The Blame Game
ON AUGUST 27, Oregon’s Deschutes and John Day rivers were closed to steelhead fishing by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) in response to record-low returns of Columbia Basin summer steelhead. They will remain closed until Dec. 31.
Some anglers agreed with the decision and some didn’t, but everyone seemed to agree that ODFW got it wrong. The closure was viewed as either too strict or not strict enough; too early or too late; illogical, inconsistent, or unfair, and it fueled unrest among antsy two-handers already run off the North Umpqua when ODFW shut it down August 10, due to its summer returns being “about 20 percent of average.”
After the Deschutes decision, steelheaders along the river either went home, switched to trout gear, or quietly wept themselves to sleep in their rented $90-a-night teardrop. But a few shared their thoughts publicly, including Mark Bachmann, owner of The Fly Fishing Shop in Welches, Ore., who called the closure “a tiny band-aid on a major wound that has been bleeding for at least 100 years,” adding that the move “punishes the least impactful user groups.”
Fourteen-year Deschutes River steelhead guide Jeff Hickman was particularly vocal, going so far as to cancel his entire Lower Deschutes steelhead season on Aug. 20, a full week before ODFW cancelled it for everyone else. He shared his perspective on his Fish the Swing website as well as media outlets like April Vokey’s Anchored podcast and an interview in Hatch magazine. Hickman’s move took guts, and certainly assisted in elevating the story both regionally and nationally. Along the way, he made several strong statements about those charged with protecting our fisheries: “It just seems like our agencies are led by a bunch of cowards too afraid to stick their neck out,” he told Hatch. “I don’t know if everybody is afraid to say something and get fired, or if they’re just too afraid to tell it like it is because that will result in fewer license sales and less revenue for the agency. I mean, their whole budgets are tied to fishing license sales.”
When Hickman joined Vokey on her Aug. 27 podcast, along with David Moskowitz from non-profit The Conservation Angler, he said he wasn’t necessarily cancelling his season because of the low return numbers, but in protest of inaction by ODFW and WDFW managers. “I would love for these managing agencies to tell safe to fish,” Hickman said. “But I have zero faith that they are even caring about it.”