Steelhead: An angler’s elegy

There was a time in my life when I could ignore the cold to venture forth on a winter’s day in pursuit of the silver ghost of Northern California Rivers – winter steelhead. They are the hardiest of rainbow trout with genetic codes embedded eons ago compelling them as adults to leave the relative comfort of their freshwater streams and swim to the sea, a journey that can be hundreds of miles.

If they make it, they will abide in salt water for a year or two, growing big and strong, until the code that brought them to the ocean tells them it is time to return to their home stream to renew the species.

When I was a boy just learning to fly fish, these glorious creatures were plentiful in local streams, including Sonoma Creek, and in especially large numbers in the Russian River. Often, the best action came from December to March, when the weather was awful and the river water was high enough to allow the fish to cross the bar at the river mouth. When the word was sent out that steelhead were sighted at Jenner, I’d drive over to a favorite spot near Guerneville and join the throng of fly-fishers standing almost shoulder to shoulder casting into the current hoping to hook one of those beauties.

In those days, my casting was even worse than it is today, and I was very rarely successful in hooking a fish, but that didn’t keep me from trying.

Since then, for a host of reasons, the Russian River steelhead run is a shadow of its former self, and there are even fewer in Sonoma Creek, which is closed to fishing. Climate change, pollution and other factors have adversely affected these sea-run rainbow trout all along the Pacific Coast, while age has adversely effected my tolerance for standing in ice cold water for hours in the hopes of catching one.

Still, a few hardy anglers like my pal, Steve Kyle, haven’t given up. They often drive for hours and endure long, bone-chilling days on remote waters in far corners of our state in hopes that somewhere these beautiful fish can still be found.

Although I have declined recently to join Steve in those quests, others far braver than I still do. Here is Steve’s report on one such recent trip:

“Being 78 years old, it seems that most of my similar-aged friends have given up fishing for winter steelhead. With the low fish returns each year, it's hard to blame them, but there are still a few grizzled brain donors living in Sonoma that find joy and redemption while casting brightly colored flies into the cold green waters of Northern California's coastal rivers.

“With Steve MacRostie, Michael Crane, Tyler Lee, and Steve Starke in various configurations as my partners, we spent a good part of February fishing the Eel, Matole, Elk, Sixes, Applegate rivers on California's Lost Coast and in Southern Oregon. We shared fine fellowship, superb weather, and perfect water conditions each day, but no fish was seen or hooked.

“A friend once told me catching fish has nothing to do with fishing. It took me a lot of years to understand what he was saying, but it's the joy of fishing that makes me happy; if I catch one, all the better. This trip proved the wisdom of his advice as there were no fish to be seen or noticed, but I had a splendid time.

“The magnificent steelhead may be at the tipping point of its very existence and headed towards the same ignominious end as the passenger pigeon: extinction at the hands of man. Climate changes, overfishing, fish farms, poaching, clear-cutting timber to the water’s edge, dams, drought, greed, idiotic legislation, minimal funding for fish and wildlife, and an overall who-cares attitude by most, have brought this noble creature's existence to where it is today, one to two percent of its former population.

“It's hard to believe that there was a time when our local rivers, including the Eel and Klamath, hosted annual salmon and steelhead runs that were counted in the millions but are now reduced to hundreds.

“My generation are the architects of this environmental nightmare and have now burdened our children and grandchildren with the self-inflicted damages we have created in our environment. I hope they can disentangle themselves from this very poor inheritance from their fathers.”