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Imagine the perfect fishing hole. A shallow green riffle defines the top. Water tumbles over stones and moss into
a deep blue hole. Toward the end, river rocks materialize as the bottom comes back into view. Below the hole, the water drops and bends into a long, deep run. On shore, mountaintops barely show above the wooded hills. Big ponderosa pines lean out over the river. A bald eagle flies over while a kingfisher chatters and a dipper shakes water from its feathers.
And, of course, big fish swim at your feet. Really big fish. Now link a couple hundred of these holes together, and you have the South Fork of the Clearwater River. For ten days in the fall of 1805, the Corps of Discovery camped along the Clearwater River at the mouth of the North Fork, at what they called the Canoe Camp. Here the men recovered from their arduous journey over Lolo Pass (they walked 160 miles in eleven days), and built five dugout canoes for their journey down the Columbia River. They also recovered from a terrible affliction: the change in diet from an all meat diet to dried fish and grains caused violent dysentery in most of the men. "Capt. Lewis & myself eate a Supper of roots boiled, which Swelled us in Such a manner that we were Scarcely able to breath for Several hours," Clark recalled. Diarrhea and vomiting ran rampant for ten days. Because the men were so sick, they had little energy for exploring or fishing. Instead, they stayed on the bank of the North Fork, working on canoes and moving as little as possible. Sadly, of the three forks of the Clearwater River, the North Fork has changed the most. Dworshak Dam,an impassable concrete wall just two miles up from the Clearwater, halted all fish migration and made the North Fork an unchanging tailwater river. The world’s largest steelhead/salmon hatchery sits at the mouth of the North Fork, yearly pouring hundreds of thousands of fish into the river in an attempt to make up for what the dam has taken away. This hatchery also attracts hundreds of fishing boats during the season, making the river congested. While Lewis and Clark’s North Fork has changed dramatically, the Middle Fork and the South Fork have avoided being buried behind concrete dams and the South Fork is a prime fishing destination.
Conservation Update The wild salmon and steelhead in the Northwest—the same big fish that were abundant when the Nez Perce fed them to the nearstarving Lewis and Clark as they stumbled out of the Northern Rockies—are now in a fight for their lives. Twelve salmon runs are endangered; some are extinct. Two hundred years ago, an estimated 16 million salmon crowded the Snake and Columbia rivers each year. Since then,these river systems have been altered from their headwaters to their estuaries. Salmon face a gauntlet of barriers on their epic journey from stream to sea and back again,including killer dams, degraded spawning areas, pollution, traveling in trucks and barges, non-native predators, unnaturally warm water, and inadequate water flow. Today, only 1 percent of our wild salmon population is left. Still,the Snake and Clearwater Rivers offer the best habitat because of surrounding roadless wildlands, and 70 to 80percent of big wild salmon are expected to come from these rivers in the future. The problem isn’t habitat; the problem is dams blocking their passage and prematurely ending their lives (80% of human-caused salmon and steelhead mortality is due to dams).In December 2000, the National Marine Fisheries Service released its biological opinion for recovering salmon and steelhead in the Columbia and Snake River basins. The Salmon Recovery Plan is a 10-year plan that attempts to avoid removing the four Lower Snake River dams by calling for a set of other measures. On May 7,2003, the Plan was ruled illegal by a federal district court because it relied on actions that could not be guaranteed. The Sierra Club supports this court decision and continues to advocate for the removal of the four Lower Snake River dams as the most effective way to ensure safe salmon passage up- and downstream and to recover harvestable salmon populations. Currently, the Club is working to pass the Salmon Planning Act in Congress. This legislation proposes to study the options for saving wild salmon, including the removal of the four Lower Snake River dams, which scientists say must be a part of any comprehensive plan to recover wild salmon and steelhead. The few short years of the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial is the best time to construct and implement a new plan to save the fabled wild salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest. Who to contact: Find out more: Photo: The Clearwater is the main tributary of the Lower Snake River and offers some of the best steelhead and Chinook salmon fishing in the lower 48 states. Photo by Drew Winterer. |
