People often refer to rivers of the Northwest as some of the last truly “wild” places in the Lower 48. The Clearwater River in Idaho is one of those places.
Changes coming to Idaho’s Clearwater River steelhead season
The Clearwater River Fisheries Working Group was tasked with providing recommendations to IDF&G that addressed both complaints from the angling community and mitigation of impacts on fish and angling opportunity due to overlaps of the fall chinook and steelhead fisheries. Here are the proposals and results.
Idaho steelhead forecast: optimism or realism?
These days, good news in the wild steelhead arena is rare. Poor ocean survival, habitat degradation, hydro system mortality, a warming climate with associated increased water temperature — wild steelhead have a lot going against them.
It’s time for the lower Snake River dams to go
“It is our collective opinion, based on overwhelming scientific evidence, that restoration of a free-flowing lower Snake River is essential to recovering wild Pacific salmon and steelhead in the basin.”
So reads a remarkable letter recently sent to the governors of Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana by 10 of the finest and most-respected salmon and steelhead scientists in the world.
Our failure to remember affects salmon and steelhead conservation
We’ve all heard stories from our grandparents of unbelievable abundance and sizes in their fishing forays — the salmon so numerous it boggled the mind, and those Lahontan cutthroat trout so big you couldn’t wrap your arms around them. Yet even with these anecdotes it’s still hard to internalize just how different our experience of today is from way back when. That’s just human nature: memory is hard to maintain, especially across generations.
Understanding this year’s forecast for the Clearwater River
Currently fishery managers are forecasting a steelhead run on the Clearwater that may rank as the fourth best among the ten-year average . With any luck we may be seeing a turnaround from some of the most underwhelming runs on record. We should be cautiously optimistic, though and here’s why.
Can-Kicking Lower Snake River Dams Record of Decision Released
The ROD adopts the preferred alternative developed through the agencies’ environmental impact statement process. The decision recommends a limited increase in the amount of water spilled over the four dams on the Lower Snake River, but allows the dams to stay in place at a significant cost to salmon, steelhead, tribes, anglers, and communities across the Columbia Basin.
Opportunity for fish and anglers on the Clearwater
The Clearwater River has seen its fair share of low points over the last five years, from depressed steelhead runs to spring/summer Chinook runs that underwhelm the communities reliant on these runs for their economies. But there is one shining bit of good news on this river: the status of fall-run Chinook.
Lower Snake plan: An opportunity, not a solution
Last month, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, and Bonneville Power Administration released the final environmental impact statement for future operations of the Columbia River System, including four dams on the Lower Snake River.
Finnerty’s Basics of Swinging for Steelhead
When it finally happens, you’ll know. First, you’ll feel an unmistakable sensation of weight, building and causing an ever-deepening bend in your rod. Then you’ll feel your brain, now infused with adrenalin, on fire with the realization that a steelhead has indeed grabbed your swung fly.