Oregon fishery news

A lot of recent Oregon Fishery news out there.

First, "fish friendly hydro" is all the rage out here in Cascadia. The latest news comes from RenewableEnergyAccess.com, with an article touting the benefits of Oregon's Pelton Round Butte Hydro Project on the Deschutes River, operated by Portland General Electric Company (PGE) and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs (CTWS). The project was certified by the Low Impact Hydropower Institute (LIHI) for fish passage measures, including a claim of 96%survival rate for downstream migrating fish. It seems pretty interesting, but I haven't seen any independent info on these LIHI people. Are they just the marketing arm of the hydro industry? Something much more positive? Who knows? I checked out Trout Unlimited to see if they had any info about them, but the site is impossible to navigate.

I can bash TU's Web site all I want, but they are doing something interesting with the new "Why Wild" campaign for getting people to eat wild salmon. Go on over and sign the Wild Salmon Bill of Rights. They can explain why eating wild salmon might be the best thing that could happen to this struggling fishery.

Lastly, Oregon State University scientists have produced a study that shows commercial trawling is destroying biodiversity off the Oregon Coast's Continental Shelf. But not enough to make anyone want to stop it. According to the AP story, areas showing roller tracks in the mud from bottom trawling nets had 20% fewer fish, 30% fewer species of fish and six times fewer invertebrates, such as crabs and seapens.

Mt. Pisgah comes alive: Oregon wildflower pics

The last few weeks on Mt. Pisgah have been pretty sweet for hiking. Nice wild flowers, good weather. Here are some recent pics:

From MattStansberry

From MattStansberry

From MattStansberry

PS: Nikon was Waaaay too backed up for orders on the D-80 I wanted to buy. I ordered it almost two months ago and it didn't look like it was going to come in before I leave for Alaska May 9. My local camera shop, Dot Dotson, worked out a better deal on a Canon Digital Rebel XTi.

Fly fishing guide in Eugene Oregon

Fly Fishing Guide in Eugene, Oregon: It doesn't get any better than this. Last weekend when my brother came in from NYC for a few days of fly fishing in Eugene, we decided to go with a guide rather than going it alone. I knew if we went by ourselves and wade fished the Middle Fork of the Willamette we'd catch a few fish, but I was hoping for more. I considered taking our inflatable kayaks, but at the last minute I stopped at The Caddis Fly and booked a trip with Chris Daughters. It was the best decision I've made so far this year.

From MattStansberry

1. If we'd have taken the kayaks, I probably wouldn't be writing this right now. I'd be dead. Two and three foot standing waves, pounding rain and cold water would have made it a long day.

2. Daughters put us on a fish bonanza. I have never in my life caught so many big wild trout. Ever. Just to give you a sense of scale: Nate hooked into fish he could barely move -- it was actually two fish on two flies on a single cast.

From MattStansberry

I wanted to post these photos so my brother can start bragging, but I plan to write more on what was working and why (and the other drift trip we took last weekend on the McKenzie).

From MattStansberry

From MattStansberry

From MattStansberry

Mudsnails in Oregon: Invasive Species Whack-a-mole

New Zealand Mudsnails may be the most depressing invasive species issue facing trout fishermen in the West. According to a pamphlet from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service:

Mudsnails are 1/8 of an inch long (but could be as small as a grain of sand

Mudsnails have a wide tolerance in water quality and temperature -- in fact they can live for days out of water on your gear

Mudsnails reproduce by cloning, so you only need one

Mudsnail population densities can reach half a million in one square yard of river.

New Zealand Mudsnails eat algae, outcompeting native bottom dwelling insects, impacting fisheries.

So how do you stop the spread? Let me warn you, it's pretty depressing...

Scrub your wading gear with a brush, disinfectant

Freeze your waders overnight!

Boil your waders for five minutes above 130 F.

Montana State University has taken up the study of NZ Mudsnails. The map below shows the spread of the snails.

Oregon State Senate moves to ban canned hunts

According to the Associated Press, the Oregon State Senate voted 22-5 to ban "canned hunting" in Oregon. It would outlaw the hunting of such animals as Ibex goats and Russian boars on closed game reserves.



I'm not opposed to "canned" huting from an animal rights perspective. And I'm not really bent out of shape about it for the "sporting" reason either. I am opposed to canned hunts and exotic ranching in general on the grounds that the animals can escape and impact wild animals -- spreading disease, out-competing native species.

Quote from ODFW: If you have species that are classified as livestock that can escape and manage to establish themselves in the wild, yes, it can pose a definite threat to native wildlife and habitats.

Ron Anglin, head of the Fish and Wildlife Department's Wildlife Division.

McKenzie River Fly Fishing Report: 4/15/07

Last night I headed down to Armitage to try my luck wading the lower McKenzie River for some late afternoon trout. The day had warmed up nice, especially compared to the day before, so I expected the trout to have the feedbag on. No dice. We got there around 5-ish, walked downstream to the little gravel island and a tail out. It looked PERFECT, but nothing was happening. Not much in the way of bugs either. Sporadic little caddis coming off, some really weird thin mayflies too, but nothing major. Fish were rising though, maybe to some sort of trico spinner? I didn't get a bite. T-O-Double-D caught a couple fish before Wild Bill and I got there, but we never saw one on the line. The evening temperature drop might have put them off a little. Good news all in all: You can wade Armitage and there are fish there.

There is word on the street of crazy-early summer steelhead below Dexter. I can't believe it, but will if I start hooking them in the town run.

Wild Bill is out this week, chasing roosterfish in Baja.

The Kid (pictured below) is coming in from NYC to decompress. We'll probably drift from Salt Creek to Black Canyon in our inflatable kayaks, unless somebody thinks that would be suicidal. Seriously. I've run them all summer, but never in high water. I'm asking for advice. Meantime, I'll check out my Soggy Sneakers guide.

Stop credit card offers from wasting paper

As I was cleaning my office today, I emptied my shredder and started thinking about all the literally TONS of paper I throw away thanks to credit card companies sending me pre-approved offers every day. Think of the paper, ink, gas used to deliver this garbage... let alone the annoyance of having to deal with it. So I just googled my way out of the problem and came up with OptOutPreScreen.com, a site that got the thumbs up from both Lifehacker and the NY Times. OptOutPreScreen is a service provided by the consumer credit reporting companies to allow you to get off the mailing lists of hundreds of banks sending offers in the mail. It takes 2 minutes to avoid this flood of crap for five years. I can't believe more people don't do this.

Funny sidenote: I looked at Lifehacker first -- before the NY Times article. Says something about the power/influence of blogs.

Sort of related: Thanks for the comment! The Green-e program director commented on my post about EWEB going green. I've seen this kind of interaction on the bigger, techie blogs but not in the "fish scales and snails" corner of the Web that OOJ calls home.

William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge photos

We checked out the William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge today. Nice wildflowers, cool birds -- but I'm out of steam. Here are the photos:

From MattStansberry

From MattStansberry

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From MattStansberry

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Western Pond Turtle sighting, fly fishing on the Willamette River

I've spent the last two days fly fishing on the Middle Fork of the Willamette River. Friday night we checked out the area near Oakridge, fishing a park on the south side of the river that produced a couple weeks ago. No luck here, we headed back to the bridge and crossed the other side. A couple goons were throwing rocks into a pool we wanted to fish. They didn't like the look of us and moved on. Still nothing though, and we went back to our original plan where we'd caught some fish before. Lots of different caddis coming off, not a bite.

From MattStansberry

From MattStansberry

Today, Todd and Ben (AKA B-real the Norwegian) headed out to the nearby confluence of the North Fork and Middle Fork of the Willamette, near Westfir. The rain was rolling in cold and the water was high, but we managed to fish most of the day. I caught the nicest looking wild redband I've ever seen (no photos -- out of battery today) and got a few more bites. In fact, we left quite a few feeding fish in the pool, but the guys were getting wet and cold and were ready to go.

From MattStansberry

While I was on the river yesterday I stumbled onto a Western Pond Turtle, a species listed as endangered in Washington and threatened in Oregon. According to the Oregon Zoo, the biggest threat to the species is the non-native bullfrog and largemouth bass. Both prey on juvenile turtles.

The Oregon Zoo, ODFW and the Lower Willamette Turtle Project are hosting a Western Pond Turtle workshop on April 20th at the Oregon Zoo.

Oregon outdoor links

I got a new laptop today (Thanks TT!) so I'll be sending my old cranky lappy to the big refurbisher in the sky. I had a bunch of links in my Favorites list that I wasn't really doing anything with, so I'm going to post them here before I lose them.



First, Al Campbell's Advanced Fly Tying online fly tying lessons have helped me waste several hours whipping up Bitch Creek-style weaved chenille stonefly patterns that look really cool. I've been using neon colors to cook up something I'm calling the "Crazy Bitch". My guess is that it'll never see a day on the river.

Also, a couple local Oregon photographers have caught my eye: M.G. Halle and Chuck Griffin. Halle has a blog about the photos he shoots. Griffin's site is more gallery and storefront. He has a bunch of photos up at the Wild Goat cafe in Eugene.

EWEB Green Power -- Green-e certified

I just got my bill from EWEB this week and saw a brochure for its green power intitiative. I've signed up to pay one extra cent per kilowatt hour (which translates to about $7 per month in my case) to have "100% green power". Does this mean my energy is coming directly from photovoltaics and wind? Probably not. The idea is to directly finance sustainable, non-fossil fuel based energy. I asked the customer service folks if I was paying extra to support hydro (which I don't want to do) and they said that they weren't sure if energy was coming from "Fish-friendly" hydro or not, but it looked like it was mostly solar and wind. EWEB certifies that it's energy is green through a program called renewable energy certificates by a third party, Green-e.



How much of the cash is actually going toward green energy development? What kind of authority does Green-e have? I have no idea. It might be something to investigate further, but I'm willing to bet $7 a month that they're doing the right thing in the mean time.

Check out the EPA's glossary of green power terms.

New Mexico photos: Bandelier and Tent Rocks

I spent the last week in New Mexico, so here are some of the photos from that trip. Check out the whole series on Picassa or Flickr, whichever you prefer. Highlights include trips to Bandelier National Monument and Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument.

From MattStansberry

From MattStansberry

From MattStansberry

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Indian Mary Peak hike on the Rogue River

Last weekend KP and I did the Indian Mary Peak hike above the Rogue River, just west of the town of Merlin. We paid the $2 day use fee at the Indian Mary park and crossed the street to the trailhead. The sign at the trailhead said it was supposed to only be a mile one way to the summit (1200 feet climb) and I just can’t believe that. It might have been the two winery tours and two nights of limited sleep beforehand, but that hike up seemed really long.

From MattStansberry

Luckily it was one of the most primordial, awe inspiring hikes I’ve ever taken. The mandrone trees were thicker and more numerous than I’d ever seen before. I replaced my trusty hiking stick (broken trying to scare imaginary bears) with a nice straight mandrone stick and used it to hoist myself up the hill. The sparser, deciduous dominated forest looked different from anything I’d ever seen on the Coast Range so far.

From MattStansberry

I took pictures of amazing flowers I haven’t been able to identify. I think this one is a glacier lilly. No idea what the other was.

From MattStansberry

A large group of owls was making noise, like a thrumming, near the top of the peak. It was really cool. Sadly, that was the coolest thing about the top of Indian Mary Peak. There is no view. I repeat. No view. What you see below is at the halfway point in the trail.

From MattStansberry

Oregon Caves National Monument photos

Oregon Caves National Monument has lots of rules, but it was a really cool 90 minute tour. The best part was when our guide turned off all the lights and we experienced REAL dark. KP and I went there a couple weekends ago and it was great. Bring your National Parks Pass to get in free, otherwise you're stuck paying $8.50 each.

From MattStansberry

From MattStansberry

From MattStansberry

Channeling Edward Abbey

I'm sitting in the Eugene Airport right now, getting ready to head down to Santa Fe, New Mexico for a week. I've got meetings most days, but they're half days so I'm hoping to get some good hiking and fly fishing in.

Hopefully I'll have my Edward Abbey experience while I'm there.

I recently read Desert Solitaire, and it left me a little depressed. Abbey is the voice of the zealot, a doomsday preacher. Ed Abbey rattles me. 40 years ago it was already ruined. What now? Do I spend the rest of my life railing against a cancer of "progress" or do I opt out, live in some far flung corner of the pacific Northwest, the last limb to succumb.

But I'm reading Cradle to Cradle now, and that is the most optimistic book I've ever read. Buy this book.