By Matt Green In September 2016, Trout Unlimited partnered with the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, and Idaho Department of Fish and Game to rehabilitate 0.8 miles of the mainstem Pahsimeroi River to improve salmon and steelhead habitat. Over a century of irrigation, which dewatered the streams for much of the year, has left the upper Pahsimeroi and …
Don’t reel up just yet
By Bill Herzog We of the swung fly club have to deal with quite a few of our brethren these days on the river, especially the more popular waters, sections and times. If we aren’t first through the run, then all we can hope for is a moving fish to come into swinging range or the rare one that …
Science Friday: Turn up the A/C
Summer-time is here. That means hot weather and hot water, two things that don’t mix well with a cold-water fish like steelhead. As we suffer through the largest heat wave of the summer, we wanted to review a piece of research that looked at how adult steelhead alter their behavior and use micro-habitats to cope with warm weather and …
Stand Up For Clean Water
When anglers think of steelhead water, we tend to think of big, muscular rivers like the Skagit, Umpqua and Eel. We don’t usually think of tributary streams small enough to step across, or even that go dry at times. We should. Such streams are very important for steelhead, particularly for spawning and rearing. In California, for example, 64 percent of …
Science Friday: Ephemeral Streams Provide Key Steelhead Habitat
Previously we wrote about the importance of ephemeral streams to steelhead. These are smaller waters, typically in headwaters and tributary drainages, segments of which dry back in summer or that flow intermittently. Today we pick up the topic again because of recent developments on the federal policy front that threaten these important habitat areas. On July 27, …
How to rig a spoon
By Bill Herzog Casting and retrieving/swinging spoons for steelhead has made a bit of a comeback the last ten years. Nice to see the oldest technique for steelhead experience a bit of career resurgence. Rigging our spoons- that is the configuration of swivels and hooks- has to not only be the right size and style but also serve a …
Smith River gets additional layer of protection
The DEQ voted unanimously to give the North Fork of the Smith Outstanding Resource Waters designation, which will protect the river, its tributaries, and associated wetlands from any activity that could degrade water quality. The rule will become state law effective immediately, but requires approval by the Environmental Protection Agency to take effect under the Clean Water Act. It …
Science Friday: Hitch-Hiking Smolts
Last week we talked about the importance of spill for out-migrating kelts and smolts in the Columbia Basin. Increasing spill is only one method employed to enhance downstream survival of smolts. As early as the mid-1950s smolts were loaded onto barges and moved downstream past the dams through the lock system. While fisheries managers experimented with this tactic early on …
Science Friday: Increased flow and spill in the Columbia River is important for more than just smolts
Steelhead in the Upper Columbia and Snake Rivers undergo some of the longest journeys of any anadromous fish — some travel more than 600 miles. Returning adults must navigate numerous dams on their upstream migration to reach spawning grounds. Those offspring that survive to become smolts must make that same migration downstream, past the same dams, in order to …
Finding solutions on the Snake River Dams
By Rob Masonis Lonesome Larry was the only sockeye to make it from the Pacific Ocean to Idaho’s Redfish Lake in 1992. That was only one year after Larry’s fellow Snake River sockeye salmon were protected under the Endangered Species Act because they were on a path to extinction. Despite the passage of almost three decades and …