New Steelheaders for the 21st Century

On the Water

Many responsible anglers are already taking serious steps to reduce their individual impacts on wild steelhead. They intentionally choose to limit the number of fish they encounter by using less efficient methods or by putting down the rod for the day after landing one. They opt not to fish at all when the water is too hot or run numbers are too low, even if fishery managers are still allowing it. If it is safe to fish, they run barbless hooks, land the fish quickly, and never lift wild steelhead out of the water. They see their time on the water as a privilege and a way to maintain connection to home waters. They know we need every wild fish to survive to spawn successfully.

The days of pounding on as many fish as possible are over. When there are so many anglers and so few fish our collective impacts accumulate quickly. We’ll push back against the loudest voices in our community - sometimes our friends - calling for irresponsible seasons and the fishery managers who fail to provide sanctuary water, cold water refuge, and the protections necessary to give wild steelhead space and time to rebuild their numbers.

We know this means we’ll fish less in the coming years, but we should take a cue from elk hunters who gladly accept limits on access, hunting methods, and harvest rates because they recognize the animals can’t survive without reasonable guardrails. (The parallels for steelheaders don’t end there. Elk hunters are also some of the most outspoken supporters of public lands and habitat protections.)

Responsible angling is an important first step in protecting the wild steelhead who manage to still return, but the most powerful work to change the trajectory for wild steelhead takes place away from the water. Steelheaders must carry our values home from the river and use them to harness our economic and political power to save our rivers and wild fish.

Investing in Recovery

Every year, anglers collectively spend millions of dollars on tackle, gear, boats, guided trips, and travel. Along the way, we buy tanks of gas, meals in restaurants, and rent rooms at hotels and cabins. We buy DVDs, magazine subscriptions, art works, and books about steelhead. This money supports tackle and fly shops, national and international manufacturers, outfitters and lodges, and rural economies all across steelhead country. New gear and trips to steelhead rivers near and far are exciting for sure, but these only benefit the angler’s experience, not the wild fish or the watershed. If we’re going to move the needle towards recovery, then steelheaders need to be investing much more widely in conservation and advocacy.

We should think of it as tithing for wild steelhead. The easiest way to do this is to donate resources to the advocacy nonprofits fighting to remove dams, restore habitat, push for better fishery policy, litigate when it is necessary, and educate anglers. An individual angler might not have the resources or knowledge available to replace a culvert blocking fish passage or file a lawsuit about a dam’s water temperature impacts under Section 401 of the Clean Water Act, but they can certainly join and support the organizations that do.

The same goes for the businesses depending on healthy steelhead runs. Anglers and the sportfishing industry have an opportunity to be partners working for wild steelhead recovery. Tackle and gear manufacturers, shops and guides all benefit from these public resources and they have an obligation to give back to the fisheries that make their businesses possible. There isn’t any room left for companies who are willing to profit from wild steelhead but aren’t investing in recovery or using their influence to push for protections and restoration. If a steelheader has a choice between two different reels, or two different guided trips, or two different pairs of waders, and one is from a company that publicly and financially supports wild steelhead conservation and the other doesn’t do anything at all, then it is clear who deserves our business.

Speaking Out and Showing Up

A steelheader might be someone who fishes local rivers with old gear or someone who buys new rods for their annual trip to a lodge in British Columbia. It seems reasonable that those two anglers would have differing financial responsibilities to donate to conservation organizations, but both of them have a voice and they should be using it to loudly call for better management and more public investment in watershed and wild steelhead restoration.

Wild steelhead are born in and return to public watersheds and their entire lives depend on the water, habitat, and fisheries overseen by Federal and State agencies and local municipalities. With our tax dollars, politicians fund these public institutions. They are run by public servants. Both are accountable to their fellow citizens. Wild steelhead might not have a voice or a vote, but anglers and businesses have the opportunity, and obligation, to speak up on behalf of wild steelhead.

There is great political power in this advocacy and collaboration. Dams get removed when citizen coalitions are unrelenting. Washington’s Wild Steelhead Gene Banks and rules against killing wild steelhead were put in place by advocates, including volunteers at the Wild Steelhead Coalition, pushing relentlessly on managers, politicians, and commissioners. When elected leaders hear from constituents in great enough numbers, they can be forced to support and fund fishery protections and habitat restoration. Public utilities can be held accountable for water quality and temperature impacts at their hydropower operations. The list goes on and on.

But the reality is that the most powerful interests and loudest voices usually take priority in driving regulations, policy, funding priorities, and infrastructure decisions. If we want healthy rivers and wild steelhead to take precedence, then steelheaders need to be the ones making phone calls, sending letters, showing up at public meetings, and demanding that fishery managers and elected officials invest in restoration and proactive management.

Agencies and legislators are certainly hearing from irrigation, commercial fishing, hydropower, land development, and logging interests. If wild steelhead are going to have a chance against that onslaught, they need to hear from anglers and conservationists in numbers they cannot ignore.

Their mission might be to preserve, protect, enhance, and perpetuate, but immediate economics have often guided the thinking and priorities of managers, commissioners, and agencies. They have licenses to sell and stakeholders clamoring for access to as much of a resource as they can get. This is how too much water gets withdrawn from aquifers, dams get built without fish passage, irresponsible hatcheries get expanded, climate change mitigation gets postponed, and too many fish keep getting killed.

Steelheaders, by speaking up, showing up, and voting on behalf of the wild fish and healthy, functioning watersheds, can break the failing status quo and steer our rivers towards recovery.

The Power of Our Community

For years, steelheaders have benefited from the leaders in our community fighting for wild fish. Anglers like Lee Spencer literally stood vigil each summer on the North Umpqua to protect wild steelhead from poachers, advocates like Bill McMillan who have committed their lives to wild fish, and dedicated volunteers like Rich Simms who saw the wild steelhead declining on his homewaters and stepped up to do something about it. There are many others: scientists, storytellers, conservationists, and local anglers all working to stem the losses and make the changes required to save wild steelhead and the rivers of the Northwest before it is too late.

The best way for all of us to thank these leaders, and build on their legacy, is to get off the sidelines and join them. Every steelheader has a contribution to offer and an obligation to safeguard the future of wild steelhead.

Together, let’s shift what it means to be steelheaders in the 21st Century and hold our community to a higher standard. Let’s make giving back to our rivers and restoring wild fish an integral part of who we are as anglers. The truth is that raising funds for conservation, showing up at commission meetings, contacting managers, and calling legislators to insist on change is the work the fish need. It is how we’ll get rivers set aside for wild fish, dam removals, selective commercial fisheries, and habitat restoration. These are actions to be proud of and something we should all be celebrating and encouraging.

With the rise of social media, email, smart phones, and all the technology at our fingertips, it has never been easier to share our time on the water or trade information about steelhead fishing. Let’s leverage this communication power to contact managing agencies and politicians, bolster the efforts of our community, and save wild steelhead, not just document them or sell products and trips.

Our heroes used to be whoever caught the most fish, but now steelheaders should be boasting just as much - maybe more - about the work they are doing to help.

A guide might post a photo of a client with a big fish one day and then talk about how they and their clients donated to a local habitat restoration the next. Shops could post fishing reports but also post reminders of upcoming deadlines of when public comments are due to fishery managers. Individual steelheaders could share copies of the letter they sent to their local Soil and Water District calling for riparian protections and better cold water management. Fishing clubs could tell the community about an upcoming meeting with their elected representatives to ask for more funding for game wardens to stop poaching.

This work is being done by conservation groups now, and they are still the first place to look for resources and ways to get involved. Together let’s build partnerships with other conservationists, tribes, tackle manufacturers, outfitters, local businesses, and anglers to call attention to the challenges wild steelhead face and push for collaborative solutions.

Let’s get rid of the advertisements and articles that never mention the low run numbers or reinforce the shifting baseline by pretending everything is fine. All they do is provide cover for business-as-usual fishery management and hydropower talking points. Instead, when we talk about wild steelhead, let’s use the experience of being an angler to inspire action and remind each other why we fight to protect them.

Let’s elevate and support managers and politicians when they make the right decisions, but better yet, let’s make steelheaders such a powerful force for restoration that they don’t dare consider any other option.

Coda: A Better Future for Wild Steelhead

This year has seen the worst runs ever recorded for the Columbia Basin and even the mighty Skeena system. Wild steelhead are in a crisis. These terrible numbers need to snap anglers out of complacency

Steelheaders can’t wait for permission to act or hope that someone else will do the work. It is up to us to band together to force our public agencies to make the investments and tough decisions required.

It won’t be easy and the scale of changes needed is immense, but our task is to focus on the ecological needs of wild steelhead and drive recovery using every economic, social, and political tool we can muster. If we do that, then we can build a better future for wild steelhead, the wild rivers of the Northwest, and the generations of steelheaders who will follow us to the water.

Wild steelhead face an emergency today, but their fate isn’t sealed. We see a way forward.

Imagine floating a wild steelhead river during the height of the season some years into the future. A dam has been removed to reconnect the entire watershed. Habitat restoration projects are ongoing throughout the basin. Important sections of the river have been set aside as cold water refuge or as sanctuary to protect steelhead waiting to spawn. Non-native species and hatchery fish have been removed. Downstream, selective commercial fisheries have eliminated bycatch. Upstream, water allocations have been protected to ensure cold water is available.

After decades of decline, and emergency closures, wild steelhead numbers were pulled back from the brink. Population diversity is reestablishing itself as the wild fish regain access to the tributaries of the entire watershed and increasing amounts of restored habitat. Salmon numbers are improving for the same reasons and the entire watershed ecology is benefitting from the accompanying increase in marine nutrients. Impacts from the changing climate make year-to-year fish productivity more uncertain, but the increased population diversity, sanctuaries, and habitat restoration provides crucial resilience for both wild steelhead and salmon runs. Anglers, guides, and tribal fisheries are on the water again. They are fishing a wide variety of methods and operating under transparent, cautious regulations that provide low-impact, sustainable fishing seasons. Monitoring is widespread and management is proactive. When run numbers are weak, flows are too low, or temperatures are too high, managers pause the fishery for the days or weeks needed to protect the fish. Businesses in the local communities are benefitting from the visiting anglers and the routine presence of game wardens has chased away the last poachers.

The steelheaders were crucial advocates for the river’s recovery. They, and the companies who make their waders, jackets, rods, and reels, built a powerful coalition with conservation groups and the region’s tribes to get the dam removed and extensive Federal and State investments in habitat restoration. They pounded on desks and called their legislators and helped fight for policies that reigned in destructive open-ocean commercial fisheries and established permanent baselines for year-round water commitments in the basin.

The anglers have kept vigilant and relentless. They are still showing up to public meetings, contacting elected officials, and supporting the organizations helping to drive the watershed’s recovery. When the steelheaders write about the river, or post about fishing trips on social media, they remind each other of the need to stay involved in its restoration and celebrate the incredible wild steelhead returning each season after they were nearly lost.

Best of all, they are able to raise the next generation of advocates by bringing their children and grandchildren to the river and passing along their love for wild steelhead and cold, free-flowing rivers.