I have been living on or near the Yakima River for eight years now. I don't actually have an address on the river and so I don't actually "reside" there - but the Yakima is where I experience life.

The fly-fishing is great of course. I'm just sorry I hadn't discovered the water long before this. I'm originally from eastern Washington - born and raised around Spokane. All of my fishing growing up was in lakes surrounding town. The West Plains mostly - Amber, Williams, Silver, Clear and West Medical. Yes, bait fishing - night crawlers - Folgers, red can.

Good fortune has brought us to the Yakima. While we now reside on the West side - native easterners speak those words with a degree of distain - we "live" on the Yakima.

Every weekend we make our 90-mile trek across Snoqualmie Pass to our little piece of heaven - a small acreage on the banks of the Upper Yakima. Jack Mitchell refers to this reach of the river as the "holy water". I'm sure it will take the rest of my life, but I'm slowly learning why.

Over the past eight years I've worked hard to better understand this place. As I write this piece under a tall grove of cottonwood, I can't help but be in awe of the workings of the River and the ecosystem that surrounds and supports it.

The Yakima is not the body of water it was before the arrival of our forefathers. My grandmother homesteaded the West Plains of Spokane in the 1880's. The Yakima basin had been significantly exploited by the time of their arrival. " Recourse extraction" was well underway, in all of its forms. The Yakima basin, like all of the great basins of the Columbia system, was fully subjugated in the building the great Northwest economy.

Initially, it was the fir trappers of the Hudson Bay Company. Then, commercial salmon fisheries, timber and mining interests and irrigators followed. The Yakima basin was all in all, "under control" with the construction of the Keecheless, Kachess, and Cle Elum reservoirs by the 1920's. The irrigation projects have left the most significant marks on the river system.

The reservoirs stand as a testament to our demands for agricultural products. The irrigation system efficiently holds and distributes water throughout the Kittitas Valley through an extensive network of dams, weirs and canals. The Federal and State bureaucracies refer to the Yakima basin as the "Yakima Project".

The "Project" is owned and operated by the United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR). The gamut of federal, state, local, tribal and private concerns provide input to the USBR as to their specific resource needs. Each year the USBR weighs the input from these groups and reaches a "compromise" decision as to how the Project will be managed and operated.

Of great concern to the native trout fishing community on the Upper Yakima is the flow regime during summer months as water is released to meet irrigation demands in the lower valley. Management of these flows by the "Project" accounts for the day-to-day fluctuations in river flows that can be so damaging to trout and salmon habitat. The USBR makes these high flow releases in order to meet "contractual" obligations to basin irrigation districts.

The high flows are just the opposite of what should be happening in a normal, free flowing, unregulated watershed. Flows would normally decline in a watershed throughout the summer at the time when resident trout, steelhead and salmon fry are in their first growing season. The higher than normal and sporadic discharges reduce rearing habitat and food availability for juvenile fish.

One very important group known as the System Operations Advisory Committee (SOAC) provides a direct voice for State of Washington interests to the USBR on this issue. The USBR formed the SOAC in 1981 under federal court order in response to inadequate stream flows in the fall and winter for incubating spring Chinook salmon eggs in the Upper Yakima. The judge ordered USBR to seek the advise of SOAC to determine the best ways to operate the Project in a manner that minimizes adverse impacts to the fish and fish habitat. The blue ribbon, wild rainbow trout fishery we enjoy today is in part the result of improved flow regimes as recommended by the SOAC to the USBR.

Most recently, in 1999 SOAC issued a report to USBR recommending further steps needed to develop an ecologically based, scientifically supported base flow regime for the Yakima River. The schedule for implementation of these recommendations is unclear.

The best hope for the River, its base flows, and the fish and fish habitat, will probably be the result of the listing of the Yakima basin steelhead as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the application of 4(d) rules by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). The result of the designation and the application of the new regulations will be to provide leverage to state and federal fish agencies to provide protections to the aquatic ecosystem throughout the basin.

It seems that over the eight years that I have been learning the water, the River has been under attack. Proposals to open a spring Chinook kill fishery are one recent example. What seem like wild fluctuations in recent stream flows are another. As this eastern Washington farm boy learns more about the Yakima and its politics, I intend to join the chorus as an advocate for more responsible wild trout habitat management. I hope as a fellow fly fisher you will join the club - the Yakima is our resource.