The Boise Valley Fly Fishers are doing a gravel augmentation project in the Lower Owyhee River in Oregon to improve the spawning grounds for brown trout.
"The Owyhee is considered one of the best brown trout fisheries in the west," said Troy Pearse of the Boise Valley Fly Fishers. "However, most of the fish are in the top half of the river, and the population drops off when you come downstream."
Check out the video to see the gravel slinger in action
The Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife started working on this problem back in 2016, as the upper section above the tunnel and below the dam gets a lot of pressure from anglers.
"This brown trout fishery began in 1990, and we know early on through the 90s and 2000s people used to fish all through here," said Dave Banks, a fish biologist with ODFW. "We are trying to figure out a way to crack the code and see if we can’t get higher densities of brown trout down in this section of the river."
To do this, a gravel slinger is hurling 100 cubic yards of gravel into the Owyhee River. The goal is to improve the spawning ground for brown trout by creating nests that are called redds.
"Each redd is approximately the size of a hula hoop," said Pearse. "The female will dig a depression in the gravel and lay her eggs. The male will fertilize them, and then she will go upstream and throw gravel over the eggs to protect them."
This partnership with the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife has been years in the making, as it took the Boise Valley Fly Fishers four years to get several permits from state and federal agencies for the gravel augmentation project.
The Boise Valley Fly Fishers got grants from the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and Fly Fishing International.
They received a donation from the Snake River Waterkeeper, and Sunroc provided the truck and the gravel at a discounted price.
BVFF raised the rest to cover the $10,000 needed to execute this project.
"It does my heart good to see all that shiny gravel in the river," said Pearse. "I can just imagine looking down in the years to come and see the fish adopt it."
The Boise Valley Fly Fishers have done two gravel augmentation projects on a smaller scale in the Boise River. Pearse told us that helped prepare them for this much larger project, and he hopes the hard work of his non-profit and volunteers will help create a better fishery for anglers in the years to come.
"The volunteers have worked tirelessly to make this happen," said Pearse. "It's a really exciting project and it has a lot of potential to help in the Owyhee River fish population."
People can fish all year round for brown trout, but it is catch-and-release. However, this time of year, anglers need to fish from the banks so they don't disturb the spawing grounds.
Dave Banks actually took me upstream, and he showed me where the fish spawn. We saw several fish in the gravel beds, and the goal of this project is to see if the presence of spawning trout will move downstream.
"We are giving them some novel material to utilize," said Banks. "The idea is if they are spawning here, we are hoping that will create more fish down low. That is our hope, but we will monitor that too."
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