Oregon Looks for Ways to Interest Youth in Fishing

The Oregonian – June 12, 2008
By Catherine Trevison

Austin Fogg scrambles along the steep pond bank and holds open the white plastic bag. At the bottom are the 4-year-old's trophies: two rainbow trout that he sort-of caught himself.

"Don't eat them, because there's blood," he warns, before bundling them back to the shady spot where his mom is pinning a worm to his hook and a state volunteer has been helping with casting.

Is the 4-year-old hooked? Organizers hope so.

Youth fishing in Oregon, as in the rest of the country, has been dropping steadily for years: The number of Oregon anglers ages 14-17 has fallen by 45 percent over the last three decades.

It's unclear if efforts like this -- a youth day on Fairview's West Salish Pond, organized by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife -- can do anything to end the slump.

This isn't a profound natural experience. Giant metal towers march through the wetland, jumbo jets roar through their final descent to the airport and the lawn chairs and coolers of the not-so-young leave little room for kids on the bank. Even the trout are trucked from a hatchery, pumped into the pond the day before.

But for city kids such as Austin, the state must work with what little it has. Because of urban development and threats to wild fish, opportunities for kids to fish safely inside the urban growth boundary are slim. And this year, an effort to create more of them has been running into the same snags.

For several years, the ODFW -- nudged at times by the state Legislature -- has been looking at ways to turn things around. During a comprehensive, every-four-years angling regulation update this spring, the agency proposed setting up several new youth-only fisheries in the metro area.

Fishing advocates say it's not just about ensuring future anglers and future fishing license revenues, although that is part of it. "Our license sales enable us to do conservation," said Rhine Messmer, recreational fisheries program manager for the ODFW.

It is also a conviction that creating connections between kids and nature protects them both.

In the 2005 book "Last Child in the Woods," author Richard Louv defined a problem he calls nature deficit disorder -- "a diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses" that stem from an alienation from the natural world. The flip side, fishing advocates say, is that children who grow up involved with nature are the ones who fight to protect the environment.

"We're going to lose a big part of the conservation horsepower in this country as the baby boomers fade out of active fishing and the baton passes to the next generation, many of whom have never learned the joy of fishing and the need to fight for the resource," said Jim Martin, Oregon's former chief of fisheries and now the conservation director for Pure Fishing, a tackle company.

One set of state proposals involves popular stocked ponds in Canby, Beaverton and Gresham. Passionate adult anglers who track the state's stocking schedule can empty the pools quickly, said Danette Ehlers, the ODFW assistant district fish biologist for the North Willamette district. Establishing youth-only seasons, especially in the summer, could give kids a chance to catch fish before a pond is fished out.

But a few adults have already objected to any proposal that would curtail their fishing. Others say it might backfire, because an adult angler might decide not to take children fishing if the adult couldn't catch some fish, too.

Far more controversial was a proposal to establish a youth-only fishery on Johnson Creek, one of the last major above-ground and free-flowing streams in the metro area.

Right now, anyone can catch and release trout on the creek. Under the proposal, only those 17 and under could fish for trout in the summer. And every day, they could take home two fish.

The rationale, said ODFW district fisheries biologist Todd Alsbury, was to give city kids a way to "to ride their bikes down to the local stream," and enjoy the pride of bringing home dinner.

But the idea sunk like a lead weight. Despite serious problems with pollution, the creek still holds tiny numbers of threatened chinook, coho and steelhead, along with native cutthroat trout.

Johnson Creek has the most important habitat for wild salmon in the city of Portland; historically, it was capable of producing a run of 13,000 coho salmon, even though there are fewer than 100 now, said Kaitlin Lovell of Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services.

Local agencies have spent at least $40 million over the past 10 years attempting to restore the creek, getting rid of artificial channels and barriers, fighting bacteria and toxins and creating shade for colder, more fish-friendly water temperatures.

"Wouldn't it be cool if we could have enough fish in Johnson Creek that we would be thrilled to have people fishing there?" said Maggie Skenderian, the city of Portland's Johnson Creek Watershed Manager. "But that day is not here yet."

At first, the state's concept involved stocking Johnson Creek with hatchery trout -- a practice common in area streams until native fish were listed as threatened in the late 1990s, Messmer said. The agency planned to use a sterile "triploid" trout that wouldn't breed with native species, and plant them in parts of the creek where they wouldn't compete with young native fish, Messmer said.

But creek defenders objected to the potential for hatchery fish to steal food from native fish and to eat their young. And without hatchery fish, the proposal was just as bad, they said; anglers would kill native trout directly and kill or injure juvenile salmon and steelhead caught by mistake.

"More fish are going to be caught, whether they're released or smacked over the head and put in a frying pan," said Jeff Eubel, a fish biologist and volunteer with the Johnson Creek Watershed Council. The council "feels any additional mortality is just unacceptable -- any increase in mortality will put them over the edge and they'll go extinct."

Fish advocates tried to come up with other ideas for kids, from stocking a casting pond in Westmoreland to creating a pond to stock at Powell Butte.

"We are supportive of getting youth involved in fishing and creating those opportunities, but in a way that doesn't jeopardize endangered species," said Matt Clark, executive director of the Johnson Creek Watershed Council. During a public hearing on proposed fishing regulations in May, several people spoke out against the Johnson Creek plan. Without local support, it likely won't be considered by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission in August, Messmer and Alsbury said.

In the meantime, fishing advocates wonder where the next generation of anglers will come from.

"Some of the best and most wonderful fish advocates I know grew up on Johnson Creek," said Liz Hamilton of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association. Her list includes David James Duncan, author of "The River Why" and one of the country's most articulate champions of wild fish.

Growing up in east Multnomah County, Duncan rode his bike to Fairview Creek to fish native cutthroat. He learned every inch of it until a year it went dry -- it's water stolen, he said, to fill ponds along Glisan Street.

By then, he could drive to "gruesome" Johnson Creek, where toxins would make a trout's skin burst with pox. Duncan caught not just fish but a car radio and a woman's polka-dot dress.

Duncan helped create the Liam Wood Flyfishing and River Guardian School for children, and believes that fishing, even on urban streams, helps teach kids to care for rivers. Even polluted rivers constantly give humans a second chance, because the cycle of evaporation and rain will purify them.

"It's wrong to think poor Johnson Creek is dead, because streams don't die. They're always purified when they rise," he said.

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