Another Successful Hall of Fame Banquet

By Norm Ritchie, Executive Director

The success can be measured in several ways – participants having fun, a good message that resonates and energizes the crowd, Good food, a well-executed plan, and of course generating funds to advance our mission. We hit on all cylinders! 

There are four groups of great people that need to be thanked for their part in making this happen.  First the volunteers who did the planning, solicited the donations, and manned the event. Then the donors who supported the Steelheaders with merchandise and services, allowing us to generate greatly needed funds. The participants that came out, bought auction items, raffle tickets, donated outright, and played games that helped us continue our sportfishing and conservation work. We need to acknowledge the last group that have dedicated their skills and years of volunteer work toward our mission. Hall of Fame inductees Jeff Stoeger, Bill Pavlisick, and Member of the Year Ken Johnson deserve the gratitude of all of us for their many accomplishments on behalf of the Steelheaders and benefiting all of the sportfishing community.

We are already getting started toward making next year’s event bigger and better! We hope to see more of you next year on Saturday, November 15th.

It is an exciting time to be a Steelheader

By Jeff Hernandez, President

It is good to take a breath and think back on the fun times this past fall. I hope you had success on the river and put fish in the freezer for the winter. I didn’t end up with as much as I had hoped, but I am not complaining. I was lucky enough to enjoy the region’s ample angling opportunities, catching fish on the Columbia, Deschutes, Grande Ronde, Wallowa and in Petersburg, Alaska. The fun wasn’t just on the water. This year’s Hall of Fame Banquet was a great success, and the chapter meetings and other volunteer events I attended were amazing. I am filled with gratitude for the dedication and work our association members put into this amazing organization.

As we look ahead to the new year, I want to share some of the events on the horizon:

Steelheader Film Fest

The Association of Northwest Steelheaders will host our first film festival on January 10^th at the McMenamins Mission Theater on 1624 NW Glisan Street. The Steelheaders Film Fest will be a collaboration with conservation driven non-profit partners. Our goal is to engage the public on our priority issues, raise awareness of the association and create an opportunity for the angling community to come together.

The featured film is “The Last 100 Miles: The Fight for the Lower Deschutes” from the Deschutes River Alliance. The film highlights the problems on the last 100 miles of the Deschutes River impacting fish, water quality and habitat. The Deschutes is one of my favorite rivers in Oregon and a river I hope to be more involved in individually and as an organization. I have seen the film, and we are in for a treat with this one.

The second film is from Fly Fishing Collaborative. Fly Fishing Collaborative builds aquaponic farms in partnership with like-minded organizations that provide women and children the protection and healing they need from the injustice of human trafficking and poverty. If all goes well, we will be collaborating with them in 2025 as they build an aquaponics farm on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. I look forward to sharing more on this partnership soon and I can’t wait for the work to begin.

We will be screening one more film that has yet to be selected. In addition to screening these awesome films, the association and our partners will be hosting prize give aways. Mark your calendars, this event is not to be missed.

Click this link or the image below to purchase your tickets before space runs out!

January Membership Drive

Also on the horizon for January is an association-wide membership drive. I am asking all our chapters to help get memberships up to date and re-engage members who have lapsed. As an incentive, I am also proposing each chapter host a special raffle. If a member brings a non-member to the meeting, the two of them will be entered to win new fishing rods.

Lastly, I would like us to have a phone-a-thon in January to see if we can get lapsed members back on the books. I will be providing a script and some instructions shortly to chapter leadership. I hope we can all pitch in.

PNW Sportsman Show

The NW Steelheaders will be at this year’s PNW Sportsman Show February 12-16. We skipped last year and are excited to attend. We will be selling memberships at the booth and need about 20 members to fill 3 shifts over four days - please contact Brad Garrett at garrett.brad@gmail.com if you can volunteer for a shift. I hope you can sign up to help. It will be fun!

Chapter Events

We have chapter events all winter long that should not be missed. Our team is focusing on sharing and highlighting these events across the association. If you have an event that we aren’t promoting, please let me know. The Tualatin Valley Chapter is having a fish-a-long some time in March and we would love to see some drift boats from other chapters joining the fun. We are also helping a boy scout troop organize a crab-a-long on March 15th on Netarts Bay. If you have a boat and would like to help with that event please contact me.

In the spring we will be hosting another fund raiser at Avidity Winery. Keep your eyes peeled for more details on this in the next newsletter.

Thank you all for your support and hard work in keeping our rivers healthy and the fish runs abundant.

Green Peter Reservoir Draw-Downs

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) recently presented data from two dam draw-down events which were dictated by a 2018 lawsuit from the Northwest Environmental Defense Center, among other groups. The dam, designed in 1960, originally had a fish collection system for downward migrating salmon and steelhead: this was abandoned in 1988 because it didn't work. The dam's turbines are not fish-friendly, and its outlet is 144 feet below water level (salmon smolt will not swim deeper than 50 feet to go through a dam).

The first draw-down was designed to lower the water level to 25 feet over the outlet pipe, allowing the passage of fish, however, many fishes' swim bladders were ruptured due to the rapidity of the draw-down. In 2023, the first year after this draw-down, there was a 70% survival rate for kokanee passing through the dam and only 12 spring chinook smolts passed through. Additionally, the sediment and turbidity numbers were extremely high - no measures were implemented to prevent this.

In 2024, almost no fish passed through the dam, leading the USACE to conclude that no fish were left. Turbidity was high, but lower than the previous year, and the draw-down was halted as fine sediment threatened the complete failure of Sweet Home's water system and partial failure of 4 other city water systems. The  draw-downs flushed so much warm water from the upper lake downstream that the river reached lethal temperatures for salmon and trout in October.

The USACE is concerned with the temperature of the discharge water and will alter its plan after consultation with the National Marine Fisheries Service and a biological opinion, but still plans to continue the draw-downs next year.

The USACE is concluding their comment period on facilities and parks at the Foster and Green Peter reservoirs. As major users of those facilities, our Mid-Willamette Valley Chapter has been engaged in this process.

Moving foward, the USACE is in the process of reviewing the final Environmental Impact Statement encompassing operations and maintenance of the entire Willamette Valley System. NW Steelheaders will monitor this closely and we will keep our membership apprised of the impacts and opportunities to make our voices heard.

Fred Meyers to Donate to NW Steelheaders – The Rest is Up to You!

We are thrilled to announce that we have received our first check from Fred Meyers. Thank you to all who have signed up so far!

NW Steelheaders has enjoyed a good relationship with Fred Meyers for years having received grants for specific achievements from the Meyer Memorial Trust, but that does not help cover our overhead expenses. The Fred Meyer Community Rewards Program can help with that, but it requires your help. Click the button below to learn more and set up your Community Rewards!

Chapter Meetings

Most chapters have resumed Monthly Chapter Meetings in-person, and we hope to get everyone meeting as soon as possible! To get more detailed meeting information please visit our Events Calendar. If you're having trouble finding a meeting you can attend, please reach out to us at office@anws.org and we'll help you out. As always, Chapter Meetings are free and open to the public. If you're new to Northwest Steelheaders, attending a meeting is a great first step to getting more involved with your local fishing community. 

Upcoming Meetings

•  Tualatin Valley Chapter - Thursday, December 12 @ 7 pm

•  Salem Chapter - Tuesday, December 17 @ 7 pm

•  Mid-Valley Chapter - Wednesday, January 1 @ 7 pm

•  Emerald Empire Chapter - Thursday, January 2 @ 6:30 pm

•  Sandy River Chapter - Thursday, January 2 @ 7 pm

•  Columbia River Chapter - Tuesday, January 14 @ 6:30 pm

•  McLoughlin Chapter - Tuesday, January 14 @ 7 pm

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