THE GREAT SALMON RECOVERY HOAX. Having faithfully attended the Salmon Recovery Forum meetings for over a

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1 THE GREAT SALMON RECOVERY HOAX Having faithfully attended the Salmon Recovery Forum meetings for over a decade, and despite all the effort, as near as I can tell, we have recovered nothing. Lots of money has been spent on replacing culverts (that were passing fish just fine) and placing large woody debris in streams already clogged with wood. As we checked some of our smaller streams after the recent snowstorm, there are countless trees, limbs, stumps and assorted chunks of wood everywhere. The salmon recovery program couldn t add this much wood in several decades. In a nutshell, we don t need anymore wood in our rivers and small streams. On February 20, 2012, the historic film Thomas s Eddy in the Golden Years was shown at the Snohomish Sportsmen s Club meeting by John Bruce. This film was taken half a century ago by Gary Ramberg. The movie featured a number of anglers now gone, some for many years. Only a handful of us who were there remain. The film could be called The Golden Age of Steelheading for many fish were landed and many were hatchery fish. Countless anglers fished other famous holes on the Snohomish River such as Riverview, the Picnic Bar, the Douglas Bar, the Crabb Bar, Daxon s

2 and Porters. Large December fish were common and we have,many photos of them including several from the Pilchuck River. Rip-rap is a horrible word to the people in charge of the salmon recovery effort but in the Ramberg Film, the far bank at Thomas s Eddy was all riprapped in a graceful curve. Having spent decades in the area, and studying juvenile salmon migration to the sea, we have observed great schools of small downstream migrants hugging the rip-rap. If a predator cutthroat or dolly comes after them, they dart into the crevices. My friend Jim Mighell, a retired National Marine Fisheries Biologist, told me of a study they did from 1962 through 1965 on the Naches River in which they electro fished for Chinook pre smolts and some coho and steelhead and found up to three times as many pre smolts along the rip-rap as in the rest of the river. We are not calling for a large use of rip-rap, but only a reasonable application of rock to keep our streams in a winding course which creates great habitat and to also protect peoples property. For years I urged the Corp of Engineers to rock Don Britton s field above the Riverview Bar but they did nothing. The result was the loss of the Riverview Bar, the washing away of several acres of prime farmland, the Snohomish Lowell Road and finally the creation Norwegian Bay which closed the road for several years.

3 Crooked rivers break the current and create wonderful recreational opportunities. (Mel Vannetti, a dairy farmer who lived downstream from the Riverview Bar, told me he took his milk to the Darigold Plant in Snohomish in his rowboat when the river flooded as the Snohomish valley was a lake.) I describe the Riverview Bar in great detail in my book Snohomish, My Beloved County---An Angler s Anthology. Anyone who had the pleasure of fishing or picnicking on this magnificent sandbar will forever treasure the memories. Over 40 years have flown since the Riverview bar vanished and words cannot express the enormous loss. Most old timers who fished there are long gone, but a few of us remember the sturgeon that would surface and send waves from shore to shore, the huge Tyees (Chinook) that would make huge splashes and the wonderful steelhead and salmon fishing. The water was over 50 feet deep in one spot at Riverview. Yes, I remember Riverview! The Schwarzmiller Farm is perhaps the most beautiful place on the Pilchuck River and is a classic example of pastoral beauty. It was rip-rapped in a gentle curve several decades ago and willows grow all along the rip-rap providing shade. This is an excellent steelhead spawning area. During my January 3, 1979 interview with baseball immortal Earl Averill, he mentioned how a group of anglers took 34 winter steelhead in one day from this drift before the Game Department was formed.

4 Tucked away in the Snohomish Sportsmen s Club archives is information no one else has. We possess many old documents and catch and fish planting records. For example: our club held a steelhead contest from 1954 through the year When the Pilchuck runs declined, we no longer held the event. The Pilchuck s December giants became rather scarce due the use of gill nets. (IF YOU DON T KNOW HISTORY, YOUR SALMONID RECOVERY EFFORT IS IN A WORLD OF HURT.) For the past 22 years, the salmon recovery effort, now known as Sound Salmon Solutions, has been focused on habitat and my hat is off to them for trying. Some of us have been trying for over 60 years with little luck. Some of our recent failures include the loss of Myricks Fork of Cemetery Creek, the loss of the upper ¾ of Cemetery Creek, the loss of Anderson s Fork of Cemetery Creek, the loss of Williams Creek due to development in the headwaters and gravel removal in the lower end (steelhead were still using this creek in 1974) the draining of East Hewitt Pond (Lake 205) due to development and degradation in the Kuhlman s Creek watershed and the replacing of a functioning culvert, the Czubin s Creek fiasco of replacing two fish passing culverts with two new ones costing $150, and in so doing, creating fish impasses just upstream, the Creswell Creek disaster replacing fish passing culverts with new ones, the removal of the concrete

5 fish ladder on the Forest Glade Tree Farm Pond which was put in by a previous salmon recovery effort and building a log filled channel that reduced the size of the pond and cost a small fortune, the wiring of logs together that allowed the beavers to build two huge dams blocking fish migration (we checked only two coho in this area in 2010 and none in 2011.) the failure to lower the huge beaver dam in the Bunk Foss Creek watershed that blocks salmon from using the upper three fourths of the stream including Clark s Fork, the loss of over 100 yards of prime coho spawning habitat by putting in a culvert that diverted the little spawning creek on the north side of the Bunk Foss glen directly into Bunk Foss Creek (Sanctioned by the WDFW), the placing of large culverts on a fork of Sanders Creek that is too steep a gradient for coho, and finally, the failure to allow Bill Lund to protect his farmland by not allowing a reasonable use of rip-rap. This is an insult to the intelligence of senior citizens. Yes, as near as I can tell, we have recovered nothing and spent a whole lot of money doing it. It s better to let peoples homes wash down area rivers than to protect them. It s not a perfect world, the salmon recovery program proves it. Will us old great grandfathers quit trying to protect our precious rills? Of course not! We know the answer and it s in our archives of over 70 years ago. PLANT MORE FISH just like Clarence Pautzke did!

6 Bob Heirman For the April 2012 Seniors Paper