Mid-July, 2008. Deschutes River, below Macks Canyon. It's warm, but not hot. The water picks up a golden hue as the sun drops below the western rimrock. The descending notes of a canyon wren mix with the clucking of chukars. The air smells of sagebrush and juniper. Water eddies around my knees in a prime steelhead run.
"Yes, yes," I say quietly. "Looks good. Hit it now." Of course, I've been muttering this almost every cast for the last 45 minutes, but I feel especially good about this toss. I get a response: the gentle curves in the fly line straighten, the free loop snaps closed, the rod bends, and a fish erupts on the surface. That took a second. For the next 30 seconds--it seemed much longer--the fly line disappears through the guides, then backing melts from the reel, and still the fish keeps charging. I just hang on and hope the knots hold. Finally the steelhead jumps, and I can recover some line. Ten minutes after the strike, she comes to hand: a bright hen of about five pounds. Not large, but pistol-hot. And wild.
The next morning, I pick up another hot wild fish. My friend Ludwig Schmidt gets two steelhead that morning, one wild and one hatchery-bred. So for an evening and a morning, we land four fish, three of them wild. The wild fish were immediately released, of course, but the hatchery fish was BBQ-bound.
Why Wild?
Toward noon Ludwig and I wander downstream. "Hey, Bill," I say to the big red-bearded guy on the bank.
"Hey, Scott."
"Nice fish," I say, pointing at seven-pounder hanging from a tree branch.
"Thanks. Maxillary clip. Came from the Round Butte hatchery."
"Bill, how's the fish weir project coming? Got your funding all lined up?" I'm talking to Bill Bakke, Executive Director of the Native Fish Society (NFS). NFS has a project to put fish weirs in Bakeoven and Buck Hollow creeks, both important wild steelhead spawning tributaries of the Deschutes. The weirs will allow stray hatchery fish to be separated from wild fish. This keeps the hatchery and wild strains from interbreeding, thus protecting the genetic purity of the wild fish. Also, the survival rate of hatchery-wild crosses is near zero.
"It's all there," Bill says. "We're going ahead."
"I'll put a check in the mail," I say. "Westfly committed $2,000, if I recall right." Westfly had indeed committed that much, pending NFS getting the rest of the funds committed.
"Bill, give me a few talking points about wild fish to share with Westfly."
He ticks them off on his fingers.
- Genetic diversity, which makes for healthier, more stable runs.
- Each river has unique strains of fish that are adapted to conditions in their home river.
- Hatchery steelhead are very expensive and have poor survival rates. The typical survival rate of hatchery strains is less than 17% that of wild fish--and getting worse with successive generations. The survival rate goes up to 80% if you raise the fish in a hatchery from wild parents. But where are you going to get the wild parents if you don't take good care of their runs?
- And best of all for anglers, wild fish are much more likely to take a fly or lure--about four times more likely. I know this from guides who have kept meticulous statistics of their client's catches, and compared them to the ratio of wild to hatchery fish in the river. Every river shows pretty much the same result: for whatever reason, wild fish are far better biters than their hatchery cousins.
"Thanks, Bill," I say. "The check will be in the mail."
How We All Help
Hot, aggressive, strong--those early wild fish that return to the Deschutes are the best the sport has to offer. Treasure them, and take care of them. Westfly is doing its part, and you all have helped to make that happen through your contributions, your auction bids, and just by being on the website (which helps to sell ads). Keep it up!
Tight lines,
Your Uncle Fuzzy
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