Oregon Fishing Perspectives.
Someone said, sometime, that an understanding of the challenges we face, the decisions we make each day, could surely benefit from understanding the perspective of people who have preceded us. Or something philosophical like that. Today, we anglers are faced with challenges, opportunities and decisions to be made that will affect the future of our fishing and more importantly, the fishing opportunities.our children will inherit. This post offers the blogospheric reader quotes from the Oregon Sportsman during the early part of the Twentieth Century. No editorializing, just quotes. This was the stuff of that time, reflecting decisions made then, and the present we have inherited. May we reflect and act wisely.
[Quote] Fishing Reports:
Two anglers recently made a trip up the Mackenzie. One reported catching ten trout, the other covered the same ground and caught fifty eight. It’s not the lack of fish. It’s in the man holding the rod.
Webster Kincaid reports that he caught eighty-eight trout in two days, fishing from a boat in the Willamette River, near Oakridge.
A number of fishermen have made very good catches in the Willamette by hauling a skiff up fifteen or twenty miles from Eugene and fishing down.
Fishing has recently been very good in the north fork of the Santiam, about half a mile north of Lyon. The fish range from ten to eighteen inches in length, and are caught principally with flies.
Scott Oby and Fire Warden Wilkes caught 100 trout on the Trask River, August 17, using crawfish for bait.
Fishing is reported good for black spotted trout in the Big Nestucca, Trask, ad Wilson rivers, many being caught weighing 3 1/2 pounds, No. 4 Backus fly being used.
Fishing is not so good in the Nehalem River, as in former years, owing to the P. R. & N. R. Co. taking gravel from the river bed, which causes the water to become muddy.
Salmon fishing has been reported as good during the past several days at the mouth of the rivers flowing into Tillamook Bay. [End Quote]
Source: The Oregon Sportsman Volume I, Number 1, September 1913.
JN
Let us hope that in 98 years from now, fishing folks are not reading the reports from today and reflecting on the loss of the resource. …..also can you please cover the Backus fly in a upcoming photo essay – sounds like it is a good pattern. tw
Understanding the historical perspective is very important. I recall an article in a salt water flyfishing magazine where they reported research on changes in fisheries using historical photos. They analyzed photos from guides and fishing shops to record what fish were caught and their size. They linked this to changes in fishing regulations. They found that the size of fish in the photo’s declined, and in some cases the fish species changed from more desirable fish to less desirable fish. On the McKenzie, this would be a shift from 20 inch natives to 10 in whitefish. Who said, “I’ve seen the enemy and it is us”?
In answer to Jim’s question: It was Pogo, in the comic strip drawn by Walt Kelly. Both Pogo, Kelly, and Jim have right on, sadly.