by Bill Redman, Chairman, Federation of Fly Fishers Steelhead Committee

*This article was first published in the September, 2005 issue of The Osprey.

      On the North Umpqua River of Oregon and among steelhead fly fishers almost anywhere, Frank and Jeanne Moore are living legends. In late August of this year, my wife and I had the unique and thoroughly enjoyable opportunity to spend an afternoon, evening and morning with Frank and Jeanne at their home above this surpassingly beautiful and famed River.

      They were the original owners and operators of Steamboat Inn, from the early 1950’s into the 1970’s. The legend began there with their welcoming and gracious hospitality. We felt at home immediately when we arrived at their place. They are encouraging, upbeat, fun, and unpretentious people, thankful every day for what they are still able to do, which is a lot.

      By the mid-1960’s, I had heard of the legend, which grew in substantial part based on Franks’ on-stream abilities, especially wading and casting. So 40 years later, he and I went fishing. As he now approaches age 83, an age at which most steelhead anglers have retreated to smaller waters and fish, he still fishes, and exceptionally well. He was quite happy to coach me on my casting.

      Fishing the North Umpqua requires negotiating steep banks to and from the River and wading a bottom composed of large, irregular, and slippery rocks, including a goodly amount of bedrock. Frank keeps his folding wading staff in a holster on his belt. While my staff was clattering among the rocks, constantly in use, his never left the holster.

      After I fished through every piece of water first at his insistence, he would fish. His casts, some of them over 100 feet, seemed almost entirely effortless. We fished about seven of his favorite runs, all beautiful water, in an evening and a morning. We had no strikes, but that’s steelheading.

      But the fishing doesn’t end it. Frank has an inquiring mind, and he is a voracious reader and keen observer of the natural world. It didn’t take him long to figure out that good fishing requires taking care of the fish and their habitat.

      He was ahead of his time in noticing after the first few years of hatchery plants in the North Umpqua that the hatchery steelhead are inferior to their wild counterparts, not as explosive on the business end of a fly line and in other ways. That meant the future has to be based on the wild fish, which means habitat protection. Frank’s conclusion: anglers should harvest hatchery steelhead; get them out of the River to keep them from interbreeding and competing with wild fish.

      And he did something about habitat protection, as he explained in the following words, which are his own:

      “The heavy logging in our area started in the mid 50’s, with some terrible road building and logging practices, with no thoughts for the fishery or other values. It was interesting to note that in most of the smaller spawning tributaries, one year after major logging along them, the warmer waters allowed the dace, shiners and other trash fish to proliferate, all but eliminating most of the Salmonids.

      “Two great advertising executives, Hal Riney and Dick Snyder, stopped by the Inn on the way to do some filming in British Columbia, Canada. I took them out and showed them what was happening to the streams, fish, and the environment, as a result of the terrible road building and logging practices by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, as well as the timber industry. I had collected daily water temperatures and other data from every major stream and their tributaries in this entire area for several years.

      “Hal and Dick cancelled their BC trip, went back to California, and returned a few days later with a huge amount of film, underwater cameras, regular movie cameras, etc., and proceeded to spend several days filming what had been and was occurring in the area. They then returned to California, where Hal wrote the script and had a famous voice do the narrative, winding up with the award-winning, high-impact film ‘Pass Creek.’

      “I then made arrangements to show the finished product to government agencies, clubs, and all kind of groups all over the country, including the halls of Congress, putting a lot of hours on my wonderful Piper Comanche plane. That was the beginning of a change in national, as well as state and private, logging practices. However, even in recent years, many land managers have gone beyond what is good for the fisheries’ resource.”

      I first saw “Pass Creek” when Frank showed it at the Federation of Fly Fishers Conclave in Jackson Hole in the late 1960’s. The views of large logs being dragged through tributary streams made an indelible impression on me, and obviously many others.

      Frank also has opposed for years the presence and operation of Soda Springs Dam just upstream from the prime 31-mile fly fishing stretch of the North Umpqua. Again in his own words, “The Soda Springs Dam has collected a huge amount of the smaller gravel above the Dam, preventing the natural migrations of that important factor to downstream spawning beds, which are now mostly cobble too large for trout and steelhead to use.”

      In addition, the frequent and rapid changes in volume of water released from the Dam repeatedly disrupt the natural rhythms and processes of the River. And the slimy coating of what looks like silt on the River’s rocks is actually a coating of dead algae released from the reservoir above the Dam. The algae have clouded the water, reducing what used to be its exceptional clarity. A few years ago, the Steamboaters, the North Umpqua Foundation, and other River advocates made an effort to have the Dam removed and appeared to be making progress toward that goal. But the management of the U. S. Forest Service and other agencies folded, and Soda Springs Dam remains in operation. The wild fish advocates continue to work toward removal of Soda Springs, but so far to no avail. This is dam that should go.

      The moral of this story is that steelhead and salmon badly need more anglers like Frank Moore, whose sport leads them into working for the conservation and recovery of these fish and their habitats, from spawning grounds to the North Pacific and back. Responsible politicians and agency managers must be made to listen to anglers, because they know we understand these fish and what they require to prosper. Their failures steal some of our greatest pleasures in life.

      We came by this rare opportunity to visit with Frank and Jeanne by making the winning bid on their donation of a night’s stay and short day of fishing at the Wild Steelhead Coalition’s auction last fall. We paid U.S. dollars for their donation. But as they say in the auction business, “Value: Priceless.”