On Mar 2, 1:21*pm, DaveS wrote:
On Mar 1, 8:59*pm, MajorOz wrote:



Congratulations. *Makes me (almost) wish I were back there. *Glad to
see there are still a decent number of steelhead getting up the river.
I have heard some horror rumors about walleye in some "lakes" behind
the dams getting to smolts and young steelhead. *Any truth to that?

More in the Tuncannon than the Touchet. The guys who really know
dryside steelhead on this forum are Bob W. and JR. *RW seems to have a
handle on the trips in Idaho. Maybe as the political **** calms these
guys will post. It would also be good to get some TR reports on the
Coastal rivers in WA and ORE.

Don't know about the walleye thing. Never caught a walleye, don't fish
lakes much, in fact cannot recall fishing a "real" lake in the last
4-5 year4s. Yesterday i did fish an old sal****er log pond running out
the low tide into Blakely Harbor. One take in the spill pool but then
zip.

What predates on what is a real tangle and what intros do to the
fishing opportunities versus saving indigenous strains is a whole
nudder lebel. Example; when i was a kid my home waters were Farrington
lake and the string of mill ponds along the Lawrence brook, a fresh to
salt trib of the Raritan River in New Jersey. At the top of the quarry
were LM Bass, but the real excitement were the native Eastern Chain
Pickerel, the largest of which grow in the garden State. Pork rind
frogs tossed with my father's Majestic bamboo fly rod from a home
built kayak/Barnegat Sneak-box. *Vicious, sharp toothed predators,
found in the Lilly pad/pickerel weed back corners of the ponds and
lake, sure to feed my confidence that I could survive as a north-woods
trapper when high school was over and I left my rural Jersey home,
even then in its death struggle with sprawl.

Now, someone introduced Northern Pike to Farrington Lake. They have
flourished to the extant that a Pike from the lake is now the State
record and . . . you know next time i get back there i want to chase
em. And in case someone says, "...well big deal, that Jersey, blah
blah...." Well i can assure you that fishing is still taken very
seriously in jersey and a lot of work and money goes into keeping a
lot of choice fisheries viable.

I guess there is no easy answer (native vs intro) except maybe that
wouldn't it be special if we could have it all ways; save the natives,
optimize the ops.

Dave

I agree. If we could have the best of both worlds without the ****
from either.......
For instance, it would seem that the coastal Oregon rivers would be
ideal habitat for smallmouth bass, but would raise hell with the
natives. I have caught a number of stripers from the Umpqua and it
doesn't seem to affect the salmon.
It is hard to tell, in advance, if an intro species will hurt a
native. Rainbows and Browns haven't seemed to hurt natives in the
Rockies. But I wouldn't want to see them come into the Donner and
Blitzen river running off Steens Mt. in Oregon, where there is redband
cutthroat.

Crystal ball?

cheers

oz, doing tailwater later this week