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?
Salmon and steelhead go home to spawn. The best guess is that salmon navigate to their river mouth magnetically, then go upriver by smell or road signs or whatever. It’s no random river either. It’s their natal river, and often their natal stretch of gravel.
There are lots of bad things that can happen to salmon in the ocean. They’re predators, but they’re also prey. There are things bigger than them, including our nets, but if they make it to freshwater their problems are only beginning.
Of course some salmon go astray and end up in the wrong river, which is genetically a good thing, but there are strong ties between a particular salmon and a particular river. Pacific salmon populations are generally healthy, but salmon populations are often discussed in terms of specific rivers, and even specific river segments. The Sacramento River chinook population and the Snake River sockeye population are each endangered, while chinook or sockeye as a species are not.
A hen steelhead will contain from 200 to 12,000 eggs, so there’s plenty of redundancy. Individual casualties happen without hurting a river’s overall population. That said, in Oregon population trends are not upward. There are plenty of natural predators, but we’re the real problem. We harvest salmon a-plenty, both commercially and for sport. We’ve destroyed habitat by lumbering and farming and development. We’ve hurt the health of populations by introducing hatchery fish into the wild. All of those things have decreased the Oregon salmon population.
And we’ve built dams.
Well, the world has seven wonders, the travelers always tell Some gardens and some towers, I guess you know them well But the greatest wonder is in Uncle Sam’s fair land It’s that King Columbia River and the big Grand Coulee Dam
Woodie Guthrie, Grand Coulie Dam, 1941.
According to the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, there are more than 400 dams in the Columbia River drainage. There are 14 on the Columbia alone, and five on the Deschutes. Construction began around the turn of the last century, and continued for 70 years. The Columbia is not a free-flowing river. It’s drainage is not free-flowing.
Roll on, Columbia, roll on Roll on, Columbia, roll on Your power is turning our darkness to dawn So roll on, Columbia, roll on
Woodie Guthrie, Roll On Columbia, Roll On, 1941.
Corps of Engineers, Dip-netting at Celilo Falls, before construction of the Dalles Dam in 1957.
The dams provide flood control and irrigation, but most importantly they provide electric power. In an odd stroke, Woodie Guthrie, unemployed and broke in Northern California, was hired for one month by the Bonneville Power Authority to narrate a film about the Columbia River dams. He’d never been to Oregon before. He wrote 26 songs in 30 days, and among them are some of his best. He knew the value of elctricity to Depression-era laborers and farmers.
Yes, Uncle Sam needs wool, Uncle Sam needs wheat, Uncle Sam needs houses and stuff to eat, Uncle Sam needs water and power dams, Uncle Sam needs people and people needs land. Don’t like dictators not much, myself, But I think the whole country ought to be run By electricity!
Woodie Guthrie, Talking Columbia Blues, 1941.
Federal law required fish migration to be considered in dam construction, and fish ladders and bypasses were built into the dams. While the bypasses may have worked well enough for the adult salmon, salmon migration is a two-way street. Juveniles must go to the ocean. Originally that was supposed to occur via the turbines and top-dam discharges, but turbines are fish killers, and spilling off the top left fish stunned and easy pickings or dead. Dam operators and builders have tried other methods, including bypasses and capturing and trucking juvenile fish. It’s expensive. Maybe some of the methods work.
In recent years some smaller dams have been removed, but there are no plans to remove any of the larger dams.
Fish Ladder, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
Deschutes river advocates, notably the Deschutes River Alliance, believe that a 273-foot tall water withdrawal tower constructed by Portland General Electric in 2010 at the Pelton Round Butte dam has destroyed the fishery in the lower Deschutes, right about where we’ll be fishing. The tower was intended to capture fish for transport around the dam and to help restore the river below the dam by controlling discharges. Before construction of the tower, PGE had released only cold, oxygen-rich water from the bottom of Lake Billy Chinook. The Alliance argues that the top water that’s now part of the discharge is contaminated agriculture runoff that violates standards for water temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen. They believe the contaminated water creates algae blooms in the lower Deschutes, kills insect life, and ultimately decimates trout, salmon, and steelhead.
The Alliance sued in 2016, and in August of 2018 the court ruled that the Alliance presented no evidence that PGE was violating its discharge permit. The Alliance says it will appeal.
Once at Whole Foods I asked for salmon, and the fishmonger pointed out steelhead. I said steelhead aren’t salmon. He said yes they are. I said no they aren’t they’re trout and he said no, that wee little pale-fleshed thing over yonder is trout and that mighty steelhead right there is salmon. Things went on like that until I gave up, knowing full well I was right and he was wrong, but here’s the thing: I wasn’t right either. People more knowledgeable than me, people with their masters in science, often refer to steelhead (and sea-run cutthroats) as salmon.
Pacific salmon are genus Oncorhynchus, and depending on who you talk to Northwest Pacific salmon includes five major species, excluding Steelhead and sea-run cutthroats, or seven major species, including steelhead and sea-run cutthroat trout. To make matters more confusing the Northwest Pacific salmon species, five or seven, are not that closely related to the Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar: Different genus, different species. Resident rainbows (which are never referred to as salmon), are Oncorhynchus mykiss, which of course is the same genus and species as steelhead. And the same genus as Pacific salmon . . .
Ocean Steelhead, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
It’s all very confusing, and to confuse things more there is also an Asian Pacific salmon species,Oncorhynchus masou. It’s been suggested that steelhead should be called Pacific trout, not Pacific salmon, because they can survive a spawning run and return to spawn again. Ok. That’ll sure clear things up, particularly since Atlantic salmon can also survive a spawning run and return to spawn again. Maybe steelhead should be called Pacific Atlantics.
The fly-fishing literature suffers the same confusion, but in reverse. It doesn’t ever call steelhead salmon, but it clearly distinguishes between steelhead and resident rainbows. No angler would ever say “I’m fishing for trout!” when the angler was fishing for steelhead. No flytier would say “I’m tying up a bunch of intruders for trout!” For the fly fisher, trout and steelhead are day and night, night and day. Sort of. Anglers know that steelhead and rainbows are more or less the same, but they’ll never admit it. Steelhead are glamorous, and in comparison, even rainbows are not.
Spawning Steelhead, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.
Steelhead, like their kinfolk salmon, are that holiest of fly-fishing prey, an anadromous fish. That’s what makes steelhead different from the run-of-the-mill resident rainbow. You think permit are special? Tarpon? They ain’t in it. Oh sure, Ted Williams was proud of his 1000 bonefish and his 1000 tarpon, but it was his 1000 Atlantic salmon that were his first love. To heck with all that saltwater stuff. It’s anadromous fish plucked from a river that get the heart racing. It’s the best of both worlds.
Anadromous. Steelhead (like resident rainbows) hatch in the spring or early summer in the gravel of freshwater rivers, and then (unlike resident rainbows) work their way to the ocean. The steelhead’s genetic sibling, the resident rainbow, might reach five pounds. The ocean-dwelling steelhead, growing huge on ocean shrimp and baitfish, might reach 20 pounds. After two or three years of growing larger than inland rainbows, steelhead get romantic notions and go home to party. After spawning, salmon die. Steelhead don’t. Theoretically the same steelhead may make the ocean/river spawning trek several times, though only about 10 percent of the population survives for return trips. Of course instead of heading back to the ocean steelhead sometimes hang out in their home river and become resident rainbows. It’s a lifestyle thing.
Sockeye Salmon, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
The biggest differences between steelhead and the other five salmon, other than the whole sex and death business, is that steelhead feed in freshwater, unless of course they’re winter steelhead and then they don’t eat much. Steelhead also don’t run the river and spawn in one swift motion, unless of course they’re winter steelhead and then they don’t dawdle. Steelhead may (or may not) take their time, but those five-species salmon stop feeding when they start their spawning run, and they all move in and move up. Then the salmon, the five-species salmon, don’t ever go back to the ocean. Who hasn’t marveled at that tragedy? And what fly fisher isn’t a bit repulsed by the notion of a flesh fly?
So there are two distinct runs of steelhead. There’s the summer steelhead, the fish we’ll be fishing for in a bit more than a week. They’re smaller than the winter steelhead, they need a bit of time before they’re ready to spawn, and they feed in freshwater. They start showing up in rivers in May for the next spring’s spawn, and continue to come into the rivers through October. They then hang out getting ready for the next spring spawn. I suppose that along about Halloween the summer steelhead by general accord stop and let the winter steelhead begin. Things are always precise in nature.
I have a mental image of the Oregon winter steelheader standing in the sleet and snow, spey-casting to a fish that isn’t interested. “During the winter I only work two days a week,” my imaginary steelheader tells me, “so I fished for 67 days last year and landed three fish. It was my best season ever.” He has a steelhead tattoo, and another of an intruder. He doesn’t know that the Astros won the World Series.
Pink Salmon, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The winter steelhead have the same ultimate goal as the summer steelhead, but they’re bigger fish, physically ready to spawn, and they’re not lollygagging in the summer pools eating caddis or whatever. They have to be provoked into yelling the salmonic equivalent of get off my lawn.
That guy? That Oregon winter steelheader? Don’t tell him, but he’s salmon fishing.
Ephemera & Young, A, The Book of Salmon in Two Parts, frontispiece, 1850.
I first read Marjorie Stoneman Douglas’s 1947 River of Grass when I thought I wanted to canoe the Everglades. I thought it was a travel guide, and I’m not certain I finished it. I may have only carried it around for a while. I’ve started it again, and it’s a far better book than I remembered. Shows what a little time will do.
This may be obvious to everybody else, but it wasn’t obvious to me: The Everglades system is not coterminous with the Everglades National Park, and the system was not preserved by designation of the Park. The Park is about one quarter of the area originally covered by the Everglades. Not small change, but the Park is only the southern part of the original area. It’s separated from its historic northern water sources by building a dike around Lake Okeechobee, building barriers like the Tamiami Trail, changing the direction of water discharges from the Lake, and draining 700,000 acres for agriculture in the Everglades Agricultural Area.
Before that stuff happened, sheet flow flowed from Lake Okeechobee down to the Bay of Florida, with normal flows of as little as 100 feet per day. Douglas described the system as a shallow river, often only inches deep, that covered most of South Florida. The river stretched from near present day Orlando south to the Keys where the land ran out.
Map of the Everglades by US War Department, 1856
In the decades after 1920 the flow stopped. After deadly floods in the 1930s, Lake Okeechobee was surrounded by the Herbert Hoover Dike for flood control. Areas of the Everglades were isolated, drained for agriculture and urban development, urbanized at its boundaries, and managed for different purposes. Today’s arguments aren’t really about restoration to original conditions, but the extent to which regionalization can be reversed and the freshwater sheet flow out of Lake Okeechobee restored to its original southerly meander.
The Park now gets most of its water from the 60 inches of average annual rainfall in Southern Florida, and it doesn’t feed much freshwater into Florida Bay. Because there isn’t freshwater flowing in, the Bay is hyper-saline. It’s lost thousands of acres of sea grass and is periodically strangled by algae. Not just any old algae, either. You can’t talk about Florida algae without saying toxic algae. It’s gotta be toxic.
And up top the Okeechobee isn’t the cleanest of lakes. Except for industry, it receives pollutants from the same list of sources as The Chesapeake: Agriculture and urban development. Phosphorous and nitrogen, the stuff of fertilizers for yards and crops, seem to be the biggest problem. Instead of flowing south to Florida Bay, the Lake overflow is now shunted east to the Atlantic estuaries by the St. Lucie Canal and west by the Caloosahatchee River.
The phosphorous-laden freshwater flows hit the saltwater systems on the Atlantic side around Stuart and in the south central bays on the Gulf side. The whole mess plays havoc with fish and wildlife in a big swatch of Southern Florida. The Everglades is also the recharge source for the Biscayne Aquifer, the principal water supply for South Florida, Miami and whatnot. There are 8 million people who depend on drinking water ultimately sourced from the Everglades, plus a lot of golf courses. Where’s the water for putting greens going to come from?
The bad guy in all of this is Big Sugar. Florida produces about half the nation’s sugar through three refiners. At its worst, Big Sugar’s historic labor practices made the West Virginia coal industry look benevolent. And the two, coal and sugar, ran neck and neck for environmental sensitivity: lop off a mountain top here, drain a wetlands there. Federal sugar subsidies are a favorite target of fiscal conservatives, who argue that artificial support of American sugar prices kills American jobs. Maybe anymore it doesn’t deserve to be the active bad guy it used to be: Creation of the Everglades Agricultural Area is done, no additional land will be added, and it’s half-life is short because of the subsidence of the soil in the EAA.
But unfairly or no Big Sugar remains the Villain in the eyes of restoration proponents. In South Florida, a fishing guides’ environmental group, Bullsugar, takes its name from the alliteration of sugar and, well, shit. Orvis is a sponsor. Patagonia is a sponsor. Hell, Raymond James is a sponsor. Raymond James. There are lots of other similar groups too: The Everglades Foundation, the Everglades Trust, Captains for Clean Water . . . The Everglades Coalition counts over 50 member organizations. Meanwhile in 2016 the New York Times reported that the Miami Herald had reported that over the past 22 years the sugar industry contributed $57 million to Florida elections. Sweet.
It’s probably no wonder that the proponents think that the governmental group with the most direct control over the Everglades water, the South Florida Water Management District, isn’t an ally. Its board is appointed by a Governor who is not seen as an ally. $57 million.
Meantime proponents believe that establishment of a storage and treatment reservoir in the Everglades Agricultural Area is the key to Everglades restoration. The reservoir would use about 15 percent of the EAA area. It would release water South, surely whistling Dixie, down through the supposedly cleansing and detoxifying Glades to the southward bay. Neither east nor west but only south.
Apparently the money is there: as a result of federal lawsuits Florida has pledged expenditures for restoration. Maybe the plan is there. Expenditures are being made and the Tamiami Trail is being raised. Apparently the big hold-up to return of substantial southward flow is Big Sugar’s willingness to sell the land for the Okeechobee drainage reservoir. 26,800 acres were purchased by the state in 2010. The proponents want 46,800 more acres. Sugar backed out once. It reached agreement and then . . . hesitated. And of course the concern is that on the horizon Big Sugar sees the possibility of more lucrative residential development, and maybe there’s a lack of sufficient interest at the state level to force the issue.
So’s anyway we’re heading to Florida, but we’re not going to the Everglades.
http://www.evergladestrust.org/toxic_algae, From the Everglades Trust, Algae Bloom in Stuart, Florida
