Well as the bluebird days come I dream of clear rivers and the incredible phenomemon known as summer run steelhead. All those years I spent in the PNW searching, and often finding the dream... don't easily fade from memory.
How are things looking this year? I am waiting for a contract to firm up which will put me in Seattle, and will be including weekends in the schedule.
Any insights appreciated. I suppose even the worst reports would not hinder me anyway!
Ill repute? Dont' you mean to say my fine mistress who had taken a few wrong turns in the past :hihi: ? But if not for the mistreatment by her suitors she would be the Dean of the lower 48 for sure. I can't wait to stare into her emerald eyes again, waiting for the big tug... and knowing it's coming to boot!
Won't be long, I just finished estimating the next phase of a project that puts me in striking range and for what I hope is a good long time with weekends to kill.
Well well my friend I guess had to 'skate' something really big and bushy to get that rise :lildevl:
Where the essence of a river is subjective, I refer to presence of wild steelhead in an untouched state - the ability to nurture great numbers and sizes of wild steelhead across four seasons, etc. Perhaps my comparison is like comparing an affliction for a beautiful tramp to your "princess Di" Dean but in the absence of negative external influences, I highly doubt the two could be put into different leagues so easily.
For example, I would be curious to compare natural production of the two rivers prior to white settlement, or at least the 1930's when the natural population of Columbia River salmonids plumetted due to damning, pun intended.
I would also be curious to compare the range and reach of the river's structure from the mouth on the Columbia River through the relatively boring section we now fish up into it's now damned upper reaches and the now isolated tribs to the trickles off the Cowlitz towers on Rainier. Oh yes and it's St.Helens tribs like the Toutle, which is known to have been one of the incredible summer run rivers in the northwest before the eruption.
I think we'd find it interesting at the very least, and I am sure it could be considered one of the great tragedies of nature's wild steelhead river jewels... before the tattoos.
Just a reminder: the fish runs on the Columbia were seriously depleted, with some races of Chinook rendered extinct, before the first dams were built. The wholesale destruction of the resource was started by the commerical fisheries, back at the turn of the century. The dams finished off what the commercial fisheries started.
....Along with rapine forest and grazing practices. I once heard Anthony Netboy lecture for some two hours on the non-dam-related impacts on the Columbia's anadromous runs.
That's why the number of Chinook used as a benchmark by the dam supporters and some federal fisheries managers, because it was the number of fish running at the time Bonneville was being built, is so totally wrong. The Chinook run was in double digit millions before the big canneries moved in.
I might as well chime in with a report from the OP that being that it is pretty darn slow. With few exceptions the fellows I have talked to are hooking (on average) about one Steelhead for five days fishing! There were a few trout around the first few days heree and there but that has sloweed way down too.
Summer is only an hour and a half away so there is still time to have some show up. From what I gather on the WWW its off to a pretty slow start everywhere.
You know its slow when you get to the gate at 0600 and its still closed from the night before!:smokin:
My local summer run "S" river has been very slow. I've not heard of any steel caught yet, although early in the month, like Moonlight mentioned about the OP rivers, there were a few trout picked up. The river level has been very high as well from runoff.
There are a few fish here and there in both Portland and SWW, but the numbers are not very consistant. Still there are enough to keep me on the water.
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