Outdoors
Rec
B
Saturday, February 19, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Yellow perch on ice
BRAD
TRUMBO
UPLAND PURSUITS
H
eavy snow and frigid
temperatures in late
December and early
January may have kept me from
traveling for a New Year vacation,
but ice forming thick on one of my
favorite yellow perch lakes was an
acceptable consolation.
My fishing friend Chas lives about three
hours closer to the lake than I, so it was
no surprise to see he was already set up
when I finally arrived in early afternoon.
We planned to stay in a cabin nearby for a
couple nights to see if we could dial in the
perch, and anything else that would enter-
tain the variety of gear in our tackle boxes.
The sun was settling behind the western
ridges as I donned my arctic survival suit
and hit the ice. Chas had no luck where he
had started, so we moved across the lake
to an area where a shallow “weed bed”
extended from the foot of a dark timbered
ridge. I was hoping to find an area between
8 and 15 feet deep on the fringe of vege-
tation where perch might linger, but also
something attractive for cruising trout to
keep things interesting.
We played the exhausting game of
drilling a line of holes until we felt out
the depth range, which left my desk-job
arms feeling a bit quivery. Sixteen inches
of ice drilling with a semi-dull manual
auger makes one reconsider the gas-pow-
ered options. Finally dialing in between 8
and 12 feet above the weeds, we located
a school of perch and sunfish, but the fish
were picky and delicate. Having started
with a small spoon, I switched out to a
bead-head fly tied with a red floss body
and a few straight feather filament tail
strands. An extremely simplistic fly —
small, attractive, and tipped with a Berkley
maggot bait.
The mercury plummeted the last half-
hour of daylight, but the bite got hot with
Brad Trumbo/Contributed Photo
A few stunning little yellow perch are a prized ice fishing catch.
yellow perch and bluegill gently sucking
up the little baited fly and finding their
way through the hole. I use an old-school
flasher that basically sends a sound wave
down and reads the intensity in which it’s
reflected by surfaces and objects. The fly
appeared as a thin yellow line. When fish
approached the fly, they too appeared as a
thin yellow line, at first. But as they closed
in, the line thickened and turned green,
then red outlined in green and yellow when
they were right on top of the fly. As I jigged
the little fly about a foot off the bottom,
green lines continually blipped beneath
as fish moved about the area. They were
small, but the action was exceptional and
watching the lines on the flasher appear
and change colors is just as thrilling now as
it was when I first acquired the technology
20 years ago.
The next morning, we found ourselves
back at the holes from the night before and
the bite was once again on. The sun had
barely laid a peach glow across the ridges
to the south when the first yellow perch
gave in to the little bead-head fly. Chas was
into them as well and we bantered across
the 15 feet that separated our holes, sharing
tips on baits and asking if the other was
seeing any fish when the bite would wane.
Curiosity caused us to move to other
areas looking for bigger fish which proved
fruitless, save for a single tiger trout that
Chas lured in by jigging a rattling crank-
bait. Luckily, no one laid claim to our orig-
inal holes, and we settled back onto them
for the evening bite.
Rainbow trout were cruising that eve-
ning and taking the little flies tipped with
the maggot or a small piece of night-
crawler to add a little flavor. While the
perch and sunfish mostly pecked at the
fly, the cruising rainbows would snag it on
the go, leaving the drag zinging on our jig
rods. Red squirrels chattered and scurried
through the evergreens as the pink halo of
dusk settled across the ridgetops. Every
other angler had vacated the lake an hour
before, yet Chas and I remained until it was
black as the night would get, landing fish,
telling jokes, and enjoying the peace of the
mountains, broken only by the occasional
singing of the ice.
Brad Trumbo/Contributed Photo
See, Perch/Page B2
Sunrise creeping upon the frozen mountain lake.
Coalition seeks to curb car-wildlife collisions
Bill in Oregon
Legislature would
allocate $7 million
for wildlife crossings
By JAYSON JACOBY
Baker City Herald
A coalition including
hunters, anglers, Tribal
representatives and mem-
bers of conservation
groups is promoting a bill
in the Oregon Legislature
that would allocate $7 mil-
lion to build fences, under-
passes and other structures
in areas where vehicles are
more likely to hit deer, elk
and other wildlife.
The coalition has com-
piled a report on the topic
that includes a priority list
for these wildlife crossing
structures.
The list includes a sec-
tion of Interstate 84 near
Meacham, part of U.S.
Highway 26 near Day-
ville, in Grant County, and
a stretch of U.S. Highway
20 from Juntura to Harper
Valley in northern Mal-
heur County.
State Rep. Ken Helm,
a Democrat from Wash-
ington County, introduced
House Bill 4130-01, the
Wildlife Crossings Invest-
ment Act, prior to the cur-
rent legislative session in
Salem.
Timothy Bishop/Travel Baker County, File
A cow and calf elk cross a highway in Baker County.
Reps. Mark Owens,
R-Crane, Bobby Levy,
R-Echo, are among the
bill’s sponsors.
On Feb. 8, the House
Interim Committee on
Environment and Natural
Resources passed the bill
and referred it to the Ways
and Means Committee for
a vote.
Tyler Dungannon, con-
servation coordinator for
the Oregon Hunters Asso-
ciation, a member of the
coalition, testified in sup-
port of the bill.
Dungannon said in
a phone interview on
Wednesday, Feb. 16, that
he’s confident the bill can
pass before the legislature
convenes.
Dungannon said that
although the $7 million
allocated in the bill might
seem a modest sum, the
state could potentially use
that money to leverage dol-
lars from the much larger
federal budget.
The federal Infra-
structure Investment and
Jobs Act of 2021 includes
$350 million in competi-
tive grants over five years
to states, Tribes and local
governments to address
chronic problems with
vehicles hitting wildlife.
“Thanks to Represen-
tative Helm and the other
sponsors of this bill, we
now have an opportunity
in front of us to really get
the ball rolling at the state
level,” Dungannon said.
That momentum has
been needed for many
years, he said.
“We have seen this issue
gain traction over the past
few years as Oregonians
start to realize the extent of
this issue,” he said.
From 2017 to 2021, the
Oregon Department of
Transportation recorded
30,951 collisions between
vehicles and wildlife.
In 2021, the average cost
of a vehicle collision with
a mule deer — the most
common — was $9,086,
according to the coalition’s
report, “Wildlife Cross-
ings: Prioritizing Safe
Wildlife Passage Across
Oregon.”
Collisions with elk,
which averaged $24,006
in expenses, totaled $56.9
million 2020, according to
the report.
Dungannon said
Oregon is “far behind”
other western states in
addressing car-animal col-
lisions on highways that
pass through wildlife
migration routes.
Some states have more
than 50 wildlife crossings,
he said, while Oregon has
about five.
Underpasses, fences
and other structures have
proved to significantly
reduce the number of colli-
sions, Dungannon said.
One of Oregon’s more
prominent projects, which
is a decade old, includes
two wildlife underpasses
along U.S. Highway 97
near Lava Butte, about 10
miles south of Bend. The
Oregon Department of
Transportation (ODOT)
also built four miles of
fencing in the area to keep
animals off the highway
and encourage them to use
the underpasses.
Between 2012 and 2019,
car collisions with wild-
life on a 4-mile stretch of
Highway 97 dropped by
86%, according to ODOT.
“It’s not a question of
whether these crossing
structures work,” Dun-
gannon said. “It’s really
just a financial hurdle.”
Dungannon emphasized
the nonpartisan support
for the campaign to reduce
car-wildlife collisions.
A 2020 poll commis-
sioned by the Pew Char-
itable Trusts found that
86% of Oregonians who
responded favored building
more wildlife crossings,
and 75% were in favor of
spending more money on
such projects, according to
the coalition’s report.
See, Wildlife/Page B2