That's a great story, 3R...

I've heard a few related stories over the last several years.

After graduating from college in 1993, I moved to Santa Barbara for a couple of years. In 1991 they had tremendous rains there that filled up Lake Kachuma (the municipal water reservoir on the Santa Ynez River). The drought before that had lasted several years, long enough that they had build a desalinization plant for the expected depletion of water if the drought didn't end.

It had been seven or eight years since the Santa Ynez River had surface water at its mouth, but it did that year thanks to the big rains. Trout fishermen caught a few three to five pound chrome "trout" in the lower river that spring. The local bios opined that they were actually steelhead, but were pretty much laughed out of town by the fishermen (who didn't want to see any closures to protect any steelhead).

I've since heard stories of similar experiences on the Malibu and Ventura Rivers, too.

It's pretty much accepted now that those fish were steelhead, and that they stayed out until water did return.

Here's the interesting part...which I had heard while I was down there, and heard again from Curt Kramer at last month's Wild Steelhead Coalition meeting. It seems that resident "trout" in those streams up and headed for the salt as soon as those rains created enough surface water to do so.

The preliminary results of tests on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia have shown the same thing; there are three "types" of rainbows. One is "resident", one is "estuarine", and the last is "anadromous". Typing them is mainly behavioral, as they are all genetically identical. As one type is reduced in population due to environmental conditions, the other two contribute fish to maintain the balance. This means that as ocean conditions work to reduce the anadromous type, when the conditions improve the estuarine and resident types donate fish to build it back up. As marine conditions improve to the point that anadromous runs are over capacity, that type leaves more and more resident and estuarine type fish around to bank on when the conditions reverse.

It's an incredible evolutionary tactic to combat extinction.

The problem around here is that the "bank account" of resident fish has been overdrawn, beat up by "trout" fishing, habitat destruction, and addition of exotic fish that have predated upon these resident fish.

As ocean conditions return to favor anadromous fish, there aren't any additional "resident" fish to help jack up the anadromous fish. When anadromous fish contribute their fecundity to resident fish, they don't survive to be there when they need them back.

Hopefully this trend can be stopped before it's too late...and here's to hoping that our steelhead's southern cousins can get the proper protection to prevent it from happening there, too.

Fish on...

Todd.