Opinion: Take out LT Golf Course, protect trout in river
By Huey Johnson
In the 1960s, while I was with the Department of Fish and Game, it was my sad task to study the trout of Lake Tahoe. Few remember that an atrocity against Tahoe occurred there, an atrocity comparable to the slaughter of the once great buffalo herds of the Great Plains: the completion of the nation’s first Federal Bureau of Reclamation dam.
Derby Dam blocked the Truckee River and killed the huge run of trout that had, for thousands of years, come from Pyramid Lake upriver to Tahoe. That first year, the new dam blocked tons of huge trout trying to spawn while the dam’s beneficiaries – desert hay farmers – pitchforked wagonloads of fish, which they used as fertilizer.
Back then, lovely Lake Tahoe had such a large trout population that it supported a commercial fishery. Dams like Derby disrupted that.
Huey Johnson is president of the Resource Renewal Institute, a Mill Valley nonprofit.
Right on Mr. Johnson. BTW how long have you been a vegetarian?
Mill Valley was a great place back in the 50’s before the great surge of new residents.
But that’s different.
What can be done to accommodate the fish? Ladders, ect…….Also at Yellowstone park there seems to be the most regulated fishing environment around. The fish and people fishing were very abundant the last time I was there. Any suggestions to restore Tahoe fishing?