THE FISHING REPORT

The steelhead season could be over on the Russian River? Friday
marked the first good opportunity to float the river from
Healdsburg down and 19 boats took advantage. There were a lot of
very experienced fishermen on the water that day. The total catch
for those 25 anglers on the 12-mile run and over 8 hours fishing
was 3 fish landed and 2 were “Downers.” There were another 40-50
bank anglers and I heard of no fish hooked. Yikes!
“What is going on?” was the question posed by most everyone. The
conditions were good with over 2 feet of visibility. The Army Corps
insists on releasing 250 cfs from Coyote Dam which is muddying the
waters all the way down to almost Cloverdale. But by the time the
water gets down to Healdsburg it is good enough to fish. None of
the “old timers” can remember a season where the river was this
clear with this amount of water and that is because the Army Corps
is doing things just a little differently this year. In past years,
they would get to the bottom of their pool and then release 125
cfs, slowly encroaching while waiting for the next storm systems.
This year they are releasing 250 cfs, which allows them to hold on
to the elevation but it is really messing up the entire river
system.
I am not sure that regardless of how much water they release,
that the fish are there. To date, at Warm Springs a total of 671
fish have returned. 185 fish returned last week.  By comparison,
last year-to-date, they had counted 353, so things are definitely
looking better. But the rub is that they release 300,000 smolt from
the Warms Springs facility alone. A total return rate of 1%, or
3000 for the season, is normal, and at this time of year, we should
have gotten well over 2000 fish at the Warm Spring’s facility
alone. The Coyote facility is typically good for another 2000 per
year based on their 200,000 smolt released.
Ocean conditions have been blamed for the salmon down turn and
certainly those same conditions have affected the steelhead. My
unscientific opinion is that the fish that went out to sea in ‘07
and ‘08 starved to death. The ocean conditions improved in ‘09, and
that is why we are seeing a lot of 4-6 pound fish. These are the
two-year-olds released in ‘09. 2011 should see a significant
improvement in the returns of steelhead and salmon to the Russian
River. What is interesting to note is that the returns for rivers
north are very robust. The line of demarcation seems to be the
Mendocino County line in that the Gualala seems to be experiencing
a lower than normal count, and the Garcia River, just 20 miles
north, is having a good year. The Eel River last week has been
phenomenal and the Smith has been very steady all season.
On February 25th, the DFG is going to have a public relations
meeting on whether there should be an ocean salmon season or not.
The meeting will be held at the Sonoma County Water Agency and they
will take public comment.  Please don’t expect your opinion to make
a difference because this is still a political decision, but if you
must vent, this is your chance. If you go, please mention my
opinion that the salmon populations have declined ever since we
stopped fishing for them. It is high time we get back to ocean
salmon fishing and return the stocks to where they need to be.
For More Fishing reports or information, please contact Hunt
Conrad at Prospect Mortgage in Healdsburg, 431-9715.