Good info. Thanks David. I live verrrry close to the Cedar and have been looking forward to this. It's a perfect size of river to take my 12 y.o. wading on. It's also the first place I caught a fish on a fly at - I think I was 7 years old.
The thing that you said in your message that I'm most concerned with is the fact that this season is experimental. I hope very much that the river gets respect from the fishers that are sure to pound it real soon. I know all of us on this list respect the places we fish and carry our trash out - in this case I think it's going to be really important for us to compensate for those who don't act so responsibly. In fact, before I fish on Tuesday and beyond on the Cedar, I will have the poaching hotline as well as local sheriff's office numbers pre-programmed in my cell. It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway... we need to respect and protect this opportunity. :) -tight lines- Jim -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of David Holmes Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2004 11:31 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: The Cedar My boy and I stopped by the Cedar River tonight at the Maple Valley (at the bridges by the Testy Chef) to quietly scope out the place. The place is crawling with .... other guys who have the same idea! In the one hour we were there we saw four other guys clearly scoping out the river. I have a feeling that Tuesday is going to be a ZOO. At this month's meeting of the newly resurrected South Lake Washington Chapter of Trout Unlimited, we had as the speaker, the distinguished activist and president of the South King County chapter, Frank Urabeck. Urabeck has been instrumental in many high-profile trout-related events such as: * The Lake Washington Sockeye season a couple of years ago * The removal of the three sealions at the locks * The marking of all hatchery salmon in the state * And now the 2004 trout season on the Cedar According to Urabeck, the Cedar was originally closed to protect the dwindling steelhead returns. The closure, plus the removal of sealions at the Ballard locks, allowed the steelhead returns to become quite strong in recent years (up to 600 a couple of years ago). However, this year only 20 have returned. One operating theory for the dwindling is that the trout in the Cedar have gotten so big that they are eating or displacing the steelhead. So the river is being opened to thin out some of these fish. Also, the Muckleshoot have been fishing in the river for a couple of years now so TU prodded the WDFW to open the river to the rest of us. TU wanted a catch-and-keep policy, but WDFW wouldn't go that far; WFDW assumes that 1 in 10 of the C&R fish will die from handling anyway. The 2004 trout season is definitely still an experiment. The WFDW has only agreed to seasons through 2005. Steve Foley, the WFDW biologist, thinks the 20" fish in the river ARE the steelhead who have simply become non-andromonus. He will be our next guest speaker. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/
