Marty's Drift October 2006

Clackamas Clean-Up, Klickitat Steelhead, and Salmon Rally

Clackamas Clean-Up

Every September there is a clean-up event organized for the Clackamas River. Each year the event gets bigger and more volunteers come out to help. The first year we did this there were perhaps 20 or 30 boats involved. We floated, picked up trash and ended the day at Carver Park by having a soda and a tube steak.

This year’s event looked like the first year on steroids. When Joyce and I arrived at Carver, the parking lot was totally filled. People swarmed throughout the small park, inflating rafts and kayaks, donning wet suits and finding their assigned pod leaders. The rafting and kayaking clubs turned out in outstanding numbers. There were hundreds of boats and several hundred people.

While there were dozens of rafts and over a hundred kayaks on the clean-up, there were only three or four drift boats.

Drift boats come in very handy for hauling metal debris such as car bumpers, metal fence posts and highway guard rails that are found. These types of objects can be a liability in a raft.

The section of river that Joyce and I worked on was relatively clean and I was encouraged that perhaps the river-using public might be getting better and not littering so badly. That was before I saw that picture of Norm’s boat.

When all of the clean-up pods had finished their assigned sections of river, everyone returned to Carver Park for a celebration where there was an excellent Bar-B-Q prepared--no tube steak. The clean-up organizers went all out with some delicious Bar-B-Q fare. To add to the enjoyment there was a Bluegrass band to play for the evening. So, no matter how repulsed I am by people who litter our waterways and river banks, at least the clean-up has become more fun through good organization.

Klickitat Steelhead

Early in the morning of the day following the clean-up, I loaded the van with camping and fishing gear, called my fishing buddy Buster, hooked up the boat and headed out of town for a few days off. Cooler September weather had slowed the glacial run-off from Mt. Adams and chances were good that the Klickitat would be in prime shape.

I found a pleasant campsite along the river and set up my camp. When it was organized I launched my boat, called Buster, and headed down river. The day was gorgeous, clear blue skies and 80 degrees. Although the water temperature is pretty cold I elected to leave the waders, wade wet and do most of my fishing from the boat. As it turned out I didn’t even fish much. The day was too laid-back. Fishing was too much an effort. It was more enjoyable to float with the current and stop on some gravel bars to throw sticks for Buster.

That evening I put German sausages on the BBQ for dinner with potato salad, home grown tomatoes and delicious peaches from orchards in Maryhill, Washington. The temperature dropped from 80 to the mid-50s. I slouched in my camp chair after dinner, lit a cheap cigar, settled back, and gazed up through the ponderosa pines. The night sky filled up with a dazzling array of stars, and all was good with the world.

In the morning John Garrett met me for a day of more serious fishing than my previous day’s float. John guides on the Klickitat, Columbia, and some other Washington streams (509-427-4057) and he was interested in rowing the ClackaMax. Although some beautiful fall Chinook salmon were entering the river, we decided to concentrate on steelhead. We took fly rods rigged to fish with strike indicators, two bobber/jig rods, and one rod to swing flies. About an eighth of a mile below the put-in I hooked the first fish. Though I didn’t land it, we could see it was a bright steelhead in the seven to nine pound range.

The next fish was John’s. We anchored in a nice pool and John cast a bobber/jig set-up while I sat and sipped a cup of coffee. When he set the hook, havoc broke loose. Without hesitation this fish went berserk! The first run was at least 100 yards. John worked him back close to the boat and off he (it was a male fish) went again on a similar run. We were both commenting that this fish had some horsepower.

We beached the boat and climbed out so we wouldn’t have to put the fish in the net if it turned out to be wild. The least amount of contact is always better for the fish. John tailed the fish and lifted it briefly (always keeping it in over the water) while I snapped a couple of pictures. The fish was 30-1/2 inches long with a 16 inch girth. A 30 inch fish would normally be 10 or 11 pounds, but this one was probably more like 15 or 16 pounds.

Although we landed two more fish, that one was the high point of the day. I landed a fish of about seven or eight pounds, that slid from my hands as John was getting the camera. John had a strike while fishing with flies that was so hard the line cut his finger. At our last spot of the day John landed another steelhead with the bobber /jig.

Besides the fish that we landed, we hooked four more that we lost. The next day I was very reluctant to leave the river.

Rally for Columbia and Snake River Salmon

On September 19 th two parks on the Willamette River were the site of a rally for Columbia and Snake river salmon and steelhead. At 4:00 p.m. about 30 kayaks, rafts, jet boats and drift boats launched at Willamette Park and proceeded up stream to Sellwood Riverside Park where several hundred activists gathered to express their concern for the fate of the salmon and steelhead that must negotiate the four lower federal dams that impede their passage on the Snake River. These dams are Lower Granite, Lower Monumental, Little Goose, and Ice Harbor.

Scientific research shows that the best, least expensive and quickest way to restore salmon and steelhead populations in Eastern Oregon and Idaho is to breach the four lower Snake River dams. Although there is much resistance to breaching the dams from farmers because of the effect it would have on wheat transportation, there are solutions to the transportation problem. On the other hand, there is no solution to the extinction of the salmon and steelhead runs. Once they are gone, they are gone, and each year their numbers get lower and lower, smaller and smaller.

At the rally on September 19 th, David James Duncan was the keynote speaker. His words are much more eloquent than mine. Here is some of what he had to say.

“Here on the Columbia/Snake, the greatest intact web of pristine spawning tributaries in the lower 48 lies upstream of us in eastern Washington, eastern Oregon and wild Idaho. But this vast web is accessible only via the 140 mile corridor known as the Lower Snake River – and the Lower Snake River is no river at all: it is a heat sink, a series of slack waters, an unnatural mass of predators, a 35-year-old extinction making disaster. Having been raised on the Bible, I call the Lower Snake “The Anti-River.” I do so for a good reason: the slack waters behind the four Anti-River dams are completely impassible to young salmonids…This impassibility has in turn inspired Endangered Species listings and a salmon smolt barging program that destroys the homing instincts and migratory ability of millions of endangered salmonids every year. The science that now monitors this ongoing disaster has been politicized under the current administration. Salmon-loving biologists have been pulled off the case, funds have been cut, research has been falsified, and the news we hear of salmonids is now largely controlled by blind powers who would save all dams at all costs, gut the Endangered Species and Clean Water acts, and to hell with wild salmon.”

“Commercial and sport fishers, next time you hear a buddy grumbling over what some other Lower Columbia fisher is or isn’t allowed to catch, tell him he’s being a tempest in a Stanley thermos cup. The truth is: untold millions of endangered smolts are being annihilated each year not by any kind of fishing, but by ludicrous, politically-decreed Anti-River deaths we can no longer scientifically monitor or see. The truth is: the 140 mile deadwater that lets Lewiston call itself a ‘seaport’ is salmon’s bitterest enemy a thousand times over.”

There are several fish conservation groups involved in getting the four Lower Snake River dams removed. Three that I am aware of working hard for dam removal are Trout Unlimited, Save Our Wild Salmon and Idaho Salmon and Steelhead Unlimited. I suggest that you contact one or all of them for more information and to give them support.

(Parts of David Duncan’s address came from his new Book, God Laughs & Plays published by the Triad Institute in 2006.)