A tale of two fish

I had retained a bit of hope, as I usually do on my drive up the McKenzie River, that I wouldn’t see another car at my fishing spot. It was a weekday in late October, and the yellow-brown deciduous trees matched the glow of the hillsides that burned two summers ago. On days like this, pulling up to the parking lot can be the most suspenseful part of the day.

I cringed at the sight of another parked car. I hoped that a kayaker was exploring the man-made lake below my fishing spot.

I decided to walk to the river and see who had beaten me there. An older man emerged from the bushes in waders. I asked him if he had any luck. He said that he had caught a few trout.

“All hatchery fish today,” he said.

At this point, I would usually move on, but I figured I’d try this spot, if not for a bit of laziness, then for a lack of time. I pulled a brown size-12 pheasant tail nymph from my box: feather tips jutting out to imitate tiny legs and a wire-ribbed thorax that looked like the segmented body of an insect. The fly wasn’t made to imitate any specific bug in particular, but to look like some generic food item underneath the water’s surface, maybe a large mayfly or a small stonefly. I didn’t expect the trout, in late fall, to be feeding much on the surface of the water.

I waded out close to the main current, my step an abbreviated stumble as I slipped over stones on the riverbed and the water pushed against my upstream leg.

I let a cast go, the line turned over and the loop unraveled a few feet above the water. My fly landed and sunk below the surface. My bobber landed with a splat. A few seconds later, it disappeared.

I raised my fly rod, the line went tight and my focus narrowed to beneath the water’s surface; I tried to get a glimpse of the fish on the end of my line, hoping it was a monster, the fish of my dreams. But after the fish shook its head twice, I knew what I was dealing with.

The fish idled in the current and turned towards me, and only seconds after hooking it, I guided the fish into my net. It was a hatchery-bred rainbow trout: thin and pale with a grayish-green hue color, and the adipose fin near the tail of the fish had been clipped off. I released the fish, and it made a lethargic escape.

A few casts later, my bobber disappeared below the surface again, but this time when I raised my rod, the tip bowed, and I squeezed the handle for control. The fish darted back and forth at the surface, then bolted downstream in tandem with the current, pulling line from my hand as I shifted the rod angle to my side. For the fish, it was a battle of life and death.

When I finally guided the fish into my net, I saw it was no bigger than the fish I caught before, but had impressive bulk and stature. I held the trout in my hand and examined it. Bold black spots covered a bright red swatch on its side and its rosy cheeks pulsed as it recovered from the fight. I didn’t have to check for an intact adipose fin to know it was wild. It splashed out of my hand and tucked behind a rock.

Each of these fish had much in common: both rainbow trout, both in the McKenzie River, both living in the same riffle above Leaburg Lake, and both unfortunate enough to take a bite of my fly that day. Yet the human relationship with each fish is quite different.  

Raised in concrete ponds, hatchery fish are released for catching by anglers. Wild fish hatch from eggs laid in streambeds, and their survival is honed by thousands of years of natural selection. These fish, like the river itself, are both wild and tamed, living in altered landscapes.

Christer LaBrecque strides through a shin-high pond, each step deliberate and forceful. His legs slice through a blanket of tiny, red mosquito fern petals on the pond’s quiet surface, pushing stagnant water to the side with ease.

Between a mist of rain and the pond, he’s surrounded by water, but sturdy waders and a thick raincoat keep his body dry. A few raindrops collect on the long curls of hair extending from the back of his mesh baseball cap, which he pulls down near his eyebrows.

LaBrecque doesn’t come here as much as he did last summer, when he drove his truck — littered with stickers of trout and salmon — 45 minutes upriver from Eugene each day to work. He navigates the pond with the confidence of a seasoned fly-fisherman wading the McKenzie in pursuit of a large rainbow trout, but he’s not here to fish — and he hasn’t in years. LaBrecque is giving me a tour of the Finn Rock floodplain he spent all of last summer restoring.

The landscape looks messy, with logs strewn about like a box of toothpicks spilled in a puddle. Trees lay crosswise in the channels, piled on top of one another, roots stretching out and mingling with bark and branches while water fills the pockets and cracks of the mess. The stream braids and spreads over the land. LaBrecque said he purposely designed the area so that no boats could navigate these side channels. 

The 84-acre project area contains roughly 3,400 logs. And they didn’t get there by accident. LaBrecque engineered each logjam with purpose, strategically planning the position of each one. Meanwhile, the teeth of a metal excavator gauged steep banks to create new side channels.

This restored area serves as fresh habitat for turtles, frogs, waterfowl, and salmon and trout, among others.

The goal is to rewild the river. When white settlers came to the McKenzie valley, the river was unsuitable for navigation or development because of flooding and stream debris. It was too messy. Settlers physically straightened the channel and dammed the river for flood control and hydropower.

LaBrecque said the intent is to replicate how the river looked 150 years ago, before white intervention.

“The messier it looks, the better we did,” LaBrecque said.

LaBrecque points to a large cottonwood alone on an island. What’s left of the crown is just a few bare branches, most of the trunk is scorched black from fire, as is the case with nearly every tree around it. The Holiday Farm Fire came through here in 2020, and LaBrecque said this was one of the hottest places in all of the burn area. In the coming years, he expects some of the scorched trees to fall into the stream below and build on what LaBrecque started.

The Finn Rock project is part of a larger trend of floodplain restoration in the upper McKenzie River area.  The US Forest Service completed a similar restoration project in 2019 a few miles upstream from Finn Rock at the confluence of the McKenzie’s South Fork and mainstem.

The project cost $2 million, according to the Forest Service’s website, roughly the same as the restoration project at Finn Rock. But the ecological benefits of floodplain restoration are backed by science. Studies show that floodplain restoration projects with complex stream networks can be up to 250% more biologically productive than channels with only one thread. Additionally, floodplain restoration increases trout and salmon production by about a quarter to a third.

This means that floodplain restoration like these are a natural tool for enhancing fish production. But just down the road lies another tool for fish production. Instead of relying on logs and excavators, it depends on pumps, trucks, and concrete pens.

Erik Whithalm’s bright orange rubber gloves grip the chord of a pull-to-start engine. He yanks the chord backward once, hard, with his elbow reaching back behind his head, and the engine roars to life.

Erik Withalm’s bright orange rubber gloves grip the cord of a pull-to-start engine. He yanks the cord backward once, hard, with his elbow reaching back behind his head, and the engine roars to life.

Today is special for Withalm, who manages Leaburg Hatchery — he’s going to put rainbow trout — more than 6,000 of them — into the McKenzie River for the first time this year. 

He’s come prepared in usual hatchery garb: Xtra-tuff rain boots, Carhartt pants, and a brown Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) hoodie and beanie. He directs his technicians, dressed the same, around the rectangular hatchery ponds. 

The last two years were full of adversity for Withalm and the Leaburg Hatchery. The 2020 Holiday Farm Fire forced Withalm and his crew to unexpectedly release a million rainbow trout from hatchery ponds because water supplies were constrained. The fire left Withalm and the hatchery without fish, but now the hatchery is back in full operation. 

The concrete pond is filled with a few feet of grayish-yellow water, but a quarter of the pond boils dark green from the backs of thousands of rainbow trout. Fish curl and slide past one another in an indistinguishable mass. They dart away from hatchery technician Cooper Erwin’s legs as he corrals the trout towards a tube in the corner, where fish shadows shoot upwards through the tube into a metal trough.

Starting slowly, eventually hundreds of fish flow into the trough in a thunderous swarm of scales and fins. The fish clank their tails against the metal as they slide through the trough and into a holding tank in a truck below.

Finally, fewer and fewer fish enter the trough, and one last rainbow flops onto the metal. Its gills flex up and down as it idles in the middle of the trough.

“Any fish left?,” Withalm yells over the whirring motor.

“Only one,” I say.

And at Withalm’s instruction, I pick up the stranded trout and heave it underhand toward the pond 20 feet below. It tumbles once in the air and splashes into the water, slipping back into the cloud of fish.

A few minutes later and eight miles downstream, the fish-laden truck meets fly-fishing guides Mike Reardon and Dave Sheffield as they ease a pontoon boat  to the bank of the river at the Deerhorn boat ramp with a few timely strokes of the oars. Sheffield, a tall thin man with a white mustache, steps off into the shallow water to pull the boat to shore.

A hose launches the fish from the truck into a metal basket submerged in a few inches of water in the middle of the boat. Reardon stands in the middle of the basket and fish flood in around his ankles.

As the boat takes off, Sheffield grabs a net and scoops up a pile of fish from the basket. Leaning over the edge of the boat, he turns the net, and hatchery fish splash into the McKenzie River.

When the guides take out at Hendricks bridge a few miles downstream, the basket is empty. The river now has six thousand more fish than it did this morning.

The boat is heavier than a normal fishing raft, so it takes extra effort to handle it. The two banter as Reardon works, cranking the winch that slowly pulls the boat onto the trailer.

“That’s why we bring the young guys along,” Sheffield said, pointing to Reardon.

Even with 60-plus years of guiding experience between them, the two still struggle to secure the raft to the trailer.

“We don’t do [stocking] enough to know how to do it,” Sheffield said with a smirk.

The stocking season starts in April and continues through the summer into the fall. Fishing guides from the McKenzie River Guides Association stock the river from the raft throughout the summer. Reardon said that some guides choose to do it frequently, while others almost never.

“I think some people like to know where they put ‘em,” he laughs.

But he said that even though he knows exactly where the fish are stocked, he doesn’t usually target hatchery fish, and if ODFW stopped stocking the river the pair of guides would “still be guiding, and we’d still be successful, because we know how to catch fish.”

But still, the two guides say they enjoy taking part in the traditional McKenzie River streamside fish fry, an activity that wouldn’t be possible, as of now, without the contribution from Leaburg Hatchery — because of potential threats to wild fish populations, anglers are only allowed to keep hatchery fish, not wild fish.

On the McKenzie, fish stocking is more than just a means to a meal, but a cultural pastime of sorts. People have been stocking the river with trout and salmon since 1907, when the first hatchery on the McKenzie River was built.

It wasn’t the Leaburg Hatchery, but the Old McKenzie Fish Hatchery across the river from where Leaburg Hatchery is now. Today, grass has grown through the cracks of the dry concrete ponds where the state of Oregon used to culture fish, and the building now serves as a museum and historical site.

Then, in 1953, the state closed the old hatchery and built a bigger hatchery next to the Leaburg Dam. Their reasoning: to mitigate for lost fishing opportunities because of the dam. 

According to the ODFW Hatchery Management Plan, ODFW operates two types of hatchery programs: conservation programs, which aim to “increase the number of naturally produced fish,” and harvest programs, which aim to “maintain fisheries without impairing naturally producing populations.” Leaburg Hatchery’s rainbow trout are a harvest program, meaning the purpose of the hatchery is to provide fish people can eat. Today, an angler on the McKenzie can catch and keep up to five hatchery fish per day. 

The McKenzie is unique, according to Barret Christiansen, president of the McKenzie River Guides Association, because it’s one of the few places left in the lower 48 states where a person can catch a fish and eat it for lunch. Christiansen said many who fish on the McKenzie, guides and anglers alike, still value this tradition.

“There’s still a clientele that’s largely out for the experience of floating down a beautiful river, catching something they can eat and introducing their kids and grandkids to something that can be consumed on the trip and brought home with them,” Christiansen said.

Christiansen makes the point that fishing harms fish whether or not they end up in the frying pan.

“It’s a blood sport, you know, you’re not doing the fish any favors by going out there and whacking them,” Christiansen said. 

Younger guides on the McKenzie, Christiansen said, are less hatchery-dependent than older guides. He said that if the hatchery were to disappear, most guides under 40 would still be able to make a living as a fishing guide, because it’s easier for them to travel to other locations.

The hatchery provides a fish that nearly ensures angler success — he said he can’t remember the last time he took someone out on the McKenzie, even first timers, without them catching a fish. The hatchery is like a security net for older guides, or as Christiansen puts it, it’s “more or less a 401k program for veteran guides.”

But not all McKenzie River guides favor stocking fish in the river.

Chris Daughters owns The Caddis Fly, a fly shop in Eugene. He guides on the McKenzie all summer long, and his favorite section is the upper river, a reach of free-flowing water that pours downhill and drops at a faster rate than any other part of the river. He said he doesn’t take more than one person at a time on these kinds of trips — it takes a skilled boater and a skilled angler to be successful and stay safe.

And ODFW doesn’t stock this section of the river, either. If he had it his way, Daughters would get rid of the hatchery and have the whole river full of wild fish, like this upper section.

“As a fishing guide, I don’t want hatchery fish, I want them gone,” Daughters said. “The McKenzie River is one of the most beautiful rivers in the West and nobody comes here to fish because there’s hatchery fish in the river.”

He said while he supports the Finn Rock restoration project, he thinks the goal of the project misses the boat slightly. While groups like McKenzie River Trust spend millions of dollars to restore habitat for wild fish, the state also spends millions of dollars to create fish and plant them in the river.

“This kind of restoration should start with ‘stop putting hatchery fish in and you’ll see amazing results,’” Daughters said.

And there’s some evidence that when hatchery stocking stops, wild trout repopulate the area. In 2009, ODFW discontinued stocking in the lower 5.1 miles of the McKenzie below Hendricks bridge. According to a citizen science report, wild rainbow trout populations in that section of the river nearly tripled by 2013. This result came from 277 angler trips which logged more than 2,500 hours. 

The study indicates that wild trout can come back in the absence of hatchery fish. With only so much food and space to go around, hatchery fish push out wild fish since the trout are stocked in such great numbers. Daughters said hatchery fish are compromising the Trust’s restoration project.

“Hatchery fish do nothing but damage people economically, and our environment,” Daughters said. “It’s like the worst thing that’s ever happened to the environment of the McKenzie River. And people are addicted to them. It’s nothing under the seriousness of pharmaceutical drugs. But I’d rather write them a check for their work than put hatchery fish in the river. And I think that’s a viable option. Just put that into the cost of rewilding the river.”

Daughters adds that the decision to stock the river with hatchery fish “is not based on science. It’s based on a social desire of very few people.”

Justin Williams, 24, watches his fishing pole, which is propped on a rock at a 45-degree angle, waiting for the tip to bob and signal a bite. He sits on a picnic table at Leaburg Lake, his boots on the bench, his elbows on his knees, and his baseball cap shading half of his face. He nods toward the bank, a gravel shore that drops off into the lake where you can’t see the bottom after about 20 feet out. There’s a boat launch near the parking lot, two bathrooms and a pavilion with an interpretive sign, and a road leading across Leaburg Dam to Highway 126.

In the reservoir’s upper reaches near Vida, the McKenzie slows, widens, and takes a sharp left turn as it flows into the lake. Cornered between the highway, the dam, and the gravel shore, the river becomes flat and still. Stray pine cones or sticks on the water’s surface create its only noticeable motion as the water flows slowly toward the dam.

The lake is stocked with rainbow trout each spring and summer. Plentiful fish stocks and calm water provide perhaps the most accessible fishing on the entire river.

“I’ve seen this whole bank lined with 30 or 40 people,” Williams said.

He points to an array of power lines 30 feet above the lake. At first glance, it appears that cobwebs are hanging from the lines, blowing in a slight breeze. But on closer inspection, it’s a rat’s nest of synthetic fishing line wrapped around the power lines — fishing lures, spinner baits, and treble hooks —  a dangling, whirling mess of misfired casts.

“Not everyone’s a fisherman, man,” Williams said, smiling and turning away. “You’re casting for the moon, trying to get to the middle.”

Williams is an Oregon native and veteran angler (he grew up on a 45,000 acre cattle ranch by the John Day River, where he learned to catch bass from his father). Although he fishes several times a week when he’s not cutting timber, this is his first time fishing at Leaburg Lake. He usually tries to avoid the crowds, and today, five days before trout stocking begins, he’s the only one with a line in the water. Anglers will flock to the lake once the fish arrive, Williams said, and will crowd the banks once the weather gets nice.

Williams grabs his spinning rod and reels in the line. He didn’t catch any fish, and he said he doesn’t really expect to. He points the rod back and slings it forward again, his line hovering in the air in a low arc. The bait sends a ripple cascading over an otherwise calm lake surface. He sets the fishing rod down and resumes his perch on the table.

“A lot of the time they overstock places they shouldn’t overstock,” Williams said. “I like the McKenzie and how beautiful it is. I don’t think they should stock the McKenzie. But I think they should stock ponds and reservoirs.”

He said that’s because hatcheries give children, like his own daughters, the opportunity to fish.

“I don’t think they need to flood the rivers with fish all the time, but I think of a 10-year-old kid who doesn’t have a parent who knows how to fish,” Williams said. “Anybody can come out here, tie a hook on a line, put a piece of Powerbait on, throw it out there and catch a fish.”

But in his personal quest for fish, Williams heads upriver seeking wild fish. He only fishes from the bank, because “if you hunt an animal, you should have to hunt it in its habitat.” He doesn’t kill a fish unless he has to.

“The higher you go, the prettier the fish get,” Williams said. “It’s just harder to catch them. They’re smarter. Stocked trout are used to somebody walking up to them and feeding them. If you go up higher where the river is thinner, you walk to the edge of the river, they see your shadow and they’re gone.”

Next summer, the McKenzie River Trust will complete the final phase of the Finn Rock Restoration project, which involves removing the partially maintained road. Its bridge crosses a McKkenzie side channel, loops around the fern-covered pond and slices through the thick blackened forest. Eventually, the road ends by the bank of the mainstem McKenzie. LaBrecque advises me not to walk this road when it’s windy, I see why: The road is covered with cracked trees that fell during a windstorm. Their jagged trunks, freshly exposed and splintered, line the roadside.

Once this road is gone, LaBrecque said, the project won’t be accessible by any machine, and access, even by foot, will be treacherous. He’s counting on the river, wind, and animals to take over the process from there.

My feet ache when we finally reach the end of the road near the McKenzie’s mainstem, but LaBrecque still moves with purpose. He scans his work of rebraiding as he looks downstream and notices something is different. He becomes animated and is giddy with excitement as he strides out farther toward the river.

A massive, uprooted tree lies in the shoulder of the mainstem McKenzie.

“That’s a fresh root wad,” he said. “We didn’t put that there. It wasn’t there two weeks ago.”

He pauses. He knows what this means, the river is beginning to take over the process of healing itself. At the same time, he will give up his control over the landscape and hope he’s done enough to help the river find its former self.

Referring to the new root wad in the river, he said, “I would’ve rather had it been racked up in the project area.” 

 “That’s probably going to be a really sweet fishing hole, right there.”