On the river, Hickman’s natural intensity assumes another form. He seems remarkably at ease as he launches the raft, gears up and herds his day’s anglers as nonchalantly as if he were finishing up the evening dishes. With a fly rod in his hands, he is a wonder to watch. Standing knee-deep in the flow, he commands his two-hander with motion that’s elegant and powerful, launching impossibly long, accurate casts across the full span of the river. He does it almost casually, barely stopping his steady stream of fish chatter. Hickman jokes, offers casting advice and reveals steelhead secrets that few people know. “Steelhead can be assholes,” he says. “Yeah, these fish are a pain in the ass. They’re super hard to catch. That’s not because they don’t bite, it’s because they’re not there. There’s not that many of them.”
Hickman need not even say it. It’s apparent in the clear-cuts, the logging trucks and the hatchery signs along these watersheds: the coastal rivers of northern Oregon and the steelhead that call them home are in serious peril. These fish, however, didn’t disappear on their own. They’re not on an extended vacation. Generations of abuse, neglect and greed have conspired to send entire populations into a death spiral. “Wild steelhead are struggling,” Hickman says between casts. “Their numbers are nowhere near where they should be.”
Those numbers are shocking. The best available data from historic and state sources strongly suggest a 90 percent ongoing decline in the Nehalem River wild steelhead population since the 1920s. Along the entire Oregon coast, agency data suggests wild steelhead in most rivers have been declining at a rate of 20-24 percent per decade since the 1980s. “If the average rate of decline continues,” says Dr. Chris Frissell, a fisheries biologist and Native Fish Society fellow, “it puts nearly all wild coastal steelhead populations at risk of extinction within 50 years.”
Nevertheless, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife considers populations like the Nehalem steelhead to be “healthy,” a graphic example of the tragedy of shifting baselines. Past information about run sizes is lost or forgotten, allowing steady, long-term declines to go unrecognised.
For Hickman, the decline of wild steelhead can be traced to two main culprits – logging and hatcheries. “The world has changed,” he says. “Everything is now about corporate greed.” That greed, he argues, is aided and abetted by Oregon’s state agencies. “Both the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Oregon Department of Forestry are departments of harvest. It’s the fox guarding the hen house. Both are run willy-nilly without any long-term solutions.”
Along the northern coast of Oregon, the logging industry is never far away. Photo: Jeremy Koreski.