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Photo by Mark Freeman Ken Morrish of Ashland casts flies for rainbow trout in the Upper Sacramento River, where restrictive fishing rules helped the river rebound nicely from a 1991 herbicide spill. California examines rules for Upper Sac By MARK FREEMAN It took a disaster for Southern Oregon's fly-casters to discover the cool trout waters of Northern California's upper Sacramento River. Now fly-fishing enthusiasts hope fishing's remarkable recovery on the "Upper Sac" won't lead to its untimely death. Declaring the Upper Sac's trout fishery recovered from a devastating 1991 chemical spill, California now is developing a new plan to govern the river, its fish and those who stalk them over the first five years of the new century. Developing this plan includes revisiting whether strict catch-and-release fishing only with flies and lures should be trimmed back or even dropped from 32 miles of the Upper Sac downstream from the little fishing hamlet of Dunsmuir. Catch-and-release angling with artificial flies and lures, plus no stocking of hatchery trout, has been the law on 32 miles of the Upper Sac since 1994. It was installed to help the wild trout rebound after nearly being wiped out by chemicals spilled into the Upper Sac from a 1991 railroad accident. The results include a blossoming of trout fishing with flies. So much so that many Rogue Valley fly-casters actually cross the border to fish -- a migration that defies Oregon's self-image as angling's nirvana. "The Upper Sac is better known now since the spill and the special regulations," says Ken Morrish, an Upper Sac disciple who says 30 percent of his fly-fishing customers at the Ashland Outdoor Store fish the Upper Sac. "There's no place else in the state that boasts such an expanse of fly-only water," Morrish says. People like Morrish will have a chance to tell their ideas to the California Department of Fish and Game. A public meeting is set for 7 tonight at the River Exchange on Sacramento Avenue in Dunsmuir, which is about 75 minutes south of Ashland. Agency biologists want public opinion about what fishing rules should be implemented and about stocking hatchery trout in the Upper Sac. There are no sacred cows here, says Randy Benthlin, a California state senior fishery biologist. People will likely advocate everything from heavy trout stocking, five-fish limits and no gear restrictions to discarding even current limited stockings of hatchery trout and turning the whole Upper Sac into a flies-only stream. "We're going to hear it all, but my sense is we won't be adopting those sorts of things in a management plan," Benthlin says. "I'd be surprised if management will be significantly different when we're all done. I'd be surprised if the general public wants a major shift." Any debate about retooling fishing regulations for the Upper Sac seemed optimistic back in the summer of 1991, after a Southern Pacific railroad car derailed and spewed 19,000 gallons of herbicide into the Upper Sac upstream from Dunsmuir. All aquatic life, including hundreds of thousands of fish, were killed in what authorities called California's worst inland chemical spill. It left in its wake a clean but vacant stream running the length of Interstate 5 from the Mt. Shasta City area to Lake Shasta. A river that had averaged 6,700 to 8,800 rainbow trout per mile was down to zero. What toxic chemicals stole, mother nature -- with lots of help from a $40 million river-rehabilitation project -- has restored. Insects slowly began to recover and native trout from tributaries began to repopulate the river. After a three-year ban on all fishing, anglers in 1994 returned to the river with new rules for a stream where anglers formerly used bait, lures and flies to catch and kill up to five trout a day. In the 32-mile stretch, angling reopened in 1994 to barbless flies and lures only, with catch and release of all trout. In the six miles of the Upper Sac around Dunsmuir, state biologists planted 12,500 trout annually. Angling there is open to bait fishing with barbless hooks, and people can keep five trout a day. This split of bait and no-bait waters was a tough pill for the community to swallow, but it has created a boon for fly-casters. So much so, in fact, that good fishing began to lure more and more regular anglers from Southern Oregon to try their hand fishing caddis flies in fast water for Upper Sac rainbows. Days of more than a dozen fat and hard-fighting 16-inch trout are commonplace for fly-casters wading the swift, cool stream, where topography, water quality and trout present fishing opportunities unlike anything in Southern Oregon. The no-bait and catch-and-release rules garner much responsibility for the improved fishing, Morrish says. Those rules were meant to help the river recover, and that job is done, Benthlin says. "The effects of the spill are apparently over," Benthlin says. "What's driving the population now is natural changes in the environment and not the spill." Naturally, now's the time to retool the fishing rules to match these changes. One option being floated by Cal Fish and Game is to expand the trout stocking and bait fishing area by three miles to encompass Castle Crags State Park. That would leave the remaining 29 miles to catch-and-release fishing with flies and lures, Benthlin says. With catch-and-release now the status quo through much of the Upper Sac, Morrish believes sticking with it will continue to improve the river's allure. Morrish sees the Upper Sac as drawing the same reputation for trout fly-fishing as Oregon's North Umpqua River has for steelhead fly-fishing. But he also believes there is room to continue the stocking of hatchery fish in the bait-fishing waters around Dunsmuir. "It's fine to have a bait section," Morrish says. "But keeping most of the Upper Sac for catch-and-release fly-fishing, to me, is the best long-term alternative for the community and the fishery." Cal Fish and Game is accepting public comments on the Upper Sac by mail, but no deadline has been set. Send them to Mike Dean, Associate Fishery Biologist, DFG, 601 Locust St., Redding, Calif., 96001. (Staff writer Mark Freeman covers the outdoors for the Mail Tribune. Call him at 776-4470, or e-mail him at [email protected] .) 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