The Caddis Fly: Oregon Fly Fishing Blog

On Friday, December 6, 2019, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission will consider a proposal for the release of all wild steelhead in southwest Oregon during the 2020 season, and we need your support!

Implementing catch and release regulations for wild steelhead in Oregon’s Southwest Zone would be the most cost-effective, equitable, and easy to implement management action to protect these important world-class populations from over harvest.

Here’s what you can do to ensure that wild steelhead populations flourish, not just survive, in southwest Oregon:

1. Sign the petition now!
2. Share the petition with your friends, families, networks, and communities.
3. Show up! We want to pack the house with wild fish advocates at the ODFW Commission meeting at 8am on December 6 at ODFW headquarters in Salem.

Across their native range, there are twelve rivers in the lower 48 states and Canada where sport anglers can still legally harvest wild steelhead. All twelve of these rivers are in Oregon, and ten of those rivers are in the Southwest Zone.

Sport fishing is the lifeblood of southwest Oregon during the winter months. Unfortunately, history has demonstrated that agencies often permit harvest of wild populations to the point of critical conservation concern, and then close fishing all together to try and rebuild a struggling run. Given the dramatic decline of wild steelhead across the Northwest, we argue it is in the best interest to take a precautionary approach to protect these iconic wild fish before populations collapse while still providing fishing opportunity.

Please join us in advocating for these iconic fish by signing the petition today!

For abundant wild fish,

Jennifer Fairbrother
Conservation Director

Our mailing address is:
Native Fish Society
813 7th St.
Suite 200A
Oregon City, OR 97045

Volunteer Day with McKenzie River Trust

November Volunteer Planting Day at Green Island
Sunday, November 17th, 10:00-2:00

The Redsides, and our new Five Rivers Chapter at U of O are partnering with the McKenzie River Trust to host a planting day at Green Island! We’d love to see you out there! Make sure you register below.

Details and registration are here.

The Redsides Chapter is Looking for New Leaders

The positions of President, Vice President and Conservation Chair are open. Thanks to those members that served in these positions for many years. Paul Wagner, Monica Mullens and Mark Robershaw have made significant contributions to the chapter and I wanted to thank them for their service.

The chapter provides a vital link between the various conservation and angling groups in the McKenzie basin and is positioned to provide members the opportunity to weigh in on the many policy issues that affect fish management. The Oregon Council and TU staff are available for support, training and tools needed to be an effective volunteer leader.

Contact Terry Turner for more information at: terry@clackamasrivertu.org

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is a man on a mission. It’s a mission that should put a smile on the face of many readers of OFFB and all who care about protecting Oregon’s rivers and fisheries. In meetings, townhalls, and private conversations over the past few months, Senator Wyden has consistently voiced his ambition to overtake Alaska as the state with the greatest number of Wild and Scenic river miles in the country.

With 2,173 Wild and Scenic river miles designated across the state, Oregon currently trails Alaska by about 1,000 river miles. In pursuit of the top spot, Senator Wyden recently put out a public call for Wild and Scenic River nominations, giving Oregonians the opportunity to achieve federal protection for their favorite rivers and creeks.

A list of Oregon’s existing Wild and Scenic Rivers can be found here, although that list doesn’t include about 250 river miles that were recently added to the W&S system through passage of the John D. Dingell Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act earlier this year. Many of Oregon’s most well-known rivers are already protected under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, so anglers and river enthusiasts with intimate knowledge of smaller rivers and creeks are well-suited to help Senator Wyden get to his 1,000-mile goal. Please take the opportunity to nominate your favorite piece of water, for the benefit of current and future Oregonians and the rivers and fish that we all know and love. Submissions are due by January 20, 2020 and should be sent via email to rivers@wyden.senate.gov.

We find ourselves living in a time when there are legitimate questions regarding the salmon’s future in a world where climate and oceans seem to be acting in ways unlike they have in at least the last few thousand years. Maybe I have the time scale right and maybe I’m off. Without belaboring who did what and what should be done at this point in the earth’s evolution, I’ll simply say that the next twenty or forty or sixty or maybe even ten years could hold some unpleasant surprises for salmon and for us humans who are affected by weather around the world.

I always always always loved to fish when I was a kid, and I still do to this day. I never doubted that fishing would be part of the future of the citizenry of North America. I never considered the possibility that rivers in Oregon might not always provide a home to salmon in the future – at least I thought the rivers where I’d always found salmon would hold salmon in perpetuity.

Now I’m not so sure.

Please don’t get me wrong. This is not a doom and gloom prediction. But my sense of confidence isn’t what it once was. My role in fisheries management seemed to require that I put on a public face of confidence in the future of salmon and salmon fisheries and wild salmon and hatchery programs and science and managers, and so forth and so on.

For me to have been a half-full thinker was, it seemed, untenable. I had to have genuine hope and optimism and confidence. If I, the salmon guy, wasn’t confident, who else should be, after all.

So I exuded confidence in the ecological system.

Confidence in people and government and anglers and management plans and environmental laws and law enforcement and all that.

And confidence in the salmon too.

I did.

At least I think I did.

Now I’m not so sure.

The salmon have been a vital part of my life. Of course there is much beauty and meaning in life without salmon. Of course there are more important issues to humans on this planet than the health and the future of salmon. Perhaps salmon are a placeholder of sorts, an iconic representation of uncountable matters, good and ill, that people will encounter in the future.

Still . . . . .  while the 2019 salmon season draws to a close. I’m pausing to reflect on our shared history, rocky as it has been, and express my hope for our shared future, whatever that may be.

Jay Nicholas