Return Engagement

Dan Ryan remembers a time when trout were biting not far from his San Clemente home.

In the late 1930s and early ‘40s, he could jump in his ’29 Chevy and drive a couple miles south to San Mateo Creek, where he would fish for steelhead, a variety of rainbow trout that spends about half its life in the ocean.

He often pulled out large trout, including a pair of 30-inchers he proudly displays in a yellowing snapshot tucked into the frame of a mirror in his Mission Viejo home.

“It was a good live crick for steelhead,” recalls Ryan, 88.

About 20 miles upstream, near the creek’s headwaters in the Cleveland National Forest, the fishing was even better, Ryan says.

“It was excellent fly fishing. The only problem was it was so damn hot up there. You’d catch a half dozen 12-inch steelhead in the morning and by noon they’d be spoiled in your bag.”

San Mateo fish stories have dwindled to nearly nothing through the years, but the endangered southern steelhead appears to be making a strong comeback in the creek, just south of San Clemente in northern San Diego County.

In the last six months, state biologists have found 40 trout in pools about 12 miles upstream from the ocean. This month, a genetic test confirmed the fish are native steelhead.

It’s a surprising discovery--steelhead were thought to be extinct south of Malibu Creek in northern Los Angeles County--and one that might further complicate the plan to extend the Foothill South toll road.

The route preferred by the Orange County Transportation Corridor Agencies connects to Interstate 5 directly over San Mateo Creek and cuts through the habitat of seven endangered species. The steelhead would make it eight.

The steelhead find might not have been made if not for Toby Shackelford, a 21-year-old Saddleback College student. Last February, Shackelford decided to take his fishing pole on a hike along San Mateo--only to disprove stories his mother had been telling him.

She said her father used to catch trout on the creek in the 1950s. “I said, ‘Yeah right, there’s hardly any water in there,’ ” Shackelford said.

But only a few minutes after throwing his line--baited with cheddar cheese--into a pool several hundred yards inland from Interstate 5, Shackelford pulled out an eight-inch trout.

Shackelford tossed the fish back and went home to apologize to his mother, but didn’t realize the significance of his catch. He later told his environmental studies professor at Saddleback, who called Alex Vejar, a biologist in the San Diego office of the state Department of Fish and Game.

A few weeks later, Shackelford led an expedition to the spot where he caught the fish. The group, which included Vejar, didn’t find any trout but found quite a few nonnative fish, some of which are predators of steelhead. Shackelford felt skepticism from the group.

“I swear I caught one,” Shackelford remembers saying. “I used to live in Seattle. I know what a steelhead looks like.”

Vejar was convinced enough to look farther upstream in areas he knew would be likely steelhead habitat if any were present. That area is on the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base--through which San Mateo Creek flows--so he and assistant Warren Wong got permission to search from the base and found two steelhead.

Since then, 38 more have been found. Two were killed--one accidentally and one for testing purposes--but as of Friday, the three pools where a majority of the known fish reside are still filled with healthy trout, Vejar said.

It’s a beautiful area in a steep canyon with large sycamores and other riparian growth providing shade. But the creek is dry above and below the ponds, so the steelhead are stuck until significant rain falls. The steelhead are at risk if water temperatures rise too high or if oxygen levels drop too low.

Another danger is from nonnative fish, which can be predators of steelhead, competitors for food or both. Vejar, leading the effort to rid the stream of such exotic fish, says nearly 5,000 of one species, the bullhead, have been pulled out of the ponds.

Biologists believe the steelhead are juveniles that hatched during the spring of 1998 after El Nino rains filled San Mateo Creek, providing a path for their parents.

Vejar believes there are likely other fish upstream and in the next several weeks he plans an all-day hike to look for more.

He hopes the effort will help convince the National Marine Fisheries Service to move to protect the San Mateo steelhead. In 1997, the agency listed southern steelhead as endangered, and extinct south of Malibu Creek.

NMFS has been accused of dragging its feet on the subject by environmental and fishing groups. Allen Greenwood of San Diego Trout, a loose-knit group of anglers and conservationists, is frustrated over how the steelhead issue has been handled by both NMFS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“The two federal agencies that are in charge of the wildlife in this area have not done anything to help out,” Greenwood said. “If some little guy does something to violate the Endangered Species Act today, they’d be all over him tomorrow, but on something that’s so important--the rarest steelhead species in the world--they are not doing anything to help.”

Jim Lecky, an assistant administrator in the NMFS’ southwest regional office in Long Beach, said his office is withholding judgment until it receives a report from California Fish and Game.

“If they are steelhead and belong to the Southern California population,” Lecky said, “then they are protected by the Endangered Species Act and we would work to protect them.”

Greenwood and others are pushing for NMFS to declare San Mateo Creek a critical habitat for the steelhead. They are also hoping the state or federal government will fund an effort to rehabilitate the creek, one of the few remaining free-flowing streams in the Southland.

But can San Mateo ever regain its status as a prime fishing spot? Perhaps. Drought plays a big role in the viability of the fish--biologists believe the long-term dry spell from the late ‘40s to the late ‘70s drove down populations.

“It’s really hard to say,” Vejar said. “Nature itself is unpredictable at times and just to have them back is pretty exciting.

“But the more help they get from people who are willing to restore the creek, the better chances of it happening sooner.”