I’m calling it the first in what I hope to be a long stream of tasty tidbits, given CalTrout has announced in their Streamkeeper’s Log that both Hat Creek and Fall River will be the recipients of some overdue ecosystem love …
Given that I lived, fished, and guided the area for a couple of decades, I can attest to what a unique and challenging fishery it used to be – how there’s no parallel for it this side of a bevy of well known Montana spring creeks, and perhaps this time we’ve learnt our lesson and are prepared to treat the creek with a bit of proper reverence …
Having spent a couple of undistinguished seasons as the CalTrout Streamkeeper for Hat Creek, with most my time pointing wardens at poachers, watching both disappear in a cloud of dust, and educating innocent folks that failed to read the forty-seven signs suggesting bait was not allowed on a “Single Barbless Artificial Only” resource, I figure a couple of cents worth of advice has been earned … just for old times sake.
While the managed trophy stretch of Hat Creek is three miles long, in its historical flavor – only a mile consistently holds fish.
Sediment blown into the creek from the Baum-Hat Canal sidewall blowout delivered a watershed killing load of sediment from which the creek was never able to recover. The Carbon Bridge flat water (pictured above) and similar slow moving stretches had their life-giving weed beds inundated with a sediment load that stifled all the bug life, removed all fish cover, and the population of large fish vanished.
Hat Creek is regulated by the flows from Powerhouse #2 – and cannot rid itself nor scour the stream bottom clean as its water level never varies. Some of the work they’re doing on the Colorado River might be worth noting – how they’re intentionally scheduling deluges from the dam to free the streambed of accumulated sediment. Opening the dam valve and releasing water down Hat Creek’s ancestral streambed might be assisted by the spillway just above the Powerhouse, but the far bank has already eroded with emergency releases and would need to be covered with concrete or something resistant to an extreme surge of water.
Cover the far side with a protective membrane, then divert the creek through that emergency spillway that bypasses the Powerhouse and let that uncontrolled jet of water work some magic.
With fish holding in only a single mile, you’ll be doing the same with anglers, parking, and foot traffic. Once the magazines are blaring your successes to the masses touting your success with both fish and habitat, you’ll have hideous erosion issues. Muskrat burrows undermine most of upstream banks – and all those arriving anglers will be equipped with sticky rubber soles with hiking cleats – and those cleats are considerably more destructive than flat bottomed felt, and they’ll rip that soft bank out by the ton as they scramble into and out of the Powerhouse #2 Riffle.
We tore out a hundred feet of that bank using flat felt soles – cleated rubber is likely to be many times that …
The boulders and rip-rap you’ve put at the parking areas and the Powerhouse riffle is a great first step, but so long as the anglers concentrate only in a narrow area, rather than the full three miles of creek you’re offering, you need to plan for the worst possible case of foot traffic and nothing less.
Perhaps you’d consider a ban on wading anglers?
That’s a bold move.
It may be time for such drastic thinking, given that a competent caster should be able to do quite well on the open grassy plains that dominate the water above the 299 bridge.
In this day and age of wader-borne nasty, why not point at invasive species and let them shoulder the outcry and blame for wading restrictions? We’ve been primed by conservation organizations and vendors alike harping on how our collective unclean is destoying the world’s best fisheries. Copy the SIMM’s model, claim how much you’re thinking of the future – yet you’re solving plenty of now in the process.
Just saying is all, it’s worthy of some thought.
Clearing the upper half of trapped sediment can be matched only by making the stretch between the 299 Bridge Park and the Britton Weir hold fish. You tossed a couple handfuls of pebbles into the creek years ago – and that was simply not enough. The rocks weren’t big enough to make fish linger past the six inch mark – and while it was a good idea, the ROI never materialized.
You’ve got the better part of a mile of monotone current, twelve to thirty-six inches deep without any cover or underwater features outside of bank shade. Why not down some of those dead trees that litter the area – and drag them into the creek?
Most of the forest below the 299 bridge was crisped in a forest fire a couple years ago, and while the pine was logged, the owners left all the trash wood still standing, that dead timber is likely free for the taking – and you wouldn’t have to drag it more than a hundred yards.
Decay is supposed to be as good a remedy as anything, and thirty to fifty thick pine trees trunks should anchor a lot of fish – as well as add places for your waderless anglers to fish from. Add another big crop of large rocks to trap additional debris and induce some scouring water flows and perhaps you can turn that nondescript featureless cobble bottom into something more conducive to stimulating fish life …
… more importantly you have the ability to spread all those magazine reading anglers out over the full creek, which lessens the severity of all those feet climbing out of one parking lot.
And let’s not poo-poo the “magazine effect” – as articles claiming huge selective fish were available to match wits with is what drew those pilgrims that never set foot outside of the Powerhouse #2 riffle.
Despite their success and sophistication at taming a 12” fish that was still stunned from being caught by the guy next to them, it was the lure of “hard” that drew them – even though they lost their taste for difficult when bested by all those truly selective fatties lolling in the flat water below.
And the hardest lesson of all, that which you failed to learn last time, is that you will never be done – and you’ll never finish this project. Stream restoration is not a sprint, it’s a marathon, and you can’t blow all your cash making a brilliant showpiece – the envy of the entire state – then assume you never have to spend a dime on it again.
You will never be finished. Each success will bring more anglers that will destroy banks, fish, litter parking lots with water bottles, and crap in overflowing toilets. You will have to fund treatments commensurate with the angling pressures and perform more surgeries knowing that each of your successes has yielded some failure in your earlier planning.
There’ll be a ton of folks making a goodly living at your expense, why not insist that guides shoulder some of that fiscal burden – perhaps charging them for the right to take clients to exploit all that hard work?
Twenty bucks contribution per angler would generate enough to staff that parking lot washroom with a sommelier or washroom attendant – or buy a hell of a lot of fry …
… or fund a tank full of Rotenone, a vacuum cleaner, and a couple of chain saws that’ll be the cheap underpinnings of something truly great.
You had it right the first time, unfortunately you didn’t consider the destructive power and uncaring sensibilities of us anglers – who didn’t even have the courtesy to offer the Old Gal a towel once we were done.
Limit the number of anglers and make ’em pay. Simple as that. It needn’t be anything extravagant, but that what they pay for they will value. And limiting angler access will drive up the mystique. Kick the funds back into stream management and riparian upkeep. Most of the water in this country is still free and accessible, and rightly so. But with a population that is increasing exponentially, I see nothing but future problems on any number of streams and rivers. Everyone keeps whining about the demographically decreasing number of fishers out there. Well, maybe so. But there are one hell of a lot more people out there than ever before converging on an ever decreasing resource.
Well I don’t know about paying (though certainly guides should fork over some of their fee) – goes against something.. principal maybe. But restricting numbers, having closed days, a proper close season, making anglers realise the “value” of such a place cannot be a bad thing. Like your post from last year (where you talked about this stretch too?) there should be a balance between actively doing good restoration and allowing recovery by keeping all those hiking cleats the hell away from the creek for certain periods. We gotta learn that we can’t have the pristine whenever we want – else it just doesn’t remain pristine.
Yes, I think that conservation organizations should really think about asserting themselves a bit more. Donating twenty bucks to a worthy cause shouldn’t be a yearly thing, it may be time to do that with each visit.
With the potential for downsizing government, we’ll be getting less funds for habitat restoration – suggesting that for us anglers, if we really insist of fishing “the Good Stuff” – it may be time to pay for it.
If I was a guide whose clientele was based on the lure of a superb fishery, I would have no issue paying for the privilege. Most of my business is the result of a conservation org’s efforts, volunteers, and limited bankroll.
I think it may be time to pay for the privilege of fishing a superb water, to ensure it has a steady stream of funds to pay for the pressures that will result from its being famous…
You cannot run a fishery on grant fundage, as those pots of money are one-time – not the necessary ongoing.
Well I agree with all you say. But still I am uneasy about the “pay to play.” There is no way of means testing this so setting the price of a ticket is tricky if one wants to be inclusive (which one surely should if the water is public access). And limiting or even denying access at certain times is still a good idea as it allows a type of recovery and restoration not possible with a chain saw. But then you run into the twin headed whore of decreasing access and increasing fees. Not an easy balance to find methinks.
It occurred to me that casting and fishing clubs might have a role to play in this with money and volunteerism but it is asking a lot from retirees to live in a trailer beside a pristine trout stream and act as caretaker and warden. However, a special fishing permit required to fish either the creek or the river in addition to a state license is a reasonable solution. This assumes that politicians cannot divert the funds for other purposes and the license would be sold locally. It could even be sun-downed to allow its effectiveness to be evaluated after a reasonable period. This would allow us to add our previous “reasonable” restrictions like: catch and release, single barbless hooks, dry fly only, no wading, casting up-stream only, and add infinitum.
Eccles,
This creek would make a great testbed for a “pay for play” trial. A scant three miles in length, both ends terminate in lakes, which makes it a wonderful testbed.
Truly quality fishing that is sustainable always has at least one limiting factor; usually it’s off the beaten path, private, and only a few anglers can fish it at one time.
Sustainable public fisheries of high quality have never been tried, they’ve always fallen on hard times as the big fish are killed, and left limping along as a shade of their former selves.
What I;m suggesting is that anglers might be able to enjoy the best of both – but in order to do so a SUSTAINABLE funding source is needed, and conservation organizations just don’t have that kind of desire and money.
Pay for play would solve that – to a degree as yet unknown. Hence my desire to test the hypothisis.
@Igneous : I think a license stamp would be ideal, but the fish and game folks may be a bit reluctant knowing they’d have to release one for every body of water.
The idea is sound however the collection is manifest, and anglers would likely be eager to pay some fee to enjoy the bounty of all that conservation work.
Stone Mountain State park is close (90 minutes away) to me and it has a pay to fish area.
http://www.ncparks.gov/Visit/parks/stmo/facilities.php
I’ve not tried it, but I hear it is popular. Very restricted and you have only a certain stretch you can fish.
The Hat Creek fish are specimen rainbows. They are remarkable for their multiple freckles, burgundy gill plates and white highlighted fins.
The stream itself is public access (alone, enough to highly commend it) a great place to listen to quail and fish among the big pine. Hat Creek still has vestiges of the wild: first time my family visited it another family, this one comprised of river otters, surprised us as they swam below the cliffs on the west side.
I fished it enough times to acquire some observations and biases but certainly not enough to attain enlightenment. Maybe you can expand or correct these views.
Relentless pressure has turned the rainbow trout there into browns. Like brown trout the rainbows on Hat Creek avidly rise only in low light. This explains the messy procession of anglers who post up at the Powerhouse Riffle every evening. Lord help you if risers don’t appear at dusk somewhere in your constrained sphere of influence. Angling there is way too constrained, the fish get pounded.
At all times of the day, but especially at dawn as you clamber up the trail from the parking lot along the hill on east side of the creek leading to the Powerhouse you will spot an eroded rock shelf. Posted all over this shelf are rainbows, some of them large. Some of the fish are nymphing but most appear to be securely resting at depth during daylight. More evidence that they aren’t interested in feeding during the day.
One hears stories of people taking advantage of the nocturnal nature of these fish by throwing mice. You wouldn’t do that would you?
Some sort of rotational angling scheme seems warranted to relieve the pressure on the poor harried fish.
Secondly, despite the fly shop hubbub the hatches there are mediocre. This is surely a function of the sediment tongue. Hat Creek is a relatively small stream with tremendous resource values. With more diverse micro habitats the bugs should recover almost immediately. Why not turn the dreaded stream dredging into something positive?
Finally, oy- the bank damage. Here I can’t buy into wading sole chose as ever being a major factor in bank sloughing. But “something” has to be done about the muskrat tunnels. Research from one of California’s fine natural resource schools could be brought to bear on this vexing problem.
The hatches were much better in the late 70’s and 80’s, both daytime and evening were dominated by the PMD and a variant we called the “Creamy Orange” …
As the weeds were covered up, the bugs dwindled – especially the Green Drake, whose hatches in late May didn’t yield a lot of bugs, but every big fish in the river keyed on them the moment they popped.
Carbon would host the occasional “bath tub” sized swirl – causing everyone to search for #4 Olive Humpies, Grasshoppers, or anything the size of your palm. It only occurred at near-dark so the color didnt’ matter as much.
The Brown trout numbers dwindled along with the creek. The best guess at the time was that Brown trout spawned later than Rainbows, and as there was so little spawning gravel in the upper river, the rainbows ruined the brown’s nests.
CalTrout poured a lot of gravel into the creek at the top of the Carbon Bridge stretch – and a couple other locations, but the Powerhouse #2 riffle contained almost all of the gravel above 299.
… and all them feet tromped everything to death.
I have pictures of the Powerhouse #2 cobble covered in October Caddis cases. Try to find one now … they were a victim of all that traffic too.
The lower river still has some – but it doesn’t hold fish except at the Weir stretch, most everything else is too shallow.
… and believe the feet comment. I’ve perched on the Powerhouse pipe above the riffle and counted 120-150 visible anglers during Memorial Day weekend. At it’s heyday the PH2 riffle commanded much of the attention, and 90% of those making the pilgrimage.
Big sediment plumes are almost impossible to remove on flat gradient streams. Not enough stream power to move the load.
Once the weeds are buried most of the hatches invariably disappear.
An unspoken secret is that the Henry’s Fork from the bottom of Box Canyon to Riverside is still suffering from sediment release fiascos from Island Park Reservoir. The correlation between aquatic macrophytes and the Green Drake is a precise one. Last year I revisited the Henry’s Fork for the first time since 1988. A very few drakes emerged from the few scattered pockets that contained some remnant Elodea. Fewer green drakes than pastel-shirted hotshot guides.
Great hatches on the fabled flat waters are getting harder to find.