NOTE: I usually just read the great fishing reports and info provided by all of you here at Calfishing. There are, I believe, quite a few of you here who might find this upsetting.

Piru Creek is a well-known and well-established trout and smallmouth fishery. It provides year-round water to all the wildlife in the area. Most of it is only accessible by back-packing. The hike from Pyramid Lake to Lake Piru takes a minimum 3-days if you dont stop along the way just to enjoy the experience of seclusion only an hour or so from the San Fernando Valley.

The writer speaks to "stocked trout" in this article, but the draw of the fly-fisherman to the creek is the now-native trout and smallmouth bass populations that have been re-producing on their own in the creek. If the creek loses its supply of cool water, this now-native fishery will die off.

This isn't a matter of water for livestock vs water for trout as is the case in Klamath. Its only a matter of an attempt to reduce a bullfrog population that is naturally feeding on a toad population.

(additional comments at the end)

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http://www.latimes.com/features/outdoors/la-os-piru1mar01,1,5197140.story?coll=la-headlines-outdoors&ctrack=2&cset=true


By Charles Duhigg, Times Staff Writer


Not even torrential rain may save one of the best and most accessible trout streams in Southern California from drying up this year under a new water management plan that could be approved this month The plan would protect an amphibian and return a creek to its natural state.

For decades, fly-fishers have worked the shady reaches of Piru Creek, a 50-mile waterway between Pyramid Lake and Lake Piru north of Castaic. Continuous releases of cool water upstream during summer keep riverbanks lush and fishing holes deep and ensure a steady supply of stocked trout. As long as the tap continues to run, the stream stays cool — warm water kills trout — and doesn't dry up as it would naturally.

But the California Department of Water Resources is poised to reduce the summertime stream flow from Pyramid Lake by as much as 80% — a level scientists and anglers acknowledge will dry up parts of Piru Creek and kill many trout. Agency officials say current flows benefit bullfrogs, which eat the endangered southwestern arroyo toad. The plan could go into effect March 15.

"This is the only place in Southern California where you can drive up and start trout fishing within minutes, as opposed to hiking for hours," said Jim Edmondson of CalTrout, an advocacy group. "A majority of terrestrial wildlife in the western United States depends on healthy trout streams. When you destroy a trout stream, you're destroying an ecosystem."

Anglers are especially riled because they say agencies charged with managing the creek offer conflicting explanations for the change.

Eva Begley, senior environmental scientist with the water resources department, says federal authorities are pushing for the new plan. She says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service requires protection of the toad under the Endangered Species Act. In addition, Begley says reduced stream flows would revert Piru Creek to its native condition.

"We're just reproducing what would occur naturally," she says.

But Fish and Wildlife Service officials say their agency did not direct the state to reduce water in Piru Creek. Rather, agency spokeswoman Lois Grunwald says after many toads washed out of the creek during a big release from Pyramid Lake two years ago "we recommended reducing the flows to maintain both the trout fishery and the natural habitat for the toad."

Fishermen say they don't think trout and toads are incompatible, though they are having a tough time persuading the state water department of that. Time is running out on the anglers; the public comment period ends Monday. "The arroyo toad has lived through every conceivable situation that man and God could contrive," says Joe Richey, a fly-fisher who owns a ranch on Piru Creek. "They're not going away, but the fish will if they make this change. I hate to see a beautiful fishery destroyed under what I think are false pretenses."

Edmondson believes California budget woes lie at the heart of the dispute. He says the Department of Water Resources can make more money using water to generate electricity than supporting fish in Piru Creek.

A 1996 memo from the United Water Conservation District, which manages Lake Piru, estimates the state spends $1 million annually to sustain the Piru Creek fishery. State water officials, however, say money does not motivate their actions.

The state wildlife agency and some biologists say reduced flows will restore natural habitat in Piru Creek.

"That creek would never naturally have standing water year-round like it does now," says UC Santa Barbara professor Samuel Sweet, who has studied and advised government agencies about Piru Creek. "There are overwhelming numbers of nonnative fish in the waters, and grasses and insects on the banks. It's an ecosystem that we've completely changed."

Dwayne Maxwell, senior biologist at the state Department of Fish and Game, says the dispute puts his agency in a difficult place. On the one hand, the department is an advocate for anglers, yet it must also protect wildlife.

"Our department has an obligation to that toad as much as to our recreational fishers," Maxwell says. "In this case, federal law may trump fishermen."

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This is a conflict of regulations. California has a law that states that once a freshwater fishery is established, it MUST be continued.

And the feds have a regulation about endangered toads being eaten by a natural predator?

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Eva Begley, senior environmental scientist with the water resources department:

"We're just reproducing what would occur naturally," she says.

Can someone please go empty her medicine cabinet so that she can experience life as it would "occur naturally"?
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"That creek would never naturally have standing water year-round like it does now," says UC Santa Barbara professor Samuel Sweet, who has studied and advised government agencies about Piru Creek. "There are overwhelming numbers of nonnative fish in the waters, and grasses and insects on the banks. It's an ecosystem that we've completely changed."

This "scientist" must not pay too much attention to where he lives and how that house came into existance by pushing out a pre-existing "ecosystem". This scientist is not concerned with what he would be eating or the water he would be drinking if not for mans' manipulation of a pre-existing "ecosystem".

His arguement about "overwhelming numbers of nonnative fish in the waters" holds NO WATER here in California. How many of our freshwater fisheries are exclusively filled with native fish?

*****NOTE*****
for you saltwater closure guys:
the quoted scientist pushing for the elimination of this fishery is from UC Santa Barbara.