hunts have not, to my knowledge, been held. By all appearances there has existed as much consternation and animosity toward the TWD by the Washington Department of Fish and Game as by me.
Watershed Management
In the 1960’s when I first began walking up the road and fishing the river above the diversion dam, I was somewhat puzzled by all the logging trucks that were running up and down the closed road. If this watershed and all river uses were closed to protect the watershed and the river, why were they logging at??? That question has stayed with me for forty years in spite of the fact that I no longer live in Washington and return only to visit family.
Two years ago, In the afternoon before giving a presentation to a Seattle fly fishing club I traveled up the old roads to the entry road to see what had changed. The first change was that the road was better, wider, smoother although still gravel. The second was that there is now a large and imposing manned kiosk checking trucks in and out. What has NOT changed is that there was a continual stream of logging trucks going in and out. When I walked down to the river below the TWD gate I was stunned by the size of the river, rather by the lack of it. Yes, everything seems smaller than one remembers it as a child, but I was 18 the last time I saw the river there. Two official people (NON-TWD) were recording river level on a gauge. It was on the order of 40 CFS. barely a trickle. I could have walked across the river in dry shoes on rock tops. It was hard to imagine where a summer steelhead (advertised as being present) might hide to summer over until the fall rains raised the river again. It was late summer, the lowest water period of the year, but this was NOT the river I remembered and still expected. When I mentioned all this at the fly club, someone said quickly there was nothing in there but “stumps”.
