The new foreign branch of the ifish.net

Great Dane · 11-15-2002, 03:43 AM

Hello to all you fishing folks of the Northwest!!
Being new on the board, I must adhere to the tradition of posting a fish tale, so be it, but first a little info of myself: I’m in the late 30ies, has a family (one wife, two kids) and have been fishing like crazy since I was 7. It was a tuff time because nobody I knew fished, but there I was with my small bike and a rod on my back pedalling all over the county chasing pike, perch, eel and the elusive trout. Later I've been fishing all over the world and I like many different types of fishing, but mainly I do best when I’m flyfishing.
I've been fishing frequently in the Northwest since 1990 and lived in Corvallis in 1999 for 8 months (with my family) and thus I feel like I know a bit about the locations and fishing issues raised on this discussion board. By trade I'm a fisheries biologist (Ph.D. and the whole lot), working for the Danish government in management of freshwater fisheries here. My interest in posting and reading this forum is basically a desire to keep informed of the fishing and peoples perceptions and opinions on fish management matters. The recent debate of the political agenda regarding the future of the hatcheries is very interesting partly because we have a similar debate going on here now. So I guess that besides a bunch of fishing tales, I'm going to join some of the discussions presenting a scientific/management point of view.

Now to business: Selecting a story worth sharing with You, is no easy, and being a non-native English speaker (writer) doesn’t help at all, but here is something that I found funny myself. It has a bit to do with the question about line size for steelhead discussed here recently, but also gives food for thought for fly-fishing pattern-freaks. Here goes: This August I was going to a meeting in Trondheim, Norway and like last year a researcher friend of mine wanted to take me salmon-fishing. We had two days on our hands and wanted to go to some small river where daily licenses were well below the usual 50-100USD, so I brought my light three-piece # 6 fly rod along. When we got there it turned out that it had been the driest summer ever recorded so no water in the smaller rivers. Anyway, we wanted to fish and we found out that Orkla (medium size river, famous for salmon up to 40lbs) had a good flow (because its hydrodeveloped and they let water out) and fishable. We found two days licenses to an upper stretch that were affordable (35 $ a day) and started to unpack our gear. The owner/guide on the stretch couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw my gear and asked me what tippet I intended to use and I told him the usual 6lbs that works well with the rather small flies that I like to throw at fish during low water conditions. You must realize that in Norway both flyfishers and others like to harvest fish and usually use heavy 12-14 feet # 10-15 rods and at least 12 lbs leaders for salmon, so he asked me if I knew that there were big salmon in the river. I answered that I saw the statistics for this part and that in the last 7 weeks only one fish over 10 lbs had been taken, so the chance for an inexperienced salmonfisherman like me getting a big one is very small. Since most fish were only 4-9 lbs, I felt OK. Then he wondered if we forgot our gaf-hook or net, and I told him that I never used that, so he just laughed and said he hoped we would have a good time. We started fishing (3 of us) and I fished a few times through a nice looking riffle with the local favourite patterns, but saw no fish. Nobody got or felt a thing that afternoon and evening, so next morning we started early (after 3 hours of sleep in a small shed at the bank) and I decided to try that riffle again, but ZIP. So just for the heck of it I changed my fly and in my box I saw a small green butt skunk (the very one that got me my first Deschutes River steelie) and put that thing on (it didn’t look anything like the local flies) and after two casts I finally had a heavy pull and HOOKED the fish. The fish stayed very calm, but felt heavy, so I just kept a constant hard pressure with my little whimpy rod. Well, the fish took me downstream through the riffles and into a deep pool and I got him into the shallow backwater after 35 minutes and just beached it there. It was a coloured buck of 17� lbs. That’s all we got, but seeing the face of the landowner when he saw the fish was worth the whole trip. Two months later I was fishing in the lower Lewis River (North fork) and had fished for a couple of hours through a nice riffle with local flies (the skunk again and freight train, etc.) when I saw one of the Norwegian salmon flies in my box (orange chillimps), thought “**** Happens” and tied it onto my 6lbs tippet. After 10 minutes I hooked a nice buck steelie of 12 lbs and had a great fight and finally beached my first steelhead on a fly this year.
The morale is: Patterns don’t matter much and big fish can be caught on light gear and everything about fishing is so ******* unpredictable and that’s why it’s so much fun!!

PS: I tried to insert photos of the two fish mentioned, but someone must tell me how that works.

craigzilla · 11-15-2002, 04:12 AM

Welcome aboard Great Dane! Its nice to see the board reaching out beyond the Great Northwest. Thanks for a good story and I look forward to your "piledhigherandeeper" input on fishing matters. Craig

bob thomas · 11-15-2002, 04:28 AM

Welcome to ifish! It's nice to know there is a beaver in Denmark. I visited the town of Alborg back in 1977 curitisy of the USAF. I really loved the town and the people. The museums were great, with the viking history. My only regret was not being able to fish. I look forward to hearing about your fisheries there. Keep us posted. Good Fishing! :smile:

Uglygreen · 11-15-2002, 04:29 AM

Good Story... Welcome

dampainter · 11-15-2002, 04:45 AM

welcome great dane, curious...what is the US equivalent to 50 - 100USD?? and 35 a day you paid ? :shocked:

Great Dane · 11-15-2002, 05:04 AM

OK dampainter, in our part of the world we pay things in DKK (means Danish Kroner) and in Norway its NKK (Norwegian Kroner) or everyone nowadays can pay with EURO's or plastic, but that's another story. So when I write USD it means US-Dollars. It is very common in Norway and UK and even worse in Iceland to have to pay at least a 100USD for permission to fish for one day at a quite restricted part (usually less than a mile) of a salmon river. I once fished the L�rdalselv in Norway (I was invited), on a beat (stretch of river) that costed 220USD per day allowing two rods, we did'nt see a thing!!!!
Now you may understand why I'm not the first to complain about crowds at some of the rivers in OR and WA.

KingFisher85 · 11-15-2002, 05:32 AM

Welcome and good story, hope to see them pictures soon.

Jennie@ifish · 11-15-2002, 06:19 AM

Ifish International! :smile:

Welcome, and thanks for the story!

Jen

Pilar · 11-15-2002, 07:11 AM

Very cool! What kind of salmon do you have in Denmark?

The Fishing Geek · 11-15-2002, 07:24 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Pilar:
Very cool! What kind of salmon do you have in Denmark?

<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helv">Expensive ones, judging by the numbers listed above.

Welcome to iFish, Great Dane. It never ceases to amaze me that the people who usually apologize for being a non-native English speaker can usually write the English language better than many of the folks who have been trying to write it as their native tongue their whole lives.

It will be nice to have your unique "fisheries biologist in a foreign land" perspective in our discussions.

Point-of-Sale Clerk · 11-15-2002, 08:36 AM

Great Dane

Welcome aboard, I look forward to your perspective on hatcheries and hatchery mitigation from a more foreign angle. It was my understanding that in Europe hatcheries were used sparingly for anadromous salmonids and were used for captive aquaculture endeavors. Do you see the same political forces battling there that we see here? The industries and landowners who want less-restrictions on how they affect water quality, the conservationists who are promoting natural river production, and fishermen who want it all?

By the way I can tell you have been there for a while, you typed with a Danish accent� :grin:

***

11-15-2002, 12:47 PM

Welcome.

Go fishing clerk. :tongue:

Great Dane · 11-15-2002, 12:49 PM

Hello and thanks for all the nice words.

To Pilar and Fishing Geek I can tell you that in Denmark as well as in the rest of Europe we only have one species of salmon; Atlantic salmon. In DK we have only got a total annual run of around 2000 fish in the whole country, so its not worth running around trying to catch these few remaining fish + the season is only 3 months (May-August). So we fish mostly for other species of which the sea-run brown trout (called sea-trout) is the most abundant and popular game fish. These fish are the native inhabitants of most of our rivers, streams and even small creeks. They come back to spawn (and do so repeatedly) at a weight from 2-25lbs. I once caught a 8th. time spawner. We can fish for trout in the rivers, but the national speciality is to fish them right from the shore in the fiords, estuari�s and directly on open coast. Lots of people do that with fly rods these days, it's tough, but a fine sport and quite effective too.
I post a photo of a friend with his days catch of seatrout in a lower river. He got them on a small spinner.

http://www.ifish.net/uploads/223013318.jpg[/IMG]

4Salt · 11-15-2002, 12:55 PM

Here you go Great Dane. Wow! Nice fish. :smile:

Great Dane · 11-15-2002, 01:30 PM

Hi again, I'm desperately trying to get the photo I promised inserted and I hope with Jennies help (thanks) it will work now.
If it worked this picture shows me with a couple of salmon caught in a free river (no license) on the Faroye Islands in the North Atlantic.

JeepMcMuddy · 11-15-2002, 01:36 PM

SWEEEEEET FISH!!!
(...and welcome aboard!)

[ 11-15-2002, 02:37 PM: Message edited by: JeepMcMuddy ]

ripper · 11-15-2002, 01:50 PM

Great Dane,Welcome! Nice to get yet another point of view.

Miss B Haven · 11-15-2002, 02:42 PM

Welcome aboard Dane- Nice fish and story. Man those things are pretty! :grin:

Point-of-Sale Clerk · 11-15-2002, 02:56 PM

Great Dane

impressive background

Danish Institute for Fisheries Research Dept. of Inland Fisheries Vejls�vej 39 DK-8600 Silkeborg Denmark.

1988. Bachelors degree in Russian language and litterature from University of Odense, Denmark

1995. M. Sc. in biology from the Institute of Zoology, University of Aarhus, Denmark and the Department of Inland Fisheries, Silkeborg. Thesis: Spawning migration of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) in River Guden�.

1996-1999. Ph.D. in biology from the University of Aalborg. Title of thesis: "Behaviour of lake piscivores and their predation on migrating smolts". The Ph. D. project was supervised by Gorm Rasmussen (Danish Institute for Fisheries Research, Dept. of Inland Fisheries, Silkeborg) and Jens-Ole Frier (University of Aalborg).

1995. Studies of the upstream migration of Atlantic salmon and sea trout (Salmo trutta L.) in River Guden� and tributaries, with special emphasis on passage of obstacles and post-spawning survival.

1996. Investigation of smolt-migration and the causes of smolt-loss in Tange reservoir.

1997. Investigation of the behaviour of pike and pikeperch in the Bygholm reservoir.

1998. The survival and migratory pattern of wild trout smolts traversing Bygholm reservoir.

1999. Working with the Oregon Cooperative Fisheries Research Unit, Oregon State University, Corvallis.

(you still have not answered my questions)

:grin:
***

4Salt · 11-15-2002, 03:08 PM

Quote:

1988. Bachelors degree in Russian language and litterature from University of Odense, Denmark

<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helv">Back in '88 I believe that in countries bordering the Baltic sea, there was still some uncertainty as to whether this would come in handy or not! :shocked: :grin:

timinthegorge · 11-15-2002, 03:13 PM

Hmmm ***......

Couldn't be the time change, could it? Just maybe he's sleeping?

And welcome to Ifish.net's board..... good story!

Tim

STGRule · 11-15-2002, 03:29 PM

Don't mind ***. He likes to show off his knowledge of internet searches and other "activity".

PS: Welcome to our little corner of the world!

[ 11-15-2002, 04:29 PM: Message edited by: STGRule ]

puffins crew · 11-15-2002, 03:46 PM

Welcome aboard!!

Niize feeeshh!! And a great story, too. I can allmost see the look on that landowners face!

Peace, Tom

Point-of-Sale Clerk · 11-15-2002, 10:23 PM

Great Dane

Don�t mind STGRule, she does sturgeon gonad research as well as analysis of white sturgeon mitigation and restoration in the Columbia and Snake rivers upstream from Bonneville.
She has a thing for bottom feeders :tongue:

STGRule�
I did not post the list of his research works but I would be happy to list yours :grin: :grin:

***

STGRule · 11-15-2002, 10:43 PM

Damn ***, you forgot the green sturgeon stuff I've been doing lately.

And they do as much active feeding on live, swimming stuff as that bottom feeding stuff. What else could be as interesting as an evolution product as perfect as a sturgeon?

[ 11-15-2002, 11:47 PM: Message edited by: STGRule ]

Sliderite · 11-16-2002, 01:14 AM

Welcome Great Dane,
It is a two bladed sword where we may learn from your perspective as a fisheries Biologist as you may learn from our fishing perspective.
I enjoyed your story and especially impressed with the gorgeous fish. Just beautiful catches!
I was almost feeling sad for your fishing prospects until I saw the wonderful pics. Great scenery.

Gus Orviston · 11-16-2002, 03:20 PM

Great Dane,,,, do you guys have a *** clerk too?

Welcome aboard!

gus

Great Dane · 11-16-2002, 11:23 PM

Hello ***, sorry that I didn’t get to answer your relevant and interesting questions last night, but figuring out how to get those photos posted took a while and then it got really late here and my wife (who thought I was on some **** site or something) told me to go to bed as I had to get out early today for weekend work (eloctro-fishing for salmon and trout broodstock). You are 9 hours behind us so now its evening here, I have to go and clean some rainbows I caught in a P&T lake this afternoon (I got 4 between 2 and 7 lbs in two hours).
Anyway, how the h… did you get that info of me??? I guess you found it on the homepage of the Institute, but what lead you there????
OK, about the hatcheries, here the fishing is locally managed by “fishing clubs”. These are usually gathered around one or more rivers or lakes and they pay the landowners an annual fee for the fishing rights. So you become a member of a club and pay an annual sum of money (25-80 USD) and thus get permission to fish all you want in the river and/or lakes belonging to this club. These clubs have in many decades obtained broodstock from the rivers and hatched and reared lots of fish in small (private) hatcheries (but you are right that we have a lot of socalled fish farms, raising rainbows to consumption size) for releasing either as fry, � years, yearlings or smolts. This is regarded useful because most of our rivers have lost spawning habitat due to canalisation, damming, waterdiversion and what not. However, the last years we have conducted investigations of the genetic structure of the (sea-trout) populations of some rivers and the results have been quite surprising. In short, the analysis compared DNA from old scale-samples (80 – 120 years old) from fish caught in a named river with DNA from a larger sample of fish from the same river today. In these rivers intensive stocking (with fish from a hatchery strain with know DNA-profile) had been carried out for 50-60 years. The expectations were that the fish today would either be 100% descendants from hatchery fish or a mix of genes between the original stock and the hatchery fish, BUT it turned out that there was no trace of “hatchery genes” in the population today. This is a clear sign that these hatchery fish were very inferior to wild fish and despite many of them were caught, they never really make it to the “bridal bed”. Nowadays we only accept stocking with fish from the rivers own genepool, but new research clearly shows that these fish have a much lower survival/return rate than wild fish, and that rivers where we have quit the stockings, fishing seems better than ever. Therefore, we have been moving from intensive stocking towards river restoration and habitat improvement in general, and in the future I don’t think we’ll stock many fish here.
The whole deal about hatcheries and mitigation is quite complicated and would take me many pages to just get started, and as I see it in the case of the Columbia, the situation is much depending on the position of hatcheries in regards to dams. In tributaries upstream mainstem dams and rivers like Sandy and Clackamas stocking may be the only way to secure fish populations, but in coastal rivers and unregulated lower tribs like the Kalama and the Washougal, there is really no sound biological reason for stocking. In these rivers the hatchery programs just helps keeping up a (unaturally?) high fishing pressure that in some cases can jeopardise the wild runs, but I personally like fishing for these hatchery fish and there may be lots of good political/economical reasons for running the program.
I guess that will do it for tonight, I still have to clean those fish, so goodnight!!

By the way, that Russian language skills of mine would come in handy at a trip to Camchatka, so if any of you (rich) guys are planning such a fishing extravaganza trip, I’ll guide and translate for free!!!

Great Dane · 11-19-2002, 09:01 AM

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Gus Orviston:
[QB]Great Dane,,,, do you guys have a *** clerk too?

Hello Gus, nice to meet you, What indeed is a ***-clerk???
I like your name, just happened to read the River Why last week (probably the first one in this country to read it) and liked it Big Time.
Maybe you, I, H2O and Jennie sholuld go fishing together once???

Gus Orviston · 11-19-2002, 09:10 AM

sure thing...your turf or ours ?? If it is yours I think you need to buy the hole :grin:

*** Clerk....is a wealth of knowledge and does a great job of debating his way through our most challenging topics...always thought provoking and direct....

*** would you accept that

gus

Great Dane · 11-19-2002, 09:30 AM

Hi again Gus,

Well, the plan was to visit the Zipperlip River and catch some fat zipperlips, but you are always welcome to come visit here. With my connections we can fish almost anywhere without paying, and as I wrote earlier the most interesting fishing for trout is directly of the shore, where it is free for everyone to fish. Thanks for telling me about ***, I just thought it was an abbreviation that I didn't know. By the way I don't think he liked my opinion on the hatchery issue. He never commented on it anyway. I,m still wondering how he dug out all that info of me!!
Hey Gus, what about going on a trip to Chamchatka as I suggested earlier???
Strangely enough I have had nobody fighting for financing such a trip yet, do you think that has to do with the recent economical recession???

Niels

fishing is life · 11-19-2002, 09:56 AM

welcome Great Dane. after reading your post about having to pay 100$ to fish for one day i have learned to appreciate more what we have here. thank you.

Bait O' Eggs · 11-19-2002, 09:58 AM

Welcome Great Dane

The advantage of fishing with Gus is that he doesnt catch much, leaving all the biters in the hole for who he is fishing with.

Gus's wife keeps him on a pretty short leash, I dont think it is long enough to get to Chamchatka.

And *** Clerk, will follow you around like a puppy dog if you say the hatcheries are a bad thing and need torn down. Reading thru your post on hatcheries and DNA, it sounds like *** may have gotten a second moniker

And *** stands for "Point of Sale" not what you may have guessed at

Great Dane · 11-19-2002, 10:07 AM

Thanks Bait o eggs for the usefull info.
Well, I can understand Gus' situation, but my wife is at a meeting tonight, so I can dream about going wherever I want right now. Anyway she's going on a "culture vacation" to visit museums and art galleries and stuff like that in Moscow next year, so I guess I can get a few weeks off to go to the wilderness.
I still like the idea of going with Gus, though after what you told about him not catching much. The trick is that we'll have to fish mainly with flies, but I guess most of you guys can handle that (though with your name it may not be your first choice).

Point-of-Sale Clerk · 11-19-2002, 12:29 PM

Great Dane

I enjoyed your response very much. Please do not construe my failure to reply as a declaration of dislike for your opinions or point of view. I consider your point of view one of the most valuable I have encountered thus far in my discussions at Ifish. We have many informed people who have posted here, from ODFW technicians / biologists / and commissioners to elected officials, but you are outside the political and economic forces that may tend to sway the local voices. It is for this reason that I did not reply. I did not wish to overwhelm you with the myriad of topics and concepts I wish to discuss with you. I look forward to discussing the many factors that make up modern salmonid management.

Gus Orviston

That was probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me on Ifish� :depressed: :smile:

ragjr · 11-19-2002, 12:30 PM

welcome to ifish

great to here about fishing from somewere else in the world.

looks like some beautful country over there.

very nice looking fish too.

Ray

DanS · 11-19-2002, 02:02 PM

Great Dane,

You've just been in the wrong boat.

Gus Orviston · 11-19-2002, 03:15 PM

Miss B, I am just trying out the new name on my santa's sled to see how she fits/feels...so far so good. Took you long enough

for somebody who posts 8+ times a day..guess there is no time to read.

Dane, just been hankering to fish from a DB for years. Seems like everybody in boats are cathcing...now it seems like everybody on the bank is. I can't catch fish from the bank, might as well stay warm while rowing and not catch fish in the boat. I look at it as a big tackle box :grin:

GO

Gus Orviston · 11-19-2002, 11:01 PM

Oh, BOE fishes with flies....but they aren't tied to his tippet (roy that is fancy for leader)... If you ever smelled something so bad it hurt your nose, and made you want to vomit....well roy's boat smell's worse. He still has a shad or two left over in the floor board. When BOE gets on Tillamook Bay you know it, there will be a vortex of SeaGulls swirling around this sled. Something right out of a Alfred Hitchcock movie (Roy Alfred is a famous director move maker) yes better than your favorite Pee Wee Herman poster in your garage. :tongue:

Roy is basically the antithesis of a Dane (roy that means opposite) ...Dane= Blonde, Tall, Handsome. And Roy, let's just say when he puts on camo to bow hunt, it has the same effect as make up. He keeps a step stool in his pack board so the stumps aren't too high, and so he is tall enough to reach the tripod on the spotting scope on its shortest setting.

Miss B Haven · 11-19-2002, 11:21 PM

Gus O - I just saw your new Avitar- ROFLMAO! :grin: When did you get that? Did I miss a thread? Did you finally give up and accept Fun Gus? Your a great sport Gus! Great holiday spirit on that Avitar too - Love it!

[img]graemlins/applause.gif[/img]

Great Dane · 11-19-2002, 11:23 PM

OK Gus, I guess BOE is about the same caracter as my buddy Jerry (from Beavercreek). He really likes his boat to be as smelly (read: Stinky) and then sit there all day in the sun eating cinnamon rolls and drinking a few cans of beer. By the way, that's something I just have to bring up as a new topic here when I get time to write a good statement: Why does anyone want to fish out of a boat in the tributaries and coastal streams??? The only reason I can think of is lazyness or being physical disabled. My friends keep dragging me out boatfishing and we drive forever, wait in lines to launch, sit on our arses (freezing or beeing too warm) hour after hour and very rarely get enything in that stupid boat, when we always get action and fish when we just fish the river from the bank, plunking or bug-flippin'. Still they wan't to go with the boat next time again... I just don't get it.