My involvement with steelhead rescue began shortly after we purchased our property in June, 2004. As the summer progressed I began to notice what I considered to be a strange phenomenon: Little Arthur Creek began to dry from the bottom up. By this I mean that the creek flow continued at the top of our property but stopped short of joining with Uvas Creek at the bottom of our property. The water seemed to just absorb into the gravel bars that cover this stretch. The drying out wasn’t a constant decrease, but seemed to decrease and increase, making it hard to predict when there would be water flowing all the way to Uvas and when it wouldn’t quite make it. As I watched this with interest, I began to notice the small Rainbow Trout swimming in the ponds that were isolated by the drying process.
I know Rainbow Trout because I grew up fishing for them in cool mountain streams. My dad taught me how to fish and our favorite family vacation was backpacking or camping in isolated locations. I took to fishing because I loved to lie silent and alone on remote creekbanks, peering into the water and willing the fish to swallow my Salmon egg bait. Sometimes I would jump into the creeks and fish for crawdads or just enjoy the shockingly cool water. Other times, I would just seem to melt into the landscape, imagining that the fish and I could communicate telepathically. The sound of the water and the freedom of the fish would lull me into a sense of intense oneness with nature and all of my troubles would fade away. The harsh, yet fascinating chore of cleaning the fish and preparing them for dinner in a tiny pan perched precariously on a small camp stove, coupled with the thought of another freeze-dried concoction barely missed, made the delicate flesh that much more appealing. Alas, college, marriage, children and life interceded and I’ve not fished since. But the memory of watching with fascination as the rainbow luminescense danced beneath the water and the temptation they provided is a fond memory. So I watched our fish with great interest.
Robert J. Behnke in his book, Trout and Salmon of North America, describes the anadromous (ocean going) form of rainbow trout that live in our streams known as steelhead (Oncorcynchus mykiss irideus) which attain a length of about 24-40 inches and 5-20 pounds, as spending half of their lives at sea, which makes them different from the type of rainbow trout that complete their life cycles in a limited area of a small stream and attain a length of about 8 inches (resident form).
I remember with clarity the first time I saw one of the large fish in Uvas Creek swimming nose pointed upstream under some overhanging vegetation. I sat mesmerized, just as I did as a youth, waiting expectantly for each glimpse of its silvery back as it maintained position in the creek.
Juvenile steelhead generally spend two years in fresh water (the parr stage) before smolting and migrating to the ocean at lengths of 6-8 inches. Most steelhead return to their home rivers for spawning after about 1-3 years of ocean life, far from shore. Unlike Pacific salmon, steelhead do not all die soon after spawning, but the rate of survival to repeat spawning is generally low, about 10 percent or less. The genetic differences between resident rainbow trout and steelhead are very difficult to determine and some hybridization occurs between the two, making any attempt to document a genetic or hereditary basis for steelhead versus resident rainbow trout very difficult, if not impossible.
I’ve heard two reasons for the name steelhead, both of which I find plausible. The first is that their heads are the color of steel when swimming under water and the second is that their heads are as tough as steel, which is necessary when they cross shallow sections of creek on their way to spawning grounds. Considering that I’ve watched 24-30 inch steelhead fight their way up shallow sections of Little Arthur with their backs out of the water, I can believe that they have heads as tough as steel, not to mention skin.
Having found this out, and also knowing that steelhead are an endangered species, I was extremely sad when I watched the fish become isolated in the drying ponds of Little Arthur in the summer of 2004 and die. I also questioned why steelhead would choose a creeek like Little Arthur. So when 2005 rolled around, I headed out with my fish net and put those that I could catch in a bucket and carried them to Uvas Creek where I released them. I believe I saved about 150 small fish that year (1-3” long).
In 2006, I had become friendly with two researchers from Cal State Monterey Bay that studied conditions of Uvas Creek for various agencies as a part of their studies. With their help, we once again tried to save the steelhead, this time using a shock system, where an electric wand is waved about in the water while the wearer sports an attractive anti-shock suit with a large (extremely heavy) battery backpack. This temporarily shocks the fish and they float to the top, just long enough to scoop them up with a net. This time, scientific measurements of length and other notations were made on each fish. This method yielded only about a dozen fish, partly due to the intense heat that summer and the quick rate at which the stream dried up.
Then, in 2007, while I was busy with my new garden, we had an early intense heatwave that dried up Little Arthur so fast that by the time I planned a rescue, none was possible - the fish were already gone.
Finally, I was put in contact with an energetic man named Herman Garcia, who runs a small non-profit called Coastal Habitat Education & Environmental Restoration (CHEER). CHEER’s objective is to clean up watersheds that once teemed with wild steelhead and to restore steelhead populations to renewed watersheds.
After much discussion, Herman, his volunteers and I coordinated to rescue the steelhead this year on our section of Little Arthur Creek, this time, with the benefit of appropriate permits and training.
In one day, we rescued 2,674 steelhead from the Casa Dos Rios section of Little Arthur Creek on May 20th, 2008 and to date, Herman and his volunteers have rescued over 23,000 steelhead and put them into flowing water either upstream in Uvas Creek (where the Santa Clara Valley Water District makes sure to keep a steady year-long flow of water below Uvas Dam) or downstream in the Pajaro River for larger fish. Some of the fish rescued were 30” long! Greg and I support Herman and his efforts. If you’d like to support him, you can contact him or send donations to CHEER at the address given in my resources section. (Casa Dos Rios Journal, Jan '09)
