HIGH WATER WILL CHALLENGE AGLERS' SKILLS

Dick Mason

The Observer

Rivers are the original forest highways, wrote naturalist Edwin Way Teale — highways that in Northeast Oregon are now flowing like nature's equivalent of the Autobahn, the high-speed German road network.

Area rivers and streams are swollen and flowing with unseasonable swiftness because of the heat wave of last week.

The sizzling weather accelerated melting of the mountain snowpack, causing rivers to rise and accelerate, bad news for anglers on the eve of the Saturday season opener for trout fishing in Northeast Oregon rivers and streams.

"There is way too much water,'' said Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Brad Smith of Enterprise.

Early this week the average flow was double what it normally is at this time of year in the Imnaha, Wallowa and Lostine rivers, Smith said. The pace has since slowed but is still significantly faster than it usually is at this time of year.

Fast-flowing water has fish looking for places to escape from the turbulence, making them harder to catch, said Nadine Craft, a La Grande ODFW biologist.

"They want to cut behind a big rock or log and hold,'' Craft said.

The fast-moving water also hurts anglers by producing turbidity. The cloudy water makes it harder for fish to feed and, of course, to see bait. Trout rely on sight when feeding, Smith said.

The turbidity will not hurt trout survival, though, since streams should return to normal in less than a month, Smith said.

The Upper Grande Ronde River is one of the only stretches of stream in Union and Wallowa counties not adversely affected by the early runoff. The Upper Grande Ronde is fed by the melting of a lower snow pack, and experiences its high-water mark earlier in the year, Craft explained.

Most Northeast Oregon lakes and ponds opened for fishing April 22. The opening of rivers and streams is delayed about five weeks to allow steelhead and salmon smolts time to begin migrating to the ocean. Most have made it to the Columbia and Snake rivers by now.

Smith said that years ago rivers opened for fishing in late April and steelhead and salmon smolts felt the impact. Most of the fish caught in rivers were 7-to-8 inch steelhead smolts.

Today anglers still catch a number of small steelhead when river fishing season opens each year in late May. Biologists don't mind, though, since these smolts are considered residual steelhead that will not migrate to the ocean. Smith said it is good to harvest these fish because they can have a negative affect on native and hatchery steelhead going to and returning from the ocean.

To encourage the harvest of residual steelhead, regulations limit anglers to fin-clipped trout in some portions of Wallowa County. Fin-clipped trout are actually steelhead that never went to the ocean. The areas where anglers are limited to fin-clipped trout are:

• the Grande Ronde River from the state line to Rondowa

• the Imnaha River from the mouth to Big Sheep Creek

• the Wallowa River from the mouth to Rock Creek

Rivers in Union and Wallowa counties are not stocked with trout since they could have a negative impact on steelhead and salmon in the rivers, Smith said.

Fishing conditions in Northeast Oregon rivers should improve significantly by mid-June, Smith said. This is when river levels in this region usually fall to their base level.