The State of Oregon is working on a revision to the Integrated Water Resources Strategy and is looking for public comment. Please take the survey before June 15. I have been highly critical of past versions of the IWRS, and based on the questions in the survey remain so. Once again, fish and wildlife are secondary concerns at best. This is not surprising given that the lead agency is the Oregon Water Resources Department which has a long history of serving agriculture, municipalities, and industry while ignoring input from the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. I will say that OWRD seems to be getting better but they have a very long way to go to effectively balance consumptive use with environmental needs.

If you are a fellow steelhead junkie, last night’s presentation by ODFW was excellent. You can see a recording by visiting their “Steelhead management in Columbia & Snake river basins” webpage. There was a ton of good information in the hour long talk, but here’s very brief summary. ODFW is currently working with forecasted returns for the upcoming season, which are lower than last year’s returns, but will watch actual returns and update regulations as needed. The current plan is to open the Deschutes for steelhead fishing on May 1 but to close it on August 15, prior to most fish getting above Sherars Falls. This is the opposite of what happened last year when the river was closed but opened on August 15 when actual returns exceeded the forecast. The John Day river is most likely to remain closed for a third straight year. Further east, the Grande Ronde and Imnaha rivers are projected to be open, although fish counts will be very low and they expect correspondingly low angling effort.

ODFW will host a webinar discussing the upcoming summer steelhead season on April 18. “For 2023, anglers should anticipate summer steelhead fishing restrictions and closures in the mainstem Columbia River and tributaries similar to previous years—including broad area and time closures, one-steelhead bag limits when open, and thermal angling sanctuaries near Oregon tributary mouths upstream of Bonneville Dam.” Get more information here.

I only fish Lake Billy Chinook for a few weeks in the early spring for bull trout but really enjoy the time. Today was beautiful and it ended up being shirtsleeves weather. To top it off, I was able to get three bull trout in a morning of fishing. A great day. I went alone so did not have anyone to take any photos, but here is one from three days ago when a couple of friends were in the boat. We live in fishing paradise.

I have good news if you fish local high lakes. At the ODFW Restoration & Enhancement board meeting this last Thursday and Friday we funded a bunch of good projects including tui chub removal this summer and next in local high lakes and Diamond Lake. No, ODFW does not consider this a high enough priority project to entirely fund themselves. Brown bullhead catfish reduction in Crane Prairie is also going to happen, but this is being dictated by the Deschutes Basin Habitat Conservation Plan. Cat fish eat endangered frogs. BTW, if you know how to catch a brown bullhead on a fly, please let me know.

A couple more good opinion pieces have appeared in the Bulletin. Jerry Freilich’s excellent column, “Perfect Balance ad was out of balance“, was published on February 15. It was a thorough dismantling of the disinformation contained in the recent half page advertisement from a group of irrigators calling themselves “Perfect Balance”. Today Tod Heisler had a column titled “Water distribution is based on fiction“. Tod summarized one of the topics that many of us have talked about for years, but which needs frequent repeating: we are in a period of water scarcity, the water we have has been over appropriated, and it needs to be reallocated. I agree 100% but also know that there is no political will to do this and the legal challenges would be played out over decades. My solution is to charge for water which will force many hobby farmers to give up their rights and allow real agriculture continued and improved access.

The Bulletin recently had an article and an editorial on a topic I have been writing about for a very long time. I first had an opinion column in the paper about how property taxes can encourage water waste about 6 years ago. It took the paper a while to fact check what I wrote, like most everyone they had not previously heard about this issue, but they did publish it. I wish I kept a copy of that column, but here’s a quick summary, followed by a discussion of the pros and cons of the bill recently introduced in the Oregon State Legislature intended to fix the problem. As always, the devil is in the details.

A few days ago the Bend Bulletin ran a story on a recently approved piping project in the North Unit Irrigation District. Like most stories about water and fish in the paper it could have been greatly improved with a more complete discussion of the issue*. Make no mistake, I am a proponent of canal piping, but the manner in which it occurs and its cost benefit are important. As I detailed in this post from last August, I opposed this piping project during the public comment period. Many others did as well and in response NUID made some small concessions in their application, but this project remains a massive public subsidy mostly for private benefit.

We are far to early in the winter to make any predictions about what the water year will look like. I typically don’t start writing about it for a couple more months, but today COID sent out an “outlook” email from Kyle Gorman, our local region manager for the Oregon Water Resources Department, that contained an important reminder. By now we should all be familiar with the map on the left showing snow water equivalent for various basins as of today. Kyle points out that these percentages are misleading. The Deschutes Basin at 100% of average over the past 20 years is not as encouraging when you consider that the past 20 years has been a period of mostly drought. To get out of the drought we are still in we need a lot more snow for at least 3 more months and for a few years in a row.

Yesterday evening I looked at the weather and made a last minute decision to spend the final day of 2022 floating the Deschutes River from Warm Springs to Trout Creek. I rarely get to fish alone and looked forward to using my pontoon boat for the first time in over a year. It’s absolutely the best way to fish the Lower Deschutes, you can get into places that you can’t in a drift boat and there are spots where you can simply stand up in the middle of the river. As you can see, it was very cold when I launched, my boat was covered in ice, and the fog was very thick. As my Swedish ancestors would say, there is no bad weather only bad clothes. I have good clothes and it turned out to be a very good day.

I’m in my 8th and final year on ODFW’s Restoration & Enhancement Board, an experience that I have truly enjoyed. I’m proud of the fact that we have been able to fund a wide range of projects that directly benefit anglers all over the state including boat ramp and dock installation and repair, habitat restoration, dam removal, and some interesting scientific studies in support of activities like Klamath River dam removal. Of course, I have lobbied to fund projects that benefit Central Oregon like the annual effort to control invasive tui chub and brown bullhead catfish in East Lake, Paulina Lake, Crane Prairie Reservoir, and Lava Lake. See this 2022 project completion report for some interesting photos.

I don’t write often about my personal fishing trips, but last week I did something really fun that should be on your bucket list if you are a fly angler: bull redfish. It was easy to get to and affordable for a saltwater trip but had all the thrill of sight fishing for big, powerful fish that put a heck of a bend in a 10wt rod. I got at least one fish like this every day we went out. We stayed at the Dogwood Lodge, a liveaboard boat on the water, and were met by guides with skiffs every morning. Follow the link for all the info you need to plan your own trip. It was really fun. I’ll definitely go back.

For decades in both my personal and professional investing I have favored areas with lower negative environmental impact.  Not only have I been able to achieve good returns, but this style of investing supports my personal values.  Herman Daly, one of the first economists to discuss the need for sustainable development, recently passed away.  The NY Times has an obituary that is worth the quick read.  Thankfully, while not universally accepted, his line of professional inquiry is no longer broadly dismissed as economic quackery.  I remained dumfounded that the well-established economic concept of “the tragedy of the commons” is not applied to ecosystems as a foundation of economic policy.

If you’ve been around Bend for any amount of time you probably recall a few years ago when there was extensive discussion of dredging Mirror Pond and the potential of adding fish passage to the Mirror Pond dam. Despite considerable effort no action was taken. Last year an advisory committee was formed to look at the issue again, some design work was done, and it is now time for public input at a meeting being held on November 7th from 9 to 11 am. Here is a link to official background material. Here is the link to attend the meeting via Zoom. KTVZ has a brief story on this. Mike Tripp, a member of the advisory committee, alerted me to all this and provided background material and his perspective on the issue, below. My 2 cents is that wild, native fish must be able to move freely up and down rivers in order to access food, spawning habitat, and pockets of cold water in the summer to maximize their health and abundance. Adding passage to the dam that creates Mirror Pond is an excellent idea.

That’s part of the title of the lead article in the latest issue of The Osprey. I encourage you to read it. I’m in my 6th decade and have become more and more aware of the power of age and personal perspective. Things that I have seen and know to be true are just not understood or appreciated by people who do not have the same lived experiences. The article is a powerful example of this from someone who has dedicated his life to steelhead fishing and preservation. I hope that all the shops, guides, and individual anglers who seem determined to catch the few remaining wild steelhead read and consider it.

The latest in the long running saga of the Snake River dams is that NOAA fisheries has finalized the draft report I discussed in this post. The September 30, 2022 report says that much needs to be done, especially habitat restoration, but that dam removal is the key action that must be taken to avoid the extirpation of many Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead runs. And time is running out. You can read the entire report here. The question is, will action be taken? Scientists have known all this for years, and the courts have ordered action multiple times, but nothing effective has been done so far. What’s that myth about Sisyphus?

I’ve had people contact me with questions about presentations of mine they have seen on YouTube. Really? I had no idea what they were talking about. After the latest email today, I searched and saw that two online presentations I gave earlier this year to Sunriver Anglers were recorded and uploaded to YouTube. One on fishing the Williamson River and one on fishing Lake Billy Chinook for bull trout. I clearly need better lighting and to speak more slowly at times. This month I am giving presentations on streamer fishing to Southern Oregon Fly Fishers and Central Oregon Flyfishers. Show up if you are in the area.

Its one week until the WaterWatch auction in Portland. As I have written before, if you care about water in rivers in Oregon there is no more deserving organization of your support than WaterWatch. Head over to their website for examples of the great work they do. If traveling to Portland is not in the cards, you can participate in the online auction starting on Monday, the 19th. I will be floating down the Grande Ronde river during the auction, but I have purchased a Golden Ticket. If drawn, it will allow me to pick one of the live auction items before bidding begins. Pretty good deal.

Like many, I just have to swing a fly for steelhead this time of year so a friend and I headed over to the middle fork of the Willamette River yesterday. Historically there were no steelhead in this river but there is a reasonable run of hatchery fish, so I had no problem going after them and harvesting a couple in just a morning of fishing. These will be in my smoker very soon. It’s about the same distance from Bend as Maupin and, surprisingly, we only saw a handful of other angers on a Saturday. Easy floating, easy wading, and lots of good swinging water.

Yesterday ODFW announced the closure of steelhead fishing on the John Day as of September 15.

“Wild steelhead returns were looking more positive earlier this summer,” said Stephan Charette, ODFW John Day district fish biologist. “Unfortunately, we have since seen wild passage slow down, though numbers are still improved from the record low return observed last year.”

Here’s the full press release.

As the graph shows, adult steelhead returns over Bonneville Dam are looking better this year than last. Note that this is for all steelhead: wild, hatchery, and destined for a number of rivers. Improved ocean conditions have been very helpful. Turning to the Deschutes, the only counts we have are at the fish trap at Sherars Falls. Only a small percentage of steelhead moving up the river head into the trap, so it is not a full count but a way of comparing years. From July 14 through September 2, 9 wild and 16 hatchery steelhead have entered the trap. During the same period last year 7 wild and 12 hatchery fish were counted. So, this year is seeing a slight improvement on the Deschutes, but the numbers are still very low. Be careful with your catch and release practices if you plan to go after any of these fish. Also remember that ODFW believes that 100% of all wild fish in the Deschutes are caught at least once, with about a 10% mortality rate and reduced fecundity. Is it really worth it? There are a lot more steelhead in the Rogue this year…

UPDATE: Here’s another reason to pay attention to the Sherars counts. If the river is still open to steelhead fishing and 60 or fewer wild steelhead are captured at the trap by October 31, the fishery will close November 15.

It’s better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. – Mark Twain

For the second time in as many columns, Gary Lewis demonstrated that he has not read Mark Twain. Mr. Lewis is great at describing trips where guides take him fishing but he has an inexplicable need to comment on issues he does not understand. His latest column has this statement about steelhead fishing:

If you value water in rivers and streams in the state of Oregon you should be a supporter of WaterWatch. There really is no organization that has done more to protect and restore flows in our state. If you live near or like to visit Portland, you should consider attending this event on September 24th. Learn more about WaterWatch here and register to attend here.

Yesterday the Bulletin had a story on North Unit Irrigation District’s latest proposed piping project. Unfortunately, the story left out a critical element of this proposal: no water savings will be returned instream. This is unprecedented for a local piping project that is to be primarily funded by public dollars. In contrast, 100% of the water saved by Central Oregon Irrigation District piping projects has been returned instream. This only makes sense, if the public is going to pay for conserving water we should get the benefit for fish, wildlife, and recreation. The public comment period on this project is open until August 10. Learn more here and please take the time to make a comment. Personally, I am not in favor of public financing for purely private benefit. For other ideas on how to use this money, keep reading.

As readers of this blog know, I regularly have opinion pieces published in the Bend Bulletin.  When I submit columns, I do so with extensive documentation of my claims, a sometimes tedious process but one I respect.  Fact-based journalism is one of the pillars of our democracy.  Unfortunately, these same standards are not applied throughout the Bulletin as evidenced by Gary Lewis’ most recent column, “Deschutes River steelhead by the numbers”.

Update on 8/4/2022: Today the Bend Bulletin printed this post I made 2 days ago.

Despite the claim that dams are a form of clean, renewable energy they are being removed in many places across the country due to their lack of cost effectiveness and dramatic negative impacts on ecosystems. Four power generating dams on the Klamath River are slated to be removed next year, the largest dam removal project in US history.  The Bend Bulletin recently published an opinion column stating that dams on the Snake River should not be removed.  Here’s a different viewpoint.

It’s not in Central Oregon, but Snake River steelhead and salmon should be of concern to all of us. Yet another study has recently come out, co-authored by scientists from ODFW, Oregon State University, and US Fish & Wildlife, among others, stating that the dams must be breached to avoid local extinction (extirpation) of these fish as well as pacific lamprey. This follows a draft report from NOAA which came to the same conclusion. Of course, dam lobbyists are fighting back hard and attempting to have the NOAA report altered. Public comments on the report are open until August 10. Here’s an easy way to make your voice heard on this matter.

ODFW has come up a little short of volunteers needed to backpack trout fry into a couple of local high lakes next Wednesday, August 3rd. You will need a backpack that can accommodate 30lbs of fish and water and the ability to carry that either 1.1 or 2.1 miles one way. I have always enjoyed doing this sort of thing in the past and look forward to helping again next week. If you want to come out and play, please contact Jen Luke at jennifer.a.luke@odfw.oregon.gov.

We all need mental health days, I’m just back from 3 of them. That’s my fishing buddy Scott with a wild, native redband trout. We estimate it was right around 8 lbs. I love fishing around here, but you don’t catch trout like that in Central Oregon. The bonus was we only saw a few other anglers in 3 days. Here’s yours truly with a smaller, but still more than respectable fish. I hope you had a great weekend of fishing.

This blog does not talk about politics, but politicians certainly impact the way in which water is managed in our state. Last Sunday the Bend Bulletin had an interesting editorial which provided excerpts from interviews with the three major candidates for governor on the topic of water. I am thankful that the Bulletin has made water a focus area. I encourage you to read the excerpts if water is a factor in your governor selection process. Keep reading for my commentary on the candidate’s statements, if you are so inclined.

Reader of this blog are familiar with the science showing that releasing hatchery anadromous fish has failed to increase returns while negatively impacting the survival of native, wild fish. OPB and ProPublica have released a good article detailing the failure, one of many that have been written over many years. On a related note, as I assumed would occur, the recent decision to stop hatchery steelhead releases on the North Umpqua was appealed to the Marion County Circuit Court which ordered ODFW to release the fish. Not surprisingly, ODFW immediately complied. After all, ODFW management wanted to do this all along regardless of the effectiveness of the program. So much for having an independent ODFW Commission make these sort of decisions.

I camped last Sunday through Tuesday on the Lower D, one of my favorite annual trips. In my opinion, camping is the only way to fish the stonefly hatch. The fishing is best early and late when there are few other anglers, I spend the middle of the day at camp, maybe have a beer and watch the insane crowds float by, and have a relaxing, productive trip. I caught 23 redbands, the biggest I measured at 19″. My fishing partner Scott, did equally well and landed a 21″ bull trout. If you pick a spot where you can row across the river you can fish many miles of water on both sides so you don’t have to bring your own rock to stand on. BTW, the river is in great shape. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise.

I would have bet big against this, but on a 4-3 vote the Commission directed ODFW to stop summer hatchery steelhead releases on the N. Umpqua. This was against the recommendation of ODFW staff. Am I glad I am not on the Commission. It was about 5 hours of testimony on both sides and a lot of people are going to be very angry. Wow. Just wow.

Last night around 9 pm one of Central Oregon District’s main canals breached. Per COID, at the time water was flowing around 250 cfs. “The Pilot Butte Canal conveys water to 17,338 acres along 25 miles between the north end of Bend, through Redmond to Terrebonne.” The breach is near my house, so I took a look. At 9:30 this morning much of the water had drained away, but there was still plenty left. It looks to me that around 3 houses were flooded along with multiple outbuildings and fields. COID says that the cause of the breach is burrowing animals. It seems to me that would make homeowners along the canal who oppose piping reconsider their position.

Last night the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife held a webinar on the outlook for wild steelhead in the Columbia River and Oregon tributaries like the Deschutes. The bottom line is that wild returns in many rivers were the lowest on record last year and are forecast to be even lower this year. For example, only 480 wild steelhead are projected to pass above Sherars Falls on the Deschutes River this year! (Talk about depressing.) While management decisions have not been finalized, the current recommendation is to close all steelhead fishing on both the Deschutes and John Day rivers until returns exceed certain thresholds. Keep reading for more information and a little commentary.

Today the Bend Bulletin published an excellent opinion piece from Tod Heisler on water management in the Deschutes Basin. Tod is the former executive director of the Deschutes River Conservancy, currently with Central Oregon LandWatch, and is one of the most knowledgeable people around on water issues. The themes he writes about are well known to readers of this blog but they need to be repeated until action is taken. We are in a crisis that our “leaders” continue to ignore.