By Bill Herzog Back in 1969, the New York Mets made baseball history. The “Amazin’ Mets,” as they came to be known, a team that had been dropped in the toilet like a three day old dead goldfish by most baseball experts, came from nowhere to shock the country and win the World Series that year. The Mets …
2017 – a Bad Year or Part of a Trend?
Ocean conditions are vitally important for wild steelhead runs — probably every steelhead angler knows this. But what does that phrase really mean? The ocean is a massive and incredibly complex system, and there are many factors out in the big blue that can influence steelhead in any given year. That is why it is so difficult to parse out …
Science Friday: Warm water’s influence on the speed of upstream migrating steelhead
The dog days of summer are fully upon us. The predicted forecast for adult summer steelhead returning to the Columbia and Snake River basins is now, unfortunately, shaping up to be worse than expected (and it was already very low). However, it can be difficult to determine how accurate this forecast actually is because at this point in time the …
Science Friday: Steelhead in hot water, and what it means for catch-and-release
As predicted for summer steelhead in the Columbia River and many other watersheds in Washington and Oregon, something has happened to the fish. There are precious few of them this season. But it’s important to remember that ebb and flow in population size is part-and-parcel with these fish — and for all salmon in general. We likely pay more …
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 …
Put fish first this summer in the Columbia
It’s hard to ignore the dismal forecast for this summer’s steelhead return to the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Just how bad is it? Well, this year’s wild and hatchery summer runs returning past Bonneville Dam are forecast to be the lowest in the past 34 years. Predictions for all stocks look bad, but in particular the later arriving and …