Things really are looking better for salmon/steelhead

Irishrover
Irishrover
Sure we don't have the level of fish runs that were here back in the 1850s. True there was gross over fishing and logging took it's toll and along came the dams. But I think we have turned the corner. Things are happening now that provide better habitat for fish. One river that has made a good come back is the Umatilla. I can remember going up to Pendelton and crossing a dry ditch that was the Umatilia river. No so anymore. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZNOJ19y29g

The John Day River is another river that has made a come back. Farmers, Ranchers and others did a lot of habitat work to cool the river down and increase its flow. It is a river with no hatcheries and no dams. If you ever get the chance, it's one river a person ought to fish at least once.
http://www.cbbulletin.com/420824.aspx

Other good work contiues on the Grand Ronde water shed. The Grand Ronde right now is a fantastic steelhead river and the plan is to get chinook amd sockey salmon back there in good numbers.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/feb/05/steelhead-surge-grand-ronde-river/

Ok enough cut and paste stories.......Lets take a look at the Sandy River. It's one of the few river that actually had a dam remove to help out the fish runs. I wish I still had the video of them blowing up that dam. Now there is no obstruction between the ocean and the head waters the Sandy. I have even seen them working on returning chinook to the Bull Run River.

Over in Central Oregon they have worked out a system to return steelhead, sockeye and chinook to the upper Deschutes, Crooked and Metolius. This is going to open a lot of water for fish to spawn in. Just one more article.
http://www.cbbulletin.com/423220.aspx

Other improvement I have seen are the re opening of the Columbia River to spring chinook fishing. It had been closed for years to get those chinook up river and over to the Handford reachand Idaho. Now I'll admit it's not much of a season but just a few years ago there was no season.
I was also pleased when they let us go back out on the ocean for coho. Back in the mid 1990 they shut it down. BY 2009 we were fishing a three fish a day limit back there out of Newport.

Something EJ said in another thread made me chuckle when he mentioned those wigwam burners. I had almost forgoten about them and all the logging that went on to feed those burners. I can recall driving hwy 99 and seeing all the mills with those burners glowing and sparks flying at night. This was before they put I-5 in. It took a lot of clear cutting to supply the wood for those mills. Now they are gone for the most part. They don't float the logs down the river like the used to. Before my time they used to dam the Sandy River fill it full of logs the blow the dam to get the timber down to the mills. Not a good thing if you are a salmon trying to spawn.

The other good things they have accomplished are taking the fish wheels out of the rivers, stopping horse seining, stopping purse seining, stopping gillnetting in Tillimook bay, the Nestuca River and the Nehalem River. There is still a lot of work to be done and it is going to take time, but I see thing getting better. I have relatives in Idaho who can now fish for chinook and steelhead on the Clearwater River, that's something.;)
 
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Casting Call
Casting Call
Very inspiring! I will do as much as I can before I leave. Thank You
 
Raincatcher
Raincatcher
:DThanks for sharing, Lon, and the trip down memory lane.
 
E
eugene1
I agree with you, Irish. Lots of money going into restoring the runs we still have and expanding them to once cut off rivers. For example they are spending about one Billion dollars to restore chinook to the San Joaquin River here in CA.

Closer to you guys the Corps is providing fish access to the Middle fork Willamette already and there is a ton of habitat upstream of Dexter.
 
18406ej
18406ej
IR,

A very nice and informative post. I can remember driving from Eugene to Florence with my parents when I was a boy, and seeing the log floats along the Siuslaw. I might be wrong, but I believe they were feeding one of the Murphy mills just North of Mapleton.

You might know the answer to this: When we were busy feeding all of our wood "scrap" into the wigwams, what did people use for ground over? I remember the bark-o-mulch craze in the mid-70's, but not what the bark was replacing.

Sincerely,

Eamon
 
bass
bass
Great post Irish. In this age of immediate gratification it is often hard to appreciate progress that is measured in decades. There is certainly more to be done, but I agree that in a lot of cases we are on the right path.
 
O
OnTheFly
Nice one Lonn. Now all we need is an open season for sea lions.:D
 
Irishrover
Irishrover
OnTheFly said:
Nice one Lonn. Now all we need is an open season for sea lions.:D

There is pleanty of room for those seals inside of the wigwam burners!

EJ before bark dust I do believe it was either dirt or grass, (not the kind they smoke).
 
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E
eugene1
Irishrover said:
There is pleanty of room for those seals inside of the wigwam burners!

EJ before bark dust I do believe it was either dirt or grass, (not the kind they smoke).

lol
 
Irishrover
Irishrover
eugene1 said:
I agree with you, Irish. Lots of money going into restoring the runs we still have and expanding them to once cut off rivers. For example they are spending about one Billion dollars to restore chinook to the San Joaquin River here in CA.

This is good news. Those fish leave San Francisco Bay and head north to feed and go along the Oregon coast. A few years back they shut off retention of chinook south of Cape Falcon off the coat of Oregon. The Sacremento chinook were doing poorly so that's why the shut down the chinook fishing. It has since been reopened. Hope you can hook into some of those hogs.
 

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