The Applegater

24 Summer 2023 Applegater Look who's reading the Gater! Take us with you on your next trip. Then send your favorite "Reading the Gater" photo to gater@applegater.org or mail to Applegater, PO Box 14, Jacksonville, OR 97530. Liquor Your Neighborhood Store Not quite nothing. e biggest fish Teresa Kasza, a retired fly-fishing guide (she called her business Rainbows on the Fly), ever caught was an 11- or 12-pound steelhead from the Applegate River in 2012. She caught it by nymphing—the fly nine feet under an indicator bobbing on the surface. "You can tell it's a wild fish," she told me, holding up the photograph, " b e c a u s e i t h a s t h i s a d i p o s e f i n near the tail. This fin is cut off from hatchery fish." Teresa will never kill a wild fish. "You want to keep the genetics in the river," she said. Actually, she releases hatchery fish, too, since, in her words, "the tug is the drug." She keeps a caught fish underwater till the camera is ready for the "hero shot," then brings it up for only as long as she can hold her breath before putting it back in the river, giving it a moment to recover, and letting it go. To fish the Applegate River, Teresa will row downriver to a bend, then get out of her boat and "walk the beat, swinging." Anglers are not allowed to fish from floating devices in the Applegate River, or in tributary streams, where fish go to spawn. Teresa continues down the river, swinging—casting so that the fly swings into the seam between slow and fast water, two steps down, casting again. "Fish hang out in the softer water, then snatch a bug from the fast water," she explained. "e presentation of a dry fly on a dead drift is the real art of fly fishing"—keeping the right amount of slackness between the bug on the water and the rod tip, creating no wake. Lakes in the Applegate also have good fishing. Applegate Lake, Miller Lake, the Acorn Woman lakes, and, in the R e d B u t t e s W i l d e r n e s s , A z a l e a , Lonesome, Echo, and Hello lakes are all stocked with rainbow or brook trout. Applegate Lake is also stocked with Chinook salmon. You can catch (if you're lucky) largemouth bass, bluegill, and black crappie in the Applegate and Acorn Woman lakes; also, in the former, smallmouth bass, and in the latter, yellow perch and cutthroat trout. Applegate Lake is the only lake with boat ramps, so an angler works from the banks of the other lakes unless he or she has carried in an inflatable boat. Permits for fishing in the Red Buttes come from California Fish and Game, while the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife issues permits for all Oregon lakes and rivers. Limits vary. "Stocking in the Applegate Lake supports recreation," says Steve Brazier, fisheries biologist at Star Ranger Station. "Limits are enforced to prevent greedy takes." e success rate for bank angling, he notes, is high. "Populations of winter steelhead and fall Chinook (in the Rogue) have remained pretty stable in the last 50 years," Steve says. (Teresa disagrees.) e same is not true, of course, for coho salmon, which are on the federally endangered list. Because the Applegate Dam stopped the natural transport of gravel downriver, the US Forest Service has an ongoing aquatic restoration project to augment spawning gravel below the dam. Teresa's addiction to fishing might come from the thrill of the catch, but the enjoyment she gets from the sport goes beyond what happens between her hands on the rod and the fish on the hook. "I feel sorry for the fish," she admits. "But fishing is my meditation. It's just me, the fly rod, and the indicator floating on the water—and the osprey, the ducklings, the otters." Or, as she puts it most succinctly, "There are no ugly places to fly fish in the Applegate." Diana Coogle diana@applegater.org ■ FISHING IN APPLEGATE Continued from page 1 Photos, top row from left: –Annette Parsons checked the Gater's tsunami forecast while kayaking in Morro Bay, California. –Jessica Bullard followed the Applegater trail guides while in Yardie Gorge, western Australia. –Ronaldo Tate studied facts in the Gater about Ta Prohm Temple near Siem Reap, Cambodia. –Megan Fehrman found a special spot on the Oregon coast for her dog and the Applegater. Photos, bottom row from left: –Amber Applegate enjoyed the Gater while in the radiology lab at OHSU, Portland. –Karen Giese read the Applegater to nephew Marius and brothers Michael and Doug at their house in Turks and Caicos. –Luke Ruediger and the Gater lobbied for mature and old forest protections in Washington, DC.

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