Tag: Trout

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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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Fly Fish Oregon Done

Last Sunday we met our guide, Travis Johnson, at 4:30 in the morning, waders on, and got back to the hotel that night at 9:20. It was a long day. Most of our days in Oregon were long days. Up early, fish until lunch, nap for a few hours then fish again until dark. Long days.

We spent the next three nights at a riverside camp on a trip put together by Louis Cahill of Gink & Gasoline, through Jeff Hickman’s Fish the Swing.  I’d signed up for the camp on a whim, because steelhead was the right color of fish for Oregon, and there was a personal invitation, addressed to occupant, in my emails. Kris was a bit startled that I’d signed her up for a group camping trip on a river with a latrine tent and no blow drier, but I swear I told her first. I think I told her first.

The food was great, and the company great. Hickman wasn’t there, but there were two boats of three anglers each and two guides, Barrett Ames and Curtis Ciszek, and Curtis’s good dog, Rowlf. And no one is nicer than Louis Cahill. The weather wasn’t the bitter cold we’d expected north of the Mason-Dixon after Labor Day, though people did make fun of our expedition wear. Who says four layers are too many for 60 degrees? That’s damned cold.

I learned two Spey casts, more or less, the double Spey and the snap-T. By the end of the week every 10th cast or so was ok, and every 20th cast I might shoot three or four feet of line.  Spey casting, mastered. I was only frustrated at that point, as opposed to deeply frustrated, or even exasperated.  Kris was pretty much exasperated, but she hung in, and got more casting instruction than is really good for anyone. She might have been happier (and just as effective) if the guides had left her alone to flail away, but she was game, and mostly patient.

The first day with Travis Johnson was upriver, south of Maupin.  Oregon has a split personality, with east of the Cascades dry, and the lush west landscaped by rain and the ocean. Technically on the Deschutes we were in Central Oregon, but it was east enough. When I first saw the east side, mostly treeless, pristine, arid, it looked enough like my childhood home to be familiar. It was comfortable.

As I said, the first day we fished a bit upriver, south of Maupin, which if you let that sink in is all wrong. Like the desert in the east, the Deschutes runs north, the wrong way. Upriver south, downriver north. Forest west, desert east. The lower Deschutes is north. No wonder Oregon has such a peculiar reputation.

Johnson is the reigning world champion Spey-caster, but he may also be the reigning world champion talker. From dark to dark he had a constant stream of great stories and strong opinions ranging from Ireland to Maupin and back again. Johnson somehow managed to weave the Northern Ireland prime minister into instructions on drift. It was almost as spectacular as the scenery.

Oregon has a peculiar history. In the decades after Lewis & Clark, the relatively new United States pushed expansion into Oregon to keep the British out. Britain and the States agreed on a 49th parallel border in 1846, and the Canadian border from Washington to North Dakota is artificially straight, designed by treaty not geography. Settlers came from New England and the old Ohio Territory, and the existing residents, the Yakima and Nez Perce and Umpqua, the lot of them, were killed, pushed out, or confined. Oregon was re-settled by white people. It wasn’t just any white people, either.  It was pretty universally British Isle-descended white people,

Interestingly, Wisconsin was settled at about the same time by the same Yankees, but with the addition of Germans, Norwegians, and other such foreign folk. The conflict in Wisconsin between Catholic beer-drinking Germans and Protestant temperance-pledging Yankees was defining, but I’m pretty sure the beer drinkers won.  Oregon, on the other hand, remained relatively isolated until World War II, the automobile, and television changed everything.  It’s still 87% white though (as is Wisconsin, interestingly enough). Oregon’s greatest novel (and one of our greatest novels), Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion, constantly riffs on its characters’ casual racism. They must have brought it with them over the Oregon Trail, because the Oregon population is still only 2 percent African American, less than 2 percent Native American, and less than 5 percent Asian. White people.

Where we camped and fished on the lower Deschutes (that’s the north end of the river; keep up), there had been a 70,000-acre fire in July that had destroyed the grass-cover and most of the river trees.  Without ground cover there was lots of dust when the wind blew, and by midday every day the wind was blowing. If it ever rains hard, there’ll be erosion and dirty water, but big rain doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. It was a prairie fire, and by next year the grass should be back.

Because it’s spring fed, the river flow is apparently pretty constant, season to season, year to year. The river is big, fast, and hard wading, horizontal rock-climbing, and neither of us could have done it without wading staffs and Patagonia river crampons. The river crampons worked, and the one morning we tried without them, with only studs in rubber soles, was scary. Notwithstanding their generally excellent performance and the Patagonia hype, when river crampons get caked with ash and dirt river crampons are not ultralight.

I caught a jack Chinook the first day, and three redsides rainbows over the next couple of days, and finally a steelhead on the third.  The small jack, three pounds maybe, was a bit like a Gulf Coast speckled trout. It was nice to see it, it was nice to get the Oregon fish out of the way, but after a bit of a flurry it seemed resigned to being caught. The redsides were pretty, wild, and genetically pure, and one was about 20 inches which I was told was about as big as they get. They were a bit overpowered by the 7 weight Spey rod though. The final steelhead was a hatchery fish with a clipped adipose fin, but it was big, 24 or 25 inches I’d guess, and it was every bit as hard to land as billed. Not many things are as good as billed.

Kris got a nice redside and some other things, a tiny pikeminnow and a sucker, so all in all it was a fine week. Oregon’s done.

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Sex and Death

Chinook Salmon, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

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.