So, if you want to hook into more metalheads (the fish…not the afficinados big hair and loud, distorted guitars) this winter, grab a copy of the January issue of Salmon Trout Steelheader Magazine and check out my “Tips of the Trade” column — this month’s topic: Pulling plugs for steelies.

And if you’ve got even more time to spend on the john, read my “Angling Adventures” column on Side-Drifting for Steelhead and my feature on fishing Nor Cal’s Smith River, both in the Jan. issue of Western Outdoors Magazine.

Workers at an English fish farm started noticing that they were missing a bunch of trout from their holding ponds…turns out the “Great Fish Escape” was on! Noted wildlife photographer Dennis Bright caught the little buggers in action:

I went to the UK to try to interview some of the trout that were still in the pond. On the condition that they remain anonymous, I’ve obtained (with the help of a couple jars of Power Bait and a cup of mini crawlers) the secret documents that the trout have been using and now, I’ll share them with you here:

Read the whole story here

Okay, so regarding the whole Prospect Island fish kill mess, the good news is this:

Thanks to the efforts of everybody who came out Dec. 1-3, over 1,800 striped bass and another several thousand other fish of various kinds are back swimming in the Delta right now, saved from certain death. The fish were rescued from Prospect, where they’d been stranded by the Bureau of Reclamation when it fixed a broken levee and pumped the water off the island.

But the bad news is this: we still have tens of thousands of dead fish like this 18 pounder that I found hanging from a tree…kind of says it all, doesn’t it? The headline could be: California Fisheries…Hung Out to Dry by our Government.

Click here to read more…

In case you haven’t been watching the news lately, northern Oregon got absolutely slammed by a huge storm over the weekend, causing massive flooding in many areas. Tillamook, OR was one of the hardest hit.

Rivers went from low to deadly in mere hours. Take the Wilson River, for example. Check out the graph — the river went from about 1,500 cfs to 35,000 cfs almost overnight on Dec. 2 and early Dec. 3. The flooding has been called the worst since the infamous 1964 flood — the biggest since they’ve been keeping track of such things.

Hopefully, it’s not a case of too little, too late, but the Department of Fish & Game and the Bureau of Reclamation finally decided late in the week to allow volunteers onto Prospect Island in the California Delta to rescue stranded striped bass.

There are already estimated tens of thousands of dead fish (including striped bass, one of the state’s most popular gamefish) on the island, which the Bureau decided to pump dry, without regard for salvaging the fish, after repairing a levee break last month. Local anglers noticed the slaughter and blew the whistle.

Today, any and all volunteers are welcome to assist in trying to rescue the remaining stripers — 181 were saved in a small effort on Friday. I’m headed down there this morning!

For more information, call Bob McDaris, owner of Cliff’s Marina in Freeport, cell 916-769-8047 or office 916-665-1611 or www.rescuethefish.org