Caddis Fly Shop: Oregon Fly Fishing Blog

Attention Native Trout supporters on the McKenzie River: We need you Monday night at the ODFW Inland Sport Fishing Advisory Committee meeting. This’s committee will be discussing its draft of the 25-year angling plan which you can download here. This plan is 100% geared towards selling more licenses for agency coffers, with little attention paid to our dwindling native fish stocks.

Tom Wolf, Oregon State Council Chair of Trout Unlimited is on the committee and said that the agency plans to dramatically increase trout stocking to boost license sales around the state. Tom requested that the reduction/removal of hatchery trout on the McKenzie be on the agenda for this meeting, so it is very important for everyone to show up in support.

The meeting will be Monday 2/8/2010 in Springfield, OR at the 162nd Infantry Regiment Readiness Center, Room 147 from 6-9 pm. The address is 3106 Pierce Parkway, Springfield, 97477.

We will be printing signs with the new logo for the McKenzie Native Trout Coalition (designed by Trout Unlimited’s Brent Ross!) and we’d like to make sure everybody at the meeting has one in their hand. See us at the meeting to pick up your sign.

If you are a guide or business owner and would like to be added to our list of coalition members, email me.
-MS

Last week the Cascade Family Flyfishers hosted author Dave Hughes for an evening of in-depth bug talk. Dave is a serious devotee of the McKenzie River, and it shows. The evening of his presentation, we met for dinner at the Steelhead Brewery with a few officers from the club. After the customary pleasantries, a nice lady asked me what I thought about hatchery trout in the McKenzie. I laid out my vision for a wild McKenzie. “Oh, I would just hate to see all the hatchery fish removed,” she said. “I’m just afraid that kids wouldn’t be able to catch fish without them. Kids need to catch fish to stay interested.” This sweet woman didn’t really deserve the barrage that ensued as I got on my soap box. Dave thought long and hard about the conversation over the following days and surprised me with the following letter, addressed to all McKenzie anglers:

“There are far more river systems in Oregon that have been degraded beyond the possibility of recovery than there are systems that could be restored to a natural state. The McKenzie River is a rare, recoverable stream, world famous for its native redside rainbow trout.

It’s critical to give kids opportunity to catch trout. Stockers serve this purpose by their abundance and catchability. If money is to be spent raising trout, it is not unwise to spend it on giving kids an opportunity to learn to fish. When those kids learn to fish, they will naturally gravitate toward wanting to fish in what I will call ‘real’ circumstances: they’ll grow the desire to leave stocked trout behind and fish in wild circumstances, for wild fish, for bigger fish, for less easy fish.

It is a given, through studies done by Jim Vincent in Montana among others, that planting hatchery trout in streams that would support wild trout is deleterious to the wild trout. So it would seem wisest to plant trout in degraded waters, and in stillwaters with little natural spawning potential, and to give kids opportunities in those waters that will, in truth, not be harmed by planted trout. There are an abundance of such waters in proximity to the McKenzie River.

It would also be wise to save the wild places that can be saved. If we don’t save them, our kids will advance through their fishing lives finding that all places are degraded places, that all fishing is the same degraded fishing for hatchery trout.

There are very few places left with the potential to be valued wild places. If we choose not save them, then those kids we have delivered into a desire to pursue fishing will not have the option of wild places in which to pursue it.”

-RR

Dave Hughes will be at the Caddis Fly Shop on February 27th.

ODFW’s Inland Sport Fishing Advisory Committee (ISFAC) is meeting in Springfield next Monday night (2/8/10), and reducing or removing hatchery trout from the McKenzie River is on the agenda for discussion. The ISFAC was formed last year to help ODFW implement its 25-year Angling Enhancement Plan, and a big component of that plan is to increase trout stocking around the state. It is very important for as many anglers as possible to show up in support of wild fish.

The next meeting will be 2/8/2010 in Springfield, OR at the 162nd Infantry Regiment Readiness Center, Room 147 from 6-9 pm. The address is 3106 Pierce Parkway, Springfield, 97477.

Mark your calendars. This is your chance to show ODFW support for our native fish stocks.
-MS