A River Comes Back : After Pesticide Spill, Sacramento Continues Long Rehabilitation

When the reel screamed and the rod looped and the fish took flight through the cool, swift river, Jack Trout became oblivious to everything around him.

The only thing that mattered for the young man standing waist-deep in water was the battle.

And it was a battle handled beautifully by the Mt. Shasta guide who, because of his fondness for the fish, goes by the surname Trout instead of his real name, Rhode.

“My father and his friends called me Little Trout and the name just stuck, so . . .”

Jack Trout turned with every turn of the fish, giving it no slack, and after a minute or so he had before him a lean, brown trout measuring about 17 inches.

“If you notice, along the lateral line of the fish, it’s like God took this big red paint brush and just went REEEDDD,” the guide said, pointing to the streak of color on the fish he held gently in his palms. “It’s just beautiful.”

Equally beautiful, in the eyes of its captor, was the way the fish darted off to safety after being set free.

Jack Trout, always in search of a big fish he calls Walter--as did Henry Fonda in “On Golden Pond”--whipped his fly back into the river and waited for another strike.

The sun shone, hawks flew, squirrels and chipmunks scurried.

The serenity was soothing.

But then came the distant roar of a freight train barreling down the river-side tracks, horn blowing.

Trout cringed.

To him, and to anyone else associated with the Upper Sacramento River, that sound is a jarring reminder of that all-too-memorable day in July 1991, when a Southern Pacific train derailed on the Cantara Loop, spilling 19,000 gallons of pesticide into the river, a chartreuse plume of poison that killed virtually everything in its path until it finally dissipated in Shasta Lake, 38 miles downstream.

More than a million fish, along with birds and other small animals, littered the river’s banks.

“It just really gives me a sickening feeling to think about it,” said Trout, 26, who grew up fishing the Sacramento and nearby McCloud rivers.

Four years have passed, however, and those in the fishing community aren’t as bitter as they once were. Southern Pacific has paid millions in compensation and the river has bounced back beyond everybody’s expectations.

Its banks are lined with lush habitat. Its cool, clear water again accommodates otters and mink and all the other critters that thrived here before the spill.

And trout, browns and rainbows, are rapidly turning the Upper Sac, as it is called, into one of the country’s premier wild-trout fisheries.

“We’re pleasantly surprised,” said Steve Turek, an environmental specialist with the Department of Fish and Game who helped lead the recovery team. “I don’t think anybody really expected it to get back as quickly as it has. We’re expecting really good things this year.”

Good things? To hear Jack Trout talk, great things are happening already.

“The fishing is so fantastic,” he said. “In the evenings, the dry fly fishing here is unbelievable. I’ve had 40-fish days.”

Perhaps, but Turek said the trout population, thriving though it may be, is only about half what it was before the spill. Pre-spill estimates had 6,700 to 8,800 trout per mile. Last year’s estimates, based on snorkeling surveys, put the population at about 3,400 fish per mile.

The fish emanated from wild stocks that were in the two-mile section of river above the spill site.

“Another thing that saved us was the numerous tributaries that flow into the river that weren’t affected by the spill,” Turek said. “What we saw the year after the spill was recruitment of four- to eight-inch fish that came out of the tributaries. We just steadily watched as the population climbed.”

But the road to recovery may yet have some bumps.

Regulations are up for their two-year review this summer, which could lead to a change in the way the river will be managed next year.

Public proposals are pouring into DFG headquarters and, although they have yet to be reviewed, not all of them will be in favor of the current management policy, which was imposed before the 1994 season, the first fishing season since the spill.

Those regulations, highly protective, call for catch-and-release and barbless hooks only in the upper six miles of river, with no stocking of hatchery fish; a five-fish limit with barbless hooks only in the six miles of river in the Dunsmuir area, and catch-and-release only with barbless hooks and no stocking in the remaining 22 miles, down to Shasta Lake.

Such strict measures are in large part responsible for the recovery of the fishery. Hatchery-raised trout, experts agree, tend to displace wild trout and create a level of stress in the wild fishery.

But some of the locals, and they are supported by some government offices and tourism agencies, want the river the way it was before the spill, when hatchery trout were stocked along most of the river, primarily around campgrounds. Then, families could sit on the bank, soaking bait, and catch their limits regardless of what stretch of river they were on.

They also say that bait fishermen easily outnumber fly fishermen and that the local communities have suffered financially because the regulations have prompted bait and catch-and-keep fishermen to go elsewhere.

The DFG will review all the proposals and, based on public input, make a recommendation to the Fish and Game Commission, which will announce the new regulations--if there are any changes--this fall.

“We want the regulations back the way they were,” said John Fisher, the past president of the Dunsmuir Chamber of Commerce who is actively involved in community affairs. “An 8-year-old kid isn’t going to catch a fish on this river the way things are. This is a family river. It always has been. The chamber has not budged on that.”

Said John Reginato, a consultant for the Shasta-Cascade Wonderland Assn., a group that promotes tourism in northeast California, “I was born on this river, I learned how to swim here, to fish and camp out here. My way of thinking is, and we have lots of support, that the river should be restored to what it was before the spill.

“The kids of parents who live on the river and in the community, they don’t fly-fish. Fly fishermen make up only 8% of those who fish the river. It’s always been a family-oriented fishing stream. The fly fishers are trying to set it aside as a catch-and-release stream, and it’s never been that type of stream. We used to be able to use bait and keep fish if we wanted.”

Fly fishermen, on the other hand, say that since the river is en route to becoming a world-class wild-trout fishery, it should continue on that course.

Allowing people to keep fish throughout the river would deal a serious blow to the fishery. Allowing them to use bait, which is usually swallowed and not lip-hooked as is usually the case with lures and flies, could also be a detriment to recovery. The mortality rate of released fish caught on lures and flies is 3%-5%, compared to 30%-60% for fish caught on bait, Turek said.

“What we have now seems to be working,” said Jim Edmondson, executive director of California Trout, a conservation group composed almost exclusively of fly fishermen. “We’re headed in the right direction. The river is 50% recovered and our initial objective is, don’t design any long-term changes until we get the river fully recovered.”

Fly fishermen and bait fishermen never really did get along. Bait fishermen have been accused of being too simplistic in their thinking, and fly fishermen have been accused of snobbishness.

Turek refused to speculate on what the DFG’s position might be, but he seemed to be leaning for leaving the current regulations in place for two more years.

“The Upper Sac is just one of those special cases where it’s extremely productive and right now, with the current regulations, we have a six-mile reach stocked for bait fishermen and the rest is an area where the wild trout can continue to thrive,” he said.

Said Jack Trout, “Life at its best is a compromise. I’m not a fly-fishing advocate, I’m a wild-trout advocate.”

He walked to an area beneath the California Conservation Corps foot bridge and, before an audience of about a dozen, cast his fly. And caught a trout.