Drew Braugh stood on the new footbridge spanning Hat Creek and pointed upstream at the 15-inch rainbow trout finning in the lee of a large clump of aquatic vegetation. The trout was easily visible in the clear water. It swung from side to side in the gentle current, now and then taking a nymph. “Two years ago,” he said, “there were almost no aquatic plants here. This part of the creek looked like a desert — gray sand flats, no place for a trout. Since we put in the tree trunks, the current has slowed, and the vegetation has begun to return.”
Several large patches of elodea, looking like dark green pillows on the sandy bottom, undulated in the slow current. Other trout became visible as we watched, moving around the edges of the plants, seeking food, competing for territory.
“See how the trees deflect the current in different ways, creating faster and slower flows? In the faster flows, the water is scouring the sand out of the streambed.” He pointed to a line of exposed white streambed where the water had pushed the gray sand downstream. Against the stream bank, dense aquatic vegetation flourished where the water had slowed enough for sand to settle out and the plants to take hold. “Over there, the vegetation has grown in, and it’s full of bugs and trout.”
Drew is the man who has led the Hat Creek restoration. As the northeastern regional manager for California Trout, he has guided the process from its conception in 2010 to the beginning of actual work in 2012. He and his team have raised the money to make it possible. He has supervised the placement of the trees in the water and the installation of the footbridge. He has organized the extensive planting and trail-building efforts. The first phase was completed in the fall of 2017. (See the graphic on the next page for a depiction of the elements involved with the Hat Creek Restoration project.) Drew is in his mid-thirties, with blond hair and an open, earnest face. His easy smile belies a single-minded determination. His job has been daunting, calling upon all his skills of negotiation, compromise, and communication to balance the often competing demands of the several stakeholders: Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which owns the land; the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which manages the fishery for the public; anglers, hikers, birders, and bicyclists, who use and value the land for recreation; and the Illmawi band of the Pit River Tribe, who have lived in the area for thousands of years and have a deep spiritual attachment to the place.
Hat Creek gained national prominence in the late 1960s when, in a radical departure from the long practice of planting catchable trout, Hat became the first stream in the West to be managed exclusively for wild fish. California Trout was born on its banks, in the energy and efforts of a small group of anglers who hoped to demonstrate that a suitable stream holding only wild trout and carefully managed through regulations could provide a rich and rewarding fishing experience, an experience measured not in fish kept, but in fish caught and carefully released — in the quality of the fish and the fishing experience. The group saw to the construction of a fish barrier, the removal of several tons of rough fish, and the restocking of native trout.
Success was immediate. Hat soon became California’s premier spring-creek destination. Fly shops opened in Burney and Fall River to serve visiting anglers. From the 1970s into the 1990s, Hat was the place to challenge yourself against the most demanding trout in the state. The creek was rich and weedy, with 16 fishable hatches. The trout numbered over six thousand per mile, mostly Pit River rainbows and a smattering of brown trout. During the 1970s, the catch rate was nearly ten thousand fish per year. Virtually all these fish were released.
In the 1980s, plumes of gray sand began to appear in the flats below the Powerhouse 2 Riffle. As the sand moved downstream, it buried plants and filled in the deeper parts of the creek above Carbon Flats, destroying habitat diversity. The fish were pushed downstream, and spawning declined. Fishing success and satisfaction declined, as well.
The original restoration in 1968 had proved the concept that an intact stream, carefully managed for wild trout, could provide a quality angling experience. This time around, the challenge was very different. Hat Creek was no longer intact.
The sediment — over fifty thousand cubic yards of volcanic ash, enough material to cover a football field to the very top of the goalposts — was composed of the ash and fine materials from the eruptions of Mount Lassen that began on the afternoon of May 22, 1915. That epic blast sent a hot slurry of ash, mud, and water flowing nearly thirty miles down the Hat Creek Valley, burying farms and killing fish. In the years since the eruptions, the valley has been in a slow process of recovery. The spring flows of Hat Creek, Lost Creek, and Rising River have slowly reestablished their streambeds, moving the volcanic ash downstream to settle out in the slow, deep water in Cassel and in Baum Lake, just upstream of the Wild Trout Area.
This process was stable for many decades. In the 1980s, all that began to change. While the dynamics are not entirely clear, it appears that sinkholes and lava tubes under Baum Lake had been slowly filling with sediment since the eruption. These were unexpectedly flushed out during construction work on the Baum Lake dam, immediately above the Wild Trout Area. This material, hundreds of times greater than Hat’s moderate flows could move quickly, overwhelmed the flats, burying everything as it went, covering plants and spawning areas, destroying insect habitat, and displacing trout. The creek became shallower. The bottom became as featureless as a beach. The fish had less and less suitable feeding and holding water. Fish surveys in the 1990s counted fewer than 2,000 fish per mile.
A study done in the 1990s suggested that at the rate the sediment slug was moving, it would pass through the two-mile flat-water section and go under the Highway 299 bridge in about 2020, then into the faster water of lower Hat Creek and on to the fish barrier by 2025. In the past 29 years, the sediment has moved from the Powerhouse Riffle to just above the highway bridge.
It was reassuring to know that the devastation the sediment brought to the flat water would eventually end, but there was impatience to do something to speed the process and repair the damage. In 2010, the Hat Creek Resource Advisory Committee began to pursue active restoration options. With data about the creek from in-stream studies and with a recreation master plan for anglers, hikers, bikers, birders, and other outdoor enthusiasts, the committee created a comprehensive restoration plan.
The Carbon reach, midway between the Powerhouse and the 299 bridge, was known for its deep channel, slow currents, and lush, rooted aquatic vegetation. The vegetation supported the abundant trout population by providing cover, remarkable insect variety, and outstanding habitat. Upward of three thousand trout had lived there during Hat Creek’s heyday. By 2010, not only did Carbon Flats look like a beach — flat gray sand, uniform and weedless — but the stream banks had retreated under prolonged pressure from cattle, muskrats, and anglers. Carbon seemed the natural place to begin the restoration.
Drew and his team got to work raising the money. In 2012, CalTrout received the first grant of $700,000 from the California Natural Resources Agency. Subsequent grants followed, and by 2014, the total available was over $1 million. In 2015, another $1.4 million was given to CalTrout and the Pit River Tribe by the Stewardship Council to support the habitat restoration work of the tribal youth crews planting native trees and shrubs along the creek, realigning and enlarging the trail, building rail fences, and controlling weeds.
The restoration has four main goals: first, to restore over six acres of native vegetation in the streamside corridor. This includes planting alders, ash, hawthorns, willows, and numerous native shrubs. Second, to improve nearly three and a half miles of trails: relocating, grading, improving drainage, and building footbridges and split-rail fences. This also has included getting vehicles out of the immediate stream corridor by relocating parking areas and providing signage to educate and direct visitors. Third, to place large woody debris in the stream to redirect the current and restore habitat for plants, insects, and fish. This leads to the fourth goal: restoring trout populations from the current two thousand to five thousand fish per mile.
Pit River tribal youth work crews began replanting the meadows and stream banks with native vegetation in 2012. Willows along the banks stabilize the ground and prevent further widening. Native trees and shrubs in two miles of streamside meadows are creating diversity for wildlife and insects and eventually will shade the water and provide cover for fish. Over five thousand native trees and shrubs have been planted and are being carefully monitored. The variety of species can be adjusted as biologists understand what does well in each planted area. To restore complexity to the streambed, the planners studied the trees that had fallen into the creek at Hat Creek Park, a mile downstream from Carbon. These trees have created prime plant and fish habitat. It was decided to imitate those conditions in the Carbon Reach.
In November 2015, a Firehawk helicopter arrived at Carbon. Over 60 feet long and with two 1100-horsepower jet engines, the Firehawk shuttled precut mature pines weighing nearly nine thousand pounds each from the nearby forest to the creek. Eighty feet long and trimmed of their limbs and tops, but with some of their roots attached, each tree was deftly placed with the roots on the bank and the trunk sloping down into the water, mimicking the way a naturally fallen tree would lie there. A 110-ton crane made the final adjustments of the logs in the creek. In all, four groups of large woody debris structures were built and installed.
These large log structures deflect the current and redistribute sediment to create conditions that encourage aquatic vegetation to grow and prosper. The vegetation, in turn, creates depth and cover for trout and habitat for aquatic insects — condos for bugs. Lots of condos means lots of bugs. Hat Creek has always had a remarkable variety of mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies, midges, damselflies, and dragonflies, as well as scuds, snails, and leeches. Provided with a suitable habitat, this rich diversity of bug life is returning. This, in turn, is bringing the fish back.
In July 2016, a steel footbridge was installed at Carbon. Built in three sections and assembled on-site, the bridge spans 160 feet across Hat Creek at the historic Carbon Bridge site. The bridge makes it easy for anglers and others to explore the entire Hat Creek Wild Trout Area on the improved trail system.
The Department of Watershed Sciences at UC Davis, in partnership with the CDFW and CalTrout, is monitoring the effects of restoration efforts in the stream and measuring their success in three ways: in terms of an increase in aquatic vegetation, a return of insect communities, and an increase in fish numbers.
In less than two years, they have seen rapid changes around the tree structures at Carbon. The bottom shape and profile are shifting, creating niches for plants. With those plants have come bugs in enough variety and numbers to suggest that Hat is on its way to recovering the variety of hatches that has always made it such a remarkable fishery. And the fishing on the Carbon Flats this past season was better than it has been in decades.
Back on the Carbon Flats footbridge, Drew reflected on the challenges the project has presented and how his greatest satisfactions have come in unexpected places. He smiles as he speaks about the young people on the Pit River tribal work crews who have done the land clearing, the replanting, and the trail building. They have come to see the very real possibility of earning a living working in the outdoors on their ancestral lands — in the local timber industry, with state and federal agencies on other restoration projects, even guiding visiting anglers. The project is helping them imagine bigger futures for themselves.
He talks about the relationships that have developed and the trust that has been built among the partners. The tribe is committed to keeping the project moving forward. They wish to maintain what has been achieved and work on further improvements, include adding more woody debris as the results of the log structures at Carbon are fully understood.
Drew says, “I see CalTrout involved with Hat Creek indefinitely. We have developed real momentum working with the tribe. I’d like for us to keep this work going, with CalTrout providing the science and technical guidance for them as they do the grant writing and the actual work on the ground. This partnership could extend 25, even 50 years, into the future. Hat Creek is just going to get better and better.”
