Troubled time for TROUT.

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

Trout fishing season opens Saturday in most of Oregon and, for the third year in a row, Eugene-area anglers are faced with subpar prospects.

The litany of recent piscatorial problems has a Biblical ring to it - drought, flood and, now, disease and pestilence.

In April of 2001, anglers worried over the impact drought would have on their sport. Last spring, the McKenzie River - the area's single most popular fishery - was virtually unfishable as it ran as a muddy flood fed by the drawing down of Cougar Reservoir for a construction project.

This year, anglers can anticipate lower-than-normal catches due to heavy mortality from a disease outbreak last summer at Leaburg Hatchery on the McKenzie River.

The hatchery, the biggest producer of legal-size rainbow hatchery trout in the Willamette Valley, saw 60 percent of its production wiped out by a viral plague of "infectious hematopoietic necrosis," or IHN.

"Normally, we have about 700,000 fish on hand just prior to opening day," Leaburg Hatchery manager Tim Wright said. "This year we have only 300,000."

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife officials were able to make up some of the loss by juggling production schedules and allotments at other hatcheries and by purchasing 38,000 trout from a private hatchery.

But the bottom line is there will be fewer hatchery fish available to catch in area waterways during the 2003 season.

"The overall numbers will be down about 30 percent or so," said Jeff Ziller, the ODFW's district fish biologist in Springfield.

As a result, fishing "might be a little bit more of a challenge" this season, Ziller said, adding that "most people are probably not going to notice the difference.

"Instead of catching three fish, you might catch two," he said. "It's certainly a drop, but not a total waste of time, either."

In the McKenzie River, for example, a total of 6,572 trout are scheduled to be released today between the mouth of Blue River and the head of Leaburg Lake. Another 2,075 fish were released Wednesday in Leaburg Lake. Normally, the pre-opener releases would number 9,500 and 3,000 fish, respectively.

Even with only a fraction of the fish available, however, the McKenzie River is bound to fish several times better than it did during the first month of the 2002 season. There was so much "turbidity" (suspended silt) in the water then that few people even bothered to try catching trout.

Ziller is predicting a "typical opening day" in local waters this year, aside from the fact that fewer fish will be available.

"The flow is high in both the McKenzie and the Middle Fork Willamette systems," he said. "So the rivers are going to fish a bit slower than in a warmer year. But as long as the water temperature is not too cold, the catch rate should be acceptable."

The reduction in trout stocking does not apply to waters in other ODFW regions. So opening day fishing should be normal at popular Cascade mountain waters like Crane Prairie and Wickiup reservoirs and South Twin and Diamond lakes.

Those are all reported to be virtually snow and ice free, thanks to the mild winter.

"This is a good year to try fishing the hike-in high lakes," Ziller said. "We did helicopter stocking in 1999 and 2001, so there should be a nice combination of 2-year old fish that are in the 8-, 9-, 10-inch range and 4-year-olds that are 12 to 14 inches."

Coast lakes at full allotment

Meanwhile, lakes in the Florence area are also getting their full regular allotment of fish in anticipation of the trout season opener. As a bonus, many of these lakes are stocked with trout of mixed sizes, ranging from pan-sized "legals" to two-pound "trophy" trout. (The coastal lakes are open year-round, but pressure always increases once "fishing season" arrives.)

Anglers are reminded that all Coast Range streams and some in the northern end of the Willamette Valley remain closed to fishing until May 31, to protect juvenile salmon and steelhead as they migrate toward the ocean.

Some Eugene-area waters actually should produce better fishing this year because they will contain more - and bigger - fish than normal.

That results from the ODFW's policies toward fish that have been exposed to IHN, one of the major fish diseases affecting salmonids in the Northwest U.S. and Canada.

Biologists believe that the virus is brought back by fish returning from the ocean and "shed" into fresh water. Other fish then pick it up from the water. The virus poses no threat to humans.

Fish that have been exposed to IHN - even though they no longer test positive for the virus - may only be released in waters where IHN already occurs.

In the McKenzie Basin, the dividing line is at Leaburg Dam.

The 300,000 "exposed" rainbow remaining in Leaburg Hatchery's rearing ponds can be used in the lower Mckenzie but not in the McKenzie River above the dam, only 200 yards from the hatchery.

"Even though these fish have tested negative for the past three months, we don't want to take a chance that it (the IHN virus) would spread back down and infect next year's production," Wright said.

Leaburg Hatchery draws its water supply from Leaburg Lake.

Biologists suspect that the virus got into the water supply last summer after being carried above the dam by the large numbers of summer steelhead that "strayed" past the hatchery entrance and climbed the fish ladder over Leaburg Dam.

To reduce chances of that happening again, Ziller plans to trap as many steelhead as possible in the fish ladder this year and "recycle" them downstream.

All trout released in the upper McKenzie Basin this season - including those in Clear Lake, Carmen, Smith, Blue River and Trail Bridge reservoirs - are being trucked in from Willamette Fish Hatchery in Oakridge. That hatchery normally handles only spring chinook salmon. However, it was pressed back into trout production last year after the Leaburg outbreak was discovered.

Other area waters are being supplied with fish from the private Desert Springs hatchery.

Meanwhile, the lower river between the town of Leaburg and Bellinger boat landing is "going to be stocked more than it would have been traditionally," Wright said, because it is one of the few waters in the immediate area in which survivors of the IHN epidemic can be released.

Trout releases in the lower river will not begin until the first week of May, to give out-migrating salmon and steelhead smolts time to clear the area.

Starting at the end of May, the lower McKenzie also will get an allotment of larger (11- to 13-inch) trout that Leaburg Hatchery had been rearing for the upper river fishery.

"The guides have really been requesting some of these larger fish" for the upper river fishery, Wright said.

To make up for the fact that those fish cannot be released above the dam, Ziller is negotiating to get about 2,600 surplus oversized hatchery rainbow from Roaring River and Alsea hatcheries. If volunteers can be found to fin-clip those fish, they probably will be released in the upper McKenzie starting in June.

Salmon outlook optimistic

While trout fishing may be a little slower than normal this year, biologists are expecting a large run of bigger-than-average spring chinook salmon in the McKenzie and Middle Fork Willamette rivers.

About 110,000 salmon bound for the Willamette River were expected to enter the Columbia River this spring, about 10 percent less than year's record-setting run.

"The interesting part of the prediction is that approximately 80 percent of the run will be 5-year olds, which is an unusually large number of very large fish," Ziller said.

One new regulation for local salmon anglers this year is that the section of the McKenzie River between Greenwood Drive boat ramp and the ODFW markers 200 yards below Leaburg Dam has been re-opened to the harvest of adipose fin-clipped salmon.

That two-mile section "includes some of the best fishing water" for salmon, Ziller said. The section had been closed because biologists thought that stretch of water held mostly wild salmon, which are protected by law.

"People were catching large numbers of adipose-marked salmon all the way up to the dam while angling for steelhead," Ziller said, so the decision was made to re-open the area to salmon fishing.

Another improved fishing opportunity this season is expected to occur in the Eugene-Springfield section of the Willamette River.

The ODFW resumed the "in-town" stocking of summer steelhead in 2001, when 40,000 smolts from Roaring River hatchery were released between the D Street boat ramp in Springfield and Valley River Inn in Eugene.

The first returning adults from that release should begin showing up soon. Based on the results of an experimental release in 1998, those fish are expected to mill around near their release points, where they can be caught by anglers, rather than swimming upstream to Dexter Dam.

The in-town steelhead fishing should be even hotter in 2005. The ODFW increased the total release this spring to 99,600, including about 57,000 IHN-exposed smolts from Leaburg Hatchery that could not be released at their originally intended site.

"With reasonable out-migration and ocean conditions, our expected return should be between 1,000-4,000 fish," Ziller said.

FOLLOWING THE RAINBOWS

Due to hatchery losses caused by disease, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife has fewer rainbow trout than normal available to release in area waters during 2003. Nevertheless, thousands of trout will be released prior to Saturday's opening of the general trout season. Listed below are the Lane County waters being stocked for opening day. Unless otherwise indicated, the fish are 8- to 10-inch "legals."

Waterway Number Trout Released

Blue River (stream) ... 1,038

Blue River Lake ... 2,422

Clear Lake ... 3,460

Dexter Lake ... 6,900

Fall Creek (above reservoir) ... 2,076

Junction City Pond ... 1,200

Leaburg Lake ... 2,074

Carmen Reservoir ... 2,629

Cottage Grove Lake ... 3,460

Smith Reservoir ... 3,460

Salmon Creek ... 2,422

Willamette River (near Oakridge) ... 1,038

McKenzie River (above Leaburg Dam) ... 6,572

Alder Lake ... 850 legals, 161 oversize 

Buck Lake ... 850 legals, 161 oversize

Dune Lake ... 850 legals, 161 oversize

Erhart Lake ... 850 legals, 161 oversize

Mercer Lake ... 2,250 (11- to 13-inchers)

Munsel Lake ... 4,150 oversize

Siltcoos Lake ... 1,250 (11- to 13-inchers)

- Oregon Department Fish and Wildlife

CAPTION(S):

Mark Kemp (left) hands a net full of hatchery fish to Ken Danison as they are loaded into a truck to be planted in a pond on Sauvie Island. An outbreak of infectious hematopoietic necrosis last summer has affected the number of fish Leaburg Hatchery can provide this year. Brian Davies / The Register-Guard Mark Kemp weighs a net full of hatchery fish before they are trucked to Sauvie Island. Trout: Fish fewer, but conditions better Continued from Page E6 Hatchery fish are drawn by a pump through a tube and into a truck from the Leaburg Hatchery on the McKenzie River.