Fishing with the G Man

The first thing to understand about fishing with the G Man is that he likes to combine wetting a line with some form of law enforcement. This is not all that surprising. When you have spent a portion of your career as a deputy sheriff, and all of it dedicated to conservation of habitat and…

Northern California summer steelhead could be listed by 2020

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…

Thinking big, starting small

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…

The cannabis conundrum

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…

Fathers

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…

Barrier Removal, New Fish Screen, Pennington Creek

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…