Currently browsing… Steelhead
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Handy
By Dean Finnerty My son really wanted this fish. He’d put in a lot of hours standing in the cold, winter flows of an Oregon coastal stream, plying its waters day after day, waiting for that tug. While he had caught steelhead before, when this tug finally came, on the other end was a fish…
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Bringing fish back to Yellowjacket Creek
The Russian River is one of the most famous steelhead fisheries in California. It is also one of the highest priority watersheds for Coho salmon recovery in the Golden State. For many years, TU has worked to support Coho recovery in the Russian River watershed. Our Redwood Empire Chapter has supported this effort through a…
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Protecting Oregon’s steelhead heritage
The legendary Frank Moore, center, with TU's vice president for Western Conservation Rob Masonis (l) and Dean Finnerty, NW Region director for TU's Sportsmen's Conservation Project. Few Oregonians have had a more profound, positive influence on so many people in the Beaver State than Frank and Jeanne Moore. This remarkable couple, whose decades-long efforts to…
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When “yesterday” actually happens today
Matt Jennings and I are standing on the bank of Wisconsin's Root River on an early spring day. And we are plotting. “I think we need to cross down there,” says Jennings, who then starts pointing his fly rod at various spots in the river. “We’ll hit that one first, then that one, and then…
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One fish
A single fish made me really happy recently, and I wasn’t even fishing. To be sure, this was no ordinary fish. It was a brute of a steelhead, as long as my arm and 12 pounds in heft, easy. So perhaps anyone seeing it languidly finning just upstream of the bridge footing nine miles from…
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Just enough
By Chris Wood Fred’s note was unexpected. He was one of the first TU volunteers I met 17 years ago when he was 78 years young. At the time, I wondered who is this cool cat with the white pony-tail and turquoise rings? His note read, “a few months ago our son, Jon, and his…
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Voices from the River: Now I begin
The California coastal stream where the author tried to begin again. By Sam DavidsonThe photos didn’t do justice to the fish. I had been waiting patiently for word from the Steelhead Whisperer, who had spent most of the day on his favorite winter water on the central California coast. But for hours all I heard…