Thank you, veterans, for having helped make this country what it is. Thank you, current members of the military, for continuing to make this nation great.
Today is a good day to donate to Project Healing Waters.
The mission of Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing is to assist in the physical and emotional rehabilitation of disabled active duty military personnel and veterans through fly fishing and fly tying education and outings.
The Western Environmental Law Center, on behalf of the McKenzie Flyfishers, today sent a notice of intent to sue to the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW) for operating two fish hatcheries on the McKenzie River that harm wild Chinook salmon without having studied the impacts of hatcheries and obtaining federal approval to operate them.
(Photo of hatchery spring chinook attempting to spawn on the lower McKenzie River)
The McKenzie River is cherished as a source of drinking water, for its varied recreational values, and as home to native wild spring Chinook salmon. Federal fish biologists have found that the McKenzie provides the best remaining habitat in the Willamette River basin for wild spring Chinook salmon, which were listed under the Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) as threatened with extinction in 1999.
“We ask ODFW to make transparent decisions for how it operates its hatcheries in order to save wild Chinook,” said Dave Thomas of McKenzie Flyfishers. “We cannot afford business as usual when wild Chinook face extinction.”
ODFW operates two hatcheries that breed and release hatchery fish into the McKenzie. The McKenzie River hatchery breeds and releases hatchery Chinook salmon. Fish biologists – including those within ODFW – have found that hatchery salmon compete with wild salmon for food, habitat, and spawning space, and can spawn with wild salmon, diluting their genetic integrity. The Leaburg hatchery breeds and releases steelhead and rainbow trout. Hatchery trout are voracious, and data indicate that hatchery trout in the McKenzie consume a significant number of young wild spring Chinook in the river.
These impacts constitute illegal “takes” under the ESA. ODFW may avoid liability for its hatchery operations only if it obtains a federal Hatchery and Genetic Management Plan or other federal authorization, after public notice and comment.
ODFW states that its top priority is to protect and restore native salmon. The mission stated in the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds is to restore “Oregon’s native fish populations and the aquatic systems that support them to productive and sustainable levels that will provide substantial environmental, cultural, and economic benefits.” But ODFW has never obtained – through a public process – the required permits to ensure that its hatchery operations will in fact restore wild spring Chinook in the McKenzie.
“We hope ODFW will commit to comply with the ESA so no lawsuit will be necessary,” said Pete Frost, attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. “But we stand ready to ensure that wild Chinook are truly on a road to recovery.”
Unvarnished? This is just to say that this recap shows the whole picture, in about the real way the season unfolded for me in 2012. Sure, I understand that salmon season isn’t really complete yet, but it feels like it to me, already, and I’m just not sure how much more oooomph I have in my reserve tank to continue smacking myself in the head with a 2 x 4.
Unglamorous? Mostly, people show the best of the best in their photo journals. I know that I have often tried to do that in the past. Hundreds of days will be compressed into a half dozen images, making it seem that this thing we call fly fishing for salmon in Oregon is a gloriously vivid, breathtakingingly beautiful pursuit.
Not that it isn’t – beautiful – because it is. But sometimes the beauty is not the stuff of coffee table books. Sometimes energy fails, fish do not cooperate, cameras malfunction (too much saltwater in the dang thing), the sun is too bright, the rain too intense, and the background exceedingly un-photogenic.
No matter. Fishing for salmon here on the Oregon coast is a gamble at best. Any great day could be followed by a day bereft of salmon. Any day when fish seem non-existant could be followed by a day when they seem plentiful. Fish present are not always on the prowl for a fly to eat, and a thousand casts just might – or might not produce a single grab.
My enthusiasm for photography has been at a low point this season, for all the reasons noted above. But a few images do chronicle the flavor of the year to date. I invite you to browse these unglamorous shots and hope you will find a few that strike a chord of recognition, be you a salmon fisher or not – because these are the stuff of any fishing pursuit, anywhere we pursue any fish we love.
Ever wondered if blogging about a place you love will forever ruin it?
Tying a few flies some mornings was hazardous but entertaining.
If there was a place other than the water to place a fly, I usually found it.
Don’t know how, but fly line usually migrates under my boots more often than not.
Deer wandered through the yard.
Hummm. Last guy to the hot spot gets last choice on anchor position.
When in doubt, tie some Tubes.
Some hunters were wise and took a break now and then.
Seven hours into the day, a grab, and a cranky camera lens.
Hail at the door; the start of another fishless day.
Finally.
My friend, each and every day.
This is an un-named cast, perfected throughout the season.
Desperation generates desperate creativity.
Indescribable beauty.
Chinook may have been tempted, but none rose to eat a little mouse this day.
Self portrait.
I released this 22″ Jack, and so it seems did the Seal.
Perhaps I should consider fly fishing for pumpkin, as the success rate seems higher, with less energy applied to the hunt.
This Echo Prime moment was glorious, and well deserved, if I do say.
At the tail-end of what just may be the end of my 2012 salmon season, reason to smile, and rejuvenation.
JN, November 2012
Mark your calendars, the 2013 Northwest Fly Tyer and Fly Fishing Expo (www.nwexpo.com) is scheduled for March 8th and 9th at the Linn County Expo Center in Albany, Oregon.
A vision conceived by the Oregon Council of Federation of Fly Fishers (OCFFF) 25 years ago, in Eugene, Oregon, has now become one of the largest fly fishing expositions on the west coast. Check out the blog in the coming months for details.
The Dirty Bird wet fly/nymph pattern is a versatile trout fly that can be swung down and across or fished dead drift. Tie it in a variety of sizes and colors to match your local caddis emergences.
Dirty Bird
Thread: Veevus 10/0 Black
Hook: TMC 3761#8-14
Bead: Black Metallic Cyclops Bead appropriate for hook size
Tail: Partridge fibers
Rib: UTC Copper Brassie
Body: Rust Hareline Dubbin
Collar: Pearl Krystal Flash
Hackle: Partridge
Throat: Black Haretron Dubbing
This Fall Fishpond introduces a new series of bags and packs made from waterproof welded materials and water resistant zippers. We think the new designs are fantastic and as usual have the great looks that you have come to expect from Fishpond. Below you will find videos on most of the new bags and packs. Check out the full line of chest and lumbar packs here and all the cool Fishpond gear bags here.
We expect these to arrive in the shop this week.
Fishpond Westwater Guide Lumbar Pack
Fishpond Westwater Roll Top Duffel
Ripping West Northwest winds gave way to beautiful weather, all day in-coming tides and hungry Bonefish. Cool for the tropics but amazing for a couple of families from the West. Fishing, beaching, trick or treating has been a blast.
It takes a rain like this to stop the madness. Knock some sense into our skulls. Isn’t there more to life than fishing? Surely. And now is a good time to embrace the “more.”
But who do I think I am kidding? I will get one or two nights of regular sleep, make a few social calls on my non-fishing friends, but all I do is recharge the fishing batteries. Soon I’m checking the hydrograph again every two or three hours. I’m always quietly packing gear, arranging flies, talking with cronies like the second coming of the Allmighty is just days away.
Meteorologists call this kind of weather pattern an atmospheric river. So much water in the air that it’s almost liquid. Like a fish could jump and just keep swimming up into the clouds. There have been some times in the last few days when water’s surface blurred to the point of vaporization. And there have been plenty of times when the fish were jumping like they expected watery air. Somewhere today those two possibilities collided. Fish swam through the atmosphere, for sure.
It’s a fitting farewell. Almost too perfect. Because this week I pack my bags for a seven-month bonefishing season at Andros South. The stuff of dreams. But I’m pretty sure it’s all real. The summer at Alaska West was real, mostly. The last two months in Oregon…okay, that crossed over into the unreal a few times. As with the feathery line between air and water, a few things have blurred.
So you won’t have to worry about me poaching your secret spot this winter. I’ll be checking the blog and getting my salmonid fixes vicariously. And you can bet that no matter how heavenly the Bahamas prove to be, I will be daydreaming about the Oregon Coast.
See you on the other side, my dear friends, and my dear Oregon!
-RR
The Chubby Chernobyl is a high floating dry fly that works in a variety of fishing situations. It seems to represent Hoppers and Stoneflies best. We have found it to fish well during the Salmon Fly Hatch on the Deschutes, Golden stonefly hatch on the Deschutes, McKenzie, Willamette, and Short Wing stonefly hatch on the McKenzie and Willamette. This Fall, Orange versions imitated October Caddis well enough that fish ate the Chubby all the way into November. It is easily our best “hopper dropper” pattern. Dipping the Chubby Chernobyl in Flyagra 2-5 hours prior to fishing it will make it float all day. Durable, visible and highly effective make the Chubby an instant hall of fame fly.
Chubby Chernobyl
Hook: TMC 5263 #6 or 8
Thread: Veevus 8/0 Orange
Underbody: Orange 2mm Hareline Fly Foam
Body: Orange Hareline Ice Dub
Wing: Rootbeer Hareline 2mm Fly Foam, Clear-White Hareline McFlyon Yarn
Legs: Rootbeer Black Flake Hareline Crazy Legs
The North Umpqua is in the news, as a 14-member panel appointed by Governor John Kitzhaber grapples with how to manage logging on western Oregon’s 2.4 million acres of Oregon and California Railroad Revested (O&C) Lands. National Geographic was on the North Umpqua this fall and visited Frank Moore, who produced this video on logging’s impact on watersheds in the 1970s (recently posted by the Native Fish Society).
Pass Creek from Native Fish Society on Vimeo.
Earlier this month, the Sandy River Hatchery won federal approval. In its 88-page biological opinion and ruling, NMFS concluded that the Sandy Hatchery’s operations would not jeopardize listed species of salmon and steelhead or their habitat. But it attached four major conditions, including:
– A limit of 100 to 400 on the number of wild salmon and steelhead it can collect for hatchery breeding and up to 2,750 wild Spring chinook it can trap and handle at weirs;
– Limiting the fish stray rate into tributaries and spawning grounds to 5 percent for hatchery summer steelhead and 10 percent for hatchery winter steelhead and other hatchery salmon.
– Ensuring that within 21 days of their release, hatchery fish make up no more than 10 percent of all juvenile fish in the lower Sandy River, allowing wild fish to compete for shelter and food.
– Yearly monitoring to see if the temporary tributary weirs cause more than a 20 percent change in spawning distribution above and below the structures.
Two days in Orlando waiting out then Hurricane Sandy, literally hours on the phone with United Airlines, and a much lighter wallet thanks to Disney, we finally arrived to Abaco Island. Much of Abaco was spared significant damage including our location at Abaco Palms, located in the settlement of Casuarina Point. We have heard that both the Northern tip and Southern tip of Abaco near Sandy point experienced considerable flooding and are still recovering.
Many of the Bonefish flats we typically fish are still muddy. The West wind tailing off the storm from the mainland U.S is still blowing and fishing conditions are less than ideal.
We have found a few fish around, and conditions appear to be improving by the day.
Despite delays and a bit of wind, 75 degrees isn’t to bad.
More on-site reports to come…
We sift through the fly fishing blogosphere for golden nuggets so you don’t have to!
Chinook Salmon: Waiting For The Rain from River_Snorkel on Vimeo.
Trout Underground: Tom Chandler posts some advice on how to pick the best camera for fly fishing. People often ask me which camera is best for fly fishermen, and because I’m a smartass, I usually tell them it’s the one you actually carry with you on the river.
SwittersB: Rick Haefle’s advice regarding winter nymph fishing for trout. Nymph fishing on a winter morning will certainly hone your skills for nymph fishing other times of the year. The sluggish metabolism of winter fish means their takes are softer and subtler than ever. It also means they won’t go as far out of their way to take your fly. Haefle’s full article here.
Steel: Steelie Mike hangs out with John Geirach. The best part about it was seeing that these two longtime fishing buddies were not unlike my friends and I. It brings so much more to the adventures he shares with us in his writing. These adventures are not unlike our own and his articulate writing style, humor and knowledge brings what the true meaning of why we fly fish back to us when we cannot break free on our own adventures.
Eat More Brook Trout: Twenty questions with Mia Sheppard — Steelhead Guide and Native Fish Society River Steward. Mia’s pet peeve… My blood boils when people can’t bury their feces in the outdoors and then your dog finds it and eats it or your walking along a river and there under a tree is a paper trail a mile long.
Fishing Jones: Pete McDonald catches stripers, weighs whether it’s better to spend money on a righteous boat or invest in an alpaca farm. Pfffttt… llamas.
Fishbeer: Matt Dunn writes a bunch of beautiful craziness, conjoined with salmon photos that make me realize I don’t know shit about Michigan. Apparently it is not really half as bad as Ohioans make it sound. And so we drifted and he sang slowly and Jesus got all the way laid in his tomb and he was just about to get raised up when a big dog came tearing down the far bank barking as loudly and as fearsomely as he could. The man didn’t stop singing and the dog didn’t stop barking.
Carp on the Fly: John Montana takes a break from carpin to catch some surf perch and posts some good advice. Trying to read a “rip” or a “hole” at high tide isn’t as easy as it looks. On a beach devoid of obvious tells, I flailed away and stripped flies through the froth. It worked. The fish are aggressive, so if you can show em the fly, they eat.
Thursday morning we left Eugene for our annual trip to the Bahamas. Now Saturday, we are heading to our second Disney World theme park. Hurricane Sandy ripped through the Bahamas, doing the most damage to Cat Island and Eleuthera. From the little info I can gather, our destination, Great Abaco Island has been spared major damage. Hopefully clearing is on the way. Flights are set to resume Sunday. To take the optimists view, big winds, waves and a general upheaval of the ocean floor should have Abaco Bones on the feed in a big way.
Stay Tuned for fishing reports…
CD
On one of the last warm days of the year, Nate and I wade the muddy banks of one of the largest Lake Erie steelhead tributaries. Shale crumbles down from tall cliffs, falls into brown water stained from leaf tannins.
More leaves float in a slow gyre down the main channel – all the sycamore trees dropped already, the oaks and maples still hanging on. I hate that there’s no current anywhere.
“The fish hate it too,” Nate says. But not really. We watch rolling steelhead, churning a slow dogleg shaped pool. In fact, they seem to prefer these slack holes where they can find a little depth.
In the factory behind me, guys are running around on forklifts. I see hardhats and imagine that I’m inside some election season political ad. Despite this being the pivotal swing state – it’s mostly indicator fishing here.
Nate casts a two-prince nymph rig with a big switch rod. I ask, why the big guns? Why not a single hander? He says it helps him set the hook… and I watch him spool out a hundred feet or so of line, moving interminably slow downriver, feeding the drift into his backing. Plunk goes the bobbicator. He sets the hook across miles of plastic fly line and hooks a big feisty Ohio steelhead.
Nate said the fish bit when he twitched his nymphs. Also weird.
The water seems a lot cloudier than the West Coast, but you have to rig much smaller diameter lines than I’m used to fishing (5lb fluorocarbon leaders?). After spending the last six years in Oregon, getting my head around how these fish think and react in their native environments – this is absolutely infuriating. I expected it to be easier. Comparable. It’s neither of those things.
Is it pleasant or enjoyable? Sure, like walking a dog in the park is a pretty good time. I’m just not sure Ohio steelhead fishing is something I’m willing to risk a job or marriage over. I don’t dream at night about slowly creeping a goddamn prince nymph a long a shale bottom slack river channel, hoping a big hatchery fish will come vacuum it up.
That said, I’ll probably keep doing it. My other options: Angrily running through the woods yelling and shooting squirrels, cheering the Browns to a 1-15 season, ice fishing, or watching Yo Gabba Gabba while rain pelts the house…
Or sitting on the couch playing back in my mind, drives down Highway 101 where green water poured through every little gap in the forest into the Pacific, squiggly blue lines on a map with big silver shapes sliding in on every tide.
Yeah, that could be bad for my mental health. So I’ll get back out there. Maybe learn to like it enough to get myself fired over it.
-MS
This years Two Fly Tournament brought together anglers and McKenzie River Trust supporters in a friendly competition to raise money for habitat rehabilitation. Seven teams competed for prizes including Echo Spey Rods, Redington Waders, Rio Lines, and of course bragging rights. $5000 was handed over to the Trust, and a good time was had by all.
Special thanks to the guides who donated their time to the event, without them the event doesn’t exist.
Ty Holloway ( “back to back” champion guide)
Matt Ramsey
Mike Reardon(runner up 2 years in a row)
Karl Meuller
Lou Verdugo
Chris Daughters ( perennial 3rd place finisher)
Ethan Nickel
And to those who entered this years event
Joan McCreery and Darlene Dolby
Jim Reichman and Ron Hegge
Andy McWilliams and Randy Dersham( 2012 champs)
Dave Hamilton and Dan Philips
Kelly Richardson and Steve Dose
Doug Hoff and Jeff Woolsey( runner up by 1/8″ )
Joe Palunuk and Chet Croco
As in past years participants had a great shot at some killer prizes, received a cool Simms Two Fly logo fishing shirt, enjoyed Hideaway Bakery wood fired oven pizza Friday night and dinner at Oregon Electric Station Saturday Night.
Special thanks to Kim and Tim Becker, Eric Neufeld and Simms for donating the Two Fly shirts. RaJeff Sports for donating rods, Rio Fly Lines, Trader Joes, McKenzie Mist, and The McKenzie River Trust for providing extra gifts for participants and guides.
Next years event is in the works and many participants have vowed to come back for redemption. If you are interested in next years event please contact Chris Daughters at Caddiseug@yahoo.com.
CD
