Given the precarious state and future of California’s precious wild steelhead, the time has come for a paradigm shift, both for managers of the resource and practitioners of steelhead angling. If we want these prized, iconic fish to survive the pressures of progress — if we truly want steelhead fishing by any method to survive — there are considerations of conservation and ethics that necessarily will have to influence our practices on the water and the way we think about fishing for steelhead. And these considerations will have to begin influencing our practices very soon, if not immediately.
While some of us may fish for steelhead using traditional techniques for self-involved, sensory reasons, these traditional methods also (maybe coincidentally) have merit from a conservation standpoint. Steelhead are migratory animals. When returning to their rivers, they carry a finite amount of energy in reserve and have no instinctual intent to replenish that reserve before spawning. Each stressful encounter for the fish will take its toll and perhaps hinder its ability to make more of the fish we love. So, by targeting only the players — only the fish that will move for a fly — the angler is targeting those fish that have the energy reserves to play our game. My feeling is: If a steelhead won’t move for a swinging fly, there’s a good reason it won’t. This fish should be left alone. It needs rest and instinct is telling it to preserve its precious energy for important work ahead.
There was a time, many decades ago, when wild steelhead stocks could withstand indiscriminate angling pressure, perhaps even light harvest. Those days are likely gone forever, at least for our foreseeable lifetimes — too many people, too much pressure from development and progress, too much loss of habitat, too many places much less wild than they used to be. I firmly believe being a steelhead fly fisher today is as much about stewardship and being an advocate for wild fish and their rivers as it about hooking six fish a day. It’s up to us to take care of what we love because there are forces that see only dollar signs where wild rivers flow, and these forces have the weight of history behind them.
If we, the steelhead fly fishing community, do not self-regulate our impact by monitoring and possibly reducing our effectiveness, we may be regulated out of fly fishing opportunities altogether by agencies responsible for preventing the disappearance of species. It may not directly be our fault runs have diminished and rivers have closed, but as has happened before, we will pay the price. Plainly, we need to find new ways to measure success in our days on the water.
The revered angling writer Roderick Haig-Brown once said (paraphrased) in order to have good sport, one must stack the odds in favor of the quarry. In fishing, if your methods become too effective, you are no longer angling, but harvesting. This is essential to the discussion on the table. The longer you fish for steelhead, the more you may find yourself asking the question, “How many do I need to catch to validate my experience?” My guess is, as time goes by the number will shrink and method and setting will gain in importance. To some degree law will regulate your choices, but at a gut level everyone must make his or her own distinction on where sport ends and where the intent to harvest begins. The genuine art, science and craft in fly fishing for steelhead lies in knowing what tackle and which techniques to employ in any given situation, and how to employ them with skill to give yourself the opportunity to not maximize your catch, but to encounter one or two memorable fish in a day’s effort.
If you’re nymphing and you’ve caught a fish in the morning, switch your tactics for the afternoon to provide yourself with a greater challenge. Similarly, if you’re dredging leaded flies on heavy sink tips and pick up a fish on the swing, swing lighter for the rest of the day. See if you can tempt a fish to move even further for your fly. Try for a bigger pull and more thrilling experience. Similarly, if steelhead are moving readily to your swinging, subsurface fly, go with a floating line, and so on up the scale of difficulty. And for heaven’s sake, if you find yourself in Theodore Castwell’s purgatory, where every cast is met with a noteworthy fish, clip the point from your hook and revel in the rise and the initial pull. I personally feel, if on any trip, I can’t remember each individual steelhead brought to hand or close, I’ve crossed the line of respectable practice.
Finally, there may come a point in an avid angler’s life when it’s time to put down the rod and enjoy wild rivers and their wild steelhead in ways outside the predator-prey relationship. Snorkeling, participating in fish counts, or hiking to find and observe spawning fish may overtake the angling urge and provide that vital connection to the magic we all cherish. This may not be for everyone, but for some it has created an even stronger bond with the fish.
I hesitate to present this “scale of difficulty” as an evolution, or even a progression; doing so would imply a linear code of correctness and assumptions of righteousness to which I’m not willing to subscribe or abide. There may be a path and enlightenments along the way, but no step
on the path is any more or less important than another. There is only where you’re at and where you’re going. The community of steelhead and salmon anglers has much to gain in terms of healthier fisheries when all, regardless of the methods we employ to participate, are enthused and engaged in enjoying and protecting wild steelhead.
Enjoying is the easy part. But protecting wild steelhead and wielding a fly rod demands restraint and awareness of the impact your effectiveness may have. Anecdotal evidence has it that steelhead in warmer summer water may drop back several river miles after being caught and released before they gain a state of recovery. Atlantic salmon anglers claim a fish caught and released will not bite again for at least two days. A true scientific grasp on the impacts of catch-and-release angling on steelhead and salmon and their ability to reproduce may be difficult to attain; tracking the myriad variables involved would be daunting. Still, it seems the intelligent thing to do is err on the side of caution.
If we are fortunate enough to continue to be afforded the privilege of angling for steelhead, the line between harmful effect and responsible enjoyment will continue to be difficult to define and maintain. That’s the way of all things. Careful balance is a product of cultural wisdom. We are our own culture, defined by our own actions, and we will acquire our wisdom one way or another, in time or too late to find this balance.
Considering the wellbeing of the resource, and that of our own, I suggest we consciously and continuously monitor the effectiveness of our methods and use them sensibly to catch a minimum of fish, but ever better fish, so that in the future we may fish at all.
