fish of Oklahoma is the white bass, also known as sand bass or sandies (Morone chrysops). There’s wide distribution of white bass among states west of the Rockies, both native and introduced, so I assume it’s a fish most people are familiar with. It’s common in the Midwest and the ArkLaOklaTex.

It’s not a big fish. The IGFA world record, shared by Louisiana and Virginia, is 6 lbs, 13 oz. That’s probably about four pounds heavier than the largest white bass anyone should ever expect to see.  The Oklahoma record is 4 lbs, 9 oz. There’s not a record for white bass on the fly, either international or Oklahoman.

White bass are a freshwater fish, but their closest relative is the saltwater striped bass (Morone saxatilis). Striped bass have been introduced into midwestern and Southern lakes, and thrive if they’re restocked from year to year. The Oklahoma striper record is 47 pounds, 8 ounces, and Lake Texoma is supposed to be the very place for stripers. There’s at least one fly guide on Texoma guiding for stripers.

There is a white bass/striped bass hybrid that’s also stocked into lakes.  The common name for the hybrids, wipers, is unfortunate, at least as bad as pikeminnow, but it has the advantage of description once you figure it out. The Oklahoma record striped hybrid is 23 lbs, 4 ounces. That’s about 19 pounds heavier than the largest white bass anyone should ever expect to see.

White bass are probably the right color of fish for Oklahoma, but there’s a problem fishing for white bass. Eleven months of the year white bass are most reliably lake fish, which requires a boat and some local knowledge, and more uncertainty than I want in Oklahoma. They aren’t a typical fly target. They chase minnows, they eat worms, they eat crustaceans, they chase more minnows. They school, and a white bass frenzy is a sight to behold. When they pound minnows on the surface it’s easy to tell they’re striper kinfolk.

And they’re anadromous. Ok, I’m lying again. They never make it to salt water, but in the spring they run into the feeder rivers and streams to spawn. When water temperatures reach the high 50s, sometime between February and May in most of their range, it’s quite the thing to catch the run. The smaller males move out of the lakes first, and then the bigger females follow. It’s a bit of a meat market, both for the fish and anglers. Conventional anglers pull out fish to the limits, and the limits are high–none in Oklahoma. This isn’t catch and release fishing. It’s freezer stocking.

The white bass feed right up to the spawn, and will hit anything that looks like a minnow. I’ve only fly fished for them once on the spawn, and then the trick was to get the fly deep enough. The big females weren’t in the river yet, and I only caught a few small males.

So to catch Oklahoma white bass at the right time I’d have to try to hit the spawn in the right place in one of the the right rivers in a fairly short window of time.  That’s still more uncertainty than I want in Oklahoma. I’m guessing I’m not patient enough to wait until spring, and I’ll fish the Mountain Home tailwater sometime before Christmas.

Texas Parks & Wildlife
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Pikeminnow

Kris caught a northern pikeminnow (Ptychocheilus oregonensis) in Oregon. Pikeminnows are the largest member of the minnow family, Cyprinidae. It’s a native of Oregon and of the Columbia drainage. It’s nativity is right there in the species name: oregonensis.

The current world record pikeminnow weighed over 13 pounds, and Kris’s fish was small, no more than half a pound. Other than being caught, the fish was in no way remarkable.  It’s apparently common to catch big pikeminnows, as long or longer than 24 inches and weighing more than three pounds. They can live longer than 15 years, and they reach sexual maturity from three to eight years. They spawn in the spring, and females can release up to 30,000 eggs.

Even though they’re not an invasive species, they are a fish of “ecological  concern.” They are voracious piscivores, thrive in the dammed Columbia drainage, and are hell on smolt salmon. Hell and dam. They’re ugly, with their ragged scales and harsh jaw. They’re not considered edible, though somebody surely eats them. Anglers hate them. If ever there was a trash fish, it’s the pikeminnow.

Before the northern pikeminnow was the northern pikeminnow it was the northern squawfish. It was renamed by the Names of Fishes Committee of the American Fisheries Society. A bit later the same Committee renamed the Jewfish as the goliath grouper.  Goliath grouper is a pretty good name, certainly a better name than Jewfish, but if I were a pikeminnow I’d feel slighted.

Florida goliath grouper, Jordan, David Starr (1907) Fishes, New York City, NY: Henry Holt and Company

The fish is also known as the Columbia River dace, and Columbia River dace would have been a pretty cool name. But no. Pikeminnow.

“Squawfish” may have originally derived from squawkfish, from the noise a pikeminnow makes when caught. Apparently American Indian names for the fish are often onomatopoeic. That’s not the name that caught on though. “Squaw” is probably derived from a Massachusett language word for woman, but it is considered particularly derisive, connoting subordinate status, sexual availability, stupidity, and squalor. Nobody needs that around. 

Columbia River dace, Evermann, Barton W. (1893) Reconnaissance of the streams and lakes of western Montana and northwestern Wyoming, Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, vol. 11, 1891, Government Printing Office 

In addition to the fish, there are plenty of geographic references to squaw, most notably Squaw Valley Ski Resort in California, and the Names of Fishes Committee may not get around to those any time soon. Of course there’s plenty of uses of Indian identity that are generally considered offensive: the Washington Redskins, the Cleveland Indians’ Chief Wahoo, and the Atlanta Braves’ tomahawk chop just to name three.  I’m personally offended by the tomahawk chop, though it’s probably because I saw it so often when the Astros and the Braves were in the same league. The Braves had Smoltz, Glavine, and Maddux. We could have used some pikeminnow for Smoltz.

There’s also Elizabeth Warren’s claim to Indian ancestry, which the Cherokee Nation, one of the three recognized Cherokee tribes, now finds offensive. Warren is originally from Oklahoma, and last week she released genetic testing data after a dare by President Trump. It’s a thing for whites (and blacks) in Oklahoma and the South to claim some trace of Native American ancestry, particularly Cherokee, and for such stories to be part of Oklahoma family lore. Senator Warren’s claim should surprise no one who knows her home, and it is the Oklahomanness of her claim that interests me. The problem with her claim is that she listed herself as a minority based on her Native American heritage in an Association of American Law Schools directory, and Harvard briefly touted her as a minority based on her claims. She did not, as the more inflammatory accounts state, list herself as Native American on job or law school applications.

1983 University of Houston Law Center Yearbook

Based on the published reports of her DNA testing, Senator Warren’s genetic claims are remote, but they are there. Senator Warren could claim she likely had ancestors who were Cherokee, just as I could claim to have likely had ancestors who were French. It would be overdone for me to claim to be French, but growing up in a culture, Oklahoma, where that heritage was peculiarly valued, the claim is common, even among those (unlike Senator Warren), who don’t have Senator Warren’s genetics.  That for whatever reason is Oklahoman.

Kris is a big fan of Senator Warren, having had her as a law school professor long before the Senator’s Harvard days. Kris thought her brilliant, passionate, and an excellent teacher.  I never had her as a teacher, don’t have strong opinions about her, and only note that the Senator’s Oklahomanness will follow her into 2020.

After I first posted this I came back and rewrote it because of Kris’s fondness for Senator Warren.  My original tone was unnecessarily glib and dismissive, and didn’t really say what I wanted to say.  What I wanted to say was that white and black Oklahoma has a history that is so intertwined with American Indian Oklahoma that they believe, true or no, that they are fundamentally, at their literal roots, a part of it.

In the interim, the principal chief of the third major Cherokee tribe, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, the Cherokees who never left North Carolina for Oklahoma, were more circumspect and fair in their statements about Senator Warren’s genetic announcement. “Like many other Americans, she has a family story of Cherokee and Delaware ancestry and evidence of Native ancestry.” She had not claimed tribal membership.

“Senator Warren has demonstrated her respect for tribal sovereignty and is an ally of the Eastern Band. As such, we support her and other allies — regardless of party — who promote tribal sovereignty, tribal self-determination, and protection of Cherokee women.”

Meanwhile there is a bounty paid by the Bonneville Power Authority on pikeminnows caught in the Columbia River. As I said, they are not a sport fish, so the bounty is to encourage anglers to target and remove large numbers of fish.  One to 25 fish pays $5 per fish, 26 to 200 fish pays $6 per fish, 201 fish and up pays $8 per fish. A tagged fish is worth $500. There are stories of fisher folk making a living on the pikeminnow bounty. Tempting.