THE OUTDOORS : DFG Searches for Trout Sites : Setting Aside Special Protected Areas Becoming Controversial Annual Issue

At a recent meeting of the Federation of Fly Fishers, Southwest Council in Pasadena, John Deinstadt of the Department of Fish and Game reported that a certain stream had improved its population of wild trout to one of the best in the state.

“Don’t tell anybody!” came a cry from the back of the room.

Everybody laughed, but the comment spoke volumes about a philosophical conflict affecting every freshwater fisherman in the state: Where and how he can fish.

The more sophisticated fishermen would like to keep some of the better waters to themselves. Those just out to catch ‘em and cook ‘em with bait or lures are essentially barred from 484 1/2 miles of streams designated as either wild trout, catch-and-release-only, or a combination of the two.

That means fishermen may use only artificial flies and, in most cases, may keep fewer than the normal 10-fish limit--sometimes zero--and only those over a certain size.

It also means those streams are not stocked with hatchery fish, but are managed to maintain a population of bigger native “trophy” fish.

Thus, certain sections of a few select streams have been reserved for those fishermen who practice the sport on a higher plane. They are there for the sport, not to fill the frying pan.

Right now, there’s plenty of water for everybody, but some alarms are sounding.

The wild trout program started in 1968 with an experiment along 3 1/2 miles of Hat Creek in north-central California. It was so successful that the practice became DFG policy in the early 1970s and later became a mandate with passage of the Trout and Steelhead Conservation Management Act of 1979, authored by former State Sen. Bob Wilson (D-San Diego).

The law requires the DFG to add 25 miles of stream and 1 lake every year to the program--a noble, politically attractive plan in the cause of conservation, except to those who have been taking limits of fish home from that lake or those 25 miles of stream all their lives. The DFG is sensitive to that, too.

“Almost every stream has a constituency,” Deinstadt said. “Maybe you and your son have been fishing that stream with bait for 30 years, and then we say you can’t do that anymore. (Also), it’s a lot harder to come in with a lake than a stream. If it’s a roadside lake, it may have a resort on it, a boat livery.

“I anticipate there will be backlashes. When bait and family anglers see that we’ve taken 25 miles of stream that they’ve enjoyed and a lot fewer people are using it, they have a kick--and I think they should kick.

“So if we’re gonna do that, we want to offer something better than what was there before. We want to keep the whole thing in balance.”

There is another potential downside. Inevitably, operating under the mandate, the state would someday run out of prime fisheries and have to settle for less.

Keith Anderson, a Long Beach-based fisheries biologist who guided the program in its early stages, said, “When we have a mandate like that, there’s a tendency to recommend marginal streams, and that tends to downgrade the whole program.”

The primary criteria for a wild trout stream are that it has to be on land accessible to the public and have an adequate fish population to provide attractive numbers and size of fish. The DFG people scout the state’s waters, looking for the best to recommend each year.

“We’re usually working 5 to 10 streams a year, trying to come up with the 25 miles, and that’s just on the major streams,” Deinstadt said. “We’ll never get around to some of the little ones.”

“We’ve already taken the best streams that aren’t real hard to find. We’re down now to having to do a lot more work. We can put 7 of those 10 streams in next year, but the total mileage is not 25 miles.”

Ideally, the DFG likes to collect baseline data on a given fishery over 3 years, gauging its ups and downs, since few waters perform the same every year. Crews are out year-round, in ice and snow or the heat of summer, wading streams with electro-shocking devices to momentarily stun the fish and bring them to the surface to be counted and sized.

When finished, they take their recommendations to the Fish and Game Commission, the five members of which are appointed by the governor.

“The commission doesn’t have to accept any of our recommendations,” Deinstadt said, “but we are required to come in and recommend that many miles.”

Historically, the commissioners follow the recommendations of the DFG’s field people. But the commission also must consider the wishes of the fishermen, so it has the DFG conduct surveys.

The DFG is considering recommending 2 stream sections to add to the 4 Southern California fisheries already designated as wild trout streams: a section of the Kern River between the Fairview Dam and Johnsondale Bridge above Kernville, and a part of Piru Creek where it flows out of Pyramid Lake near Interstate 5.

Currently, Southern California has only 55 1/2 miles of the state’s wild trout streams.

In 1987, an organization called the Kern River Fly Fishermen asked the DFG to designate the 3-mile strip for wild trout, developing a proposal that would: “stop further stocking of domesticated strains of trout in a selected reach of stream. In the place of stocked trout, resident wild trout and possibly native trout introduced from upstream stock would maintain the fishery through natural reproduction. In this way the native strain’s inherent characteristics to survive in the river could potentially produce the desired trout fishery.”

In a preliminary draft of a management plan, then, the DFG noted, “Many of the anglers fishing the river do so as part of family vacations . . . (and) probably do not prize the experience of catching a wild trout over that of a hatchery reared rainbow trout . . .

“If the readily caught and artificially abundant stocked trout were replaced by lower densities of wild trout, the success of many anglers now fishing the stream could drop to an unsatisfactory level.”

In a detailed mail-in survey by the DFG, only 159 anglers responded overall, and only 111 responded from the section of stream in question. Among those, however, 29 of the 34 fly fisherman surveyed (85.3%) approved the plan, compared to only 27 of the 77 (35%) of the bait and lure anglers.

The DFG report concluded: “Support . . . is divided . . . Recognizably, the sample is limited. However, if the decision to adopt the proposed management program were dependent on this survey alone, support from the majority of anglers using the area would be lacking.”

The DFG surveys also have served an important purpose in establishing where the most and biggest fish are--a boon to all fishermen.

For example, of the 2 most populated streams in Southern California, Bear Creek, which flows out of Big Bear Lake and eventually into the Santa Ana River, has been calculated to have more than 4,500 fish per mile. They are almost all brown trout, while Piru Creek has about 4,400, but all rainbow. Also, most of Bear Creek’s fish are longer than 8 inches and a good number are over 10, while Piru has only a few over 8.

Studies are still being done on the Kern, but Lon Gentry of the Kern River Fly Fishermen said, “We need wild trout designation to keep the population up.” In other words, they need it to prevent the stream from being fished out of native trout.

The DFG also is sensitive to that prospect.

WILD TROUT STREAMS

1-Upper Klamath River 2-Upper Sacramento River 3-McCloud River 4-Fall River 5-Hat Creek 6-Manzanita Lake 7-Yellow Creek 8-Middle Fork Feather River 9-Nelson Creek 10-North Fork Yuba River 11-Milton Lake 12-Truckee River 13-Martis Creek Reservoir 14-North Fork American River 15-Rubicon River 16-Heenan Lake 17-East Fork Carson River 18-Middle Fork Stanislaus River 19-Kirman Lake 20-East Walker River 21-Clavey River 22-Merced River 23-McCloud Lake 24-Hot Creek 25-Crowley Lake 26-Owens River 27-South Fork Merced River 28-San Lorenzo River 29-Kings River 30-South Fork Kings River 31-Carmel River 32-North Fork Tule River 33-Cottonwood Creek 34-Sespe Creek 35-West Fork San Gabriel River 36-Deep Creek 37-Bear Creek