Steelhead restoration - Deschutes

[Phish_on]

Interesting -
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index...51fish07.frame

Thanks for posting that for us Phish. I find it more than interesting. I think these kinds of projects are great. It won't be a fishing opportunity on site, at least in the foreseeable future, but it will provide more steelhead for C&R fishing in the Deschutes mainstem. Maybe most importantly though, it just makes ya feel good to see restoration; both as a feeling of putting things back right in some places and for the optimism it portends for the future. Good article! - RT

[Phish_on]

(I had to know more!)
http://www.fwee.org/news/8.22.99.html
http://www.portlandgeneral.com/news_deschutes.asp

I guess this has been in the works for a while.

I didn't realize that the dams were built with some kind of fish-passage system - the problem was the fish (smolts) just got lost in Billy Chinook & Lake Simtustus. So fish managers gave up and put the hatchery downstream.

So there are a lot of issues, not the least of which is the impact on the trout populations which have kind of stabilized in the last 40 years - - how about the hungry Dolly Varden and (non-native, but prized) German Browns, they will love steelhead fry!

Very interesting, though. I've dreamed about what it must have been like up at Crane Prairie in the "Before-time" - - could salmon and steelhead make it past a natural barrier like Benham Falls ?

[garyk]

Don't overlook the fact that successful passage at Round Butte will also send steelhead/salmon up the Crooked RIver and Metolius River as well. Prior to the dam, the Metolius was well known for its chinook run. Some say the word Metolius, means stinking-water or stinking-fish, supposedly the result of the stacked up carcasses.

Keep in mind that the extinction of these runs is a contemporary phenomenom; Round Butte dam wasn't closed until like 1958 or '62, thereabouts.

The smolts are lost in Billy Chinook as the cold river waters enter and submerge under the warm lake layer of water.

As other topics have discussed, returning salmonids and their carcasses will help to re-fertilize the waters of these three rivers.

A final note, my understanding is that Steelhead Falls, on the Deschutes, not many miles above the lake is an impassable barrier to anadromous fish. THus there were never steelhead in Bend.




[This message has been edited by garyk (edited 12-07-2000).]

Wow, I love the Metolius R. so much for it's all around area beauty; especially the river itself. I enjoy C&R flyfishing for trout there; with the rare hookup with a big broodstock 'bow or a big Dolly always possible. Hearing about and imagining spring chinook and summer steelhead hanging out in the gorgeous deep pools and riffles on that river is just one more thing that makes me want the impossible go-back-in-time machine. I'd like to take graphite fly and casting rods with some great modern flies and cured eggs back in that machine and be in shangrila for good while!

[garyk]

RT --

And for good measure, you would also have sockeye salmon too. The kokanee, that swarm up out of Billy Chinook each autumn, into the Metolius and continue through the system of Lake Creek-SuttleLake-Blue Lake are the progeny of the original sockeye. So they're still there today - just smaller.

Getting salmon back up into the Metolius has been the dream of many of us for years and some for decades. So this is all very exciting.