Solecism: a grammatical mistake in speech or writing . . . a breach of good manners . . . an example of incorrect behavior.
Putah Creek is the most popular trout stream within a reasonably short drive of San Francisco. It is a day trip for urban fly fishers not only from the Bay Area, but also from Davis, Fairfield, Woodland, and Sacramento. It holds native wild rainbow trout, some of them trophy size. It is strictly catch and release in its most popular stretch. I doubt there’s a country creek so close to a highly concentrated urban population that gets as many fly fishers. But in the words of the late, great Samuel Goldwyn: “Include me out.”
I took a strong dislike to Putah Creek the day I first laid eyes on it nearly thirty years ago. The hills were dripping with cold winter rain. All the coastal steelhead rivers were blown out, but I had an acute need to go fishing. By the time I got to the creek, it was the color of a cheap margarita. The water pouring out of Monticello Dam made everything downstream look like glacial melt. You couldn’t see bottom in the milky green flood. I ended up wading and fishing by Braille. The treacherous streambed of rubble and boulders was slick with algae. The banks were a jungle of overhanging trees, brush, and blackberry thorns that left little room for a back cast. Just getting in and out of the creek was a struggle. The trout were feeding on a carpet of midge larvae. In order to keep my size 22 fly down on the bottom, I had to resort to split shot, and that meant lobbing the line, instead of casting it. Was the glass half full or half empty? You either found this fishing “technically challenging” or “a pain in the ass.”
What was worse, the creek looked like it had been engineered to death. A 304-foot concrete-arch dam plugs Lake Berryessa, a vast impoundment that loomed ominously behind the no-kill stretch of the creek. Putah’s headwaters come from springs on the eastern slope of Cobb Mountain in the Coastal Range. The upper creek drains through hillside woodlands mantled in blue and valley oaks, chaparral, tall upland grasses, and riparian willows and cottonwoods, picking up other small streams on its southeasterly route until coming to a dead stop at Lake Berryessa, one of the largest artificial impoundments in California. The controlled flows being released from Monticello Dam on the other side of the reservoir have transformed Putah Creek downstream into a tailwater trout fishery for about eight miles of steep and shady canyon.
Below the canyon stretch, the nature of the creek changes once again as it comes into contact with a diversion dam and a small backup reservoir. The Putah Diversion Dam reroutes most of the creek’s flow into something called the Putah South Canal, where the water goes south to do double duty for agriculture and to become the drinking supply for Vallejo and other towns in Solano County. The surplus frog water coming out of the reservoir, known as Lake Solano, passes eastward as the lower portion of Putah Creek, a much straightened channel flowing toward the Delta through agricultural flatlands south of downtown Davis, the UC Davis campus, and the town of Winters.
People have been reengineering Putah Creek almost since Gold Rush days. The little town once known as Davisville, a depot established by the Southern Pacific Railroad, was periodically flooded in wintertime by high creek flows, so folks living in what was to become Davis dredged a new channel to divert the stream south of the town. That artificial channel, now the main channel, became known as South Fork Putah Creek. In the mid-1940s, the Army Corps of Engineers expanded the dredging and built levees, further channelizing it. The original streambed that once ran close by Davis, the diminished “North Fork,” was replaced in 1968 with a concrete-lined waterway that wends along a bicycle path through the UC Davis Arboretum, its eastward flow completely eliminated. The waterway widens at a spot called Lake Spafford, and every few years, the university drains it for a cleaning and recovers stolen bicycles off the bottom.
Buttressed by levees and channeled, lower Putah continues eastward on a well-regulated journey through riparian woodlands that have been altered and modified with the introduction of nonnative flora and fauna. At one time, Putah Creek flowed directly into the Sacramento River, but now ends up in the so-called Toe Drain of the Yolo Bypass, a system of weirs designed to divert floodwaters from Sacramento and nearby communities. From there, its water gets released from a check dam into the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta.
Even more confusing than the plumbing is the origin of the creek’s name. Or even why it is called a creek, when it is really a midsize river draining four counties. Some believe the name Putah Creek derives from puta wuwwe, a Miwok Indian phrase meaning either “grassy creek” or “grassy banks.” Others say that Patwin Wintun Indian bands living near its banks called it Liwaito. The records kept by Mission San Francisco Solano indicate that the Indians who lived near the creek were referred to variously as Putto or Puttato, and the names found in various Spanish land grants refer to the creek as “Arroyo de los Puttos” and “Puta Creek.” Unfortunately the word puta is also a Spanish vulgarism for “whore.” This didn’t sit well with the United States Board on Geographic Names, a division of the Department of the Interior, which officially changed the appellation from Puta to Putah Creek, inserting an “h” to make up for the historical solecism.
Further confusing things, Putah Creek sometimes goes by the name of Green River. There are said to be two reasons for this. The creek turns vege-
table green in the summertime, due to a buildup of algae and water plants. But mostly it’s because John Fogerty, who swam and played in the creek as a kid on family vacations, memorialized it in his song “Green River,” a hit single for Credence Clearwater Revival in the summer of 1969. The song has a bayou vibe, but comes straight out of the Central Valley of California.
There is fishing for bass and carp in lower Putah Creek. And some steelhead and stray hatchery salmon now return to spawn in gravel beds close by the town of Winters, courtesy of timed releases from the Putah Diversion Dam and the seasonal opening of the check dam in the Toe Drain. But no anadromous fish can make it past the Putah Diversion Dam, so the interdam stretch in the canyon between Lake Solano and Lake Berryessa is exclusively a fishery for landlocked wild rainbow trout. Many regard this stretch as something of a blue-ribbon stream and talk up its trophy rainbows.
Fluctuating flows from Monticello Dam, slime-covered rocks, downed trees and deadfalls, tight casting quarters beneath overhanging branches — all make this “blue-ribbon” trout water a nightmare to fish. Many fly fishers love it for precisely those reasons. It is, if anything, a challenge.
After a very long absence, one day I decided to make a return visit to Putah Creek. I wanted to see if time had tempered either me or the creek, so I made the ninety-minute drive from my home in San Francisco to Winters to check out the action. And my conclusion was: a river is still a better place to be than anywhere else.
It was a fine day in March, and the stream flows were reasonable enough to wade and cover a lot of water. Fishing in the canyon is year-round, but the unwritten code now is to abstain from fishing in the canyon from December through February. That’s when Putah’s rainbow trout spawn, and there are only a limited number of gravel beds suitable for laying eggs. Fishing guides and fly-shop personnel are asking anglers to give the trout a break in the wintertime.
Riding along the stretch of road between the two dams, I drank in the canyon’s freshness. I noticed that some of the public-access areas and parking lots had been upgraded with picnic tables, platforms, and restroom facilities. Parking fees had risen to eight bucks. The creek looked to be in fine shape, although a little turbid.
Below Monticello Dam, the views opened on a lot of riffles, runs, and green pools of varying depths. An old wildfire had thinned out some of the vegetation, but I could see that roll casting would be at a premium. The trees looked like they would eat your flies.
For reasons perhaps known only to entomologists, Putah Creek is notable for its microscopic insect life. The rocky bottom has been called a “midge carpet.” Feeding trout are mostly keyed in on larvae. Occasionally you might see hatches of small Baetis, but in the main, Putah Creek is not a dry-fly stream. The trout are feasting deep down on a biomass of minutiae. On this stream, small nymphs and midge patterns from size 18 to 24 are usually called for. Leaders are tapered down to 5X, 6X, and even 7X tippets. Nearly everyone uses split shot and a strike indicator. The indicator also acts like a bobber. On Hat Creek, I wouldn’t be caught dead using one. On Putah Creek, I take the Fifth Amendment.
I am at that stage in life when I no longer care what material my fly rod is made of or what its modulus of elasticity might be. And I’m more interested in the connections in a river than I am in my leader connection. (Some days, I’m even more interested in what I’m having for lunch than in what the trout are taking.) But for Putah Creek, I thought it wise to reach for a fiberglass rod. I wanted something with a lot of bend and stretch in it to cushion a sudden strike from a large trout. Fine tippets break too easily on fast-action rods, so those in the know use medium-action rods on Putah Creek and save their faster graphite rods for when they’re casting streamers on heavier leaders during the higher flows of summertime.
Because I hate split shot, I put on a weighted braided sinking leader that I hoped would get my fly down, but still allow me to put a little poetry into the cast.
I headed downriver from the first public-access parking spot. The water was cold and the current strong. It was awkward maneuvering around on those snot rocks. This creek was as hard to wade as the Pit River, another California stream at the mercy of hydraulics. I wasn’t exactly fishing by Braille, but the creek was definitely cloudy. I found myself in a few tight corners and doing a lot of roll casting.
The most effective method on Putah Creek is high-stick nymphing, which tends to wear out your arm. Nymph fishing is my least favorite way to catch trout, but I doubted I would be getting in any dry-fly action on this swift, cold stream.
I knew that with limited bank access, it would be hard just finding a trout that hadn’t already seen a thousand Brassies, Copper Johns, Prince Nymphs, Woolly Worms, Zonkers, Zebra, Micro and Jujube Midges, and all the other nifty confections of the fly-tying vise that are favored by Putah Creek anglers. I thought I might try to wade to hard-to-reach places or maybe bushwhack along the banks to find unmolested trout. But bushwhacking was out because of the thick brush and the tangles of blackberry thorns.
I worked the creek pretty hard, but I seemed to spend as much time cleaning green slime off my nymph and leader as I did roll casting and high-sticking. I knew I was going to have to do some hopscotching, so I motored downstream. The second parking access had a run with a lot of boulders in it that would provide good structure, but again I had a hard time getting around in the strong current that was pressing against my waders. Downstream at the third access point, I encountered a long run with a nice pool and a tailout and then another long run that gradually tapered off into shallows. I knew it connected with the stretch that swings by the f inal parking lot. I was tempted, but wading back upstream to where I had parked my car would be a struggle, so I ended up driving to the final access point, where the creek wraps around an island and creates some attractive riffles and pools that I found relatively easier to wade. I even caught a few ten-inch trout.
But I didn’t hook anything that took my breath away. I knew the big ones were in there, though. I had seen videos posted on YouTube. There was reason to be optimistic. We had conservation on our side. Hatchery stocking had ended ages ago. All the trout in the creek were wild. It is all catch and release, too, strictly no-kill by law. Anglers are limited to using barbless artificial flies and lures in the interdam section. A landmark lawsuit had established dam releases that conformed more to natural seasonal flows. Because the discharges from Monticello Dam come off the bottom of Lake Berryessa, the creek always is cold, and trout have thrived in the nutrient-rich water. There is always a chance of landing a monster in there.
But by day’s end it was apparent the creek wasn’t going to yield one of her trophy rainbows to me. Everyone said Putah Creek is a challenge to fish, and by then I was inclined to agree. My record best would remain intact: a five-pound brown trout landed on the East Walker River near the town of Bridgeport in the Sierra Nevada. The movie Out of the Past was filmed in Bridgeport. There is a line of dialogue in that classic film noir that could serve as our epitaph. Jane Greer asks Robert Mitchum, “Is there a way to win?” He tells her, “There’s a way to lose more slowly.”
I drove upstream past the Napa County line to have a look at the vast reservoir rimmed by hogback mountain ridges. From this viewpoint, it was still possible to picture Berryessa Valley before it was drowned by Monticello Dam. I had seen the photographs of a bygone California taken by the famed photographer Dorothea Lange and Pirkle Jones. Their book Death of a Valley documented the heartache of farmers and townspeople whose lives were upended when they were evicted from their homes to make way for progress. Putah Creek had been a midsize river where it passed through the wide valley hemmed in by the Vaca Mountains. The Army Corps of Engineers decided Berryessa Valley was the ideal spot for a new reservoir that would slake the thirst of all the newcomers pouring into the Golden State in the 1950s. “Every month thirty-thousand people are coming to California,” said Governor Earl Warren, “and not one of them is bringing a gallon of water.” People in the farming town of Monticello wrote letters, protested, and fought in court, but their property was condemned through eminent domain. Houses were demolished or lifted off their foundations and hauled out of the valley. Farm equipment was auctioned off, fences torn down, crops plowed under. The local cemetery was moved to a bluff overlooking the valley. The engineers who built Monticello Dam sacrificed one farming valley in order to irrigate prime bottomlands in bordering Yolo and Solano Counties and provide water for growing communities. Today, Lake Berryessa supplies both water and hydroelectric power for the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Bureau of Reclamation bulldozed the valley floor, scouring it clean, not wanting a repeat of what happened back East, where parts of churches and houses starting popping up to the surface of reservoirs as sad reminders of the human loss. Bass planted in Lake Berryessa died because there was no place for fish to lay eggs, so bass anglers put unsold Christmas trees in buckets of cement and sank them to create structure. Today, Lake Berryessa is home to everything from sunfish to kokanee salmon.
Construction of Monticello Dam began in 1953, was completed in 1958, and its reservoir filled by 1963 — which makes it roughly contemporary with my birth. At the time, it was the second-largest reservoir in California after Shasta Lake. Monticello Dam, Lake Berryessa, the Putah Diversion Dam, and Lake Solano were all part of the so-called Solano Project, an engineering scheme separate from other water projects in California, such as the larger Central Valley Project.
It’s hard to believe Monticello Dam and I are almost the same age. Today, Lake Berryessa ranks only seventh in the largest-reservoir sweepstakes in California. More river valleys were drowned to make room for more people like me moving into California. Could all this be my fault? As the man said: “In an avalanche, every snowflake pleads not guilty.”
I was two years old and living on the other side of the continent when construction began on Monticello Dam. When you are a small child, everything around you seems normal. We take it as the way things have always been. As we age, we notice that things change, and because we sometimes don’t like what we see, we might regret some of those changes. But we are rarely startled by them, because they happen over time. For our children, however, who will be born to us some thirty years after our births, what they see at age four or five becomes their “normal.” To them, the world has always been like that.
What they don’t realize is that it is always less. There is even a name for how we fail to perceive these dramatic changes in the natural world. It is called “the shifting baseline syndrome.” A marine biologist in the Florida Keys came up with the concept. She was looking at historical photographs of sport catches taken over the decades and posted at the dock on Mallory Square in Key West. Those photos showed dramatically diminishing sizes of big fish caught over time. What didn’t change in those photographs were the smiles of happy anglers. We think the present isn’t all that different from what the past had been. The world doesn’t seem fallen, because we have grown accustomed to the fall.
Once there was a town and a valley where today there is a tall dam and a reservoir. Before that, there had been a hacienda and a spread called Rancho Las Putas. In 1842, a grant of 35,000 acres was deeded by the governor of California to two brothers of Basque heritage, José Jesus and Sexto “Sixto” Berrellezza, the first European settlers in the valley. To pay off their debts, the brothers subdivided their rancho, and after losing most of their holdings to shysters, watched as parcels of their land were sold by agents to farmers who soon filled the valley. In time, the valley (and reservoir) came to be known by an anglicized version of their surname. Before the rancho, there had been Wintun Indian villages along Putah Creek, which ran through the middle of the valley. But most of the Indians were long gone by then, having been removed much earlier to the Spanish missions.
For millennia, salmon and steelhead swam up Putah Creek, some of them all the way into the mountain headwaters, before they too became a memory, like the Wintun. They spawned in Butts Creek, Hunting Creek, Bucksnort Creek, Big Canyon Creek, Harbin Creek, Crazy Creek, Helena Creek, Dry Creek, and Bear Canyon Creek. No doubt all those creeks had Indian names.
At one time, wild salmon and steelhead swam into every river and creek that drained into the Central Valley. Now most of them are an historical footnote. I drove back, counting the dancing riffles in Putah Creek. It is nice that there is a “trophy trout stream” for anglers to fish that runs for eight miles between two dams. It is nice that people are doing their level best to conserve and improve the ecology of the creek. I wished them well. But these are no substitute for what nature once gifted to us. In the future, I would be leaving the trophy trout in Putah Creek to my fellow anglers. Our big-fish stories are getting smaller.
