Steelhead Fishing Rebounds This Season On Mad River   By: Dan Bacher March 21, 2008 More Articles by Dan

The Mad River, located in Humboldt County on the North Coast above Arcata, is a magnet for anglers throughout the state because of its abundant run of hard-fighting hatchery steelhead. For nearly three decades, the Department of Fish and Game’s Mad River Fish Hatchery has played a key role in enhancing the Mad River’s steelhead population.

The hatchery has been through its ups and downs over these years. It was built by the California Wildlife Conservation Board to enhance salmon and steelhead populations in the North Coast streams of California.

Construction began in August of 1969 and was completed in February of 1971. For two decades, the hatchery produced 250,000 steelhead yearlings, 64,000 catchable rainbow trout and varying numbers of chinook smolts and yearlings and coho yearlings depending on the number of adults trapped the previous season.

Faced with imminent closure due to DFG budget cuts in the early 1990’s, a group of avid steelhead anglers including Larry Williams and yours truly successfully pressured the DFG to keep it open.

Unfortunately, in 2004 the hatchery was closed as part of a statewide reduction in the hatchery budget. The hatchery reopened on January 12, 2005 under a public-private partnership between the DFG and the Friends of the Mad River Fish Hatchery Board, a Humboldt County non-profit organization, to provide funding to reopen the Mad River Fish Hatchery at Blue Lake. “I want to be able to take my children fishing in Mad River for the next 20 years, and the cooperation of the past year between DFG and our community, I believe, will allow us all to do that,” said Dave Varshock, president of the Friends of the Mad River Fish Hatchery Board at the time.

Then State Senator Dave Cogdill stepped in, sponsoring legislation providing dedicated funding to boost funding for the Mad River facilities and other fish hatcheries throughout the state. The hatchery now raises steelhead for the Mad River and catchable trout to be planted in Freshwater Lagoon, Big Lagoon, Ruth Lake and other lakes in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, according to Jerry Ayers, hatchery manager.

Last year the Hatchery’s spawning of steelhead resulted in 181,000 steelhead currently living at the hatchery that will be released this winter. This year about 300,000 eggs will be taken for fertilization and the goal of DFG is to release at least 150,000, healthy steelhead yearlings into the Mad River watershed in the winter of 2009.

“Steelhead fishing has been excellent this year,” said Ayers. “This is the first year that the fish released in 2005 are returning. The fish are bigger than normal – many are in the 10 to 14 pound range. Anglers, for the first time this year, are sticking their heads in the door of the office and thanking me for planting steelhead in the river.”

The impact of the hatchery on the steelhead population is demonstrated by the contrast between the fishing this season and last year. “Last year the steelhead fishing was extremely slow because it was the year there was a missing year class of fish,” he said. “The much improved fishing this year makes obvious the impact of the hatchery.”

Although wild steelhead do spawn in the Mad, it does not have good spawning habitat because much of the watershed has been heavily logged. The Mad is subject to periodic flooding and it takes a long time to clear up, in contrast to a pristine steelhead river like the Smith.

The best fishing on the Mad is in the stretch from the fish hatchery down to the Blue Lake Bridge in the town of Blue Lake. Don’t expect peace and solitude on this popular river – word of the good run of fish this year is drawing crowds of anglers to the Mad.

When I stopped by the Mad River below the hatchery on the afternoon of February 8 en route to a meeting in Trinidad, many anglers were carrying steelhead back to the parking lot after fishing the river.

Mugzy Baer of Arcata caught and kept a 7 lb. steelhead while using yarn and a Fish Pill. While I was there, John Boak of Fortuna caught and released a female steelhead netted by Craig Francheschi of Fortuna. The two walked out with two steelhead in the 8 to 9 pound class.

I also saw two other anglers bringing back their two fish limits of bright steelhead up to 12 pounds. Although they took home limits, the fishermen said that they had worked a lot of water hard with roe for their fish.

In addition to steelhead, the hatchery also raises 43,250 pounds (75,525 fish) of Mt. Shasta strain rainbow trout. The fish, funded under the Sport Fish Restoration Act, will go into Freshwater Lagoon, Dry Lake, Fish Lake, Ruth Lake and other lakes on the North Coast

“The last two plants we made in Ruth Lake last season made anglers really happy,” said Ayers, “since they averaged 1-1/2 pounds each.”

The facility also raises coastal cutthroat trout from eggs of brood stock fish obtained from Humboldt State University. These fish will be released into Freshwater Lagoon and Fish Lake, according to Ayers.

But it is the hatchery steelhead that get anglers the most excited, drawing fishermen from throughout the state to the Mad River every winter. “The Mad River steelhead fishery brings an estimated $1-3/4 million into the Humboldt County economy every year,” said Ayers.

For more information, call the Mad River Fish Hatchery at (707) 822-0592.

More Articles by Dan