THE ELWHA RIVER was the first body of water I ever fished, doing so in the late 1980s with my namesake uncle, Mike Colton. He was visiting us and his native Olympic Peninsula from his adopted North Carolina after a death in the family.
Uncle Mike was itching for a shot at a salmon, having grown bored of bagging brook and brown trout in the streams that cut through the hills and hollers of Western North Carolina.
So he, my sister and I all headed out and enjoyed a gorgeous day, the perfect example of Pacific Northwest summer weather that justifies our existence and keeps us pushing through long, dark slogs through wet winters.
We all got skunked as our timing was off: too late for the primary thrust of the chinook run and too early for coho, the depleted river’s real claim to fame at that time.
I think it was a pink year, but they weren’t biting either.
My Snoopy rod had nary a nibble that day, but that was fine. Uncle Mike pointed out the first bear scat I had ever seen, we saw a fox slink past through the brush, I got to throw a lot of smooth river rocks (possibly why we were skunked?) and we headed home with an ice cream cone from Granny’s — a day well spent.
Extension needed
Those types of days are over for the Elwha, at least for the next 25 months, and likely longer.
That’s a bummer, but it’s neccessary.
It came as no surprise, with the Elwha Dam removal project having wrapped so recently, but therecreational and commercial fishing moratorium on the Elwha River, a ban which expired March 1, received a 26-month extension late last month.
A fishing moratorium in these waters has been in place since 2011 to protect depleted native salmonid populations, including four federally listed fish species which are needed to re-colonize habitats between and upstream of the two former dam sites.
The Lower Elwha Klallam tribe, Olympic National Park and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife all agreed (a miracle — I kid) to keep anglers of all types out of the recovering river through at least June 1, 2019.
That’s too short a time frame. It’s going to take much longer than eight years of recovery to make up for 80 years as a dammed river.
I doubt harvestable populations of salmon will be present in the river at any point in my lifetime (I’m 35 in June). And that’s not a knock on the dam removal project, or the recovery efforts as biologists work within a veritable 45-mile long Petri dish of habitat.
Mountain lakes in the Elwha basin within Olympic National Park and Lake Sutherland will remain open to sport fishing from the fourth Saturday in April to October 31.
Fisheries biologists recently confirmed upstream passage of adult chinook, sockeye, coho, winter and summer steelhead and bull trout past the former Glines Canyon Dam site.
Those species, as well as pink, chum, and Pacific lamprey, have now been documented upstream of the former Elwha Dam site.
A press release from Olympic National Park discussed the the important role those salmon species are playing in locations upstream of the former Glines Canyon Dam site.
“These early re-colonizers play an important role in establishing spawning and juvenile rearing in habitats of the upper watershed,” the release stated.
“To date, low numbers of Chinook salmon, summer steelhead, and bull trout have been observed as high upstream as the Hayes River confluence.”
The Elwha project partners are annually evaluating spawner abundance, extent of distribution and juvenile production throughout the system using a variety of tools including sonar, redd surveys, radio telemetry, snorkel surveys, smolt trapping and environmental DNA.
Recreational and commercial fishing will resume when there is broad distribution of spawning adults in newly accessible habitats above the former dam sites, when spawning occurs at a rate that allows for population growth and diversity and when there is adequate escapement and a harvestable surplus. The salmon and steelhead populations are expanding into newly opened habitats, but are not yet approaching the recovery objectives.
Monitoring ecosystem recovery in the Elwha is a cooperative effort among the Lower Elwha Klallam, the Park, NOAA Fisheries, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, and state Fish and Wildlife.
Kid’s Fishing Derby
We didn’t have kid’s derby growing up in Port Townsend, no fishable lakes or ponds to speak of within the city, so I wasn’t able to partake in the fun children and parents will enjoy Saturday morning at Lincoln Park.
For full details on Saturday’s derby madness, head to page A5.
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Sports reporter/columnist Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-417-3525 or mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
