While the Douglas County Commissioners cry foul over Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife’s proposed closure of the salmon fishing season, don’t forget, they’re once again, complaining about a problem that they themselves created.
For County Commissioners Tim Freeman, Chris Boice, and Tom Kress are the same politicians who oppose the removal of the condemned and “high hazard” Winchester Dam, which only benefits a handful of wealthy landowners while preventing wild migratory native fish from accessing over 160 miles of prime fish habitat on which Oregon taxpayer’s have spent tens of millions of dollars in restoration.
The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) says Winchester Dam and its out-of-date fish ladder is the worst manmade obstacle to fish on any river in the entire state of Oregon.
Thanks to the dam’s negative impact on local fish populations, ODFW is now considering closing the salmon season on the Umpqua River, which usually begins in June and continues until late November. The proposed imposition of the season-long restrictions stem from concerns about the long-term health of the local salmon population. According to ODFW, “While fall chinook fishing is expected to be good in most coastal rivers this fall, the Umpqua River is an exception.”
ODFW stated in a June 13, 2025, press release, “This is the first time the Umpqua River has dropped below the Critical Abundance Threshold (CAT) since the Coastal Multi-Species Conservation and Management Plan (CMP) was adopted in 2014. Last year’s return of fall Chinook to the Umpqua was the lowest on record since 1980. The CMP calls for discontinuing wild harvest when populations fall below CAT, but allows for adaptive management such as the approach in the Umpqua River this year.”
“We have talked for a couple years now about how conditions in the Umpqua River are very concerning for salmon and steelhead due to impacts from wildfire, drought, warming streams and non-native predators,” said Tom Stahl, ODFW Deputy Fish Administrator for Inland Fisheries. “The outcomes from these conditions are now being felt with last year’s extremely low return and discussions over how this affects the fishery are difficult for everyone.”
“It’s very hard to realize such an iconic river as the Umpqua is struggling,” said ODFW Commissioner Becky Hatfield-Hyde. “I am very thankful ODFW staff have come up with some options, and we ask the public to hang in there with us and help us figure out how to look toward the future.”
But Scott Worsley, a fishing guide with 20 years of experience fishing in the Umpqua Basin, is critical of ODFW’s management of the fishery. “They just haven’t been transparent,” he claims. “And it’s not just fall salmon—it’s the summer steelhead run that they wiped out and they don’t do anymore, it’s the Coho run that they don’t do anymore, it’s the fish kills that they’ve had over the last 15 years. There’s just no transparency.”
Of course, the biggest fish kill on any Oregon River in recent memory occurred at the Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River in August 2023. According to the Oregon Department of Justice, Ryan Beckley, owner of TerraFirma Foundation Systems and President of the Board of Directors of the Winchester Water Control District (WWCD), the homeowners association that owns the condemned Winchester Dam, managed to kill seven generations of Pacific lamprey—more than 550,000 of this wild migratory native fish, during attempted “repairs’ of the dam on on of the hottest days of the year, in August 2023. This resulted in the Oregon Department of Justice bringing an unprecedented $27.5 million lawsuit against Beckley, TerraFirma, DOWL Engineering, and the WWCD.
David Guschauski, a volunteer with the Gardiner Reedsport Winchester Bay STEP program, which raises harvestable hatchery salmon, says closure of the salmon season will adversely affect tourism on the Oregon coast. “There’s people who have got their plans already to be here for the fishing season,” Guschauski explained. “They’ve bought airline tickets and reserved motels and got this all set up and they do it every and now all of a sudden they’re not going to be able to and it’s going to affect it a lot.”
The owner of a bait and tackle shop and a café in Winchester Bay says that 80% of his sales occur during salmon season.
In June, Douglas County Commissioner Chris Boice addressed the ODFW Commissioners at their meeting in Pendelton, Oregon.
Readers will remember Boice as the commissioner who masterminded the effort to impose dumping fees at all eleven of Douglas County’s formerly free solid waste transfer stations—part of his ongoing pattern of offloading costs onto taxpayers while protecting private interests like the Winchester Dam. Boice went so far as to allow a political donor to dispose of the furnishing and wreckage of an entire hotel for free, even as he imposed dumping fees on Douglas County taxpayers, emblematic of Boice’s commitment to accommodating wealthy donors at the expense of ordinary citizens.
And now he wants the public to believe he’s standing up for rural working families by opposing the salmon season closure.
The North Umpqua River is a world-class fishery,” Boice claimed. “Not just for Oregon, but globally. It’s significant economic drivers for our county.” According to Boice, closure of the salmon season on the Umpqua River would impact motels, restaurants, tackle shops, and many other local businesses. He claimed that 65% of the visitors—some 12,000 fishermen and fisherwoman—come for steelhead and salmon fishing, supporting 150 direct jobs and $8 million in local spending.
Although Boice and his fellow Republican county commissioners oppose ODFW’s proposed closure of the salmon season on the Umpqua River, these same elected officials are united in their opposition to the removal of the condemned Winchester Dam on the North Umpqua River. ODFW considers the dam and its 80-year-old fish ladder the worst manmade obstacle to fish on any river in the state of Oregon.
Consequently, it appears that the Douglas County Commissioners’ concerns about the plight of the salmon are ingenuous. If they really cared about the Umpqua Basin Fishery, they would support the removal of the Winchester Dam—which they most certainly do not.
Many county residents are angered by the diminishing salmon populations on the North Umpqua River. They’re quick to blame natural predators, calling for the slaughter of sea lions and seals, while turning a blind eye to the most obvious physical barrier to wild salmon—the insurmountable obstacle that is the crumbling and derelict dam, defended by county commissioners and a few dozen wealthy landowners at the exclusion of the public.
In the past ten years, ODFW repeatedly closed the fishing season on the Umpqua River due to dangerously low fish counts, chiefly because of the Winchester Dam. Professional fishing guides in Douglas County know that hundreds of confused wild migratory native fish can usually be found trapped on the downstream side of the Winchester Dam because the fish ladder there is nearly impossible for them to locate.
On September 17, 2024, ODFW sent the Winchester Water Control District (WWCD), owners of the derelict dam, a Notice of Noncompliance describing “inadequate fishway attraction flows at the fishway [fish ladder] entrance (s) and excessive false attraction flows. This discrepancy from design standards and criteria can prevent or delay, upstream migrating fish from finding the fish ladder entrance, which can result in fish injury, or harm, including stress, by NMF [native migratory fish] expending, effort in multiple attempts to leap over the dam… The “deteriorated internal fishway walls” of the fish ladder “are spalling [fragmenting], which can cause abrasions to fish and result in fish injury, or harm, including stress” and the “presence of exposed rebar, in certain locations, which can cause injuries and abrasions to fish and result in a harm and fish mortality.”
The fish ladder at Winchester Dam is on the wrong side of the of the river and 400-feet from the main flow. The hundreds of leaks in the face of the 450-foot dam create so many “false-attractants,” wild migratory fish have a hard time finding the fish ladder, let alone passing through it. The 17-foot dam is too high for fish to jump. Fish migrating downstream go over the lip of the dam and are injured by falling on the bedrock below.
According to ODFW, the “water surface elevation jump height … which exceed criteria for Catostomus species and juvenile salmonids…” and “inadequate water depths below the crest of the dam, for downstream, migrating fish species that pass over the dam to ensure fish safely fall into water of adequate depth. This discrepancy in design standards and criteria can result in fish falling directly onto the concrete apron, or rocks immediately below the dam, which can result in fish injury, harm, and mortality.”
The Notice of Noncompliance states that “ORS 509.625 (3) (b) (A) authorizes ODFW to order installation of fish passage (the fish ladder) at Winchester Dam, without regard for funding sources because WWCD is already subject to an obligation to install fish passage or provide alternatives to fish passage in Winchester Dam.”
This means WWCD has until 2028 to build a brand new, state of the art fish ladder, like the one at the Soda Springs Dam 60 miles upstream, which cost $80 million.
In August 2023, for the second time in three years, ODFW closed fishing on the North Umpqua River because summer steelhead counts at Winchester Dam were fewer that 1,200. In 2021 and 2022, the steelhead count was the lowest it’s been since 1946, when they began counting native fish at the Winchester Dam.
In 2023, the steelhead count at the Winchester Dam was so low, Greg Huchko, ODFW’s Umpqua District Senior Biologist in Douglas County, wouldn’t even reveal the fish count total. “Really low,” is all he’d admit.
to prevent the unprecedented fish kill of more than 550,000 Pacific lamprey at Winchester Dam in 2023
In 2021, only 450 wild summer steelhead were counted at the Winchester Dam. But by the time ODFW closed the fishing season in August, those 450 fish had been caught and eaten by intrepid fishermen and fisherwomen. Consequently, they never got the chance to spawn and so, the annual steelhead count at the Winchester Dam continue to plummet.
August is too late to close the fishing season. Summer steelhead begin migrating up the North Umpqua River in April. If ODFW had closed fishing on the North Umpqua River in April, those 450 steelhead would have had time to spawn – and the native fish population would increase, instead of diminishing.
In this manner, ODFW is not protecting the steelhead. This approach to fisheries management is contributing to the dwindling fish count at the Winchester Dam. So why does ODFW do this?
Follow the money. ODFW derives revenue from the sale of fishing licenses. ODFW charges Oregon residents $44 a year for a fishing license. Non-Oregon residents are charged $110.
Each year, in January, ODFW begins issuing press releases predicting that the fisheries are so healthy, fishing season will be open all year, and wild native fish will be plentiful on the North Umpqua River.Although ODFW is well aware that nothing could be further from the truth, these press releases convince skeptical fishermen and fisherwomen to buy their fishing licenses early in the year.
This is why ODFW often waits until August to close fishing on the North Umpqua River. Their decision is not based on science but rather on profit.
Curiously, when asked about their erroneous predictions in 2021 and 2022, ODFW officials decline to comment. Nevertheless, ODFW deliberately waits to close the fishing season in August after they’ve sold thousands of fishing licenses. When they close the fishing season, ODFW provides no refunds to fishermen and fisherwomen who purchased fishing licenses.
ODFW is a state agency whose stated mandate is to “protect and enhance Oregon’s fish and wildlife and their habitats for use and enjoyment by present and future generations.” Nevertheless, in reality, ODFW prioritizes maximizing profits from fishing licenses above fisheries best management practices, the needs of the community and the local economy.
The North Umpqua River is the number one steelhead stream in North America—and some say, in the world.
This riparian habitat of the North Umpqua is the jewel of Douglas County, Oregon. Fishermen and fisherwomen from all over the planet buy fishing licenses, airline tickets, rental cars, hotel rooms, restaurant food, and the services of local fishing guides. But year after year, ODFW pulls the rug out from under them by closing the fishing season prematurely.
ODFW’s approach to native fisheries management deprives Douglas County of the revenue derived from fishing tourism and local fishermen and fisherwomen. Instead, a tiny fraction of this revenue is collected by ODFW by their ongoing bait-and-switch fishing license racket.
Meanwhile, the condemned Winchester Dam continues to prevent wild migratory fish from accessing 160 miles of high quality wild upstream habitat on which the Oregon taxpayers have spent tens of millions of dollars in restoration.
It’s a no-brainer. As long as the elected officials in Douglas County continue to oppose the removal of the Winchester Dam—a undertaking that can be accomplished at little or no cost to the dam owners—the fishery in the Umpqua Basin will remain peril.
When are the elected officials of Douglas County going realize that ODFW isn’t going to going to invest resources in the Umpqua Basin until the county commissioners start actively supporting the removal or replacement of the Winchester Dam and its dangerous fish ladder—the worst manmade obstacle to fish on any river in Oregon.
