We love all steelhead here at Wild Steelheaders United and Trout Unlimited, but some anadromous O. mykiss populations may deserve more love than others. Consider wild summer run steelhead in Northern California. The available data for wild summers between Redwood Creek and the Gualala River (including the legendary Eel River watershed) suggest their numbers are greatly
Herman Garcia (L) of CHEER and Matt Clifford, California Water Attorney for Trout Unlimited, at an off-stream storage project site along Little Arthur Creek. In 2006, the Pajaro River on California’s central coast came out of obscurity to make national headline—for the wrong reason: it was named the most endangered river in America. Historically, the
This graphic of a tributary to the Eel River shows the intense marijuana cultivation typical of many drainages in California’s Emerald Triangle. The large red circles indicate outdoor grows of more than 100 plants and the pot farms in this drainage alone require more than 15 million gallons of water per growing season. By Matt
Photo: The Steelhead Whisperer and his daughter on California’s Big Sur River. I spent Father’s Day this year not fishing. That was fine with me, though. My son was with me and we were at 7,500 feet in the Sierra Nevada range, where winter had not yet gathered up all of her train. And we
Trout Unlimited is working along the south-central coast of California to recover native steelhead runs, largely by restoring habitat and enhancing fish passage and dry season streamflows through cooperative partnership projects with landowners and agricultural operators. Steelhead are listed as Threatened in this region. On Pennington Creek near San Luis Obispo, TU completed a major
Land acquisition, conversion to regional park land, dedication of irrigation water to the Carmel River The Carmel River on California’s central coast is a native steelhead stronghold, but dams and a steady increase in diversions and pumping have contributed to a drastic decline in adult steelhead returns. Recently, two of three dams on this river
The Mill Creek Dam Fish Passage Project dramatically improves access for native coho salmon and steelhead to more than eleven miles of high quality spawning and rearing habitat in a key tributary to California’s Russian River. TU and a variety of partners completed construction on this project in October 2016. Adult coho salmons returns in the Russian
