Guide supports moratorium for impact study

Fishing guide Scott Stratton makes a living helping clients catch fish on the Trinity River, and he notes that those visitors help other businesses as well. They stay at local hotels and eat at restaurants here, he said.

"The fish are incredibly important," said Stratton, of Lewiston. "I think it's one of the biggest money generators for the fall months ... Trinity River is a pretty famous river for steelhead."

Stratton, 56, runs Trinity River Adventures and has fished the Trinity River for 20 years, spending the last 10 years as a professional guide.

He believes a moratorium on suction dredge gold mining until a study on the effects on fish is completed makes sense. A bill seeking to do that statewide is now in the Assembly. The bill was brought on behalf of the Karuk Tribe, which is based in Siskiyou County around the Klamath River, but it also has the support of fishermen's groups and the Friends of the Trinity River.

When the issue first came up, the state Department of Fish and Game stated its regulations on the activity were sufficient to protect fish. The agency later said that new information indicates it is doing harm.

Stratton, a board member on the Trinity River Guides Association, was particularly put off by a miner who set up by a boat ramp in Del Loma. Cables securing his dredges blocked boats from launching there, Stratton said, and deep holes made wading hazardous.

But the law was on the miner's side, Stratton said.

"It's so destroyed I won't take my clients in there," Stratton said. "We as guides pretty much quit using it."

This was extreme behavior, Stratton said, and in most cases fishing guides are able to work around dredges. But he still disputes miners' contention that the activity actually helps fish.

"It can no way help them," Stratton said. "Their silt buries the spawning areas. ... Any time you're taking and digging a hole and blowing the sediments down the river it's got to set the natural balance off."