Photo by Paul Updike

The small bobber floated down the Sandy River, with the tiny pink jig fixed below it at about 7 feet deep. The float followed the current, arcing around an outcrop of rock protruding into the river, when suddenly it disappeared under the surface. Swinging the rod back, I felt the line go tight, and I could feel a big fish shaking its head. Too quick, the line relaxed and the float regained the surface. I reeled in the line dejectedly, my heart still pounding from the adrenalin rush that always accompanies a steelhead strike. The little jig's hook was bent, but I knew the fish had not been on long enough to really disturb it, so I sat down to give the spot a rest.

After about 10 minutes, I tried drifting a pink corky tipped with pink and chartreuse yarn through the slot where the fish lay. On the first pass I felt a hit, and sent the hook home. It took only a few seconds for me to realize I was hooked to a monster steelhead, much bigger than the average 8- to 10-pound winter fish that the Sandy River offers. It was almost another 20 minutes before I saw the big buck, and another five minutes passed before I landed him.

The giant male never jumped; instead he preferred to bull downstream, with me hopping over the rocks like a madman as I tried to keep up with him. Later I pulled the giant wild winter steelhead into a calm backwater, and slipped the bait out of his mouth. I measured the fish, which I estimated at nearly 20 pounds. He was 39 inches long, my biggest winter steelhead ever!

Big, wild winter metalheads like this one are caught every year on the Sandy River, one of Oregon's most famous steelhead rivers. However, the hatchery segment of the run receives the most attention, and that segment has changed drastically since the late 1990s. The river's reputation had suffered for years, with declines in both the wild and hatchery runs. As a result, fisheries managers were already making changes to the Sandy management plan when it was announced that Marmot Dam, a fixture on the river since 1914, was going to be decommissioned. The dam will be removed in 2007.

Hatchery plantings above Marmot Dam had already been curtailed, and the river and tributaries above the dam had been closed to steelhead and salmon angling to protect the wild runs in the river, a move that was unpopular with anglers. More importantly, the dam provided a sorting facility: Hatchery fish were removed, and wild fish were passed to spawn in the upper watershed. Without the dam to sort the fish, managers feared that there would be too much interaction between the hatchery-produced Big Creek fish and the wild spawners, diluting the genetic strength of the river's native steelhead. For this reason, hatchery plantings of the Big Creek stock of winter fish, used heavily in Oregon for years, were phased out, and native broodstock were used to produce a hatchery strain of in-basin origin.

Since the Sandy's native steelhead stock arrives later than other stocks, the popular December fishery came to an end along with the river's traditional Thanksgiving Day season opener. The run now starts in mid-January and peaks in March. The first returns of the broodstock fish, in 2003, were promising. The 2004 run was even better, and fishermen enjoyed one of the best steelhead runs in modern times on the Sandy River.

Then came the dry winter of 2005, and along with it, a much poorer run of winter steelhead. Were the poor returns the result of the low water, or was some other factor to blame? Many fishermen wondered if the steelhead, sensing the poor river conditions, had simply waited out in the salt water, to return in 2006. That scenario, however, is unlikely.