Johnson fishing for compliments
8th book examines hatcheries
In July last year, the state had no choice but to kill 3.2 million trout at two Southern California hatcheries to stop a bacterial infection outbreak.
The news seemingly vanished quicker than the trout. Sure, it was during COVID-19. But it warranted national attention, believes Vallejo’s Vic Johnson, 77, a devoted fly fisherman and author of eight books on the subject, including the recently-released “What’s Happening Behind the Fish Hatchery Door Today?”
“It’s like 10 percent of California’s whole supply. You can’t just grow 3 million trout overnight,” Johnson said.
If the bacteria and the state erased 3.2 million deer, people would be protesting, hinted Johnson. However, a fish devastation remained under the radar because fish “aren’t warm and cuddly,” he said.
Fish are vital, Johnson said emphatically, especially “farmed” fish at hatcheries. Because of demand, Johnson said 62 percent of all fish consumed will be grown on farms by 2030.
“The days of catching our fish in the ocean or the bay — while it’s still going to happen — will be less as more and more people are living longer and they need food,” Johnson said.
The retired civil engineer seemingly exhausted all that could be said about fly fishing in seven books, with the debut book, “Fiberglass Fly Rods,” released in 1996. But an extensive look at the history and advancement of hatcheries was one book that Johnson wouldn’t let get away.
“You would think after hundreds of years of fly fishing, every topic has been explored in great detail. That turns out not to be true,” Johnson said.
It took two years of research, traveling across the country with his wife, Nancy, hitting hatcheries from Idaho to Arkansas, Wisconsin and South Carolina. Topics include fish doctors to biosecurity, climate change, and aquaculture.
“My concept of writing a book is probably not ‘main stream.’ Most fishing authors are very knowledgeable about the topic of their book,” wrote Johnson in the introduction. “Conversely, I select a topic that most fishermen, myself included, do not understand very well.”
For the devoted fisherman, visiting hatcheries and learning about its process, purpose and technologies was like a kid witnessing Santa coming down the chimney. Maybe better.
Take the code-writing tagging machine at the Trinity River Fish Hatchery in Lewiston, up in the north part of the state. A wire tag the diameter of a human hair is inserted into the tiny fish’s snout, basically supplying life cycle information.
Watching a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe operate the code-writing equipment as thousands of fish are tagged, “I’m there with my mouth open,” Johnson said.
His introduction to modern technology and fish hatcheries had begun.
“Nancy and I went all over the United States to figure out what they were doing; seeing how hatcheries have changed in the last 65 years,” Johnson said, acknowledging much of his hatchery knowledge “is what we learned in science class when we were kids.”
Johnson said one of the highlights of the research was getting U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service curator April Gregory in Spearfish, N.D., to write the book’s foreword.
Of the 155,000 visitors Gregory sees come through Spearfish each year, “I was probably the first one she met that wanted to understand how fish hatcheries work,” smiled Johnson.
What Johnson realized in his travels: some of the top fish experts are in his backyard.
“Turns out, the really smart fish people are at UC Davis,” said Johnson, noting that the facility “is one of the leading institutions for aquaculture in the United States.”
In the book’s final chapter, Johnson discusses the possible impact of climate change.
“We’re all looking for the guilty party. But the trout don’t care about who is guilty. The reality is, the water’s heating up,” Johnson said.
Trout prefer cooler water that holds more oxygen — it’s believed that brown and rainbow trout begin to experience stress when the temperature rises to about 68 degrees — which means that when water warms, “that in California, they have to swim farther up the mountains or where the water is cooler,” said Johnson, surmising through his interviews that 2050 could be an expiration date for many fish because of climate change.
Some species will possibly switch habitats, Johnson believes.
“Where we’ve traditionally been trying to catch fish ‘A’ will now be the home for fish ‘B,'” Johnson said, adding that his ninth book might be an approach to handling climate change.
“From a fish’s perspective, it’s ‘Guys, I don’t care who or what’s to blame. If it changes the wrong way, I’m dead.'”
Admittedly, “it’s a lot more science than I understand,” Johnson said.
At least Johnson’s figured out the concept of marketing his work. Photographs are vital with more than one per page in the 120-page soft cover book.
“Writing 120 pages of words would bore everybody to death,” said Johnson.
For more information, call (707) 644-4788 or visit engineeringpathways.com.