The documentary Rivers of a Lost Coast poignantly recounts the glory days of the Smith River, when every fall, as the days grew colder and shorter, great V-shaped wakes announced the arrival of thousands of Chinook salmon.
On each new tide, they entered the river mouth, clogging the lower river pools with a bounty so vast no one thought it would ever end. One North Coast angler put it simply: “It was magic.”
In those magical, halcyon days legendary angler Bill Schaadt lived to fish. He spent every waking moment he could fly fishing California’s North Coast rivers for anadromous fish, and one river became his favorite — the Smith.
Bill earned just enough money as a sign painter to fund his fishing, which amounted to about a hundred days a year on the water. But his passion bordered on an obsession. In his book I Know Bill Schaadt, Ben Taylor recounts asking Bill, “What’s the longest stretch you’ve ever fished without missing a day?” “Two years and six months,” was Bill’s reply. Bill’s Smith River diary from 1962 records an astonishing total of 203 Chinook salmon landed that season (with over a hundred lost). His largest king, on October 27, weighed 56-1/2 pounds. Bill’s entry from October 30: “Very good. At least 15 large f ish on — landed 12. One 32-pounder.”
Bill never could afford expensive rods or reels, but his technique was flawless. Russell Chatham wrote: “He was the most perfect fly caster who ever lived — and I have personally watched every world champion since Jimmy Green. Not only was every cast exquisite in every way, but never once in all the years since I fished within four feet of him, did he ever get even a minor tangle.”
Like Bill, I had a similar single-minded pursuit, dedicating myself in my twenties to my passion, rock climbing, often climbing a hundred days a year. For me, Yosemite Valley was a magical place. I spent summers there living in a VW van, obsessively climbing big walls such as El Capitan and Half Dome. Before I became a professional climbing guide, I had no rent and no bills, occasionally earning enough money to fund my climbing by working search and rescue. I was a proverbial “climbing bum,” but I felt rich in doing what I loved on a budget of twenty dollars a day. When I discovered fly fishing, I realized that although I might not be able to climb like I used to when I got older, I could easily stand knee deep in a river and wave a fly rod.
For many of California’s North Coast rivers, the magic slowly died. After World War II, rampant, unregulated logging deforested most watersheds. The Eel River, once called the “land of the giants” for the size of its Chinook, was decimated by two great floods, in 1955 and 1964, when all the spawning grounds were inundated by mud and silt from the denuded hillsides.
Flood control also devastated nearly every North Coast river. The Coyote Dam, built on the Russian River, blocked spawning grounds for fifty thousand winter-run steelhead. Feeder streams were obliterated to create access roads for logging, wiping out spawning beds for entire silver salmon populations. For the old-timers who were around for the glory days, visiting these rivers in their later years was a sad affair — like fishing for ghosts or visiting the grave of a long-lost love.
But the Smith avoided the atrocities that befell most of the North Coast rivers, surviving as the largest undammed river in California. The watershed was never logged — a thick forest of cedar and spruce and of redwoods towering over three hundred feet high. To this day, it remains the clearest of the North Coast rivers — crystal clear
most of the time, rising high and turbid after a major storm, but unlike other North Coast rivers that take a week or more to clear, dropping back into shape just days later, taking on that distinctive emerald green tint signaling optimal fishing conditions. Fishing the Smith is all about timing. The fish bite best when the river is dropping or has stabilized after a rain. Optimal conditions for fly fishing are when the river level is below 8 feet at the Jed Smith gauge.
The Siren’s Song
In the upper reaches of the Smith, above “The Forks,” where the Middle and South Forks merge, the river cuts through deep, spectacular rock gorges filled with car-sized boulders, deep turquoise pools, white water, and fast, deep runs. Below The Forks, from the tiny town of Hiouchi eight miles downstream to the Highway 101 bridge, the river winds through dense redwood groves and Jedediah Smith State Park. In this beautiful stretch are a dozen or so famous pools that harbor the large kings and big winter steelhead that the Smith is known for.
On December 22, 1976, just above the Highway 101 bridge, Robert Halley caught the California state record steelhead, a girthy fish that weighed 27 pounds, 4 ounces. In February of 2007, from this same stretch of water, a local guide measured what is perhaps the largest steelhead ever caught in California: 42 inches in length with a 23-inch girth. Estimated to weigh 30 pounds, the fish was caught and released without any official record designation.
Below the Highway 101 bridge, the river exits the redwood groves and courses through cow pastureland, where Rowdy Creek enters as its last major tributary. Below Rowdy Creek, the river widens and winds through four miles of tidewater pools before pouring into the ocean.
The big Chinook, averaging 20 pounds, arrive in October, staging in the tidewater pools. When the river flows at less than 600 cubic feet per second, fishing is closed above Rowdy Creek, and the action is concentrated at the tidewater holes: the Piling Hole, the Cattle Crossing, and the Sand Hole, fishing from boats and small prams with fast-sinking lines and small Comet-style flies.
Once the rains begin in November and into December, kings push all the way up the system, and if you get the timing right, and the water level isn’t too high, it’s game on at the twenty or so prime holes on the 15 river miles from the tidewater all the way up to The Forks.
Many of the Smith Chinook spend up to four or even five years at sea before returning to the river at legendary sizes, like the remarkably silver, porcine 60-pounder with a broom-sized tail caught on November 2, 1979, from the slow, deep water of the spectacular canyon below The Forks, or the 68-pound king caught in 1988 from the Bailey Hole on the lower river. It was in November of 1948, at the mouth of Rowdy Creek, that a 98-pound woman caught one of the largest kings ever recorded in California — a hook-jawed male that weighed 82 pounds.
A quiver of interchangeable shooting heads with different sink rates is what you’ll want for targeting kings in the pools, to slice down through heavy current and get your fly in front of a fish.
The big winter steelhead, averaging 12 pounds, enter the river starting in December and are at their peak in-river numbers in January and February. The “Redwood Pools” near Jed Smith State Park, with their expansive gravel bars, are amenable to traditional Spey casting and swinging flies, especially at dawn, before the flotilla of guided drift boats pounds the river bottom with bouncing bait balls. The steelhead tend to hang out in the tailouts below pools or just below the tailouts in the slightly riffled water.
Above The Forks, the scenery gets downright mystical, and the water is too rough for drift boats. There, I use my 11-foot 7 weight switch rod with an indicator rig, perfect for roll casting from tight quarters, to drift a fly deep into the boulder-lined pools.
Due to hyperclear, fast, heavy water and huge, powerful fish that often hunker down deep in the pools, fly fishing for salmon and steelhead on the Smith is notoriously and exceptionally difficult — both getting them to bite and landing them in strong current. But part of the Smith’s allure, besides trophy-sized fish, is its beguiling beauty, which will entice you like a siren’s song, even if you’ve gone days without a bite.
The Stronghold
The North American Salmon Stronghold Partnership, convened in 2008 by the Wild Salmon Center, recognized the Smith River as the first of California’s six wild salmon “strongholds.” The stronghold philosophy is to focus conservation efforts on maintaining healthy fisheries, rather than to restore irreparably damaged ones. “The cost of protection can be lower than the cost of restoration,” says Wild Salmon Center president Guido Rahr.
Embracing the stronghold philosophy, the Smith River Alliance recently purchased 5,400 acres of private land along the Smith’s headwaters, blocking logging and mining interests to help ensure the Smith runs clear and cold. In the last 10 years, the state of California has invested $3.4 million toward protection projects in the Smith River watershed. In recent years, fall Chinook returns have averaged an estimated 20,000 fish, a fraction of the wild fish numbers of the 1960s. Of these, an estimated 20 percent are hatchery Chinooks from the Rowdy Creek Hatchery, spawned from fish that return to their fish trap. Since 1973, a target goal of up to 100,000 adipose-fin-clipped Chinook have been released annually.
But according to a report by California Trout in 2017, “Numerous studies have shown . . . that interactions of wild Pacific salmon with hatchery-produced salmon can reduce overall fitness of a population, its local adaptability, reduce long-term resilience of the population, and threaten extinction.” The report concludes that “the introduction of hatchery salmon from Rowdy Creek Hatchery on the Smith River may therefore be in conflict with the status of the Smith River as a ‘stronghold’ for wild salmon and should be re-evaluated.”
Every River Ends
After the word got out, the 1970s saw increasing numbers of anglers vying for dwindling numbers of kings on the Smith. When the fish were in, spots were staked out early, the good pools lined with anchored prams. But the glory days were over. Chatham wrote: “We woke up one morning and it was all gone, the rivers, the bay, everything.” “I could book a trip to the ends of the earth any time I wanted, but Bill could not. To his everlasting credit, he cast from dawn until dark into largely fishless water.”
In I Know Bill Schaadt, Ben Taylor recalls when Bill was diagnosed with terminal cancer and Ben went to visit him: “During our conversation Bill broke down crying and put his head on my shoulder.” Then Bill composed himself and made a final request: “When the time comes and a service is held and if the grab is on, I don’t want you to come — promise me you’ll be on the river?” “Absolutely,” Ben lied. Bill died in 1995, at the age of 71.
Even though it was many years ago, I remember my first Smith River king like it was yesterday. It had rained all night, just enough to swell the river, but not blow it out. We launched the drift boat before sunrise below Rowdy Creek and found the tidewater pools shrouded in thick fog and vacant of other anglers. When we arrived at the Cattle Crossing Hole, we were greeted by the thick, silvery backs of rolling kings, fresh from the sea. My hands trembled as I tied on a fly and made my first cast. I let the sinking line settle toward the bottom, then began a series of quick, short strips until I felt a massive pull that nearly ripped the 11-weight rod out of my hands. The fish swam slowly up and down the pool a few times as if contemplating what to do, then bolted downstream, toward the river mouth. Even with me palming the reel and with a clamped-down drag, the fight went on and on as the fog burned off and the sun came out. We drifted a mile downriver toward the ocean before I could pull the fish in close to the boat. Once the fish was in the net, I breathed an ecstatic sigh of relief and marveled at the king that measured nearly four feet long. After I held that great fish and watched it swim away, I felt like the luckiest man alive.
I later fished with a young guide on the Smith whose father knew Bill Schaadt. Knowing how enamored I was with the history of the Smith, he gave me a fly that Bill had tied before he died. It’s a simple red Comet, tied on a size 6 black hook with a sparse red hackle, silver tinsel, and a short red tail — a cherished talisman and a reminder that my most precious gift is time itself and that now is the time to pursue those things I love the most, like the pull of a king on a fly line, because every river ends, dissolving into an infinite, shining sea.
