Moratorium mumbo jumbo

It was another tough week in the news. 

Fisheries managers announced plans for a fishing moratorium on the Elwha River and all of its tributaries starting next fall. The proposal is part of the Elwha Dam removal project that is scheduled for completion in 2014. 

The Elwha dams removal is the largest such project in U.S. history. It is a grand experiment that will attempt to restore all five species of Pacific salmon along with steelhead, bull trout and sea run cutthroat by removing the dams and allowing the fish access to 70 miles of pristine spawning and rearing habitat within Olympic National Park. 

It has been estimated that the Elwha River once supported a historic population of 400,000 fish. It is thought that the Elwha now supports only 3000 salmon. 

The proposed fishing moratorium is an attempt to rebuild runs of fish that have been blocked from the upper Elwha and its tributaries for 100 years.

Of all the tributaries of the Elwha, Indian Creek could have been the most important small stream in the watershed. In prehistoric times there was a S'Klallam village located at the mouth of Indian Creek at its confluence with the Elwha. Indian Creek was noted for its runs of steelhead, a sea-run rainbow trout and blue backs. That is a popular name for the sockeye salmon. 

The sockeye have always been valued for their beauty and the quality of their blood-red flesh. Sockeye generally run up rivers that have a lake where the adults can spawn and the juveniles can spend the first year of their lives. As the sockeye run upstream to their spawning grounds their appearance changes from the blue backs and silver bellies of an ocean fish to a spawner with a red body, a green head and a hooked nose.  

John Sutherland, a Hudson's Bay trapper who was the first European to discover the lake he named for himself, observed red salmon spawning in November. We can assume these were sockeye. 

Once the Elwha dams were built the Indian Creek sockeye, steelhead and village disappeared. 

With the removal of the dams, it is hoped that the steelhead and sockeye will return to Lake Sutherland.  That's the motive for the proposed sport fishing moratorium in the lake. 

To observe the effects of a sport-fishing moratorium on salmon restoration we have only to look at the Elwha's nearest neighbor the Dungeness River to see what we are in for. 

Like the Elwha, the Dungeness is a river that once supported hundreds of thousands of the five species of salmon. 

Unlike the Elwha, the Dungeness has no dam to blame for making the fish threatened or endangered. 

Back in the '90s the Dungeness River was closed to sport fishing for most of the year as a conservation measure. Who could argue with that? We had the assurance that once the runs were rebuilt we could fish again. 

Ten years after, instead of rebuilding the runs of fish on Dungeness, the government has invested their millions buying waterfront real estate, while allowing a commercial gillnet fishery to continue at the mouth of the river.  Meanwhile, homes along the Dungeness River have been declared bull trout habitat. 

They are routinely purchased from willing sellers, razed and replaced with native vegetation without one fish to show for it.  

The sport-fishing moratorium on the Dungeness is a failed experiment.  Normally, conducting a failed experiment while expecting different results fits Einstein’s' definition of insanity. Here on the Olympic Peninsula we call it salmon restoration. 

Those who ignore history probably don't fish.

A sad salmon situation

It was daylight on the water. A pair of lines cut through the surface of the Strait of Juan de Fuca near where a Spanish explorer bought some salmon “of a hundred pounds weight” from the Indians back in 1790.

People have been coming to the North Olympic Peninsula to catch salmon ever since. While the rest of the country is sweltering through a hot summer, people fishing in the Straits these days have no problem staying cool in the fog and wind of the salt chuck.

King salmon tend to bite at daylight so these murky mornings where dawn seems delayed are ideal for fishing. It is however, an activity that is not for everyone.

The breaking waves make sitting in a boat like riding a mechanical bull while holding a fishing pole. A grease fried breakfast sits in your gut like a bucket of bubbling lead.

You breathe a heady mixture of outboard exhaust, rotting herring and seaweed while shivering in foul weather gear you might usually wear in November. After a few minutes or a few hours, time does not matter in this misery you forget what possessed you to ever want to catch a king salmon in the first place.  

Mutinous eyes search the empty horizon. You want to suggest turning back before you miss your soap opera. You remember all of the things you should be doing today like going to the job you took a day off from, while you still have one.

Then you get a bite. Do you set the hook immediately? And risk pulling the hooks out or let the fish munch awhile and let go. This is an age old question that there is no time to answer.

The fish is headed to Canada with what’s left of your line. You chase the fish and reel in as fast as you can. Before you know it the fish is at the boat. You want to net the prize but this is where things get crazy.

The law says that “wild” fish caught with hook and line have to be released. In theory you are supposed to be able to tell a “wild” fish from one of hatchery origin by the presence of an adipose fin.

Unfortunately, many hatcheries still don’t clip the fins of the fish they release. After 100 years of fish hatcheries where billions of salmon have been released in almost every body of water in Washington, the line between hatchery and wild fish has been blurred beyond recognition. Is a salmon with an adipose fin a wild fish, an unclipped hatchery fish or the offspring of naturally spawning hatchery fish? There is no way to be sure.

It’s just your luck that the king salmon you reeled in has an adipose fin. It is hooked deeply. A cloud of blood issues from the ruptured gills. The fish sinks tired and sick beneath the surface. You sit and watch in the funk of failure.

There is a splash. A sea lion rolls near the boat. She just ate your salmon.

You stop at the store on the way home thinking if you bought a fish for the going rate of $15 a pound or so, people might think you caught it.

Unfortunately the fish at the store have adipose fins. While you are required to release your so-called “wild” fish, the non-selective commercial fisheries are allowed to kill and sell the “wild” fish legally.

You get so upset over the wasteful and corrupt management of our fisheries that you forget the salmon and buy a package of hot dogs instead.

Bull trout bull

A sharp eyed reader suggested a correction to my column about the Dungeness Valley Creamery. It’s one of two remaining dairies in the Sequim Dungeness Valley.

The future operation of the dairy is being threatened by Clallam County’s plan to move the flood control dikes from along the Dungeness River to restore the habitat of the endangered bull trout.

Oops, I did it again, called the bull trout endangered. The fact is the bull trout is not endangered. 
It has been federally listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. “Threatened,” according to the government definition means the species is likely to become “endangered.” An “endangered” species means it’s likely to become extinct.

Please excuse my confusion. I only know what I read in the fishing laws, where it says it is illegal to lift a bull trout out of the water. 
Forget about eating a bull trout for dinner. You could lose your fishing license for that.

Not that anyone ever bragged about eating a bull trout in the old days. They can be soft and mushy with bland white-meat. 
Who wouldn’t rather catch a fat, red-meated steelhead or a salmon than a bull trout? They were seen as scavengers that ate the eggs and spawn of the salmon and steelhead.

Nobody really ever cared about catching a bull trout, until there weren’t any salmon or steelhead and there was nothing but bull trout left.

The idea that anyone would call the bull trout threatened or endangered is a joke to anyone who has ever fished the Dungeness, where on any given day you could catch four bull trout for every rainbow.  

That was until the Dungeness, a river with two fish hatcheries on it, was closed to fishing for most of the year.  This seemed to confirm the old saying, when fishing is outlawed, only outlaws will fish. There were so many poachers on the Dungeness last summer they did not get an adequate return of spring Chinook back to the hatchery.

The Dungeness spring chinook is a run of salmon worth saving. These are the “first salmon” of the Northwest.

That means they run up the river in early spring when the salmonberry blossoms. These fish don’t spawn until August. The spring chinook don’t feed in the river, they survive and develop into spawners on their body fat. This makes the spring chinook the richest of the salmon.

There used to be an awesome chinook fishery right out in Dungeness Bay every spring when the dogwoods bloomed. Many of these fish were produced at the Dungeness Fish hatchery.

Hatchery fish have been getting a bad rap for failing in recent years. Runs of hatchery fish always fail after you lay off the hatchery workers and stop feeding the fish.

Sping chinook are the key to restoring the Dungeness-Greywolf ecosystem. Their migration up into the mountains was an exchange of nutrients from the ocean to the land that endured since the last Ice Age.

Everything from the trees to the bugs fed on the carcasses of spawned out salmon.

The fact that we have interrupted this cycle is an intolerable ecological disaster. Our salmon are overharvest throughout the extent of their range. There is just too much nylon fishing gear in the water. We need a responsible hatchery program to mitigate this nylon pollution.

So you can take out all the dikes on the lower Dungeness and it won’t matter to the fish. There have never been any dikes on the upper Dungeness and the fish up there are just as endangered.

Oops, I mean threatened. 

  

Got them ol' punch card blues

April can be  the cruelest month. It's when we are forced to turn in our income tax and turn in our punch card.
The first punch cards were to record an anglers' catch of salmon and steelhead.
They were free. We knew that was too good to last.
Before long, they started charging for punch cards and making us punch other stuff like crab, halibut and sturgeon.
Today's punch card is a complex legal document that has grown so large you must roll it up like a medieval scroll to carry it around.
The law says you must record immediately, in ink, the date, catch location and, in the case of salmon and steelhead, identity of the fish as hatchery-bred or wild.
For a steelhead fisherman, this can be a real challenge.
Imagine standing over the top of your boots in a freezing river in a blizzard. It's is your lucky day. You caught a steelhead.
Now you must waddle to shore and begin the complex legal process of recording your catch.
First, it might be handy to have an ink pen that functioned on wet paper in the snow.
But before you can write the location of your catch on the punch card, you must figure out where that is.
You can't just write the name of the river, no. You must find the secret identification code of each river located somewhere in the fishing law book.
Inevitably, you give up trying to find the secret code. You try to write the name of the river in the space provided.
Your fingers are frozen. You scribble something that looks like an ink blob.
Punch cards are a real hassle for crabbers.
Imagine standing over the top of your boots out on the tide flats. It's your lucky day.
You scoop up a crab. You unroll your punch card document and invariably drop it in the water.
Again, you fill out your punch card with something that looks like an ink blob.
Filling out a punch card for salmon or halibut is no picnic, either.
Imagine bobbing around in an ocean swell trying to hold down a greasy breakfast while breathing a heady mixture of salt air, rotting herring and outboard motor exhaust.
It's your lucky day. You catch a salmon or halibut but you don't care. You only want to be put on shore or put out of your misery.
You fill out your punch card with another ink blob.
For years, we have been told that the state bean-counters could look at these ink blobs to come up with catch numbers with a method known only to professional fortunetellers.
Nowadays, they have a brave new way to count the catch: computer models.
No one bothered to look at the punch cards before they cut this year's halibut season to just 13 days.
How could they? The punch cards that show last year's catch haven't been sent in yet.
Instead of actually counting the catch, the state used a computer model to cut our halibut season -- which begs the question:
Why bother with punch cards if the state is just going to dream up bogus harvest numbers for fish and crab with computer models anyway?
The answer is simple.
Money from punch card sales goes to support the advanced, state-of-the-art computer systems that are required to administer punch card sales.
Someday punch cards might also provide vital funding for more scientific research that could allow the dreamers in the Department of Fisheries to someday design a punch card that anglers can figure out.

Seeing red while fly fishing

Fish has always been a metaphor for life.
In fishing and in life, you must have a vision of your goal. We cast our offering with a force of will into a hidden world hoping to be rewarded.
Success involves timing, skill and luck.
With timing and skill you can make your own luck.
Bad luck can take your eye off the goal and cause you to blindly pound the same dead water with the same dud gear while hoping something will eventually happen.
Albert Einstein said repeating the same failed experiment while hoping for a different outcome was insanity.
I call it fly fishing.
As a fishing guide, I have experienced that fly fishermen can be the toughest to hook up.
When guiding fly fishermen, I insist they use barbless hooks. It makes for less bleeding when they snag the guide.
Fly fishermen often suffer from performance anxiety. It forces them to wade too far, cast too far and spend way too much money on gear, with predictable results.
They go over their waders. Their line piles up in a tangle around their head. The fish are spooked by too much line ripping across the surface of the water.
This can take the enjoyment out of fly fishing.
If your goal is to enjoy fly fishing, I've got a book for you.
I just read The Little Red Book of Fly Fishing (Skyhorse Publishing, 2010) by Charlie Meyers and Kirk Deeter.
They copied the template of Harvey Penick's hugely successful Little Red Book of Golf and opened up their notebooks to reveal an encyclopedic knowledge of fly fishing.
This Little Red Book is told in a language fishermen can understand.
For example, ever had a sore back after a day's fishing? That can be the result of poor posture.
The LRB says that foot railings placed in bars allow patrons to stand for long periods of time by getting one leg up a little higher than the other.
That might explain why a lot of folks do their fishing in the bar.
The LRB says it means you should fish with a rock under one foot.
Let's say you were in that bar and you wanted to throw a glass of beer at someone. You would accelerate as you aim, then stop to let the beer fly.
This is about how tough it is to cast a fly, unless you're a guy.
Fly fishing is a sexist sport. Ask any guide.
If a man and a woman are fishing together on a guided trip, the woman will catch more fish. There are many reasons for this.
Women are patient. They are not competitive. Women listen to instructions, unless they come from their significant other.
There is no faster way to reveal an infinite chasm of misunderstanding in a relationship than to let a man try to teach his wife or girlfriend how to fly fish.
The LRB states that you can learn the hard way or let a professional handle it.
That's what guides are for.
As professionals, fishing guides are routinely forced to become relationship counselors just to keep the The Bickersons from ripping each other's face off — long enough to catch a fish.
I have a secret technique for this. The LRB specifically warns about guides who claim to have secret techniques.
The LRB also deals with the prejudice against outdoor writers because they kiss and tell. For this the authors are unapologetic.
Outdoor writers pass knowledge to the next generation to preserve fish in the future.
That is the goal. 

A good day's fishing

“Call me when the fishing’s good,” my fancy friend said.

I wish had a dollar for every time I heard that one. As a professional fishing guide I can tell you that it’s only natural for people to want to go fishing when they have the best chance at catching one of the rarest critters that swim, the steelhead.

It is called the fish of 1,000 casts, which might translate into 10,000 oar strokes in a drift boat, or 10 miles of slogging muddy rainforest trails through tangles of vine maple and devil’s club to find a secret fishing hole that’s clogged with other anglers who all have one thing in common: They came to the North Olympic Peninsula seeking solitude and a chance to catch what many consider the greatest game fish on Earth.

As a guide on the cutting edge of the tourist industry I tell people they should have been here 100 years ago. The fishing was ruined here with the coming of the railroad, but you can still have a good day. Unfortunately, many people wouldn’t know a good day’s fishing if it snagged them with a treble hook.

Half the people who fish for steelhead don’t catch one. They are skunked. Skunking can lead to depression and a feeling of inadequacy that can directly translate into other areas of your personal life.

Conversely, watching a 3-foot-long chrome-plated trout peel out 100 yards of line and jump into the sunrise can allow you to forget your dead-end career, abusive relationship and nagging health problems long enough to enjoy life. These sordid details of a doomed existence are somehow pushed to the back burner when you hear the words, “Fish on!”

The experience has been known to release endorphins into the blood stream that can adjust serotonin levels in the brain, in a manner consistent with other forms of addictive behavior.

The symptoms of a fish induced psychosis can take many forms. The angler may wear rubber boots when it is not raining. They obsess on the weather report. They may smell like fish.

They develop physical maladies like minor burns on their thumbs caused by hot fish peeling line off the reel. Or, they may suffer from tennis elbow without ever having played the game. They got it from setting the hook on one too many fish. They may develop problems at work if they still have a job. Few employers enjoy having production stopped just so the crew can look at my fish pictures or listen to the one-that-got-away-fables that only foster an inbred sense of failure. 
Typically, the beginning angler starts out happy to catch one steelhead a day. They think that is good fishing. As the season progresses however, they are driven to catch another and another fish to get the same buzz they used to get catching just one. They may go on fishing binges that can last for days, the only purpose of which is to catch larger and brighter fish.

The mystical connection between man and fish is reduced to a delusional statistic of numbers caught on the days spent fishing.

At that point there is nothing you can do but wait until the angler hits bottom. The day will come when they can’t catch a fish if it was flopping around in the bottom of their boat.

This will often cause the poor angler to pause and reflect on the pointless nature of their existence. They find themselves wishing they could just catch one fish.

That would be a good day’s fishing.