Saving a creek for the fish

The tour group came across a pool that was teeming with pink salmon. At first the fish appeared like black shadows. After the group standing at the creek’s edge had a moment to focus their eyes, individual fish came into view, swimming against the current just enough to stay in place.

Bob Carey, Skagit River area manager for the Nature Conservancy, said there were probably 750 pink salmon in this one pool.

“It’s one of the few places where you can still conjure up the image of walking across the creek on the backs of the salmon,” Carey said.

Larsen, the Democratic congressman from Everett, was on the Illabot to see firsthand some of the 14 miles of watershed he wants to protect. In March, Larsen introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that would add the creek to the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

“The designation will help preserve the fish habitat for the Illabot and help preserve recreational opportunities for hunting and fishing in the area as well,” Larsen said.

Also on the tour were representatives from the U.S. Forest Service, Seattle City Light, Fidalgo Fly Fishers and the conservation group American Rivers.

The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act exists to curtail development or alterations on rivers and to keep them as freely flowing as possible for the benefit of fish and wildlife. On the Illabot, the designation would begin just above the bridge at Rockport-Cascade Road. Because all of the land above the bridge is publicly owned, the only major effect would be to ban small hydroelectric projects along the creek.

A representative of Seattle City Light who took the tour said the utility supports Larsen’s bill. Seattle City Light owns property along the Illabot.

Ecologist Ron Tressler said the designation fits in with the utility’s 15-year effort to restore salmon habitat along the Skagit.

“We view it as something we should be doing,” Tressler said.

Carey called the Illabot “the gem of the Skagit.” The creek has proven to be a highly successful spawning area, drawing one sixth of all the pink salmon that reproduce in the Skagit basin. This year’s run of Skagit pinks is expected to be 1.2 million.

If the river is kept wild, officials said, it will continue to form off-channel pools such as the one where Larsen and the rest of the group found a school of coho fingerlings residing.

The river is home to about 20 percent of the chum salmon that enter the Skagit and provides a freshwater home for young steelhead trout that Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Brett Barkdull called “ideal.”

“It’s a refuge for all of our fish in this basin,” Barkdull said of the Illabot.

It’s no wonder, then, that the fishing community is on board with the wild and scenic designation.

“If you don’t have ... a place for the trout and the salmon to grow, you don’t have fish to catch,” Fidalgo Fly Fishers President Patrick O’Hearn said.

“I think anybody who is serious about fishing is at heart a conservationist,” he said.

Larsen said he was confident his bill would pass this year. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., has introduced a companion bill in the Senate.

Ralph Schwartz can be reached at 360-416-2138 or rschwartz@skagitpublishing.com.