A fishery management plan being developed for southwest Oregon coastal rivers has generated some debate over whether to temporarily reduce or prohibit harvest of wild steelhead.
It’s time for the lower Snake River dams to go
“It is our collective opinion, based on overwhelming scientific evidence, that restoration of a free-flowing lower Snake River is essential to recovering wild Pacific salmon and steelhead in the basin.”
So reads a remarkable letter recently sent to the governors of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana by 10 of the finest and most-respected salmon and steelhead scientists in the world.
Dean of the Umpqua
The steelhead community is filled with amazingly humble and generous people. We are lucky to have many of those people working here at Wild Steelheaders United. Our fearless leader Dean Finnerty is certainly one of them. Read about our own Sam Davidson’s recent adventure with him on the famous North Umpqua.
Our failure to remember affects salmon and steelhead conservation
We’ve all heard stories from our grandparents of unbelievable abundance and sizes in their fishing forays — the salmon so numerous it boggled the mind, and those Lahontan cutthroat trout so big you couldn’t wrap your arms around them. Yet even with these anecdotes it’s still hard to internalize just how different our experience of today is from way back when. That’s just human nature: memory is hard to maintain, especially across generations.
WILD: the relationship between steelhead and the fires they survive
It’s understandable that after a fire season like the one we just had—by many accounts, one of the worst fire seasons in recorded history in the US—many anglers want to know: how do the fires that we see all over the news affect the steelhead and rivers we love?
TU applauds new Klamath River agreement
Trout Unlimited lauded the Memorandum of Agreement released today by the states of California and Oregon, the Yurok and Karuk Tribes, PacifiCorp (a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy), and Klamath River Renewal Corporation. With the agreement, the two states and Berkshire Hathaway-owned PacifiCorp agreed to provide additional resources and support for dam removal through the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement. See TU’s press release here.
Can-Kicking Lower Snake River Dams Record of Decision Released
The ROD adopts the preferred alternative developed through the agencies’ environmental impact statement process. The decision recommends a limited increase in the amount of water spilled over the four dams on the Lower Snake River, but allows the dams to stay in place at a significant cost to salmon, steelhead, tribes, anglers, and communities across the Columbia Basin.
Wildfire Perspectives: Returning Home to a World Upended
Wildfires have consumed over 1,000,000 acres across Oregon. Countless homes have been lost and some of our most storied fishing grounds, including the North Santiam, McKenzie, and North Umpqua, have burned to the ground.
Oregon South Coast Management Plan Proposal Nearing Completion
In order to continue with the opportunity to harvest wild steelhead in southern Oregon, we need better science. If we continue down the path of harvesting wild steelhead without better understanding of population and harvest levels, we could watch those populations decline to unfishable levels within our lifetime. Here’s our update on the latest…
Finnerty’s Basics of Swinging for Steelhead
When it finally happens, you’ll know. First, you’ll feel an unmistakable sensation of weight, building and causing an ever-deepening bend in your rod. Then you’ll feel your brain, now infused with adrenalin, on fire with the realization that a steelhead has indeed grabbed your swung fly.