Watch out when fishermen land real estate deals

What entices so many fishermen to foul great fishing streams?

The question is hitting me harder as I venture out this year to sample the spring runs and hatches, and I’m not talking about the occasional litter of white plastic worm containers.

The lot-for-sale signs are blooming like spring wildflowers along the Snake River upstream from Asotin, Wash., where a 4-mile, $3 million road improvement project is paving the way for another surge of development.

More and more “Keep Out” signs are blocking anglers from the thread of land they once crossed from the road down to their favorite fishing rock along the public shoreline.

I’d like to think the big houses, fences and signs were the work of city slickers naïve to the ways of rivers and wildlife.

But the fishing boats in the driveways tell the story.

Last fall, for example, I hopped aboard a jet boat to chronicle a morning of steelhead fishing with a guide and his four repeat customers.

The trip had become a traditional getaway for the men from Western Washington. I enjoyed their enthusiasm for steelheading and their apparent appreciation for the beauty of the Snake River canyon.

“Our rivers don’t have this kind of scenery,” one angler said, pointing to the sunshine on the mountains rising from the canyon and referring to the bighorn sheep they regularly see on their visits.

“West Side fishermen go out all year to catch two or three steelhead,” his companion continued. “Over here, the fishing is slow if you don’t catch that many or more in a day.”

Before long, however, the talk took a turn that’s all too familiar among fishermen of means.

The anglers marveled at the open space and vowed to come back and use their business expertise to develop lots above a little beach.

“That’s the prettiest spot on this section of river,” one of them said.

Not for long, I thought.

“There was a bighorn ram there last time we were here,” his partner said.

Maybe never again.

Love it? Leave it: Who are my fishing heroes? Anyone who buys land along a good section of trout stream and leaves it natural.

Easy come, easy go: One of my fishing buddies was in Montana on the Clark Fork River last weekend for the first time since last fall and he, too, found new homes, signs and a few menacing dogs blocking access to some of the public river stretches he’s fished for years.

“I’ve seen lots of oar boats on the river, but Saturday was the first time I’ve been passed by a motor boat on the Clark Fork,” he said.

“I’d found a pod of fish rising to a hatch and I was having good luck there. Then the boat came by. They slowed down when they saw me, which means the boat made an even bigger wake that washed up on shore. That stirred up the mud, stopped the hatch and put the fish down. The boat went on by, but my fishing was over.”

Pheasant season fallout: A few pheasant hunters apparently are scratching their heads about the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department’s proposal to create the longest pheasant season in memory.

The Fish and Wildlife Commission will set the hunting seasons for the next three years during a meeting Friday and Saturday in Tumwater.

The proposed East Side pheasant season would run from the first Saturday in October through the Martin Luther King holiday weekend (Jan. 17). This proposal was favored by 26 percent of the 1,622 respondents to the department’s online survey.

Meanwhile, twice that many, 51 percent, said they’d rather keep a season similar to last year, which ran from the weekend after deer season to mid-January.

Another 21 percent said they would like to see the season run from early October through Dec. 31.

Department officials say they strayed from public opinion primarily so that the pheasant season would be the same as the quail and partridge seasons, even though pheasant seasons have been different for decades.

Sportsmen who have experience knocking on doors and asking permission to hunt are skeptical about the proposed long pheasant hunt.

“Landowners view pheasants completely different from quail and chukars,” one caller said. “They’re not going to like that long season when we get a hard winter.”

“Pheasant hunters are going to get a chilly reception when they ask a farmer to hunt the week before he’s planning to have his relatives over to hunt deer,” another pointed out.

“Good quality pheasant hunting preserves are an option for those who want to hunt pheasants late in the winter,” another said. “The wild birds don’t have enough cover to be hunted so much.”

Deer permits required: The general three-point minimum late buck hunt that’s been held in November from Spokane south to the Snake River would be replaced by a permit-only hunt, according to another department proposal.

Biologists say there’s only one other option that could turn around the apparent decline of mature bucks in units127-133 and 136-142: no late season at all.