An Undergrounder sent me an old hardback copy of Russell Chatham’s The Angler’s Coast, and while the writing is evocative and the stories interesting, the most intriguing aspect of the book was its look at fisheries that — in many cases — no longer exist.
Chatham was something of a fly fishing bum and the stories reflect it (he’ll fish almost anywhere for anything), but a modern fly fisherman can’t help but sit up and notice when Chatham tells us Bill Schaadt caught between 800 and 900 steelhead on the Russian River in 1956, yet when the book was written (the early 1970s), Schaadt would have counted himself lucky to land twenty.
What would that number be today?
In other words, the steelhead hasn’t always been the “fish of a thousands casts” and it’s interesting too see how its scarcity has created a folklore that isn’t — historically speaking — true.
Time adds weight to some written works (Swift’s A Modest Proposal is a shining example), and I’d recommend The Angler’s Coast to any newer fly fisherman (especially those in California) who wonders why so many are fighting so hard to restore our still-declining steelhead and salmon runs.
As someone who started fishing in the mid-70s and graduated from high school in 1979, Chatham’s stories about the west’s fisheries fall just outside my grasp; they overlap my childhood but were largely gone before I was old enough to notice, leaving me with the impression of something I should remember, but can’t.
The book was written four decades ago and things have largely gotten worse instead of better, and while it’s not a weepy recounting of what we lost, it is a robust set of stories about the very tail end of the losing, and perhaps an incentive to do the things it will take to recover at least a fraction of what have become the West Coast’s version of the buffalo.
See you in the stacks, Tom Chandler.
I was lucky enough to catch the very end of the “good ole days,” and even then it seemed like nothing compared to what we used to hear from older guys in Fortuna and Eureka. I saw things that were unbelievable, even then. Huge pods of salmon moving up the Eel over the shoals below Fernbridge as the tide turned. Hundreds of fish in the Van Duzen junction pool. And on and on. My God, why didn’t I fish more back then? Chathams books are difficult for me to read, bringing as they do a pit-of-my-stomach ache of something important that is lost forever.
Craig(Quote)
The Angler’s Coast inspired me to acquire a [50 year-old, leaky, found-on-the-bottom-of-the-Russian] pram for various sorts of fishing, swing for steelhead and enhanced my already overpowering love of our redwood forests. It opened up unexpected arenas for me to consider, like fishing for stripers in some of the bay’s nooks and crannies.
The book also provided me with a healthy disdain for anyone over the age of 65 or so and the California Department of Fish and Game. Thanks to a lack of foresight by previous generations, I’ll never see anything like the anadromous runs that Chatham describes.
Kevin(Quote)
A sobering read, for sure. But one of the best “fishing books” ever written in my view. Perhaps because Chatham does a great job of writing in the style of his great mentor. There are few today who can write plainly; conveying more depth and magnitude with less.
Jonny
English Jonny(Quote)
Which is what makes the fight against Pebble Mine so poignant. These are the “good ole” days for that fishery. During the height of the season, 600,000 Sockeye pass the mouth of the Kvichak each day. Each day! That mine has to be killed, otherwise in forty years we’ll be talking about how good it used to be there too.
Steve Z(Quote)
It’s true. It also adds a certain urgency to the recovery of California’s north coast rivers (Klamath, Eel, Smith, etc). It just wasn’t that long ago that they were overrun with fish, and getting it back — even a fraction of it — seems doable.
The buffalo are gone and we’ll never assemble the kind of range it will take to bring back even a tiny fraction of the herds, but the rivers are still there; all they need is some help, and they’ll recover all on their own…
Tom Chandler(Quote)
The east coast has seen stripers crash, and recover, in a much shorter time period. Some say another crash is coming. Even if you aren’t fishing Chatham’s Angler’s Coast, and instead are fishing the one on the right side, his book is worth reading for that proper perspective. I hope nobody has to write the “east coast” version in 20 years.
T.J. Brayshaw(Quote)
Unfortunately, the salmon spawning habitat has been dewatered, clear cut, silted in, developed and polluted, so recovery is far more involved than protecting the fish and the bait they feed on.
In truth, with the river habitat so compromised and hatcheries actually damaging fish populations, it’s probably safe to say that salmon will never return in anything but a fraction of their former numbers.
Tom Chandler(Quote)
It is absolutely not too late to save these rivers. Many want us to think that it’s a lost cause, but it’s not too late!!!!
Obviously, a few have irreversible obstacles. But there are a few coastal rivers that can and will improve in time. Some are showing a glimmer of hope when conditions are right.
We need to keep up the good fight!
Dave N(Quote)