Oly Hickman is an excitable three-year-old. At the moment, he’s excited about the carrot sticks his mom, Kathryn, is doling out. He’s excited about doing laps around the kitchen. He’s excited by the new humans he’s just met – all of whom are talking loudly and at the same time. But most of all, Oly Hickman is excited to finally have the opportunity to goof around with his old man.

It’s been a long day for Oly’s dad, Jeff Hickman. Hickman is a prominent steelhead fishing guide, outfitter and activist for wild rivers and wild fish. Today at the office, a short coastal stream on Oregon’s north coast, sleet, snow, rain and even squalls of hail pounded down all damn day. There were two rafts to mother hen. Knots needed untangling and flies needed changing. A newbie required help learning to Spey cast. A pair of anglers somehow got lost in the woods – that was a new one. By the time Hickman beaches at the takeout, it’s dark. And cold. No steelhead. Not today. Maybe tomorrow.

Nevertheless, Hickman is in a fine mood after the float, twirling a squealing Oly around his shoulders while he talks about river levels, weather and tomorrow’s odds. Hickman is central casting’s ideal steelhead guide. He is tall, rugged and hewn from sturdy stuff that resists wet, cold and wind. Given his size, reputation and occupation, one might expect Hickman to be a more imposing figure. Instead he’s disarming, earnest and enthusiastic – about everything. He finds small things funny and funny things hilarious, which is to say, he laughs a lot, a smile rumpling his permanent chin stubble and his chuckles rebounding off walls.

Oly logs a few more laps around the kitchen. A huge pot of pozole bubbles; crisping sourdough flavors the air; a salad attracts a few polite glances. The conversation drifts from the water’s perfect shade of steelhead green on today’s river to snow levels in the mountains to the latest local Sasquatch news. Everyone except Oly has a Bigfoot story.

Like his kid, Hickman is excitable, especially when talking about Bigfoot or steelhead or rivers – but especially steelhead and rivers. He waves his hands around, he gets louder and words come sprinting out of his mouth at a quicker pace. “Fly fishing is not only what I do for a living,” he says, “it’s my sanity.” But for Hickman, there’s something more than just the fishing that keeps him out late on a miserable Wednesday night. “It breeds stewardship… I feel like it’s my duty. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I wasn’t active and vocal and doing what I can to make a difference.”

Hickman is a volunteer for the Native Fish Society, working as a river steward on Oregon’s Nehalem River for more than 11 years. In that time, the NFS has ended harmful dredge mining in over 20,000 miles of essential salmon habitats in Oregon, helped secure protections for 101,000 acres of public lands from strip mining in southwest Oregon and secured Scenic Waterway protections for the Nehalem River. Aside from showing up for meetings, hearings and planning sessions and marshalling volunteers for surveys and restoration projects, Hickman’s success as a wild fish activist is simple: combine the gift of gab with an insistently positive attitude. “The secret,” he explains, “is talking to your neighbor and getting to know people in your community – that’s grassroots activism.”

The second component to Hickman’s approach is to simply speak his mind, loudly if need be. “It’s a complaint-based system,” he says. “If you are complaining, you are going to make a difference. You’re going to influence change.” It sounds funny when he says it, and he can’t conceal a grin while saying it, but after the punchline, he presses his point. “This is not doom and gloom,” he says. “This is not me saying that the world is over, let’s all give up and get drunk. We’re at a tipping point and we all need to stand up and speak our minds and talk about what’s important to us. I think a complaint is worth a lot more than people give it credit for. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, man.”

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.

In the raft, Hickman stands at the oars much of the time, guiding the boat through narrow channels and around rocks and standing waves. He eyes a likely-looking stretch downstream and slides the boat to the shore at the head of the run. He checks the fly, the leader, where he’s standing – the little things – and begins to unfurl those casually magnificent casts, talking all the while. He talks to the fish. He talks to himself. He tells everyone what he’s thinking and what he thinks the fish are thinking. Finally, it happens. A fish grabs his fly. The reel zings that zingy sound and the fish bolts. Hickman called the shot. The fish was exactly where he said it would be. He grunts, his long Spey rod bucks and curves into and out of a rainbow shape. Someone runs to get the net.

After a few minutes, the battle is over and the fish flails in the mesh. It’s a hatchery steelhead, fins scraped and rounded by months of contact with concrete walls and raceways. The fish has violent red scrapes on its flank; Hickman hypothesises it’s recently escaped an encounter with a hungry seal. The fish is smallish, ill-formed and didn’t put up much of a fight. It’s quickly dispatched with a piece of driftwood; the gills are slashed and its blood runs into the river. Hickman is still jacked from the grab, but is noticeably unimpressed. In fact, he’s a bit disappointed. “I don’t know why,” he says, “human nature thinks we can do something better than nature.”

Hard to catch, harder to hold. Jeff Hickman fumbles the release of a wild steelhead in northern Oregon. Photo: Jeremy Koreski.