Steelhead

Re "Frankly, We Have Better Fish to Fry," March 26, Ventura County Life column inspired by the discovery of a dead female steelhead, with eggs, in the fish screen bay at Freeman Diversion Dam on the Santa Clara River. The column is a strange mixture, part cynicism and part empathy. Steve Chawkins states that his first thought on hearing of the dead steelhead was, "I wonder if it was a fry-by" and later that he "wondered who had the tartar sauce." However, he also writes, "I know that restoring the steelhead is a worthy goal."

Steelhead trout once packed the natural pools of Southern California's spawning rivers - that is, until the waterways were transformed into concrete drainage canals in the 1930s to protect the burgeoning flatlands from flooding. The last steelhead in the Los Angeles River was a 25-incher caught off a bridge in Glendale in 1940, two years after that stretch was paved. Today, the region's steelhead population hovers around 500 - 10% of what it was seven decades ago. "The good news is that steelhead are remarkably resilient if given half a chance," Jerry Schubel, president and chief executive of the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, said last week as crews were installing plumbing and temperature controls in an exhibit he said was designed to "reveal some of the secrets of this fish and inspire conservation.

A federal judge on Monday upheld protections for wild steelhead trout in California rivers, rejecting an argument by forestry groups that the success of hatchery-raised steelhead has made the population sufficiently robust. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno disagreed. In his 168-page ruling, he said hatchery-raised fish are no substitute for wild steelhead. Steelhead are listed as either threatened or endangered in different parts of California. In a related claim, the judge also rejected a bid by Central Valley farmers to remove steelhead trout from the federal Endangered Species Act. The farmers pointed to an abundance of resident rainbow trout, steelhead that do not migrate to the ocean.

A federal appeals court panel has ruled that wild steelhead remain an endangered species and rebuffed Central Valley irrigators' efforts to relax federal government protections on the Pacific salmon. Six irrigation districts had challenged the National Marine Fisheries Service decision to list the oceangoing steelhead separately from more plentiful freshwater rainbow trout on the grounds that the two fish interbreed and the steelhead were therefore protected from extinction. Both types of Pacific salmon are born in fresh water, but steelhead migrate to the ocean whereas rainbow trout remain in rivers and lakes.

Steelhead trout once packed the natural pools of Southern California's spawning rivers - that is, until the waterways were transformed into concrete drainage canals in the 1930s to protect the burgeoning flatlands from flooding. The last steelhead in the Los Angeles River was a 25-incher caught off a bridge in Glendale in 1940, two years after that stretch was paved. Today, the region's steelhead population hovers around 500 - 10% of what it was seven decades ago. "The good news is that steelhead are remarkably resilient if given half a chance," Jerry Schubel, president and chief executive of the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, said last week as crews were installing plumbing and temperature controls in an exhibit he said was designed to "reveal some of the secrets of this fish and inspire conservation.

A federal appeals court panel has ruled that wild steelhead remain an endangered species and rebuffed Central Valley irrigators' efforts to relax federal government protections on the Pacific salmon. Six irrigation districts had challenged the National Marine Fisheries Service decision to list the oceangoing steelhead separately from more plentiful freshwater rainbow trout on the grounds that the two fish interbreed and the steelhead were therefore protected from extinction. Both types of Pacific salmon are born in fresh water, but steelhead migrate to the ocean whereas rainbow trout remain in rivers and lakes.

An unusual coalition of interests announced Monday that they are banding together to press for greater protections for steelhead trout, which are fast disappearing from Southern California mountain streams. Calling the fish a wild symbol and indicator of ecosystem health, representatives of the Southern California Steelhead Recovery Coalition met in Los Angeles to raise awareness of the plight of the fish and urge government action to save it. "The Southern California steelhead holds the genetic key to all steelhead populations on the Pacific Coast," Michael Pottorff of San Diego Trout said.

Regarding "Searching for Steelhead and the Past in Malibu Creek" [May 24]: The reason the author couldn't find trout is that after a heavy runoff, all the trout have gone to sea. The Southern steelhead tolerates warm and low water in drought years and being flushed to sea in high-water years. Moderate-flow years allow the fish to return for a spring run. This little-known wonder of Southern California has been given very short shrift. Tony Rezzato Culver City

"Swim!" said the mama fishy, "Swim if you can!" and they swam and they swam, back over the dam. --Lyrics from "Three Little Fishes" by Saxie Dowell, 1939 Jimmy Decker swears that even after the Rindge Dam was wedged into Malibu Canyon in 1926 to create a water supply for the beach colony, the steelhead continued to migrate upstream to spawn. "Those years, we'd get up to 50 inches of rain in one season," Decker, 71, recalls. "The water used to pour over the dam six to 10 feet deep."

Long gone are the days when hotels reserved entire floors for out-of-town fishermen tempted by the thousands of steelhead that could be seen splashing in the Ventura River. So, too, has passed the time when a tourist guide could gush, as one did in 1911, that "a fine stream flows into the ocean at the west end of the city, and from May to October the breakfast tables of Ventura need never go trout-less." Since the 1950s, dams, diversions, mining and pollution have battered the once-bountiful river, from its convergence with Matilija Creek 16 miles north to the brackish lagoon at its mouth near the Ventura County Fairgrounds.

More water may be headed to the Southland and the San Joaquin Valley after a judge concluded Tuesday that a federal agency acted arbitrarily when it imposed pumping limits to protect migrating salmon and steelhead. The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Oliver W. Wanger is the latest development in a tangle of legal challenges to restrictions based on the Endangered Species Act that are cutting water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, east of San Francisco. Wanger sharply criticized some of the scientific rationale for the pumping curbs, but stopped short of jettisoning them, saying he needed more information before deciding on a cure.

They're nearly always pregnant, like the mythical tribbles of "Star Trek" fame. They pass through gullets of fish unfazed. And they could bring disaster to native bugs, frogs and steelhead restoration efforts in the Santa Monica Mountains. New Zealand mudsnails have taken over four watersheds in the Santa Monica Mountains and are spreading fast, expanding from the first confirmed sample in Medea Creek in Agoura Hills to nearly 30 other stream sites in four years. The invasive species, found in many waterways in the U.S. West, the Great Lakes and Canada, reproduces asexually, so "it just takes one to infest a water body," said Mark Abramson, a stream restoration expert for the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission.

Fisheries managers announced Tuesday that they would enhance but not significantly alter the government's current strategy for saving salmon from extinction in the rivers of the Pacific Northwest, drawing criticism from conservationists. The long-awaited review left intact key components of the George W. Bush administration's controversial 2008 "biological opinion," which concluded that salmon could be kept alive on the Columbia and Snake rivers without removing dams or significantly increasing water flows.

A federal judge on Monday upheld protections for wild steelhead trout in California rivers, rejecting an argument by forestry groups that the success of hatchery-raised steelhead has made the population sufficiently robust. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno disagreed. In his 168-page ruling, he said hatchery-raised fish are no substitute for wild steelhead. Steelhead are listed as either threatened or endangered in different parts of California. In a related claim, the judge also rejected a bid by Central Valley farmers to remove steelhead trout from the federal Endangered Species Act. The farmers pointed to an abundance of resident rainbow trout, steelhead that do not migrate to the ocean.

These days large swaths of the once-meandering Topanga Creek are dry and full of dirt and look like a Santa Monica Mountains hiking trail. The cause is a 1,000-foot-long berm that rises up to 30 feet high and disrupts the water's 10-mile path to the ocean. Beginning in the 1960s, residents fearful that heavy rains would swell the creek and flood their homes gradually began to pile on material to interrupt the water flow.

With federal regulators canceling this year's salmon fishing season off California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency and asked the Bush administration to aid the embattled coastal industry. The governor issued a proclamation and dispatched a letter to President Bush asking help in obtaining federal disaster assistance. Meanwhile, he signed a bill by state Sen. Patricia Wiggins (D-Santa Rosa) to fund $5.3 million in restoration projects for salmon and steelhead.

Re "Salmon and Steelhead May Lose Protections," Dec. 1: I see that, at the outset of his legacy term, "the environmental president" is spending some of his hard-earned political capital to expedite the extinction of salmon and steelhead populations on the western coast of the United States. Gregory Fast Oxnard The story indicating the intention of the Bush administration to gut the protected status of the steelhead trout and salmon in California and Washington on the basis of "military necessity" (Dec.

Re "Endangered Steelhead Trout Likely Making a Comeback in O.C. Stream," Dec. 24: Steelhead trout in Trabuco Creek? Not a chance. I have lived in Orange County for 40 years and used to hike and explore the area in Trabuco Canyon where the creek originates. Many years there is absolutely no water in that creek. There may have been a few mudholes with brackish water in them, but no fish -- just flies and a tadpole or two dining on the mosquito larvae. If steelhead were found, they were planted, as I understand they were 8- to 10-inch-long fingerlings.

About 100,000 young steelhead trout have been found dead at a fish-breeding facility, setting back efforts to restore the threatened species. Hatchery workers discovered about 100 adult and 100,000 yearlings floating Friday in the Coyote Valley Dam fish imprinting facility at Lake Mendocino, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

[ONCORHYNCHUS MYKISS] What is a steelhead? Though legendary among anglers along the California coast for its elusive nature and fierce runs when hooked, the steelhead is hard to categorize. Technically, the steelhead is a rainbow trout that migrates to the ocean.