In This Issue
SHOT
Meetings
Events
Hatchery Lawsuit
Hall of Fame
Columbia Bi-Op

 

Still time to register for SHOT

 

We are looking forward to hosting our first-ever Tillamook fishing tournament coming up Oct. 17-19, and there is still time to put your team together for this fun event.
  
For more info or to register, please click HERE.
Upcoming Meetings
You can also check for upcoming events and meetings on our Website calendar HERE.
  
Association
Executive Committee meeting 6:30 pm Wednesday, Oct. 16 at the Association office, 6641 SE Lake Rd., in Milwaukie.
Magazine

Ifish thread

Meetup

Contact ANWS President Bill Kremers at 541-602-0881, [email protected]

 

Columbia River

General Meeting 6:30 pm

Wednesday, Oct. 16 at Pied Piper Pizza, 12300 NE Fourth Plain Rd., in Vancouver.

Newsletter

Website

Facebook

Contact President Keith Hyde at 360-772-0996 or [email protected]

 

Emerald Empire

General Meeting 7 pm Wednesday, Oct. 2 at the Veterans' Memorial Building, 1626 Willamette St., in Eugene.

Join the chapter early for a no-host dinner, 5:30-7 pm. Rick Barrow of Rick Barrow's Guide Service will talk about bobber fishing for winter steelhead, and Dean Hendricks of North Country Flies and Lures will discuss coho fishing on Siltcoos Lake.

Newsletter

Website

Facebook

Contact President Bill Robbins at 541-689-5075, [email protected]

 

McLoughlin

General Meeting 7pm Tuesday, Oct. 8 at Denny's, 15815 S.E. 82nd Drive, in Clackamas. Guest speaker Carmen McDonald, who represents several lines of fishing equipment, will have some new products to show. 

Facebook

Contact President Carol Clark at 503-632-6974 or [email protected]

 

Mid-Valley

General Meeting, 7 pm Wednesday, Oct. 2 at the Albany Senior Center, 489 Water Ave. in Albany. Featured speaker will be Curt Curry, owner of Curry's Guide Service. Curt will talk about and demonstrate techniques for catching fall Chinook and coho. Executive Director Russell Bassett will update the group about current campaigns, projects and events.

Website

Contact President Larry Bell at
541-337-5427 or [email protected]

 

Molalla River

General Meeting 6:30 pm Thursday, Oct.17 at the Farmstead Restaurant, 28313 S. Highway 213, in Molalla. Guest speaker will be Lance Kruzic of NMFS, discussing upper Willamette steelhead and spring Chinook management, past, present, and future.

Facebook

Contact President Sam Wurdinger at 503-932-8386 or [email protected]

 

Newberg

General Meeting 7 pm Tuesday, Oct. 8 at the Chehalem Senior Center, 101 Foothills Dr., in Newberg. Trey Carskadon, recently elected Association Oregon Legislative Director, will discuss fishing for fall Chinook and coho.         

Website

Facebook

Contact President Mark Grier at 971-279-3382 or [email protected]

 

North Coast

General meeting 7 pm Thursday, Oct. 24 at the ODFW Tillamook Office, 4907 Third St., in Tillamook.

Contact Co-President Bill Hedlund at 503-815-2737, [email protected], or Co-President Bob Rees at 503-812-9036 or [email protected]


Salem
General meeting 7 pm Tuesday, October 15, City of Keizer Community Center (City Hall), 930 Chemawa Road, in Keizer.

Website
Facebook

Contact President Jim Zelenka at 503-371-4063, [email protected]

Sandy River
 
General meeting 7 pm Wednesday, October 2 at the Sam Cox building, Glenn Otto Park, 1106 E. Columbia River Hwy, in Troutdale. Guest speaker will be Jeff Stoeger from O2Bfishin Guide Service, talking about fishing the Deschutes. 

Website
Newsletter
Contact President Doug Briggs, 503-729-2023, [email protected]

Tom McCall
 
General Meeting 11:30 pm October 16, 11:30 am at the Old Spaghetti Factory, 0715 SW Bancroft St., in Portland.

Contact President Dave Reggiani, 503-657-5379, [email protected]

Tualatin Valley

General Meeting 7 pm Thursday, October 10 at the Aloha American Legion Hall, 20325 SW Alexander in Aloha.

Website
Contact President Tom VanderPlaat, 503-357-4825, [email protected]

Upcoming Events


Family-Friendly Walk on the Wilson River, Saturday, October 26th

 

The Wilson River Trail spans roughly 20 miles along the gorgeous Wilson River-a hotspot for fishing, camping, hiking, and swimming. We'll be doing a 3.5 mile section beginning at Jones Creek and ending at the Footbridge Trailhead. We'll take our time to check out the river, eat lunch, and enjoy the newly classified High Value Conservation Area around the river. Kids are welcome.

  • 10 am in the northeast corner of the Home Depot parking lot off Highway 26 (13700 Northwest Science Park Drive), or
  • 11 am at the Jones Creek day-use area on Highway 6.

For more information, or to register, please e-mail NCSFC Organizer Chris Smith.

 

Nov. 1-2, Tillamook Area Fish-Along, Tualatin Valley Chapter
Food, lodging at the Tillamook County Fairgrounds, and fishing the Wilson, Trask, and Nestucca rivers. Contact Tom Vanderplaat, 503-357-4825. This event is open to public.
Steelheaders defend fishing and hatchery reform in the courts
 

The Northwest Steelheaders and our allies filed our second amicus curiae legal brief with the federal 9th Circuit Court on Sept. 18 in defense of fishing and hatchery reform. The court case is round four of a two-year battle on the Sandy River's hatchery operations. The case is now focused on the claims presented by the plaintiffs that the National Marine Fisheries Services approval of ODFW's Hatchery Genetic Management Plans violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Earlier this year, the plaintiffs sought an immediate injunction to shutdown all the Sandy's hatchery operations, which was denied by the judge.

 

While the case is focused on the Sandy River, it has potential ramifications to all hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest and the fishing opportunity they provide. In addition, the Sandy case is one of several brought forward recently by different plaintiffs in three different states aimed at shutting down hatcheries: the Elwah River, Trinity River, and possibly the McKenzie River. The judge was scheduled to hear oral arguments for the Sandy River case on Oct. 30; however due to the federal government shutdown he has granted a stay in the case.

 

Steelheaders wants to make clear to our members that we are very passionate about wild fish, and spend much of our time working on efforts to increase natural production of salmonids. These efforts include legislative battles each session to fight back industry efforts that would harm fish like stopping efforts for Columbia River water withdrawals, litigation for court-mandate spill in Columbia River hydro operations, working through the administrative process to create visible and durable conservation areas in Oregon's state forests, and working both legislatively and administrative to achieve lower Columbia River commercial fisheries harvest reform, just to name a few recent efforts to improve wild salmon and steelhead runs.

 

That being said, we also understand that hatcheries provide social and health benefits associated with fishing opportunity; economic benefits to local communities; and even provide benefits to natural production in the form of supplementation, nutrient enrichment, creating conservationists, and funding of the agency through license sales for conservation and monitoring. While the plaintiffs in this case are using science to make claims that hatchery fish must be removed to recover wild fish, Steelheaders believes they have taken an extreme view of the science that discredits and disregards supplementation science and the benefits to natural production provided by hatcheries. In addition, we are finding little evidence that removing hatchery fish does recover wild populations. In fact, there are several examples where the opposite is true, and removing hatchery fish had a negligible benefit or none at all to the wild populations.

 

We are very concerned that if the plaintiffs are successful on the Sandy River, it will set a precedent that hatcheries are a much worse limiting factor for wild production than they are in fact. If the plaintiffs are successful, hatcheries will require the strictest scrutiny under the ESA, placing hatcheries as a more dangerous limiting than most other limiting factors like timber and agricultural operations that do not require that level of ESA scrutiny.

 

Our second amicus brief in this case included documentation and declarations from scientific and technical experts, as well as sportfishing advocates and guides. Our main arguments were as follows:

 

  • The Associations believe that wild fish can survive and recover in a river system that includes hatchery fish. This belief is based on scientific studies that the Plaintiffs have not addressed in their filings in this case. The Associations present expert written testimony that the Plaintiffs have ignored scientific data that does not support their preferred outcome.
  • The Plaintiffs have relied on a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument that attributes successes in other watersheds to the closing of hatchery programs, when those successes are more likely due to other factors such as favorable ocean conditions and court-mandated spills in the Columbia River hydropower system.
  • The Associations dispute the Plaintiffs' characterization of the Sandy River Hatchery as "the last remaining threat to restoring wild salmonid populations in the Sandy River basin" and maintain that the Sandy River Hatchery is only one of many limiting factors that are dealt with in the Sandy River Basin in a considerably less Draconian manner than Plaintiffs indicate is necessary for management of the Sandy River Hatchery.
  • The Associations assert there is little evidence that eliminating or further reducing hatchery fish in the Sandy River basin will recover wild populations. The Associations provide expert written testimony that the resource agencies did not err procedurally in the NMFS NEPA process, nor in the decision document, and that the EA/FONSI issued by NMFS is the appropriate mechanism for approving the river's HGMPs.
  • The Associations draw the court's attention to the balance of equities that has been, and should be, considered in any action involving the Sandy River's hatchery program, and assert that sportfishing should be weighted heavily in any balance of equities in recognition of sportfishing's important contributions to the protection of wild fish and to the well-being of Oregon's citizens.

We are fighting these lawsuits in court, but this issue isn't just a legal battle, it's a battle for the hearts of minds of Pacific Northwest residents. It involves not only challenging the assertions of anti-hatchery zealots, but also challenging the agencies to do better job by the anglers that fund them through policy and management changes. It's an uphill battle the silent majority of anglers must be actively engaged in.

 

Steelheaders is currently working to create a video that showcases the benefits of hatcheries, and we hope to have that completed in early 2014, but we need your help. These legal battles, public education, and policy change efforts take time and money, and it is not something we can fund with grants. Our Hatchery AND Wild campaign can only be funded by member and business supporter dollars, and if you care about the future of salmon and steelhead fishing in the Pacific Northwest, please join the effort by donating to the Steelheaders today.

 
Opportunity coming to Portland

 

You are cordially invited to Opportunity, the Association of Northwest Steelheaders' 26th Annual Hall of Fame Auction and Banquet starting at 4:30 pm on Nov. 16, 2013. Please join us to celebrate achieving the opportunity to recover listed fish, the opportunity to have full consistent sport fishing season, and the opportunity to maximize the benefits of our fisheries for all. This year's Hall of Fame promises to be the biggest and best ever, with a new venue that we are very excited about, an incredible array of fantastic experiences and items to bid on, fun games to participate in, videos, and scrumptious food and drinks. Opportunity will be held at the Sheraton PDX, 8235 NE Airport Way, in Portland, OR. Please reserve your seats now!

 

One of the many things that will make this event a memorable, must-see experience is our diverse array of incredible items. We work hard to secure items that most of us would buy during the year. Whether it's a fishing adventure to Alaska, fishing trips with the best local guides, rods and reels, cooking equipment, romantic getaways, or hunting and golfing trips; we have something for everyone, including several one-of-kind experiences designed to bring your more opportunity.

 

Please be sure to register early. Price for early registration before Oct. 15 is $60 per seat, $550 per table, or $650 per premium table. Price for late registration after Oct. 15 is $70 per seat, $600 per table, or $700 for premium table. A table seats 10. Premium tables include up front seating and courtesy bottles of wine at your table. We think this is the best value around!

 

To register, please fill out the registration form HERE and send to the Steelheaders' office with payment, call us at (503) 653-4176, e-mail [email protected], or register now online by clicking HERE. Tell your friends and include them at your table! If you would like donate goods or services, please contact the Steelheaders' office. We look forward to bringing you Opportunity the evening of Nov. 16. As always, all auction profits benefit fish runs and fishing opportunity in the Pacific Northwest. 

 

Spill, Baby, Spill: Columbia Bi-Op disappointingly more of the same

 
The following is Steelheaders comments to NOAA-Fisheries on the recently resubmitted draft Federal Columbia River Power System Biological Opinion, the document that governs Columbia and Snake river hydro operations. For more info on spill, check out Norm Ritchie's article in the last edition of "Salmon Trout Steelheader" magazine HERE.
  
"We are writing to express our deep disappointment about the flawed and inadequate Draft FCRPS Bi-Op, and to ask that the final version be significantly strengthened before it is released at the end of this year. An effective, lawful and science-based plan will provide much-needed help to imperiled salmon and steelhead in the near-term and - if we can break out of the current rut of litigation - help build additional momentum for a regional collaboration to craft shared solutions for the connected salmon, energy and transportation challenges we face in the Columbia Basin and Northwest.

 

Wild salmon and steelhead represent priceless cultural, economic, recreational and ecological treasures for the people of the Pacific Northwest and nation. In the Columbia Basin, however, thirteen stocks of wild salmon and steelhead remain at risk of extinction due in large part to the impacts of the federal dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers - a risk that's further compounded by a long series of expensive, illegal plans produced by NOAA, in partnership with Bonneville Power Administration and other federal agencies.

 

Steelheaders is especially concerned that the latest draft salmon plan is virtually indistinguishable from earlier versions, despite clear direction from a federal court to consider new and stronger measures, and even rolls back existing salmon protections. We urge NOAA to make changes that improve and strengthen the plan in its final form.

 

"Salmon spill" - sending water and fish over the tops of dams to help them reach the ocean more quickly and safely - is one of our most effective measures in the near-term to help salmon and steelhead survive the lethal dams and reservoirs in the Columbia Basin. Since 2006, the federal agencies have been required under court order to spill water and the results are undeniable. This program has improved the survival of young smolts migrating to the ocean and increased the numbers of adult salmon that return.

 

Regional state, Tribal, and federal salmon scientists have recently determined that additional spill in the spring and summer months could significantly increase salmon survival, which could in turn be sufficient to begin to restore at least some Columbia River stocks. In contrast to this emerging scientific consensus, NOAA's draft plan would allow dam operators to eliminate spill in August and curtail it in May. In its failure to address the concerns of the court, this plan squanders an opportunity to provide near-term help for endangered salmon and steelhead, move beyond the courtroom, and build additional momentum for a regional collaboration that can help resolve these issues over the long-term.

 

We ask that you change course and submit an effective, lawful, science-based plan that meets the near-term needs of salmon and steelhead, particularly through inclusion of an expanded spill program, and lays the groundwork for the regional collaboration we need to address the linked challenges that face salmon, energy and transportation in the Columbia-Snake Basin."

  


We hope you enjoyed this edition of "The Steelhead," which is sent to all ANWS members monthly. For questions and comments, please e-mail [email protected]. For more information, please click on a linked button below.  

 
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