For the Love of Fish
Native Skagit River steelhead have advocates in the least likely of places, even if they disagree on how to save the dwindling fish population.
Bill McMillan and Scott Willison stand on the bank of Finney Creek near Concrete, Wash. When doing surveys McMillan arms himself with a walking stick, camera, and notebook. // Photo by Ben Delaney
Story and Photos by Ben Delaney
December 6, 2023
Scott Willison and Bill McMillan meet near Finney Creek, just outside Concrete, Washington, around noon. While it’s not particularly early in the day, ice still tops the puddles scattered on the one-lane dirt road. Finney Creek itself will see a couple of hours of sunlight throughout the day, but the old logging road won’t lose its coating of frost.
They put on their waders, making sure not to step on the sharp gravel with the delicate neoprene booties. A hole in the waders would result in a long, cold, wet, day no one wants.
The two have met this afternoon to count fish and their redds in this tributary of the Skagit River. Redds are the spawning beds dug by female steelhead in order to protect the eggs they lay.
While walking miles on the uneven and treacherous river bed is tough enough, counting is the hard part.
Willison and McMillan are counting steelhead, a species native to the West Coast from southern California, up the Pacific rim, all the way to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia.
Bill McMillan and Scott Willison cross Finney Creek near Concrete, Wash. Besides steelhead, chinook, coho, pink and chum salmon all use Finney Creek to spawn at their respective time of year. // Photo by Ben Delaney
Steelhead are anadromous rainbow trout, meaning they live part of their life in freshwater and part out to sea. They are related to the typical rainbow trout found solely in freshwater ponds, lakes and rivers around the U.S. and the world.
Steelhead are considered the sixth species of salmon to the Upper Skagit Tribe, according to Scott Schuyler, a tribal elder and policy representative on natural resource matters for the tribe, They hold the same cultural significance as all Pacific salmon. Indigenous communities of the Pacific Northwest consider themselves salmon people. They use salmon to nourish their people and honor the salmon’s sacrifice in ceremonies celebrating the important gift from the Creator.
Steelhead are in the rivers longer than the other species of salmon. They can be found spawning from November to May and historically fed Indigenous peoples throughout long winter months, Schuyler said in an email.
While counting steelhead is a relatively simple task, counting redds is not. The disturbed gravel is nearly indistinguishable from typical riverbed features, and it takes a highly trained eye to identify redds among the multi-colored gravel.
Back at Finney Creek, Willison and McMillan have to tread lightly and carefully while walking the river. Stepping on a new redd by accident could lead to the death of the very fish they have invested so much time to protect.
Armed with a bright orange waterproof field notebook, a camera and an old extendable hiking pole, McMillan is prepared. The notebook holds pages and pages of detailed notes regarding steelhead redds.
McMillan’s purple mechanical pencil starts moving nearly any time his feet stop. Anyone can have good intentions when surveying, but having great observational skills is really what makes a good surveyor, according to McMillan.
McMillan, who now requires a walking stick to cross creeks with slippery rocks, has been counting redds and monitoring steelheads since 1979. Willison has been doing independent spawner surveying for the past six or seven years.
While it’s hard to find many 78-year-olds who cross thigh-deep rushing water throughout the year, it's even harder to find someone as dedicated to surveying Skagit River steelhead as McMillan.
Bill McMillan writes a note about a salmon carcass found on Finney Creek near Concrete, Wash. McMillan will record how many dead or alive fish he sees in a day. Along with counting the carcass he makes an estimate as to how long it has been there. // Photo by Ben Delaney
Five or six years ago, McMillian had a day that changed the way he interacted with rivers and steelhead. He was fishing the Skagit right by his house on a gravel bar below Finney Creek. He could— in his words— still stay reasonably upright.
He quickly hooked a summer run steelhead, and despite steelheads being notoriously difficult to catch, McMillan landed the fish promptly. It was a beautiful, bright, wild steelhead.
McMillan noticed scars on one side of the fish. Then he saw a pink-orange dacron fishing line coming from the fish's throat. The fish had already been hooked, bad.
He couldn’t do anything for the fish but take his own hook out of the corner of its mouth and get it back in the water.
He released the fish and attended to his fishing line, as it had gotten tangled after he released it. Not 30 seconds had gone by, and McMillan turned to look back at the river to see the wild steelhead he had just released floating belly up in the current.
He grabbed the fish, turned it upright, and supported its belly while holding its tail. McMillan worked the fish back and forth in the current for some time, trying to revive it.
Finally, it slowly swam off on its own power, but McMillan was never sure what became of that fish. The incident upset him, and he briefly considered going home, but decided to keep fishing.
Not more than five or six casts later, he caught another wild steelhead, but younger. This fish would most likely take its first journey to the ocean in the next year.
This time, McMillan’s hook took the fish’s eye out. The first fish, and now this; it made him sick.
“No more. I’m too old. I’m too clumsy. I have a difficult time releasing fish anymore,” McMillan said. “It was the initial lesson that ‘You need to start letting go of it. You need to be coordinated. You need to do things fast. You need to take care of these fish well and fast. And if you can’t, you shouldn’t be fishing.’ Just for the fish’s sake, it was best I quit, ” McMillan said.
After this incident, he started changing how he interacted with steelhead and the creeks and streams they spawn in.
Nearly every river on the Pacific coast has seen a decline in steelhead population. At the turn of the 20th century, nearly a million steelhead called the Puget Sound home. It is now estimated that less than 14,000 are still swimming.
Tribes are allocated a certain percentage of each year’s steelhead run through treaty law. Often, these tribal harvests are blamed for dwindling salmon and steelhead runs. In reality, habitat degradation, hatcheries, hydropower, rising water temperatures and commercial and recreational harvests are all impacting run sizes.
A landmark Supreme Court case in 1975 reaffirmed these tribal fishing rights after years of pushback from tribal fishers whose rights were actively being abused by state officials.
Now, tribes have the right to fish in areas where they have since time immemorial. If the fish population returns to a tribal fishing area in low numbers, quotas are lowered and tribal members catch less. However, people who fish merely for sport are able to do so anywhere in the Puget Sound and are not restricted by treaty rulings. They often fish healthy runs.
Most data collected through surveys like the ones conducted by Willison and McMillan aid in forecasting fish numbers for the next year.
Forecasts usually take into consideration the spawner survey data taken at different points in the fish’s life. All this data is put into models that give an estimate of the number of steelhead that will return to a river in the coming year.
The forecast will decide how much, what kind, and if any fishing for steelhead is allowed during the run. Four thousand adult steelhead is the magic number. If a run is forecasted to be smaller than 4,000, no fishing can occur that season.
Forecasts aren’t always accurate. In 2021, more steelhead were projected to run the river than actually did, meaning a fishery was opened that shouldn’t have been. In 2023, the opposite occurred: a fishery remained closed that should have been opened.
“Forecasting models are an educated guess at best, so it’s really tough to base management decisions on any of them,” Willison said. “I’m really amazed that we seem to at least be in the ballpark.”
While McMillan and Willison have put a lot of time and effort into surveying, their efforts haven’t always been rewarded. For the past 14 years as a civilian scientist, McMillan has been independently surveying five tributaries to the Skagit River and not getting paid a dime for his time.
After Willison first started surveying, he became frustrated that the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) didn’t want the valuable data he and McMillan were collecting.
The WDFW and Seattle City Light both conduct their own surveys and often share data. The Upper Skagit Indian Tribe also conducts its own steelhead monitoring that helps with forecasts and collects useful biological information like age and life history.
“Incorporating citizen science into management can be tricky. You need to have a lot of consistency and quality control on the data,”Erin Lowery said, a Seattle City Light fisheries biologist. “I'm not disparaging the citizen science. I'm just saying that it has to fit within a statistically robust sampling plan in order for it to be relevant to get an estimate.”
As McMillan ages, he won’t be able to conduct the surveys any more and is passing the torch to Willison and the North Sound chapter of Trout Unlimited. Their survey data is utilized and funded in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service and The Confluence Fly Shop in Bellingham, among others.
Scott Willison is the owner of The Confluence Fly Shop. He is a Western Washington University graduate who has been fishing on the Skagit since 1994.
Scott Willison holds a wild steelhead on Feb. 6, 2021. The average steelhead weighs between 8 and 11 pounds, but they can grow up to 40 pounds. // Photo courtesy of “The Braddlesnake”
Both Willison and McMillan devote so much time to surveying steelhead because they share a concern for hatchery fish’s effects on wild steelhead.
Since hatchery fish are created from artificial selection, hatchery populations are often less genetically diverse than wild ones. While hatcheries can increase population numbers, often for a short time, wild fish advocates see it as a band aid solution that doesn't address the root of fish population decline.
“Diluting the gene pool and weakening that natural diversity that exists within a run is a big problem,” Willison said. “I think diversity is about the only thing steelhead really have going for them.”
Since hatchery fish aren’t raised in the river, they don’t learn the natural instincts wild fish do. The domesticity traits common in hatchery steelhead are passed onto their offspring.
“My understanding of steelhead and the Skagit is that there've been attempts at integrated hatchery programs in the past,” Lowery said. “It has never been successful.”
Many advocacy groups like the Wild Fish Conservancy advocate for helping wild fish populations by promoting responsible fisheries and protecting and restoring habitat rather than building more hatcheries.
Although there are no current plans for a hatchery on the Skagit, it is often the first response to combat dwindling steelhead numbers. Regardless, steelhead can count on McMillan and Willison in the cold and rain, counting them.
When asked what keeps McMillan surveying, he answered before the question was even finished: “It gives life meaning. It’s the most important thing to me.”
Ben Delaney is a third-year student at Western who studies environmental journalism.