Volunteer Experts Needed For Klamath Sucker Delisting

On May 19, 2002, Bush appointee Steve Williams, Director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, ruled that there was no reason to reconsider the "endangered" listing for Klamath Basin suckers. He rejected the Congressional testimony of biologist David Vogel (hired by the Klamath Water Users Association) that either the listing was a fraud to begin with, or there had been a remarkable recovery. Government biologists couldn't find suckers in 1988, when they listed them, and yet in the 1990s, they counted hundreds of thousands of them.

Six Klamath Basin residents challenged the Bush Administration's denial of their petition in Federal court. On January 14, 2003, United States District Judge Anna Brown granted the Federal Government a protective order against any and all discovery in the case. Judge Brown set a deadline of March 14, 2003 for the Bush Administration to file for summary judgment dismissing the case; plaintiffs will have to file papers resisting the motion by April 11th.

Unfortunately, the petitioners may not be able to rely upon Vogel to defend his Congressional conclusions because local leaders deem the important task of fighting California's lies about the fish die-off to be a higher priority for his time. Nor can plaintiffs afford to hire other expert witnesses. However, Federal law says that anyone may be "qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education".

Many of you in the community have personal experience and expert knowledge about just how abundant the suckers are. Or you know someone else who can testify that suckers are not endangered, and can encourage them to participate. Local experts can explain to Judge Brown that "threats" to suckers from water quality problems are not serious, because suckers as a species easily survive large fish die-offs. Local experts can explain to Judge Brown that habitat problems do not threaten the suckers either. The Web page http://www.buchal.com/Klamath/delisting.htm identifies areas where testimony is needed, includes a declaration form for use in submitting testimony, and explains how easy it is for you to put your views on this important issue before the Court.

The Klamath Basin sucker fish are probably like every other sucker fish in the Pacific Northwest. They are not endangered and are a threat to any native fish in the streams where they are predators.

In California many fishers have declared sucker fish as bank fish. That means when you catch them, you stomp their bellies hard on the bank, rip the hook out and stomp their head and leave them on the bank for the predators. I prefer to throw them back in the water to return the nutrients.

They live to eat baby trout, steelhead and salmon. When I really get ticked off at them (when they drive other fish out of hole), I will put on a fly that resembles a baby trout, steelhead or salmon. Then I will become a junkfish serial killer of these worthless fish. I just did this week on the Russian River after two hard days of fishing with no steelhead and just sucker fish. My last hour on the Russian yesterday, I looked like a serial sucker fish killer.

In some streams north of the Klamath Basin, there is a bounty or payment for each dead sucker fish, you catch and kill. I can't see any real difference between these fish and the Klamath Basin Barbara Boxer nosed sucker fish.

All of these sucker fish, squawfish are related and often will destroy the native fish and planted trout/steelhead and salmon smolts.

I know there was/is a bounty on the Columbia River, and I believe that some other waters in Oregon have a bounty on them.

I live in N. California and have noticed that whenever the local squawfish/sucker fish take over fishing holes that have been good for steelhead for decades. The steelhead no longer use those holes for holding or laying their eggs. We are seeing this on the Russian River right now above Healdsbert and below Geyersville.

10 years ago, it was seldom that you caught a squawfish/sucker fish on a fishing fly. Now it is a common everyday occurence from flies that imitate salmon, steelhead and trout eggs as their first menu choice during spawning time for the salmonoid species. That is an indication of how these slimey suckers key in on salmonoid eggs and impact the future of the salmonoids in the streams where there is an abundance.

Then, when baby salmonoids are heading downstream these slimey suckers will key on these baby smolts. This is why I carry the Jansen flies which look like baby trout, steelhead or salmon. When smolts are going down stream, I become a serial killer of the slimey suckers trying to eat all of the baby salmonoids using the Jansen flies. That was what I did this week.

A relative new occurrence has been noted by me and a few other fly fishers. The past couple of years Gray Davis or someone has been really dumping water downstream on the American and Sacramento River and the Trinity last year. I believe that it is to generate power as we have no new power plants. Also, it is an economic boon to the whitewater enviral rats who own canoes, kayaks and pontoon boats. With the high flows, they can often rent the boats twice a day.

During these artificial high water flows, a lot of normal food for all fish gets washed down stream. These slimey sucker fish then key in to the few remaining hatches of flies and in particuliar their nymph stage. I'm seeing less and less brown and green caddis hatches on the American, Sacramento and other rivers/streams as more bugs get washed down stream in these heavy abnormal summer flows. This will have a devastating impact on native trout and salmonoids if their diet of normal river bugs is removed from the rivers by high flow and squaw/sucker fish.

In places where trout or summer steelhead would bang a caddis pupah fly, we are mainly seeing the slimey suckerfish go after this nymph stage of the brown and green caddis flies. Also, you can see them gourging on the hard case caddis flies who form a hard case of the river sands around their bodies to protect them. I have seen hundreds of squaw fish in shallow water moving rocks around to gorge on these cased caddis nymphs. As a result it becomes harder and harder to even find a cased caddis nymph in waters a few years ago that had them all over rocks or on the underside of rocks.

Jim, I'm not an expert, but I notice these trends as I fish. I'm sure that the Klamath Sucker fish eat the eggs and fry of the famous, huge and wonderful Williamson River Red Sided trout that go in and out of Klamath Lake and back up the Williamson in the summer. This pattern will be replicated where other streams and rivers flow into the Klamath Lake. Yet you never hear any Fish and Game official concerned about these fabulous Williamson/Klamath native trout, which may be the biggest stream trout in America, including Alaska. These trout are a real catch and release asset for the economy of Oregon. There is no asset value for the Barbara Boxer Short Nosed Sucker Fish.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.